Cloth shoes with “thousand-layered soles” have long been a symbol of a mother’s love in China. Despite competition from modern shoes, handmade cloth shoes have survived and even found a niche market. Duan Yuguo, a shoemaker from Gaozhuang village in Henan province, has turned his family’s shoemaking heritage into a successful business that brings benefits beyond his family. In his workshop, Duan teaches women to make shoes, giving instructions to ensure their work is correct. The shoes are made entirely from cotton and linen fabrics using flour and water as glue, without any chemical additives. This makes the shoes breathable and comfortable to wear.
During a training session in February, a group of women gathered around Duan to learn how to make a special kind of shoe that has been passed down through his family for generations. Duan taught them to pound the soles, trim rough edges, and shape the shoes. He watched them closely, giving instructions to ensure their work was on the right track. Duan emphasizes the importance of sticking to proven methods and practicing them repeatedly for successful results.
Duan’s workshop displays an array of simple but plush cloth shoes, featuring diverse elements such as Suzhou-style embroidery, images of tiger heads, and fashionable patterns. The shoes are crafted entirely from cotton and linen fabrics, using a composite made of flour and water as glue, without any chemical additives. This gives the shoes a breathable quality and makes them comfortable to wear.
Duan’s shoes not only offer comfort but also a sense of cultural heritage. The traditional crafting methods and materials used connect the wearer to the past and the generations that came before them. Duan’s business has also brought economic benefits to his community, providing jobs for local women and generating income for his family.
The popularity of Duan’s shoes reflects a growing trend of people seeking comfort and connection to traditional culture. Duan’s shoes offer both, and his dedication to preserving his family’s shoemaking heritage is a testament to the importance of preserving cultural traditions.
Duan’s work highlights the significance of traditional crafts and the value of passing down skills and knowledge from one generation to the next. By sharing his craft with others, Duan is helping to ensure that traditional shoemaking techniques are not lost to modernization.
Duan Yuguo’s dedication to traditional shoemaking has turned his family’s heritage into a thriving business, providing economic benefits to his community while also preserving cultural traditions. The popularity of his shoes reflects a growing desire for comfort and connection to traditional culture, and his commitment to passing down his skills ensures that traditional shoemaking techniques are not lost to modernization.
Duan Yuguo’s cloth shoes may not have a flashy appearance, but they are steeped in a rich history and carry strong cultural significance. Duan’s family made cloth shoes for court officials with their superb sewing and needlework skills as early as the Emperor Qianlong’s reign of the Qing Dynasty. In the 19th century, earlier generations of his family opened shoe stores in Ruyang and places as far away as Beijing and drew in a large number of apprentices in Henan. However, the booming cloth shoe family business hit a low ebb after social turmoil before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and failed to keep up with the times afterward.
Duan’s father didn’t carry on the family tradition, but fortunately, his mother Shi Xizhi managed to learn the craft from his grandfather, though she mainly made the shoes for domestic use. Duan watched her making the shoes in childhood, and he felt curious when those pieces of cloth were turned into the shoes he wore. In 2008, Duan’s mother suggested reviving the family tradition, and Duan, who was at a loss as to his future career at the time, started to learn his family’s shoemaking skills from his mother.
An array of simple but plush cloth shoes featuring diverse elements takes up considerable space in Duan’s workshop, making it look like a shoe museum. The shoes are crafted entirely from cotton and linen fabrics, using a composite made of flour and water as glue, without any chemical additives, giving them a breathable quality and making them comfortable to wear. When sewing the shoe top, if the stitching is not straight, even by an inch, it can affect the appearance of the shoe and make it look less attractive, says Duan.
Duan’s handmade cloth shoes have managed to survive the test of time and hang onto a niche market, despite modern shoes made with high-tech materials claiming center stage. Duan has tapped into the desire of those who seek comfort the old fashioned way and turned his family shoemaking heritage into a growing business that brings benefits beyond his family walls. A group of women laid siege to Duan in early February, listening attentively as he demonstrated tips on how to make a special kind of shoe that has been passed down through his family for generations.
