Page 211 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 204
staged the same sort of thing by having lotus flowers spread out so that his favourite wife
could dance on them. Another version of this tale makes the dancing floor out to have
been a carpet with a lotus design. According to tradition, it was to enable them to dance
neatly ori the small blossoms that Chinese women had their feet bound. Men were
supposed to find bound feet sexually stimulating. The custom is attested from about AD
900 onwards, and was not abolished until the end of the 19th century. Nowadays one may
still find a few old women in villages with bound feet. The poetic name for the mutilation
was ‘the bent lotus’.

A lotus in bloom

He in Chinese also means ‘concord’, ‘unison’, so a picture of two lotus blooms (or a
leaf and a blossom) on one stem expresses the wish for ‘heart and harmony shared’.
The lotus seed-box with its many seeds symbolises fertility.
Love is symbolised by juxtaposing a lotus (representing the girl) and a fish
(symbolising the young man). The red lotus blossom symbolises the female genitalia, the
lotus stem the male.
In Tibetan Tantrism, the thunderbolt (vajra) becomes a male symbol when it is
associated with a lotus. Courtesans were often called ‘red lotus’. When a man says that he
has had the luck ‘to come upon a lotus blossom with a double style’ he means that he has
met up with an old flame.