Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She leaned on the door frame, getting support from the wood that she no longer got from her feat. The binding had just begun and already she has trouble balancing herself.

Her mother told her that this was tradition. That to go before the matchmaker she needed to be beautiful. To achieve the perfection of beauty she needed to sway in the wind like the willow tree.

The girl had no desire to sway in the wind, she wanted to be the wind. To go where...