20. THE WOMEN OF YUEH—I
She is a southern girl of Chang-kan Town;
Her face is prettier than star or moon,
And white like frost her feet in sandals—
She does not wear the crow-head covers.
In these poems Li Po records what he saw of the "southern" girls in Kiangsu and Chehkiang. These provinces were under the king of Yueh in the 5th and 6th centuries, B.C.
Chang-kan is near the city of Nanking, and was at Li Po's time inhabited by the lower class of people.
The crowhead covers are a kind of shoes worn by the upper-class women of the north. So named on account of their shape and very small size—small feet seem to have been already at a premium. "It is interesting," remarks a native critic demurely, "to note Li Po's admiration for a barefoot woman."
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