DESCRIPTION

Beginning from hip Shanghai with it’s loud modernity and flashy attractive lifestyle, it seems that Modern China is a society without a Past but very much of a Future.

The “I” protagonist breaks away from there into the distant past of classical China in search of the last great mysteries of her childhood: the fabled “Golden Lotus”, the women with bound feet. 


Following the red thread of her journey, the film thrives on the juxtaposition of modern and ancient China, Shanghai and the countryside, and the tensions between current and historical notions of beauty and attractiveness, erotic ideals, the ideal of marriage and woman's role in society. 

For over 1000 years, the tradition of foot-binding was a quintessential ideal of beauty in the Middle Kingdom affecting over 2 billion women. It seems inconceivable that this pervasive and enduring social phenomenon has been concealed and ignored in China for so long.

How could this cruel practice continue for so many generations? What induced so many Chinese women to inflict such sufferance and pain on themselves and their daughters? 
The answers, revealed in this film, lie in a number of factors.