What is the origin of Miao embroidery?

Clothing is "fossilized" and can be seen in the shadow of the Han Dynasty's Central Plains clothing. This unwritten people used needles as brushes and colorful threads as ink to embroider centuries of suffering and the bumpy road of migration on their dresses.

When "outsiders" were convinced by Miao embroidery, it was given more value, and those instinctive records of history were now transformed into beauty that could be measured in money.

"China also has high-class clothing"

"Why is Miao clothing so attractive?" That's the question that intrigues Wei Ronghui.

Wei Ronghui, deputy director of the Central Museum of Ethnic Minorities, grew up as a Miao in Guizhou's Qiandongnan Prefecture. "I've come into contact with many people who collect Chinese ethnic minority costumes, and many of them started out collecting costumes of various ethnic groups, to later collect only Miao costumes. Of all the ethnic costumes being collected, the number of Miao costumes being collected is the largest."

In order to answer the doubts in his mind, Wei Ronghui often asked collectors the reasons why they like Miao clothing. The answers given are varied, "Some say it is a costume that makes people cry when they look at it, some say it has a feeling of warmth that makes people warm, and some say that from the Miao embroidery, they can see a kind of upbeat attitude towards life."

A Japanese collector called Sato Toshihiko told reporters that he liked the Hmong clothing, because "Hmong embroidery is the most exquisite", "there are no two embroidery is exactly the same". Sato, who works in Beijing, said he saw Miao embroidery on his first trip to Guizhou in 1996 and fell in love at first sight, and now he goes to Guizhou every year, and the ethnic clothing market is a must-visit place every time.

The embroidery on Miao clothing is the reason why collectors are keen on Miao clothing. "Many ethnic costumes, can only get the attention of collectors, museums and researchers, only the Miao costume, got the widest range of favorite, whether it is a professional collector or ordinary people, will like the embroidery on the Miao costume." Speaking of her people's costume craft, Wei Ronghui is very proud.

The variety of Miao embroidery and the exquisite craftsmanship leave other embroidery types in the dust. Among China's four major embroideries, Miao embroidery has more than 20 types of craftsmanship, and pick embroidery, crepe embroidery and stacked embroidery are techniques not found in other embroideries. "There is a 'double-needle lock' craft that originated in the Han Dynasty, an embroidery that is hard to see nowadays but has been preserved in Miao embroidery."

The exquisite workmanship of Miao clothing also makes collectors love it. "Broken thread embroidery" is to break a silk thread into several, and Miao women use silk threads thinner than hair to embroider, and a piece of embroidery often takes several months. Wei Ronghui said, Miao clothing in Paris show, the French high-class clothing trade union chairman Gobak on the Miao embroidery was full of praise, he said: "We used to think that China does not have a history of high-class clothing, but in the ethnic minority clothing, especially in the Miao clothing, I saw."

What's also fascinating are the patterns of Miao embroidery. In the Central Museum of Ethnic Minorities, there is a set of "Dragon Boat Clothes", which are embroidered to depict the scenes of the Dragon Boat Festival, the most lively festival of the Miao people, with the dragon boat races in full swing. Miao embroidery not only records festivals, totems and heroes, but also records the history of the Miao's hundreds of years of migration. In many Miao embroidery patterns, there are water-wave-like patterns, and the Miao use such symbols to indicate that their ancestors used to trek across mountains and rivers, crossing the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, before finally coming to the southwest.

The superb imaginative ability of the Miao people can be seen in the embroidery. The butterfly pattern that often appears in Miao embroidery is the "Mother Butterfly", a totem celebrated by the Miao people. The heart of a maple tree gives birth to a butterfly, which falls in love with a blister in a paddy field, and the butterfly lays 12 eggs, which evolve into all things natural and the ancestors of the Miao people. The Hmong believe that "Mother Butterfly" is the ancestor of all Hmong people***.

Guandongnan is the region with the largest variety of butterfly patterns. Only in the town of Shidong, butterfly modeling there are several kinds of people face human butterfly wings, there are also people face human hands and feet, behind the wings, like the Western angel modeling. There are also geometric embroideries with very abstract lines representing butterflies, which are used to decorate the obeisance hems of clothes and the legs of pants.

"The use of color in Miao embroidery is also uniquely bold, they use red with green, purple with green, purple with black, color combinations that we usually think of as tacky are used boldly in Miao embroidery to achieve an exaggerated effect, and they use it to not be tacky at all." Wei Ronghui said. Bright colors and colorful patterns are what attract people to Miao embroidery.

"The Miao people's perception of the art of weaving, embroidery and dyeing is due to the highly developed agricultural civilization of that year. Perhaps it can be said that the exquisiteness and prosperity of the Miao's costume art is not comparable to that of other ethnic groups." Yang Yuan, curator of the National Costume Museum at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, commented on the Miao costumes.

Clothes are more than just clothes

Jiang Wenying, 53, has a photo of her mother on the wall of her house wearing a full-fledged Miao dress, with brightly colored flowers embroidered on the front and sleeve panels, and pants decorated with embroidery. Shidong Miao's favorite "machine-woven cloth" is dark brown, and with the colorful embroidery, it looks elegant and dignified.

The dress on her mother's body was made by her grandmother's grandmother for her grandmother's marriage, and then she passed it on to Jiang Wenying's mother, who has now given it to her. Jiang Wenying is very proud of this family heirloom, she said, like this fine workmanship, embroidery, and a long history of the Miao dress, it is now very difficult to see.