At his workshop in Gaozhuang village, Ruyang county, Luoyang, Central China’s Henan province, Duan taught the group of women to pound the soles, trim rough edges and shape the shoes. During the process, Duan watched them closely, giving instructions to ensure their operations were on the right track. According to Duan, sticking to the methods that work and practicing them over and again is key to crafting high-quality shoes.
Crafting a pair of cloth shoes is a meticulous process involving over 100 steps that require great attention to detail. It all starts with painting the shoe sole onto cloth, which is then cut out and layered to create the sole’s shape. After applying paste to the cloth strips, the edges of the layers of cloth are bound to form the foundation of the sole. Cotton is then padded in and sewn onto the surface with a cloth cover to complete the sole.
According to Duan, the most important step in the process is crafting the sole. Once the sole is finished, the upper cloth is stitched together with the sole. The final touches include stuffing hot rubber into the shoe to fix the structure and fine-tune the design. All of these steps are done by hand, and it takes five to six days to finish a pair of cloth shoes, with at least 2,100 stitches applied to each pair.
Although Duan had inherited his family’s shoemaking skills, turning them into a marketable commodity was not easy. “After all, they had been mostly made for our own family use,” he says. But through hard work and determination, he managed to revive the family business and turn it into a growing enterprise.
Today, Duan’s workshop in Gaozhuang village, Ruyang county, Henan province is a shoe museum filled with an array of simple but plush cloth shoes featuring diverse elements, including refined Suzhou-style embroidery, images of tiger heads, and fashionable patterns. Duan’s shoes are crafted entirely from cotton and linen fabrics, using a composite made of flour and water as glue, without any chemical additives. This gives the shoes a breathable quality and makes them comfortable to wear.
Despite the popularity of modern shoes made with high-tech materials, traditional handmade cloth shoes like those made by Duan have managed to survive the test of time and hang onto a niche market. Duan’s shoes may not have a flashy appearance, but they are steeped in a rich history and carry strong cultural significance.
Duan’s family has been making cloth shoes since the Emperor Qianlong’s reign of the Qing Dynasty, and they have a long and storied past. In the 19th century, earlier generations of his family opened shoe stores in Ruyang and places as far away as Beijing, drawing in a large number of apprentices in Henan. However, the business hit a low ebb after social turmoil before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and failed to keep up with the times afterward.
Duan’s mother, Shi Xizhi, managed to learn the craft from his grandfather, but she mainly made the shoes for domestic use. Duan watched her make the shoes in childhood, and his early memories of the process inspired him to revive the family tradition. In 2008, when he was at a loss as to his future career, Duan began learning his family’s shoemaking skills from his mother.
Over the course of three years, Duan visited shoe experts across several provinces in China, including Shanghai, Hubei, Shanxi, and Zhejiang, to learn various shoemaking techniques and improve his skills. He studied and compared over 80 techniques before making changes to combine their strengths to ensure a more comfortable wearing experience for modern consumers.
Duan realized that the shoes made in the past were made of old rags and had more stitches than necessary, resulting in toughness at the cost of comfort. Therefore, he set out to upgrade the look of the shoes to cater to the needs of modern consumers. After constant experimenting, he found a balance between durability and comfort.
Using size 40 shoes as an example, he established that the standard for the shoe top is 95 to 96 stitches. He believed that it would not be practical or aesthetically pleasing if the stitches were too dense or sparse. Thus, he made sure that he maintained a delicate balance between the number of stitches, the quality of the material, and the comfort of the shoe.
Duan also spent considerable time searching for raw materials that were hard to come by in his rural home long before e-commerce was available. He had to travel far and wide to find stretchable fabric and eyelets, which are usually reinforced with metal rings as a way to thread cords through, in Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanxi provinces.
Despite the challenges, Duan persevered and eventually found raw materials of the highest quality to make his shoes. His work garnered the interest of several shoe plant owners who entrusted him with big orders.
