Xiangxi Straw Sandals

Xiangxi Straw Sandals

　　The straw sandals commonly seen across Xiangxi are artistically displayed here. They hang alongside books and other artworks without looking out of place. They bring the scent of the mountains and the freshness of crops into the study, offer readers the joy of journeying, and infuse the array of artworks with a sense of primitiveness, simplicity, and everyday life. In this way, Xiangxi’s straw sandals soothe the emotions of the city.

　　In Xiangxi, almost everyone knows how to weave straw sandals, including women and children, but the most common weavers are adult men. Straw sandals ultimately belong to words as rugged and masculine as resilience, perseverance, hardship, toil, and exposure to wind and rain. Pop songs even sing, “Straw sandals are boats, Dad is the sail.” Boudoirs may only embroider floral shoes, never produce straw sandals.

　　Straw sandals are woven from grass leaves and the tendrils of a bountiful harvest. The best dried straw is glutinous rice straw, tough and resilient, which is pounded on a stone slab until the fragrance of grain wafts back. The pounded straw is then twisted and twisted again, and the golden sounds of autumn ring out once more. Weaving straw sandals requires a pair of large hands—hands with a kinship to grain. Only such hands, using meticulously processed straw, can weave authentic, top-quality straw sandals. Only such hands, weaving patterns and knots from straw strips, can create something earthy, radiant, and solid. And so, in this new cycle, the straw is given life anew. Straw can also be mixed with palm fiber, cloth strips, and the bark of paper mulberry, along with beliefs in durability and multiple hues, making the sandals stronger, more beautiful, richer in character, and more in harmony with the mountains and the flowering seasons. Wearing them, you can climb more hillsides, step across more streams, and hum more mountain songs.

　　To make straw sandals in a simple way, one can tie one end of the rope around the waist and the other end to the toes of the outstretched feet, allowing work to begin anytime, anywhere. For a more refined approach, there’s the straw sandal stool. Sitting astride the stool, one uses the waist as one anchor and the two long ears attached to the wooden stool as the other. As a child, I saw such stools—the round holes of the two long ears worn smooth, and the stool itself aged with a historical hue and a sense of time. Even if not making sandals, sitting on it evokes the rich aroma of aged grain.

　　Straw sandals belong to the wilderness. They’ve stepped through mud, snow, cliffs, steep slopes, stone paths, and field ridges. When entering a house, they’re taken off by the door, carrying mud, water, wind, cold, and heat, and then they rest—like two weary servants lying quietly, waiting outside for the call of a new day. In truth, straw sandals do sometimes come indoors. Carried in by their owner, they’re placed near the stove to dry, hung over the fire pit where meals are cooked, or above racks holding cured meats, exposed to smoke and heat. Straw sandals have ears and a nose; at such times, they can catch the bluish scent of cooking smoke and the aromas of oil, salt, rice, and dishes, listening to the cured meat sizzling fragrantly below. Only then can they leisurely breathe in a bit of the farmhouse’s fragrance.

　　Like how city folk may look down on country folk, straw sandals can also be unwelcoming to strangers. It’s said that when city people ask about shoe sizes when buying straw sandals, country folk used to laugh about it for decades. Do straw sandals have sizes? Straw sandals don’t have so many hierarchies—one pair can be shared by men, women, old, and young. If the difference is too great, for extremely large feet, the ropes are just slightly loosened; for very small feet, they’re just tightened a bit. Yet straw sandals can be harsh on city dwellers’ feet, especially new ones, which can rub and cause blisters. Those accustomed to wearing straw sandals rarely get blisters—they can fully enjoy the softness, simplicity, breathability, convenience, and affordability of the sandals.

　　There are few types of straw sandals, seemingly only one variety: hemp straw sandals. Hemp straw sandals are the nobility among straw sandals. They’re woven from dried and bleached ramie, featuring delicate ears, delicate noses, fine stripes, and fine knots. They’re suitable for market days or visiting relatives but have no place in hauling manure, carrying firewood, or working in the mountains. I’ve only seen them once or twice from afar but never touched them. Later, there were also straw sandals made from car tires, which ultimately bore the taint of industrial civilization, retaining only a rustic form—hardly worth mentioning.

　　As the tide of modern civilization surges over cities and gradually seeps into the countryside, straw sandals reflect on themselves. Needless to say, cloth shoes, leather shoes, high heels, or platform shoes can never replace straw sandals. The only thing that can somewhat share the load and function of straw sandals is the Liberation Shoe. With its military-green canvas upper and rubber sole, it can be worn uphill, downhill, and is durable, but it lacks the affordability of straw sandals and cannot be handwoven. It comes from urban assembly lines, requiring how many grains, how many eggs, how much sweat to obtain. Moreover, wearing them for long periods, the sweat odor caused by poor ventilation can unpleasantly taint the fresh breeze and earthy scent of the countryside. But still, the Liberation Shoe has its own market niche.

　　I wonder if straw sandals will fade from the pages of history. If something truly replaces all their advantages, I suppose there’s no need to panic—they’ve already written the story of the countryside for us. Even if one day they can only be seen in museums or on artists’ desks, I don’t think it’s anything to regret.

　　Recently, there’s news that at some tourist spots, many people are eagerly buying straw sandals as folk-woven handicrafts with special collectible value. Upon hearing this, would the rural areas that produce straw sandals feel nothing but gratification?