Aside from the cultural legacy the women of China left behind, the tangible evidence of the existence of footbinding lies in the shoes they wore and the deformed limbs that filled them. With the help of a translator, a mother of six, born in 1922, explained to me that when Sun YatSen mandated the extinction of the practice, regulators were sent out door to door. People were encouraged to gather up the beautiful shoes and hand them in or report on those who continued to bind. As a child and during the first years of her arranged marriage, she wore pretty shoes, but they were all tossed away by the time she and her husband acquired a modest home in the late 1940s at the onset of the PRC. With animation, she described her initiationsintosbinding, declaring that it was cruel, and with resignation, indicated that her feet were now an ugly embarrassment to her. For mature women, she demonstrated, to cease binding was just as painful as starting. It sometimes took up to five years to bind looser and looser until the feet finally felt comfortable. Since she, and others like her, loosened their bindings, she has worn plain black strapped fabric shoes with a pair of socks. Still short in comparison to an untouched foot, a market for shoes in small sizes did remain to meet a lessening demand. It was not until the 1980s that the last factory in Tianjin stopped production.

　　To become a collector of lotus?shoes is addictive. The first pair I bought was on a wintry day at Panjiayuan market in Beijing. They were a thick blue felt with pink tassel and lotus appliqués. They were a winter shoe from northern climes and had definitely been worn. I picked them up constantly to admire and wonder about the woman who had worn them. Subsequent visits to other markets, a keen eye to spot them in stalls or samples in bags not on display, and learning Chinese phrases to make inquiries, increased the size of my collection to just over 2 dozen, each with its own features and significance. The perfect foot inside the shoe had six characteristics: small, slim, pointed, fragrant, arched, soft/supple and straight. The shoe mirrored the same requirements, except for the fragrance. The design of the shoe varied between geographical regions and minority groups. The largest were in the north; the smallest in Fujian and Taiwan. The prettiest were from Shanxi and Shaanxi, but the smallest and most beautiful were worn by prostitutes and actresses who could pay for professional needlework. Often, in an illusion, a small shoe actually held a foot whose heel hung over the back or whose volume rather than length was contained. The pointed toe slid carefully without paddingsintosthe front.. The shoe's arch curved upward and was often exaggerated in its construction through the vamp or with a raised interior heel platform or exterior lift. The strength needed for the weakened foot was primarily in the binding, but frequently, insertions of bamboo stripssintosthe lining supported the heel, or tabs attached to the back upper edge were also incorporatedsintosthe binding or legging cover-ups. A nighttime bootie might have some slight quilting. All were custom made using a last for shape. A full wardrobe consisted of 16 pairs, four for each season.

　　In making a lotus shoe, two parts, the vamp and the sole, became the canvas for personal creativity and expression.

　　The colour, design and stitching told a powerful story in choice and symbols. Red shoes were for happy and special occasions. White was for mourning. The desired fabric was silk, embroidered painstakingly with flowers, the lotus and peony especially, wildlife and animals such as cats, frogs

　　or bats, the mythical phoenix or other symbols of long life, prosperity, fertility or happiness. My two favourite pairs are purple, fairly flat-footed, one which has the eyes and fins and delicate stitchery to create a fish, and the other is gold-tasselled and sports whimsical deer with blue antlers. Soles were also subject to colourful patterns, particularly the lotus, ladder, and lanterns as life came to a close. If not artful, the soles were primarily practical and were made of hand-quilted layers of cotton, supplemented for weather and wear with lambskin, leather, or iron cleats coupled with wooden heels to repel water and ground creatures.

　　In ancient works of art, women with small feet were shown wearing flowing robes draped to show only a hint of the beauty lying beneath. Occasionally, a covered foot was revealed, sometimes in an erotic context of seduction or bedchamber. Lotus shoe reproductions have appeared in ceramics, wooden snuff containers, and good luck hangings.

　　Old photographs of bound-footed women have appeared in antique markets and on postcards.

　　Lately, the mystique of the footbinding tradition has been explored in two coffee-table books, Splendid Slippers, enthusiastically researched by Beverley Jackson and Dorothy Ko's Every Step a Lotus, a book commissioned by the world-class Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada. Aching for Beauty, written by Wang Peng like an academic treatise, and a novel, entitled The Three-Inch Golden Lotus by Feng Jicai, translated by David Wakefield both make interesting reading.