Kneeling for the ancient Chinese aesthetic viewpoints of each period

What was the standard for the appearance of beautiful women in ancient China?

Before the Han Dynasty in China, people focused only on facial appearance for women, and it was only in the Wei and Jin dynasties that they began to focus on adornment. Emperor Wen of Wei liked his concubines to dress up and wear their hair in a cicada-wing shape. The Tang Dynasty was an open society that allowed bare chests and bare arms, and the female physical beauty that was prized was a wide forehead, round face, and chubby body.

Matriarchal clan society period: thick and sturdy

In the ancient matriarchal clan society, the standard of reproduction and production was the standard of beauty. The stylized features of the Neolithic goddess statues show that they are stout and sturdy.

Summer, Shang, Zhou, Spring, Autumn and Warring States Periods: Soft and delicate

People paid attention to the female facial image, men advocated the concept of "weak and submissive" beauty prevailed, and the scholarly men prevailed in the aesthetic sense of "delicate and delicate".

The period from the two Han dynasties to the North and South Dynasties: both inside and outside

This period, people focus on decoration, the appreciation of beauty metaphysical, aesthetic has reached a philosophical height that is still inaccessible, such as Cao Zhi's "Luoshen Fu". By the North and South Dynasties, China's view of beauty completed a cycle of degradation from healthy and natural to morbidly sculpted.

During the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties, women's beauty had not yet gained independent value, and although people appreciated women's beauty, they emphasized more on morality, showing a tendency to suppress beauty with virtue. Perhaps by the material conditions of the limitations of this period of women's clothing is more simple, clothes, shoes and men do not have much difference, there is no scarf, belt and other accessories, the head is just pull a simple bun, no decoration, but this period of the woman already know a white can cover up a hundred ugly, began to use the makeup powder. Ancient powder has two kinds of powder: rice powder and lead powder. Rice powder is made by adding spices after crushing rice grains. Lead powder was a paste-like fat. After the Han Dynasty, lead powder was drained of water and made into powder or solid shape, which has been used by later generations. The pre-Qin and the two Han dynasties, with their clothes on top and clothes underneath, powder-white and black garments, and plump flesh and slightly bony body shapes, laid down the basic style of ancient Chinese women's beauty.

Sui-Tang period: graceful and rich, healthy and natural

Luxurious and rich, healthy and natural became the dominant standard of beauty. Women's physical beauty is forehead wide, face round, body fat, health is a kind of women's beauty that people appreciated at that time. During this period, women's clothing was quite revealing, with a tendency towards the modern Western "sexy" look.

From the Wei and Jin Dynasties, women's beauty began to gain independent value, and was appreciated and cherished. Xun Ch'an once said, "Women's virtue is not enough, when the color is the main". Inspired by this declaration of independence of virtue, women began to move towards a conscious pursuit of beauty.

The women of this period mostly wore short jackets with wide sleeves and long, floor-length skirts. The waist was girded with a "hold waist" and decorated with a belt, and it was also popular to wear flower hairpins and "step shakes" on the head, so that when they walked, their shirts fluttered and their pendants clanked, further emphasizing the femininity of women's gentleness and charm, as well as their gracefulness and elegance. In terms of make-up, the most popular was to put a red or yellow "flower" on the forehead for decoration, and the "flower" was of different shapes, mainly in the shape of leaves or flowers. When Hua Mulan returned home after her military service, she was wearing a red or yellow flower in the window and a yellow flower in the mirror.

Sui-Tang was the heyday of China's feudal society, strong, culturally prosperous, open to the outside world, and relaxed internally, women's constraints are also relatively less, so the beauty of women also showed a corresponding scene of glory and splendor.

Tang Dynasty women to the beauty of the plump body, coupled with towering buns, fluttering silk, looks gorgeous and generous, fully embodies the female beauty of the "Tang Dynasty weather". Their dress is the most daring and sexy of all Chinese women. This can be confirmed in the famous painting of the Tang Dynasty, "Hairpin Ladies". The woman painted in the picture, fluffy temples, wearing a large branch flowers, and pin on the hairpin, wearing a thin flower gauze tunic, another light gauze painted silk, underwear half-exposed, with a large handful of halo valance flowers, bare breasts and bare arms. This sexy attire in ancient China can be called unprecedented.

The idea of "the unity of man and heaven" is the essence of ancient Chinese culture, Confucianism, Taoism, two philosophical viewpoints are recognized and adopted by the most far-reaching source of the essence of traditional Chinese culture, this concept gives rise to a unique view of the design, that is, all kinds of works of art are regarded as a product of the whole of nature, from the integrated, holistic viewpoint to look at the design of handicrafts, the design of the artifacts, the design of the artifacts, the design of the artifacts. The design of artifacts is viewed from a comprehensive and holistic point of view, and costumes are no exception. This concept of design was recorded in one of the earliest works on craftsmanship in China, the Kaogongji, which says, "There is a time in heaven, a time in earth, a time in material, a time in beauty, and a time in skill in work, and the combination of these four things can then be good." As early as two thousand years ago, Chinese craftsmen have realized that the production of any craft design is not an isolated human behavior, but in the natural world, the result of the integrated effect of the conditions of this large system. Timelessness is the seasonal climate conditions, geography refers to the geographical conditions, the material has the beauty for the performance conditions of the craft materials, and the work has the skill, it refers to the production process conditions. For clothing, it refers to the clothing season, clothing environment, and the texture of the material and tailoring techniques, only these four are harmonized, there is a subtle design.

"Zhou Yi" affirms the unity of man and nature, affirms the intermingling of man and nature, that is, man is not only a product of nature, all human activities from moral cultivation to utilitarian practice, must follow the natural revelation, subject to the laws of nature, and nature is also permeated with human factors. Nature itself often has a social and moral enlightenment, where there is often no absolute isolation of the chasm between man and nature, the two influence each other to penetrate, man and nature to follow the law of unity, heaven and earth and nature also has the social attributes of man, but also contains the ethics and morality related to human beings, manifested in the aesthetic emotion is partial to the sensibility of the. In the view of ancient Chinese philosophers, man is the unity of form and God, that is, the unity of the body and spirit, which is an indivisible whole, therefore, whether Taoism, Confucianism advocate the spirit and the body both, beauty and goodness of the wall, and clothing is the embodiment of the aesthetic harmony between people and things and the externalization of the natural expression of the tendency of this aesthetic emotional consciousness exposed in the clothing is also in line with the "natural" way, "the way of nature". This tendency of aesthetic emotional consciousness exposed in clothing is also in line with the way of "nature", "the external decoration of oneself is covered by nature" ("Thickness of the Way"), "spitting out the splendor, and there is nothing that is not emotional" ("Physical Nature"). ("Body" language), the Wei and Jin period of the Bamboo Forest seven sages debauchery of the form, heavy God and the remains of the skeleton, so the performance of the clothing is often not bound by the rules of etiquette, regardless of the shape, often bare chest navel clothing is very casual. The Shishu Xinyin Ren Tan", "Liu Ling tasted bare clothes and ride the deer car, wine and debauchery".