Below: Lotus Feet
So far, the book has summarized Madame Mao's life from her traumatic childhood up to her career as a actress in adulthood. As a child, the author portray's Mao as not having a real name besides "girl". She was born into an abusive family: her father is hardly ever there and when he is, he beats both her and her mother. Her mother was forced
into the marriage and has no idea of how to raise a child. When Mao was four, her mother attempted to bind her feet so that she could have "lotus feet." This results in extremely disfigured and small feet that are swolen and pointed like rice cakes, as described in the book. After three weeks with bound feet, Mao rips off the bandages because she can no longer deal with the pain: this is the first of many acts of defiance and independance in Mao's life. Soon after, she is put into the custody of her grandparents who giver her a proper name of Yunhe. Her grandpa introduced her to theater and the opera, which consequently becomes her passion in life. She runs away from her grandparents to begin her acting career but is majorly unsuccessful, save for the debut appearance she made as a replacement for the lead part in an opera. Yunhe then becomes a Chinese teacher but word gets out that she's a communist so she is put in jail for a time and is luck to get out alive. After many failures, she rechanges her name to Lan Ping (meaning blue apple) to start a new life. In this "new life," Lan Ping tries her hand at acting again in Shanghai and gets a leading role in a popular play.
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