Through his continuous efforts to improve the quality and design of his shoes, Duan has been able to create a brand that resonates with people, and his shoes are now sold in major cities across China. He takes pride in the fact that his shoes are not only comfortable and durable but also carry a rich cultural heritage.
The journey has not been without its challenges, but Duan has learned the importance of perseverance and hard work. He continues to innovate and experiment, always striving to improve the quality and design of his shoes.
Duan’s commitment to preserving the traditional methods of cloth shoemaking while also innovatively integrating embroidery and other elements led him to establish his cloth shoemaking company in Gaozhuang village in 2012. His exquisite craftsmanship and rich style earned his products interest from the high-end market, catering to different customers, ranging from children to the elderly.
“Many of my customers are scholars and college professors, who pursue comfort,” he says, adding that a considerable number of these customers have opted for his shoes out of a sense of nostalgia. In 2017, the Duan family’s cloth shoe craftsmanship was named an intangible cultural heritage of Ruyang county and a time-honored brand. At the same time, it was rated among the most popular tourism products in Henan’s Luoyang city by the tourism and consumer departments.
The path to this success was not easy for Duan, as he spent the following three years visiting shoe experts in Shanghai municipality, Hubei, Shanxi, and Zhejiang provinces and learning various techniques to complement his own. He studied and compared over 80 shoemaking techniques before making changes to combine their strength and ensure a more comfortable wearing experience.
To upgrade the look of the shoes to cater to the needs of modern consumers, Duan experimented constantly and found the perfect balance between toughness and comfort. He also had to search for raw materials that were hard to come by in his rural home long before e-commerce was available, traveling far and wide to find stretchable fabric and eyelets in Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanxi provinces.
Duan’s wife Chen Na made a tough decision and quit her teaching job to help him with the increasing orders. “The orders were piling up, and he was working around the clock. I felt impelled to help,” Chen says. Now, she is also engaged in the handicraft and has even branched out to make bags with similar craftsmanship.
Through his dedication to preserving a centuries-old tradition, Duan not only revived his family’s business but also elevated it to a new level of recognition and success. His unique and exquisite craftmanship not only serves the needs of his customers but also preserves an essential piece of cultural heritage for generations to come.
In 2019, the Ruyang county government initiated a cloth-shoe cultural and industrial park to aid poverty alleviation with a budget of 3.6 million yuan ($517,320). Duan established a center for poverty alleviation in the park and was responsible for helping villagers increase their income by making cloth shoes. Duan expressed his eagerness to share his love for handmade cloth shoes and his desire to pass on his legacy.
Surprisingly, many households in the area had a history of making cloth shoes and required little technical training. Duan standardized and provided guidance to them, enabling them to produce high-quality products. More than 1,000 households in the neighboring villages have already benefited from this program.
Zhao Rulai from Gaozhuang village, now in her 60s, was able to earn more than 1,500 yuan per month with the skill of making a pair of shoe soles in a day after receiving Duan’s training. She expressed gratitude for Duan’s contribution to enabling old women to earn money at home and said she returned the favor with meticulous work.
Duan’s innovative integration of embroidery and other elements led to the development of a series of products catering to different customers. His exquisite craftsmanship and rich style earned his products the interest of the high-end market, including scholars and college professors who seek comfort.
As a result of the expanded production capacity, annual sales of Duan-style cloth shoes reached 10,000 pairs, with a value of 2.4 million yuan. In 2020, Duan-style cloth shoes were named an intangible cultural heritage of Luoyang, and Duan’s workshop started a partnership with the intangible cultural heritage study and training program run by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Through this partnership, they have refined the cloth-shoe production process by dividing the labor. Some workers are responsible for repairing the soles of the shoes, while others embroider the shoe tops. Duan stated that this not only reduces business costs but also provides a convenient way for local villagers to earn additional income during their spare time.
Recently, Duan’s workshop was selected as one of the 66 exemplary cases supporting rural vitalization by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, and the National Rural Revitalization Administration. These accolades have given Duan more faith and enthusiasm to continue his work.
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