The "Three-Inch Lotus" Museum of Chengdu in China's Sichuan Province has reopened on Jan. 15 after being rehabilitated from the destruction it endured during a fire.
Housing over 5,000 pairs of "lotus shoes," the museum displays the millennium-old story of an ancient Chinese tradition of foot-binding for Chinese women.
According to Xinhua News Agency, the term "three-inch lotus" had been used to describe smallish feet of Chinese women who participated in the custom of foot-binding for their feet to fit into the small shoes they were required to wear.
The smallest shoes on display, says the report, are almost half the size of a foot-long ruler at only 9 centimeters.
Also on display are metal depictions of how a woman's regular-sized foot is forcibly changed by foot-binding to make it smaller.
According to tradition, women's feet were bound and broken while they were still very young to prevent the feet to grow to its normal size. The shrunk feet were later called "three-inch golden lotuses," also known as "San Cun Jin Lian."
The tradition of the "three-inch golden lotus" feet--which was considered a sign of beauty, status and sexual appeal--began during the reign of Emperor Li Yu, who reportedly fell in love with a dancer who had her foot bound to look like a new moon while she performed a "lotus dance."
Han Qiaoni, a resident of Yuxian County in northern China's Shanxi Province, is the last Chinese woman to experience the foot-binding custom.
According to the Daily Mail UK, the 102-year-old Chinese woman had her toes broken and bound when she was only two years old using a long cloth to wrap her toes after her big toe was removed.
Her toes were bent until they pressed against the sole of the foot, deforming it to become the smallish fit for the golden lotus shoes.
Han told the Daily Mail UK that the foot-binding had severed her feet too much that it took six months before she was able to walk again.
The practice had been prohibited since 1912, though some families had stuck to tradition back then and secretly did the foot-binding.