I asked to see Jiang Wenying's heirloom, and she shook her head firmly, saying that she would only take it out during festivals and rituals. Jiang Wenying has no daughters, daughters-in-law followed her to learn embroidery learned well, as to whether the heirloom dress will be passed on to one of the daughters-in-law, Jiang Wenying has not yet decided.

No ethnic group like the Hmong, the women's clothing is so important and sacred, the Hmong woman's life for sewing, embroidery, probably no other ethnic groups of women can be compared to the amount of time. According to a survey in 1957, in the Shidong area of Taijiang County, Guizhou Province, it takes 427 days to sew a first-class dress and 337 days to sew a second-class dress. A Miao woman needs more than one set of dresses, and when a woman has a child, it takes a lot of time to carry the child on her back. Because of the bright and beautiful embroidery on the straps, today the Hmong straps are one of the most beloved Hmong garments by many tourists and collectors.

Jiang Wenying heard from her elders that her family migrated to Guizhou from Shaanxi hundreds of years ago, and that the style of clothes she sews and embroiders now is not much different from the clothing worn by the women in her forebears hundreds of years ago.

When she got married, Jiang Wenying went out in the same style of dress as her mother's wedding dress. While Han Chinese clothing has undergone a sea change, Miao clothing has held strong, unchanged for hundreds of years.

Many people who study Miao costumes are puzzled as to why they have remained unchanged through the ages. One reason that has been recognized is that this ethnic group, which has experienced too much suffering, relied on uniform costumes to emphasize national unity and maintain their traditions and culture during their forced migration from the central plains to the southwest.

Clothing plays an extremely important role in Hmong marriages, and it is it that sustains the traditions of this nation, and it is for this reason that Hmong women spend their entire lives making clothes. Within the Miao, there are countless "marriage groups", and only men and women within the same "marriage group" can intermarry, and the mark of identifying the "marriage group" is clothing.

Every year on the 15th day of the 3rd month of the lunar calendar, is the most important festival of the Miao people in Shidong, Taijiang County, locally called "Sisters' Day". Miao men and women dressed in full costume, from all directions to get together, singing, drinking, looking for their favorite object. Whenever a Hmong boy sees a girl's dress in the same style as his mother's, he knows that the girl is the one he can choose to marry, and if the style is different, he can't come forward to court her.

If the Hmong had not stubbornly retained their passion for making fine clothing, perhaps the customs and traditions of this ethnic group would have long ago been overwhelmed by foreign influences during their migration. In turn, Hmong customs have defended the making of Hmong clothing from generation to generation.

The Hmong marriage customs, the girl after the day of marriage or a few days later, will return to their mother's family "sit home", "sit home" time may be a few months, may be one or two years. "Sitting at home" is almost exclusively time for embroidery. During the days of "sitting at home", the bride is able to receive special care from her mother's family, and she doesn't have to engage in too many chores and labor, so she has more time to concentrate on embroidery, making dresses for herself and sewing straps for her future children. future children to sew backpacks, clothes and hats.

History in dresses

Before the tourists came to Shidong town, every Hmong family went about their lives in a routine way, with the men working in the fields and the women doing the housework, embroidery and dressmaking. Daughters learned to embroider according to the patterns taught by their mothers, who taught them dragons, so they embroidered dragons; mothers taught them butterflies, so they embroidered butterflies. When a mother embroiders her daughter's dowry, the daughter embroiders her own daughter's dowry.

Why are the styles of dresses made by each generation almost the same? Why do the embroidered patterns remain basically the same? What do those colorful patterns mean? Just as every family has to pan the rice for cooking, women learning to embroider and make clothes is, in the eyes of the Hmong, life itself without the need to explore the causes.

Jiang Wenying, who began learning embroidery from her mother at age 7, is now a famous paper cutter in Shidong town. The Shidong Miao's best embroidery techniques are "flat embroidery" and "broken thread embroidery", both embroidery needs to cut paper first, and then according to the pattern of the paper cut on the cloth embroidery, so paper cutting is an important inseparable process of embroidery, paper cutting is not good, the flowers are not good.

A paper-cut is a story, according to the paper-cut embroidery into an embroidered piece, the embroidered piece of sewing to the corresponding position of the Miao clothing, in order to complete a set of exquisite Miao clothing. There are fewer and fewer people who can cut paper, and even fewer who can cut out a complete story of ancient songs like Jiang Wenying. The Miao people did not have their own words since ancient times, and the hosts of the rituals took on the important task of recording history. The ancient songs they hummed during the rituals recorded the Miao people's speculations about the beginning of the world, their memories of their migratory journeys and their beliefs in heaven and earth, ghosts and gods. Miao embroidery will be invisible ancient songs, embroidered on the clothes, an embroidered piece a piece, linked together, is the historical memory of the Miao people.

Jiang Wenying cut ancient songs never template, stories and graphics are in her head, an ancient song, at least 30 paper cuts. Jiang Wenying took out a paper cutting, telling the story of casting the sun and moon. The picture shows two people around a fireplace wielding a sledgehammer, "The sun is made of gold, the moon is made of silver, and the casting people are Xiong Gong and Bao Gong." Jiang Wenying explains the story on the paper cutouts in Hmong. In the next one, a man with long legs carries a basket with the sun and the moon in it. Jiang Wenying said that the sun and moon were cast, by a person with nine legs and nine bones, with a basket to pick the sun and moon to the sky, and since then, there is a Hmong people live in the sky and earth, sun and moon.

The imagination of the origin of all things is feathered into Miao embroidery, which is worn by Miao women, and those stories belonging to this ethnic group have been passed down from generation to generation.

Source: China Ethnic Net