What are the characteristics of Hakka costumes

There are many kinds of Hakka clothing. The Hakka people call their clothes "shirts and pants". "Shirt" refers to the upper garment and "pants" refers to the lower garment. "The most common way of dressing for the Hakka people is to wear a large lapel shirt and large crotch pants. The cardigan is the most common shirt worn by men, women and children of the Hakka people. In addition to the placket, the Hakka people also wear a pair of plackets. The apron is associated with the jacket. Hakka aprons are usually made of a single piece of cloth that is colorful and resistant to dirt, and are mostly worn by Hakka women when they are working. Strictly speaking, the apron is not a blouse, generally can not be used alone, often worn on the surface of the lapel shirt, to work to prevent soiling of the clothes and clothing worn by the subsidiary clothing. Hat is also part of the clothes. Hakka people have the most distinctive hats, counting the "cool hat" (cool hats) worn by women in summer and the "winter head" worn in the fall and winter period.

The most prominent feature of Hakka clothing is "simple and simple". There are many ancient records. Such as the Kangxi thirty years, "Chengxiang County," said Chengxiang County (now Meixian) urban and rural women's clothing custom is "head not wrapped in brocade, foot not wrapped hanging. To the Qianlong period, "the upper middle class, women's textile sewing, coarse clothing, thin makeup, to chaste and noble. To the villages and townships of women's districts, mallet police short clothes, the task of the fields and gardening, picking the mountain negative eaves, not free from the despicable wild". In other words, "rough clothes and thin makeup", "mallet summer short clothes" wear characteristics, and even simple to the degree of "despicable wild", which shows the simplicity of the dress at that time. Whether an ethnic group or a folk family is concerned about clothing is especially obvious from the women's body. Hakka women are known for their diligence, frugality and hard work, not fashionable, simple and unadorned, and they cherish their clothes, wearing patched clothes on weekdays, and they can't afford to wear new clothes except for one or two occasional times on New Year's Day or when they visit their relatives. "These sayings are a good illustration of the concept of wearing clothes.

The simplicity of the Hakka people is linked to their neatness. Hakka people often dress differently depending on whether they are rich or poor in urban or rural areas. Most of the countryside residents wear simple clothes, but they seek to be wearable, comfortable, and generous, while city dwellers dress more elaborately, pay attention to fashion and neatness, and generally pay attention to their status and environment. In the old days, there is a proverb "not afraid of shirt rotten, most afraid of people rotten." Clothes are broken, as long as they are well made up, cleaned and neatly dressed, they will not be laughed at. Hakka people heavy face, pay great attention to formal occasions wear. For example, people in Meixian County have said, "no rice cooking pot, go out and wear official-like". On New Year's holidays or visit friends and relatives, must wear neat and clean clothes, so as not to be looked down upon. During the Kangxi period, "Cheng Township County," Volume I "Customs" said "Qimin no matter what is not dressed". Huang Zunxian in the Tongzhi years made "send female brother", also said that the Hakka women "make-up began to powder, often decorated but the Towel," is in line with the reality of the Hakka portrayal. The Hakka people do not just throw away their worn-out clothes, as the saying goes, "Don't throw away your rotten clothes and pants, save them for your old age." More typically, the pants (about 6 inches wide) of the big crotch pants, more with the poor quality of the white cloth into the barge part of the top cover, harmless. Some women's wedding clothes, a lifetime can not wear, pressed in the bottom of the box cabinet corner, year after year, often become the remnants of the clothes after death.

