Lotus Shoes: Stories between Stitches

— Cao Zijian, “Rhapsody on the Luo River Goddess” Translated by David R. Knechtges

And she is dazzling as lotus emerging from limpid ripples.

Lotus Shoes: Stories between Stitches is curated by Madeleine Ward-Schultz ’22, the 2021–2022 Charina Endowment Fund Endowed Intern, and is supported by the Friends of the Tang and the Carter-Rodriguez Fund for Student-Curated Programs.

All artworks are in the collection of the Tang Teaching Museum.

In third-century China, male poets like Cao Zijian praised the Luo River Goddess’s stunning beauty and graceful movements, expressing dominant views regarding women’s bodies and how they should be presented. While some elite women maintained power and agency, their options gradually grew limited. Centuries later, beginning in the Song Dynasty (960–1279), mothers bound their daughters’ feet into lotus shapes, considered desirable to potential suitors, thereby helping to secure a future husband from a wealthier family. The practice gained popularity over many years, reaching its height during the 1800s as European tourism in China began. Secluded in women’s quarters, women and girls handcrafted shoes for their bound feet, or lotus shoes, decorating them with color and embroidery and other details. Through the process of reshaping the foot and advertising their accomplishments in the shoes they made, girls learned the socially required virtues, skills, and behaviors befitting wives and mothers.

Lotus Shoes: Stories between Stitches presents a closer look at the self-expression of Chinese women through shoes for bound feet in the Tang collection. By examining the shoes’ colors, creative adornments, and regionally unique shapes, the exhibition tells the shoe wearers’ stories and addresses some Western misconceptions about footbinding practices. Three sections—History, Artistry, and Reflection—explore China’s early modern societies and the symbols and meanings that women stitched onto their individualized shoes. The exhibition also encourages us to reflect on our own identity expressions and how we present ourselves within societal expectations today.

Shandong Jiangsu Zhejiang Guangdong Pearl River Delta

This map of China depicts the provinces where the lotus shoes in this exhibition were possibly crafted. Shaded areas indicate distinct local styles.

Maps by the following were referenced for this diagram: cartographer David Fuller, DLF Group, and Wikimedia user Pryaltonion.

Southern Heartland

Shanxi

HISTORY

In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), many ethnic groups maintained distinct identities and customs that were passed down through their communities. The Han practice of footbinding was adopted throughout China, with regional styles of lotus shoes reflecting ongoing cultural diversity.

The influence of Daoism and Confucianism fostered a philosophy of harmony and balance in familial relationships. The popular Confucianist school of thought prioritized the family over the individual. Labor roles were gender-based, with men doing agricultural work outside while women managed the household inside. Patriarchal structures were the norm, and while the official status of the family passed from father to son, daughters also contributed to the family’s wellbeing through their labor and craft. The origins of footbinding remain unknown, but possible inspirations can be found in poetry and royal court dancing. Practices, which began during the Song dynasty (960–1279) among the elite with lightly wrapped cloth strips, were more often adopted by families who desired to secure a good match for their daughters. Binding became tighter and more common during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and continued until 1949, in defiance of the Qing government’s attempts to ban the custom.

The Binding Process

Footbinding is the practice of painfully reforming the foot into a shape with a higher, bulging instep, smaller lengthwise shape, and elongated appearance from raised heel to big toe. Women of the family began the ritual around a daughter’s sixth birthday, when Chinese tradition said the transformation into womanhood began.

The labor-intensive process, which lasted through a girl’s teen years, was said to emulate the pain of childbearing. After softening and then folding the four smaller toes under the arch, women tightly bound herb-soaked wrappings around the girl’s foot to preserve the shape at around five or six inches. The ideal size, known as “the golden lotus,” was three inches. The practice declined in the early 1910s and completely ceased in 1949 under the People’s Republic of China.

