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Why homes in Asia maintain a strict shoes-off rule, often opting for slippers instead


Across Asia, most private homes maintain a firm shoes-off rule. In Hong Kong, encountering a towering mound of assorted footwear outside a house party is commonplace. Shoe racks are generally found at the entrance, or outside it, rather than in bedroom wardrobes, as in other parts of the world.

Protecting the cleanli­ness of interior floors is a legacy from times – not that long ago – when roads and footpaths were filthy. Chinese superstitions enforce the rule: wearing outdoor shoes inside is believed to introduce “bad luck”, a metaphor for germs, into the home. Going barefoot indoors is also unusual; slippers or rubber sandals being worn instead.

In early urban Hong Kong, ground floors were usually paved in stone slabs, with timber boards supported by beams on upper levels. Like almost all building materials in the colony’s early days – with the exceptions of mud bricks for village houses and locally quarried stone – this timber was imported. Southeast Asia was the main source, with much of it imported via the British North Borneo Company, established in 1881. The scale of the trade and Chinese emigration links were such that Sandakan, on the coast of modern Sabah, east Malaysia, became known as “Little Hong Kong”. Read More

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