The Hakka people do most of the cloth is made of cotton yarn, ramie, their own textile, commonly known as "home machine cloth". This cloth cloth width of one Lu Ban feet (equivalent to 12 city feet), to three zhang for a horse (about 43.2 city feet), so locally known as "three zhang white". Generally speaking, the face width of one foot, three zhang long enough to usually make a set of clothes, so the customary rules. The first thing you need to weave cloth is "thread", and the initial thread is also self-spun. But this "spinning thread" is very thick, woven cloth is very rough. Later, there was a machine line, called "foreign yarn", the market town also has a special foreign yarn store, they loaned out foreign yarn to the village women weaving into cloth, and then cloth for yarn, into the reproduction, this behavior is called "back to cloth". At that time, many women in urban and rural areas of Meizhou would weave cloth, especially popular in Xingning County. This kind of cloth had a white background, and was bleached and dyed with earth dyes in black, blue, greenish blue, etc. The dyes were made of earth-made "indigo powder", and were also used in "potato buttercups", "earth beads", or "wushu trees". There is also "yam buttercup", "earth bead", or "oshu tree" and other grasses that are boiled and dyed in water. Adult clothing color more black, dark blue, dark gray. In the summer, cloth made of sesame seeds is often used. The Hakka people call their clothes "shirts and pants". Traditionally, shirts are "big lapel shirts" and pants are wide "big crotch pants". Clothing styles are wide and long, with little difference between men and women. The tops are "lapel shirts", with the right side slanting down to the placket, and cloth buttons, and women's clothing has one or two laces added to the placket edge, to show the difference between men and women. The sleeves are long and wide, and the cuffs are about 1 foot wide. The pants are basically no difference between men and women, all wide head and feet, pants (commonly known as "leg") 1.8 feet to 2 feet wide. Wear generally with "pants belt" (gauze belt) tight, or will be cross-twisted tight pants can be tied in the back.

In the old days, men and women did not wear "bottoms" (underpants), the sophisticated plus wear a shorter pants is, but generally wear underwear, commonly known as "coats mile", "stay asleep shirt". The dresses for summer and winter are not much different. There was not much difference between the summer and winter styles of clothing, except that thin ramie cloth was worn in the summer, commonly known as "summer cloth", and thick cloth was used in the winter. In the winter, they wore thicker cloth. The cold weather clothes were called "cotton jackets" or sleeveless "cotton corsets".

The "lapel shirt" has no opening at the chest, no buttons, and no pockets on the surface. The opening starts from the neck and runs diagonally to the right until the right side of the ribs, and buttons are placed along the side. The large crotch pants that go with the "lapel shirt" are also known as "doo-doo pants" (or "jiaotou pants"). Due to the climate, very few people wear cotton pants in winter. In general, people of both sexes tend to wear a cotton jacket for the rest of their lives. Generally speaking, people in urban and rural areas of Meizhou wear clothes mostly "new three years, old three years, sewing and mending and three years", "big brother new, second brother old, third brother with the rotten shirt sleeves". The former means that a set of clothes to wear 9 years before the new, the latter means that the children wear clothes, the older brother through the clothes passed on to the second and third brother to continue to wear.

Of course, rich and poor families dressed differently. In the material, a few rich families wear more silk. In the shirt and pants style, in addition to the lapel shirt crotch pants open-chested coat, there are also wearing sprinkles, horse coat. The so-called "sprinkled clothes", the hemline extended to below the knee lapel long shirt. The so-called "ma-suit" is a sleeveless open-chested shirt. Often, the vest and the sprinkled clothes are worn at the same time, i.e., after wearing the sprinkled clothes, then wear the vest, which is called "vest over sprinkled clothes", and is also commonly known as "long shirt over the vest". If you put on a "Guadu cap", it is the wear of the squire. The rich family's wife also wore a long shirt, but its long shirt is not called "sprinkled clothes", but called "cheongsam".

Generally, women wearing lapel shirts cross (cross) head pants to be equipped with a head scarf. Most of the head of the square black, with a ring buckle, one end of the buckle in the back of the head on the bun, one end of the buckle under the chin. The head of the summer can shade the sun, winter for the head to protect the warmth of the face. There is another kind of called periwinkles, mostly worn when doing housework. The long periwig is called a halter, the top of the end with a strap hanging on the neck or with the neck of the face of the garment buckle fastening, the chest with a belt tied at the waist. The short pasha is called apron, only tied to the waist in front of the chest.