Lotus shoes: small footwear for Chinese women who were tied down as children

More than 1,000 years ago, during the Chinese dynasty, many young girls bound their toes tightly with gauze to give the appearance of delicate feet. The earliest preserved examples of petite footwear known as “lotus shoes” date back to the 13th century, but the custom of foot binding, known in Chinese as “chanzu,” continued into the mid-20th century.

Foot binding was a type of body modification performed primarily on young girls by the Han Chinese. Between the ages of four and eight, the girl’s legs were wrapped in bandages and gauze by her mother. The goal was to create a foot that looked very small by bending all four little toes under the sole of the foot and breaking the arch of the foot to bring the front and back of the foot as close together as possible. The practice, which was reported to be extremely painful, was at various times a symbol of high status, an expression of female beauty, and a way to restrict women’s physical movements.

“The bandage that the woman used on her leg was about 10 feet long, so it was difficult to wash her leg,” Chinese author Yang Yang, whose mother had a bound leg, told NPR. “I only washed it once every two weeks, so it was very, very smelly.”

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The earliest known archaeological examples of lotus shoes date from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) in China. Experts at the Textile Research Center (TRC) in Leiden, the Netherlands, say six pairs of shoes were discovered in the tomb of Mrs. Huang Sheng, who lived from 1227 to 1243, and their average length was just 5 inches (13 centimeters). Evidence of bound feet has been found in several other 13th-century tombs, suggesting that it was an upper-class custom and a prerequisite for a woman’s “proper” marriage.

There are extant examples of many types of Lotus shoes, including daytime boots, wedding shoes, and sleeping socks. Lotus shoes were usually made of cotton, wool, or silk, and were often decorated with intricate embroidery of flowers and birds. The smallest example of a Lotus shoe in the TRC Leiden exhibit is only 2.4 inches (6 cm) long.

By the late 19th century, the fight for women’s rights in China was causing the practice of foot binding to become obsolete, as it severely deformed women’s feet and caused pain. However, foot binding was practiced in some areas until 1949, and a small number of elderly women with bound feet can still be seen today. The last factory that manufactured Lotus shoes closed in 1999, but a few small stores remained in existence.

For more amazing archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archive.