This pair of shoes were made for the donor for her wedding and were brought to Victoria, Canada, in 1910. It then became a wedding gift from Mrs. Chan to her daughter for the daughter’s 1939 wedding in Winnipeg. The shoes show that Chinese Canadian women used material objects to create continuity, connecting their Canadian-born children with Chinese history and cultural heritage. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries China, women from the ruling class did not practice foot binding. Instead, they wore these specially designed shoes with a concave heel in the centre to draw attention to their height and social status. The shoes were also designed to show that the Manchus were a “taller race” than the Han Chinese. The decorative motif on the shoes, flowers and birds, symbolize beauty and happiness.