WHAT ARE LOTUS FEET?
In ancient China and all the time up till the Qing Dynasty which ended at the beginning of the last century, binding women's feet was common amongst the rich and the elite. If you haven't heard of this before, girls feet are wrapped tightly in fabric from a young age to stop them growing, and by the time they are a grown up woman their feet are still quite tiny. Think 4 inches. These are called lotus feet.
大家應該聽過以前傳統中國富貴女性會纏足。 你們又有沒有看過手工做的三寸金蓮呢? 馬來西亞馬六甲一天遊，讓我遇上這門已漸漸失去的傳統手工藝。 楊先生是這家華益鞋莊的老闆， 爺爺的年代已開始做三寸金蓮。可惜直到他這一代已沒有後人再有興趣學這門手藝。纏足是一個是殘暴的行為，讓當年很多大家閨秀，千金小姐吃過不少苦頭 。幸好現今的女性不用再接受這樣的折磨。今天的三寸金蓮已成為收藏和紀念品，而楊先生也隨著時代的變遷開始多元化發展做南洋拖鞋。 感謝楊先生讓我在店內多了解這個遠久的歷史和傳統。
The process of binding feet deforms it, as basically all the toes are squashed together and even curled under towards the sole. Ouch!!!! I can't imagine the pain the ladies had to go through. Small feet are thought to be beautiful and represents a status symbol for the wealthy and elite as it limits mobility. If you're not rich enough you can't afford to be waited on hand and foot all your life. With such beauty and wealth, you need beautiful shoes. These shoes are called Three Inch Golden Lotus. The Chinese three inch roughly equates to the western four inch, and is considered the perfect size for feet.
THE SHOP
When I was in Malacca, Malaysia, I stumbled onto this shoe shop which has been making Golden Lotus shoes for three generations. I had a chat with the owner Mr Yeo and he was very kind to let me take photos around the shop.
At the front of the shop are a couple of framed articles about foot binding and if you want to understand more about it you can check out the website for Mr Yeo's shop. There's an interesting article which tells the story of the Lotus Foot. Do be prepared for some not too pleasant photos though.
THE SHOES
Of course, today no one wears the Lotus Shoes anymore, they're more of a collectors item or bought as souveniers. All the exquisite Lotus Shoes are handmade by Mr Yeo and family, and comes in different colours. The fabric is traditional chinese style fabric, you may recognise them from handbags if you have bought any souviners from China. I dare not touch the shoes as they seemed so delicate, and it was really hard to believe that they would have been worn by a grown up woman as recent as a hundred years ago.
Mr Yeo also makes traditional Nyonya beaded shoes. Nyonya are the Chinese immigrants who came to Malaysia and the surrounding countries around the 15th to 17th century and these shoes dates back to the 20th century. They form part of the tradtional outfit. I think it's really amazing how you can apply the skills in shoe making from one tradition and culture to another. I feel like they have bridged two worlds together.
BIDDING FAREWELL
I would have loved to stay around to chat with Mr Yeo and understand more about this traditional handicraft but my husband felt that we shouldn't bother him for too long and shoo'ed me to leave. I thanked Mr Yeo for his kindness, took a few more photos outside the shop and reluctantly left this piece of history.
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What a painful history! I can't believe how those women must have suffered,... unfortunately, there are so many awful traditions around the world...
Sadly, some of these still exists today FGM is one that comes to mind 😔
So true... :(
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I love this post @livinguktaiwan! I've been fascinated with Chinese culture for most of my life, and always found the process of foot binding to be so barbaric, all under the guise of beauty. I guess, to a bit of a lesser degree, what women do today with plastic surgery, excessive dieting etc, is kind of similar.
The lotus feet shoes are still being made...do you think there's anywhere that foot binding is still taking place?
I'm submitting this post to curie and c-squared by the way. Nice job :)
Thanks Lynne. There's been no reports of this practice still taking place so thankfully it should have stopped now. Apart from being babaric, its just not practical in modern days.
Thanks for the submissions I really appreciate it. But I won't get curied , so hope it doesn't impact your score too much!!
Thank goodness it's not modern day practice; poor little girls who had that done to them.
Why wouldn't you get curied? I'm actually not an official curie member, but we get to "practice" in c-squared Discord. Unfortunately the two I submitted, no one was around all day to look at them, so I don't even have feedback for you...or me for that matter.
Posts have to be of an 'exceptional standard' to be curied if your rep is high, but not sure exactly how that is assessed. Also the post cant be more than 10 SBD when they curie it, that i can understand and think is fair enough. Hence my path have never crossed with Curie, no mattet how hard I tried, even when i was a small minnow 😔
Anyway, c-squared did pay me a visit, so thank you very much for that! 💓
It's such a subjective thing I think, but I hear what you're saying overall. Glad c-squared popped by then :)
Looks like a cool place, even though they are instruments of torture!
The shop was an eyeopener and the shoes are really nice ...if you ignore why they're made
What a crazy tradition.. it's like the shoe sizes are in the negative. My toe wouldn't even fit.
You have a massive toe 😂 but I know what you mean
shoe size 13 but what's even crazier, Mike's feet are smaller but his toe is twice the size of mine. We call it Hammer Toe!
🤔🔨👢
Such an interesting shop and it is just in Malaysia so near to the place I stay which is Singapore. I remember seeing pictures of the feet of those who wore such shoes. Their feet were deformed. Usually those with small feet are supposed to be the ones who need not do much work from the wealthy ones!
It would be very difficult to work in this condition. But those were the days ....
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这在我们国内都很难见到的手艺，竟然在国外出现
相信隨著這代師傅走了，這手藝就會完全失傳。其實也不知是好還是不好，畢竟纏足是一個不人道的習俗。
歡迎到 Steemit!
I have seen this kind of shoes in our local museum.But the shoes in the museum isn't as beautiful as these. Those are black in my memory.
I think these will become rarely as the days go by
Hiya, just swinging by to let you know that this post made the Honorable mentions list in the Travel Digest #285.
Please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider upvoting the Travel Digest if you like what we're doing.
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
Thank you @c-squared, i appereciate you dropping by
Did he indicate if he has any older women customers who had their feet bound as children? Maybe not if it totally died out a hundred years ago. Don't you wonder who first had that idea?
Sadly I didn't get to speak to him that much as he was trying to sell me a pair of shoes initially. I think the practice was more prevalent in China probably thats where his grandfather was before they went to Malaysia.
Feet fetish is a weird thing...
I have read about this before. Your post give more insight into this "cultural matter". A very interesting post.