What kind of shoes were the "high heels" of palace ladies in the Qing Dynasty?

This kind of high-heeled shoes, called flag shoes, is one of the most distinctive costumes of flag women, which can be worn by ladies from the court to the folk. There were no flag shoes in the early Qing Dynasty. In the eighth year of Tiancong, Huang Taiji gave a set of class clothes, including: "three pairs of golden flower boots, nine pairs of Japanese satin boots, three pairs of sewing boots, thirty-two pairs of satin boots, eight pairs of wool boots and ten pairs of leather boots, without high soles."

This kind of embroidered flag shoes are made of wood and are called "high-top shoes" or "flowerpot-bottom" shoes and "horseshoe-bottom" shoes. Its wooden heel is generally about 5- 10 cm high, some can reach 14- 16 cm, and the highest can reach about 25 cm. Usually wrapped in white cloth, and then embedded in the middle of the soles of the feet. The heel bottom usually has two shapes, one is that the top is open and the bottom is convergent, showing the shape of an inverted trapezoidal flowerpot. The other is thin at the top and wide at the bottom, flat at the front and round at the back, with the appearance and landing marks like horseshoes. The "flowerpot bottom" and "horseshoe bottom" are named after this, and they are also collectively called "high-top shoes". In addition to embroidered patterns or decorative pieces such as cicada butterflies on the vamp, there are often embroidery or beading on the parts of wood that cannot follow the ground. Some toes are decorated with ears made of silk thread, which is as long as the ground. The high-heeled wooden sole of this kind of shoes is extremely strong, and the upper is often broken, while the sole is still intact and can be reused. High-grade flag shoes are mostly worn by aristocratic young and middle-aged women over the age of thirteen or fourteen. Older women's flag shoes are mostly made of flat wood, which is called "flat shoes". The front end of the flag shoe is slightly cut to facilitate walking. I don't even wear it now.

Manchu people have the custom of "chopping wood to make shoes" since ancient times. There are different opinions about the origin of this kind of high-top shoes. One view is that Manchu women used to go up mountains to collect wild fruits, mushrooms and so on. In order to prevent insect bites, they tied wooden blocks to the soles, and later made increasingly sophisticated shoes and developed them into high-top shoes. There is also a legend that in order to cross a mud pond and recapture the city occupied by the enemy, the ancestors of the Manchu Dynasty learned the appearance of a white crane, tied high branches on their shoes, and finally won, achieving the goal of revenge and development. In order not to forget those tragic days, but also to commemorate the contribution of stilt wooden shoes, women put on these shoes and passed them down from generation to generation, becoming more and more exquisite and beautiful, and later they became like this.