The classics tell us that, in relationships, the one between teacher and student comes second only to the one between parent and child.

But there are certain books I would never put on a Kindle because you want to be able to look at graphs and photos or the footnotes and maps. You can't see that.

And often it would be a woman who was in her 70s or 80s who would win the beauty contest, because bound feet never age.

I know a lot about women and their suffering, but I still know almost nothing about men.

If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband's family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. . . But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn't she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?

It used to happen in villages and towns in China that they would have - I guess you'd call them beauty contests - where all of the women of a particular village or town would be seated behind these screens or curtains with only their feet showing.

And one of the interesting things about bound feet is that they never age.