Women and Community

Society valued women for their needlework skills and capacity to preserve their husbands’ lineage by giving birth to male heirs. Within those parameters, the female community remained a close-knit social web where girls learned from their elders and formed friendships. Young women also crafted shoes as gifts to friends moving away to a husband’s household and village. Practicing their embroidery and shoe crafting not only taught girls the artistry that would support the domestic economy, but it also cultivated the modesty, morality, and diligence of a good wife. A bride-tobe presented her pair of lotus shoes to prospective mothers-in-law, who, as household and familial managers, chose their son’s matches, drawing from their own training and experience in women’s quarters.

Unrecorded Chinese artist

Lotus shoes (shoes for bound feet)

Probably late 19th or 20th century Hand-sewn, hand-embroidered silk, cotton, wood Gift of Scot and Julie Cohen, 2020.6.11a-b

These shoes, by Shandong crafters, characterize the region’s style with downward, gradually sloping toes, vertical uppers, and the crescent moon heel shape. This maker constructed boots with a taller shaft, embroidered with the lotus blossom, and toes with wàn (swastika)-winged butterfly designs.

Unrecorded Chinese artist

Lotus shoes (shoes for bound feet) Probably late 19th or 20th century Hand-sewn, hand-embroidered silk, cotton, wood Gift of Scot and Julie Cohen, 2020.6.13a-b

Women in the Southern Heartland’s Zhejiang region often created slim, elongated shoes with a short heel height, concave vamp incline, and upturned toe. This pair also features coiled heel straps and gingham-patterned heel lifts for further support.

Unrecorded Chinese artist

Lotus shoes (shoes for bound feet) Probably late 19th or 20th century Hand-sewn, hand-embroidered silk, cotton, wood Gift of Scot and Julie Cohen, 2020.6.8a-b

These shoes, possibly for ritual use, were made by artisans from the Pearl River Delta in Guandong province, who crafted both wearable and votive shoes. They feature a slim shape, upturned toe, low-heeled pump, and an open back; some were reinforced by heel lifts, as seen here. The decorations often incorporated gilded thread, metal sequins, tiny white beads, and a butterfly or lotus flower at the back. Votive shoes were offered to the folktale figure Weaving Maid in the region’s Seven Heavenly Maidens ceremony, celebrating girls’ and young women’s talents and friendship bonds.

ARTISTRY

Stitching Stories

To craft lotus shoes, girls and women developed skills in shoe shaping and design. First, they sketched designs on paper, then chose silk or cotton fabric uppers (sides for the shoes). They then traced the designs onto fabric, embroidered them, and attached the components together: four upper fabric cuts and fabric-covered carpenter-made wooden heels. In developing their designs, women created optical illusions to visually suggest the “golden lotus” ideal. Intentionally placed branches, vines, and different-sized animals could direct the eye, granting women control over the way others viewed their bound feet.

Certain symbols had pre-existing associations: lotus flowers signified fruitfulness and purity; birds, bats, and butterflies brought longevity and beauty. Other symbols like the Chinese character shòu suggested long life, good health, virtue, and peaceful death, while wàn (the swastika, a popular motif in Buddhism used since Ancient Mesopotamia, centuries before its Nazi appropriation) fortified prosperity. If a shoe upper displayed multiple symbols together, they could convey a larger meaning—sometimes even whole stories.

Coloring Meaning

Color carried specific connotations based on the five natural elements (wood, fire, metal, water, and earth). Warm colors like red were thought to bring good fortune (happiness and wealth), power, and faith. Yellow and gold represented growth and authority. Blues and greens encouraged growth, healing, harmony, and heavenly blessings. White was exclusively used for mourning, in which women wore undyed, minimally adorned clothing and shoes. As the five-stage mourning process progressed, women would reintroduce faded blue, black, and gray or minimal embroidery.

With a plethora of pictographs, color symbolism, and skilled needlework, women communicated their talents through their artistry, on their own terms. However, during the first decade of the 1900s, Western influence led to a manufactured, more standardized lotus shoe, losing some of the embroidered individuality.

