A viewer takes in a display of “three inch lotus” shoes. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

“Three inch lotus” was a term used for women’s bound feet or the extremely small shoes they wore. Foot binding was the custom of tightly binding a young girl’s feet into a distorted shape to prevent further growth.

Foot binding is thought to have originated during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in imperial China in the 10th or 11th century as a trend among upper-class court dancers, and prevailed in the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1127). The practice was outlawed several times beginning in the 13th century and was finally banned after the Communists came to power in 1949. Although considered a cruel and barbaric practice, it took years to die out and some of its victims, 70 and older, can be found today.

“Three inch lotus” was first a status symbol to indicate high social rank of upper-class women, for they did not have to do manual labor. The long fingernails of the concubines of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was another example of high status. Through the 11th and 12th centuries, foot binding became widespread and popular even in the poorest families, and was taken as an indispensable quality of beauty.

Some men of letters even created poems to praise such “delicate” feet, and their tiny, swaying steps were seen as attractive and arousing for men. Women with “three inch lotus” were likely to make better marriages, while girls with normal size feet would have difficulty finding husbands.

Under such patriarchal and morbid trends, when a girl was about three years old she had to undergo a painful “operation” to get the “three inch lotus”. During the process, her toes would be fractured and her feet would be bound tightly with linen strips, forcing her feet to form a concave shape. With such deformed feet, women were confined to the house, and objectified as men’s property. In Chengdu, Southwest China’s Sichuan province, the “Three Inch Lotus” Museum reopens on Jan 15. It contains more than 5,000 pairs of “lotus shoes” on display, revealing and reflecting the thousand-year history of foot-binding of Chinese women. It is said that the smallest shoes on display are only 9 centimeters long.

Any progress of civilization can never be made without generations’ striving. To free women’s feet from “three inch lotus” shoes was the first step China took to further women’s liberation in its history.