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 These women are sitting in
the western hills outside of Kunming, China. They have
walked halfway up the mountain to do their work. The
older woman on the right has bound feet.
Anita Stewart and Beverley Jackson
examine Anita's kingfisher feather headdress during
Beverley's visit to Mingei on March 2, 2000.
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For
over a thousand years, Chinese women's beauty was judged by the size of
their feet. The ideal foot was three inches long, and shaped like a lotus
bud. Few women achieved this ideal.
Footbinding began for most girls at about six years
of age, and they would wear the bindings for the rest of their lives.
Over 90% of women in China bound their feet, including women from all
classes and regions.
A woman spent many hours making and embroidering
her own shoes. She needed sixteen pairs of shoes before her wedding,
four for each season, including sleeping slippers and red special occasion
shoes.
Typically, a matchmaker carried one shoe to her
prospective mother-in-law, rather than a portrait. If the shoe was small,
she was judged to be obedient and able to withstand hardship. If the
needlework was fine, she was considered to be self-disciplined and skillful.
In the 1920's, as Chinese women became more aware
of western fashions, binding began to fall out of favor in some circles,
especially in Shanghai. In 1949, with "Liberation", it was
outlawed.
While we were in China in January, we saw three
older women whose feet had been bound. One woman, in Yunnan province,
was halfway up in the western hills outside of Kunming, a place only
reached by a long, steep walk. She wore traditional embroidered slippers.
We brought back a number of old shoes for bound
feet. In the Yunnan province, we purchased five pairs of the flat shoes
used in that region. They have wonderful embroidery, mostly with flowers,
but a few with dragons.
In Beijing, we found a wonderful variety of older
silk slippers. We have a pair of red sleeping slippers with green embroidery,
perhaps used on a wedding night. A pair of blue silk funeral slippers
has soles stitched with the traditional lotus of long life and the ladder
to eternity. We also have an impossibly tiny pair of red slippers with
unusual starburst embroidery, and several other lovely examples of beautifully
embroidered shoes.
These shoes are reminders of the extremes women
went to in order to look beautiful. They are also beautifully crafted
examples of Chinese women's main creative outlet for a thousand years.
Suggested reading: Splendid Slippers,
by Beverly Jackson.
Ten Speed Press, 1997.¨
To
see lotus shoes currently avalable at Mingei World Arts, please click
here.
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