Unrecorded Chinese artist

Lotus shoe (shoe for bound foot)

Probably late 19th or 20th century Hand-sewn, hand-embroidered silk, cotton, wood Gift of Scot and Julie Cohen, 2020.6.23

This shoe demonstrates a distinctive high-heeled style with a 1 3⁄4-inch-tall decorated barrel heel and dramatically sloped, flattened “V” toe, possibly a unique style from the Shanxi region. It also features a popular lacing technique called “ladder rung” in which delicate individual threads cross over the vamp.

Unrecorded Chinese artist

Lotus shoes (shoes for bound feet)

Probably late 19th or 20th century Hand-sewn, hand-embroidered silk, cotton, wood Gift of Scot and Julie Cohen, 2020.6.7a-b

Shandong women made ankle-high lotus shoes that exhibit downward-pointing toes and kidney-shaped heels. This maker also personalized the pair with blue satin heel lifts and intricate looped couching stitches.

Unrecorded Chinese artist

Mourning lotus shoes (shoes for bound feet)

Probably late 19th or 20th century Hand-sewn cotton Gift of Scot and Julie Cohen, 2020.6.15a-b

White shoes proclaimed the first stage of the fivestage mourning period. Through the course of each stage, women crafted additional shoes that gradually re-introduced embellished and brightercolored compositions.

Unrecorded Chinese artist Lotus shoes (shoes for bound feet) Probably late 19th or 20th century Leather, cotton, wooden inserts Gift of Scot and Julie Cohen, 2020.6.21a-b

These leather shoes feature a flat, practical design and material that was inspired by Western styles and popular around the 1910s–1930s.

REFLECTION

Perceptions and Place

By selecting colorful silks and creating unique stitches, women created stories and demonstrated their skills, aestheticism, and artistry. For example, a pair on display here with fluttering butterflies, paddling birds, lotus blossoms, and magenta silk reflects the wearer’s wishes for beauty, good health, and happiness.

During the late 1800s, with increased exchange and trade, Europeans and Americans purchased lotus shoes and other Chinese material culture for their personal collections back home. There, the shoes were treated as exotic attractions that affirmed the cultural differences between China and the West and were used to highlight Western superiority. Photographs of Chinese women’s naked bound feet shocked Westerners, who saw footbinding only through the lens of pain and the victimization of women. Lacking cultural context, Europeans and Americans disregarded Chinese women’s craft and traditions, including their skilled needlework and vital roles in their families and communities.

Self-Presentation

By reflecting on the shoes as records of female voices and expanding our histories, both at personal and cultural levels, we can recognize the agency that Chinese women had in creating their own narratives through their lotus shoes. Untitled Mirror by Lillian Mulero asks us to consider how we present ourselves to others and where we place ourselves in society. Do you think that the objects you wear, make, and use tell stories about who you are and who you want to be?

Unrecorded

Chinese artist

Lotus shoes (shoes for bound feet) Probably late 19th or 20th century Hand-sewn, hand-embroidered silk, cotton, wood Gift of Scot and Julie Cohen, 2020.6.22a-b

This pair was made by a Northern crafter, possibly from the Shanxi region. Unlike most shoes where the uppers mirror each other, these present different designs on each upper, whereas the soles have matching designs.

Lillian Mulero

Untitled Mirror, 1990

Gold leaf, aluminum leaf, oil on canvas Gift of the artist, ED2016.1.193

Untitled Mirror examines representation and narrative agency through the nonreflective, mirror-like surface. Mulero explores portraiture’s intimate subject-viewer exchange in her broader work.

Typefaces: Parbole, designed by Dávid Molnár for ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, and Standard by Bryce Wilner

With thanks to Jenny H. Day, Associate Professor of History and Frances Young Tang ’61 Chair in China Studies, for consultation on this project.