The vastness of Asia and its diversity of peoples mean it is a continent of many handicrafts. Many of them were developed as a way to reflect the ethnic and racial make-up, religious beliefs, natural environments and changing social conditions of a place; today, their practitioners are finding ways to stay relevant in contemporary society.
HONG KONG: STITCHED WITH HEART
A bride’s embroidered slippers are a crucial element of the tea ceremony and recessional of a Hong Kong Chinese wedding. The elaborate peony patterns in bright colours, sometimes outlined by golden threads, are the perfect complement to a woman’s gold bracelets and gown on her wedding day. The shoes, called sau fa hai in Cantonese, appear at other auspicious occasions, too: at Chinese New Year, children will often wear shoes embroidered with similar patterns to the bridal peony or elaborate goldfish.
Such shoes were not always accessible to the masses; in ancient China, they were used to indicate the social status of members of royal families. The shoes’ history can be traced back to China’s Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC), when the ruler, Duke Xian of Jin, who had defeated his neighbouring jurisdictions to form a unified nation, ordered all the ladies of his court to sew floral and fruit patterns onto their shoes to commemorate his victories.
Embroidered shoes grew increasingly popular among the wealthy, with each dynasty having its own patterns, colours, materials and shoe styles. They were most popular in the Tang dynasty (618-907), when shoemakers set up shops to sell them to women from wealthy families. Those shoes were embroidered with geometric patterns in contrasting colours to indicate the wearers’ social status, ethnicity and gender, as they used to be worn by both men and women before the Qing dynasty. During the Song dynasty, women of rich families wore “bow shoes”. They were shaped like a bow with a curved sole to fit ladies’ bound feet and came in a wide variety of patterns. When the Republic of China was established in 1912, marking the abolition of imperial rule, embroidered shoes became available to a great segment of society, and the rules about the significance of patterns became less strict.
“Shoes were originally made to protect
