Evolution of Shoes and Caps in China
History of the Shoe in China
In the neolithic age(from about 10,000 years ago to about 4,000 year ago), ancestors of China used grass, hemp, or kudzu vine to weave into the lü(shoe).There were many ways to call the shoe, such as jü(屦), lü(履), xi(舄) and so on. Xi is the most valuable.
Ancient shoes were classified into three types in terms of the material, i.e. grass, cloth and leather.
Cloth shoes refer to shoes made with hemp fiber, damask silk, brocade and so on.
In the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - 220 A.D.), the toe cap of the cloth shoe was usually branched, and the sol was made with linen thread. Such a shoe was called "shuangjian qiaotou fanglü(square shoe with double tip and rising head);
In the Wei and Jin dynasties(220 - 316 A.D.),usually a double-animal pattern was woven into the front tip, the color matching was harmonious, and the whole shoe looked very graceful;
In the North Song Dynasty(550 - 577),the ji was popular among all people, from the emperor to the man in the street. The so-called ji was a shoe with wooden teeth, consisting of three parts, bian(the shoe body), xi(the lace) and chi(the teeth).
In the Song Dynasty(960 - 1297), shoes for men were mostly leather shoes with a small toe, and shoes for women usually had a round toe, a flat toe or rising toe, sometimes with all kinds of patterns decorated on them, such as a flower or a bird.
In the Ming Dynasty(1368 - 1644), men's shoes usually stressed thickness and strength, and the materials and fashions were varied. In general, in the north, people wore lozenge-patterned nice-looking shoes, and in the south people wore palm fiber shoes. Besides,in the period from the Yuan Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, a kind of female cloth shoes was popular, characterized by a high rising toe and a flat and thick sol. It looked especially slim.
In the Qing Dynasty(1644 - 1911), male shoes were mostly pointed-toe ones, whose materials were satin in summer and autumn, and lint in winter;The sol might be thick or thin, the instep might be single-ridged or double-ridged, and the upper might have embroidery, or there was a pattern of ruyi cirrus clouds at the toe;The female shoes in the Qing Dynasty were very special: the sol was usually wooden, as high as one inch to five inches, whose shape was like a horse's hoof, thus, it was called "matidi"(horse hoof shaped sol). The instep was usually made of silk, with colored embroidery on it. Those worn by noble women also had some jewelry inlaid on the vamp. Old women usually wore wooden flat-soled shoes.

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