Why do women in the Tang Dynasty like to wear a silk belt on their backs?

Except skirts and shirts, women in the Tang Dynasty all wore "pants". In the Tang Dynasty, Kui Xiang was like a long scarf, which could also be called "Kui Si" or "Zi Kui". It is usually made of light and transparent yarn and silk, draped over the shoulders and wrapped around the arms. Silk is often printed with patterns or painted with mud and gold and silver, which is very beautiful. In some novels and documents of the Tang Dynasty, there are always records describing the gorgeous colors of silk, such as "wearing bright luster" and "purple silver mud". In the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the decoration of scorpions became more and more gorgeous. Besides printing and clay sculpture, there are many decorative techniques, such as embroidery, painting, folding and halo. There are also heavy clips. In the late Tang Dynasty, "gift towel" and "order towel" were also common costumes belonging to the same subclass. Silk is not an inherent clothing of the Han nationality, nor is it used by the ethnic minorities in China. Mr. Ji believes that silk probably originated in West Asia, and was later accepted by Buddhist art in Central Asia, and then spread to China from the East.

In addition to these basic costumes, women's dresses in the Tang Dynasty often have a short-sleeved blouse called "half-arm". Ji Sun's textual research on "half arm", also known as "half sleeve", first appeared in the Three Kingdoms period and was popular in the Sui Dynasty. Both men and women wore it in the Tang Dynasty. Relatively speaking, women wear more half arms, and half arms are often made of better quality fabrics. On the murals of Princess Yongtai's tomb in the Tang Dynasty, ladies always draw an arm and a half on the blouse, and the female figurines unearthed from the Tang Dynasty tomb above the middle level often wear an arm and a half. However, the half-arm was only popular in women's clothing in the early Tang Dynasty, and it was obviously reduced in the middle and late Tang Dynasty. This is because in the early Tang Dynasty, women's blouses were narrow and suitable for wearing half arms. After the mid-Tang Dynasty, as women's clothing became wider and wider, it gradually became unsuitable to wear half-arms.

Large sleeves in murals

At present, we can often see portraits of women wearing long sleeves in the Tang Dynasty. This long-sleeved blouse for women in the Tang Dynasty is also called "Yan". In the Han and Jin dynasties, "Yan" refers to a short coat. In the Tang Dynasty, "Yan" began to develop as a kind of clothing. When it appeared in the literature of Tang Dynasty, "big sleeves" were often used to refer to gorgeous big sleeve tops such as court ceremonial dresses and dancers' dresses, which were called "colorful big sleeve skirts" and "wide sleeves". People's grand costumes can also be "Yan". In Bai Juyi's Twenty Poems about Deep Spring, there is a saying that "deep spring marries a woman's family, and purple rows are pheasants", so the name of the wedding dress is Yan, and there are pheasant patterns symbolizing the dress. But apart from the characteristics of big sleeves, the neckline style and wearing method are not much different from shirts.