Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Lotus or Lily Feet - Foot Binding ( 纏 足) in China

I'd just pigged out on a heavy beef comfort food stew - it's winter and yesterday the coldest of the year - and was wandering around the living room when my gaze fell happily on a little pair of highly embroidered ladies shoes bought in China in the late C19 by my great aunt Mimi.

My Great Aunt Mimi (centre, front row) at the time of traveling the world in the late C19

Great Aunt Mimi was absolutely the most cheerful, out-going and positive adult I have ever known. She had no conspicuous abilities or talents - just an enormous sense of delight in life and an uncomplicated unguarded openness with people.

My strongest memory is of her teaching me, in the 1960's at the age of three or four, the song 'Little Brown Jug' with a loving affection and an endless enthusiasm I remember to this day. Her merriness was irresistibly infectious.

My Great Aunt Mimi in her 90's - I knew her in the 1960's, I was 3 or 4

My great aunt never married. She left the family home ...

My Great Aunt Mimi - Standing in white

... to live with one of her nine brothers - till he married.

Then she established her own household.

And took an extended Grand Tour of the world. Not only to the the usual stations of the cross - Paris, Rome and London - but through the Far East, India and China. She was not at all short on courage! And all this journey-ing with a glass eye.

I have always thought of Mimi when I noticed the little Chinese shoes in the various places they have occupied in the places I've lived.

Though I only became fully aware of the accompanying horrors they meant for the wearer as a teenager.

The practice of foot-binding developed in China in the C9 primarily as a symbol of wealth - lotus-footed persons did not require the mobility needed by working people.


Binding began between three and six years of age ...


... to achieve the optimally beautiful and ideal adult lily foot of three inches.

The practice became illegal after 1949 in New China, though it continued in outlying provinces into the 1960's.


The shoes themselves are often beautiful when viewed as works of handicraft. The first two below are deliciously fanciful examples of children's shoes. And the remainder, shoes for adults reflecting varying degrees of wealth.











When I was living in China, you still used to see older women who had undergone foot-binding (not my photos below).



I found this quite good Chinese documentary on the subject, if you'd like a bit more.