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Foot binding is drawing 70x more Wikipedia traffic than normal

Foot binding drew 63,006 views on 2026-06-07, 70x more than the usual 895 a day over the previous 60 days.

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Foot binding

Former Chinese custom

70x
63,006 views
usually 895 a day
Daily Wikipedia pageviews for Foot binding025K50K75K100K63,00624 Apr16 May7 Jun
Wikipedia pageviews, 7 Jun 2026 wikispikes.com
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Daily Wikipedia pageviews for Foot binding
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2026-06-0763,006
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What this article is

Foot binding, or footbinding, was the Chinese custom of breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls to change their shape and size. Feet altered by foot binding were known as lotus feet and the shoes made for them were known as lotus shoes. In late imperial China, bound feet were considered a status symbol and a mark of feminine beauty. However, foot binding was a painful practice that limited the mobility of women and resulted in lifelong disabilities.

Summary text from the Wikipedia article "Foot binding", available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article.

How this was measured

Views are Wikimedia's own pageview counts for en.wikipedia, filtered to agent=user so automated traffic is excluded. The baseline is the median of the previous 60 days, which is used instead of the mean so that an earlier surge cannot flatten a later one. The multiple is the day's views divided by that median.

Read Foot binding on Wikipedia