skimming over the top of golden lilies

Lori Hale Williams

These tiny shoes are not children's shoes. They are shoes meant for a chinese lady, one who had her feet bound. They are tiny, smaller than my small hands, and made of beautiful red silk. Chinese foot binding was a procedure commonly done to women in the Tang Dynasty in China (600-900eds) and continued on well into the 12th century. The processes involved wrapping and rewrapping the feet of girls until their bones grew in the mutated form, small enough to fit in these shoes. The practice reportedly began to copy a concubine's small feet, and lead to essentially cripple a woman. More information and some pictures here at wikipedia. These were given to me by my mother-in-law.


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