Customs of Heshan Gulao

Rural women living east of Suzhou, China, still retain their traditional folk costumes. They have always worn traditional costumes characterized by combing their hair, tying their headscarves, wearing patchwork shirts, patchwork pants, Cambodian skirts, wrapped bladders, and embroidered shoes, which are quite characteristic of the Heshan Gulao water town.

Women in the water town attach great importance to the combing and decoration of their heads, and they show their dexterity and dignified beauty with their black hair, large hair stays and many ornaments, supplemented by exquisite head wrapping and costumes.

The local characteristics of their costumes are very strong and the inheritance is stable, but with the change of seasons, age differences and the need for rituals, and there are obvious differences.

Generally speaking, for spring and fall, the characteristics of spring and fall seasonal costumes are particularly prominent. Spring and Autumn season clothing tops to patchwork shirts, fabrics are mostly flower cloth, earth cloth, dark and light shillelagh cloth as the main tone, contrasting colors, fresh but not colorful, colorful but not vulgar, commonly used in several colors of fabrics spliced together, tailoring is decent, sewing is fine, decorative is very strong, and its characteristics are also reflected through the decorative techniques of the clothing Song: there are splicing, piping, new climb, with ornaments, embroidery and so on.

And the pants are mostly made of white calico on blue ground or blue calico on white ground, and the pants are spliced with blue or black shillelagh. These costumes were initially spliced due to the limitation of cloth width and material saving, spliced by the realization of the actual need for splicing to the development of subjective consciousness of splicing, all pay attention to the neat and balanced and symmetry of the beauty of the form.