Bound Feet & Western Dress
by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang

List Price: $13.95
Pages: 215
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0385479646
Publisher: Anchor

I was born on the Fourth of July in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in suburban Connecticut as American as everyone else around me. I spoke English at home, loved Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, and even considered myself like Harriet the Spy. But, filled with stories of China from my parents and my amah, who had brought up my father in Shanghai and was now in charge of my siblings and me, I dreamed of other lands, and felt drawn to know more about my Chinese heritage.

In 1980, I visited China for the first time on a six-month sabbatical with my father, a professor at Yale. I met with many relatives and even lived with some for several weeks, sharing a room with six other people, and a bathroom and kitchen with nine other families.

I recently married and moved to Moscow with my husband. Before that, I lived in New York and worked as an attorney.

top of the page

Q: What first led you to write a book about your great-aunt?


A: I'd known Yu-i since my childhood and had always been fascinated by her. She was one of those perfectly upright old Chinese women you often see in Chinatown, very small, proper and contained. But at the same time that there was something secretive and proud about her, there seemed something also mournful and shameful. I was attracted to that part of her, the part of her that held herself separate from family members and others, that part of her that made people in the family call her masculine.


Yu-i in Hamburg with Eighth Brother, Chang Chiachu, who was also Pang-Mei's grandfather (1926).

Then the first time she sat down with me to tell me her story, she said, "You must remember this. In China, a woman is nothing." Something clicked in me. I was hooked.



Q: What is the significance of the title, Bound Feet & Western Dress?


A: For me, it's about the tension between the East and the West, the old and the new, the traditional and the modern. I think this was my great-aunt's dilemma and, in some ways, my own.

For instance, my great-aunt's feet were bound for three days until her progressive brother stepped in and said that it was too painful for her, and besides, old-fashioned. So, Yu-i grew up with the "unbound" feet of a modern woman, but without the education or expectations of her Western counterparts. And she married by arrangement Hsü Chih-mo, a man who aspired to be very Western; he studied abroad and introduced Western poetry forms to China. Yu-i never felt modern or educated enough around him and his friends.

After the divorce, she worked as vice president of the Shanghai Women's Savings Bank. She took care of her in-laws by having them move in with her. And then when her ex-husband died in a plane crash at the age of thirty-five, my great-aunt helped support his second wife and the second wife's lover! She took care of Hsü Chih-mo's family on behalf of her teenage son because she thought it was his duty to look after the family his father left behind.

As the first generation in my family to be born and raised in America, I, too, had to reconcile the Eastern and Western values. I wanted to be like everybody else but still honor my Chinese heritage.


Yu-i and Pang-Mei, New York City, Christmas 1986.



Q: Do you ever go back to China? Do you still have relatives in China?


A: When Nixon opened China in 1974, my amah, who left behind a son in China, was watching on television. She kept saying, "If Nixon can go, why can't I?" So she moved to China after nearly twenty years in America. And the last time my family and I were in China in 1989, we visited her. We went out to her village and she showed us all around--how well she lived, how much rice there was. And her son was building her a house like a Swiss chalet in the middle of the village. My father asked, "How is she going to get up the stairs when she gets much older?" The son said, "I will carry her."

I still have distant relatives in China. When I spend time with them, I realize how lucky I was to have been born in America. I've had so many more opportunities than them.


Yu-i posing with her mother and her sisters shortly after her return from Germany. Notice her decidedly Western dress and striped hat in contrast to her traditional sisters.



Q: How does your family feel about your writing the book?


A: They're very happy for me and they've been supportive of the project all along. When I was researching the book, it made them a little uncomfortable at first that I was digging into so-called family secrets and talking frankly with Yu-i about things that we never dared discuss at big family gatherings. But I know that my parents admired Yu-i enormously and felt that her story should be told.

Some of the sections in my voice were a little difficult for my parents to read because they saw how conflicted I felt about being Chinese at certain points in my life. I don't think my parents ever realized I felt that way. They were born proud of their Chinese heritage, while I had to come to it on my own, through Yu-i.


Yu-i with a teenage Ahuan. She raised her son on her own after returning from Germany in 1926.



Q: How did you make the choice to write in Yu-i's voice and to weave your voice in at the beginning of each chapter? Did Yu-i's memories come easily?


A: The manuscript must have gone through a half-dozen permutations before my editor and I were satisfied with the final format and balance. At first I simply opened and closed the book with my voice--serving as a sort of bookend. At another point, my voice came in and out of the story almost at random. At one point, we even introduced sections with either my name or Yu-i's so readers would know where they were.

The first drafts were also stiffer and more formal in a sense. In one early draft, the beginning was full of details on the Chang family history in China. My father read it and said, "This is great." But my mother and I read it and countered with the truth: It was boring--the story had no dramatic arc.

Yu-i opened up more and more as I talked to her. But I often had to probe and press or remind her of things so that she would tell me the story behind the story. I used different methods to help her remember. For instance, I'd ask her about the food they ate and prepared, using these associations as a way into her memories.



Q: In the end you did not marry a Chinese man. How does that decision affect your life? How do you imagine raising your own children?


A: I did want to marry a Chinese to please my family, but I ended up falling in love with someone who isn't Chinese and marrying him. The values we share are not race-dependent. When I married Dan last summer, I stood at the altar confident of my decision. But I could not have arrived at that place without resolving some of the same issues that Yu-i faced, such as the tension between family loyalty and individual freedom. I don't believe it was a coincidence that I became compelled by Yu-i's story. She was the first woman in her family not to have bound feet; she was one of the first women in China to get divorced. I drew on her strength and courage. She helped me to discover my own legacy. That's what I hope I can do for my own children.




© Copyright 2012 by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang. Reprinted with permission by Anchor. All rights reserved.

• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.

top of the page