For centuries a woman with bound feet could not escape the clutches of her jailer, or husband. When she walked at all, she tip-toed around with an exaggerated sway in her hips. In the eyes of men with distorted tastes, this was the height of female delicacy, beauty and sex appeal.

Foot binding first came into fashion during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). One of the Song emperors is said to have adored small, delicate feet and, to win his favour, his concubines bound their feet.

The practice later spread to ordinary society, catching on quickly with women of the majority ethnic group, the Han.

A woman with naturally developed, unfettered feet was called a da jiao man po, or a barbarian shrew with large feet.

Hoping to see their petite-footed offspring make good matches in future, mothers would bind the feet of daughters as young as three years old to create a pair of delicate "three-inch golden lotuses." "I do this because I love you," mothers would say to their daughters as the girls screamed in pain. "It's for your good and one day you will thank me."

If at any time the feet were released from the torture, healing would begin and they would increase in size once more. This meant the girl's feet had to be wrapped and constrained through her whole life: as a young adult, in middle-age, as a mother and as a grandmother.

In feudal China, when a bride, her face veiled in a red, square cloth, arrived at the home of her husband, who had very likely never seen her before, he would first raise the bottom of her gown slightly in front of all the guests to check the size of her feet.

If a pair of tiny feet were revealed, the audience would cheer. This was the moment at which the bride could feel happy in the knowledge that all the pain of foot binding had paid off.

But if two "large, clumsy" feet appeared, her husband and the guests would sigh with despair. The newly-weds would have lost face.

Although Shanghai was opened up to the outside world in the mid-19th century, the practice of foot binding was still prevalent in the city in the early 20th century.

If a woman wanted to earn a living working as a high-class prostitute near Fuzhou Road, she had to have a pair of tiny feet. Otherwise, she could only work as a maid or a servant.

The first person to raise her voice against the crippling custom was a woman called Mrs Archibald Little. In the year 1895, she started the Tian Zu Hui or Natural Foot Society in Shanghai.

The society did much to raise public awareness about the cruelty of foot binding.

In 1897, two Chinese reformers, Liang Qichao and Tan Sitong, advocates of a Constitutional Monarchy, joined the cause. They set up a Bu Chan Zu Hui or Non Foot Binding Society headquartered in Shanghai with offices across China.

Members of the society had to agree not to shackle their daughter's feet, nor allow their sons to marry women with bound feet. They also had to remove all coverings from the feet of any of their relatives who had been subjected to the practice.

As foot binding began to disappear, new ideas that women should be independent of men and given access to a wider world surfaced.

Soon, the first schools for girls were set up in Shanghai and a few lucky girls were able to walk, on healthy feet, to school.

In Shanghai, modern young Chinese women had freedom of movement. They took part in athletics or went dancing just like Western women.

Once liberated from foot binding, women started to play a larger role in society in Shanghai than anywhere else, or anytime else, in the history of China.

A group of respected, gifted women came to prominence in Shanghai. Their number included the two First Ladies of the Republic of China, the Soong sisters, brilliant woman writer Aileen Chang and China's Film Queen Hu Die. These bright women stood proud, on their own two feet. (By Shi Hua)