GOLDEN LOTUS REVISITED
(July 20th, 2012)
After 7 years of making the GOLDEN LOTUS(2006), my third film in the documentary trilogy on contemporary China, I revisited the hometown of one of my main characters in Tonghai, Yunnan province on July 8th,2012. To my pleasant surprise, Grandma Zhan is still alive and she is now 103 years old, one of the very few lotus women still alive in China today !
Grandma Zhan is in great care of her family. She hasn’t been wearing her shoes for a long time since she hasn’t been walking, but the daughter put on a pair of embroidered shoes for me. In my eyes, Grandma Zhan has always looked very graceful with a dancer’s posture. I couldn’t help wondering about one issue again why the tiny feet had been the source of PRIDE for millions of women of the past – Joanne Cheng
Back in 2009, I visited Dr. JiSheng Ke in Taiwan, a collector of 10,000 pair of authentic lotus shoes. My research was on the AESTHETICS OF GOLDEN LOTUS. According to the Dr. Ke ” A classy woman’s lower legs and feet were wrapped in multilayers often decorated with buckles and ribbons with intricate embroidery -testimony of the inner voice of women who were less mobile in a society dominated by men”.
