Costume Culture of the Zhuang People

Clothing is a composite representation of the material and spiritual needs of human beings, i.e., a combination of external features and psychological aesthetics. The colorful national costumes are the crystallization of the creative wisdom of all ethnic groups and show the spiritual outlook of each ethnic group.

The Zhuang costume consists of two main parts: one refers to clothing, i.e., clothes (garments), including coats, pants, skirts, hats, scarves, gloves, belts, shoes, socks, leggings, etc.; and the other refers to decorations (trimmings), including hairstyles, jewelry, eyeglasses, rucksacks, and even tattoos, tattooing, etc. The two main parts combine to form the Zhuang costume, which is a combination of the appearance characteristics and psychological aesthetics. The two main parts combine to form the Zhuang dress, which is an important part of the Zhuang culture. Clothing is the most characteristic external image of an ethnic group, belonging to both the material hardware culture and the spiritual soft body culture at the same time. It reflects the level of economic development of the Zhuang people and shows the ideology of the Zhuang people, i.e. spiritual connotation, such as folk customs, philosophical thoughts, aesthetic ideas, morality and ethics, social etiquette, religious beliefs, etc. The Zhuang people's clothing culture form contains the economic development of the Zhuang people, and it is the most important part of the Zhuang people's culture. The cultural form of Zhuang clothing contains economic factors and spiritual style characteristics.

The Zhuang dress, related to the ancient Yue people, Xiou, Luo Yue people and Bong people. Nowadays, ethnologists can only review the history of the creation and development and derivation of the costumes of the ancestors of the Zhuang people from some written historical materials. Data show that: Guilin Caipi Yan excavation of neolithic relics, there are a number of bone cones, experts deduce: that is the Lingnan Zhuang ancestors used to sew animal skin or traction fiber primitive sheltering tools, indicating that the ancient Zhuang people have long had to cover the body of the original clothing. Later to the Han, Three Kingdoms, Sui and Tang, Song, Ming and Qing Dynasties to the modern era, the Zhuang dress with the economic development and evolution.

According to the expert's monograph: the Han Tomb in Lopo Bay, Guigang, unearthed fragments of orange-red brocade on black ground, indicating that there were such ornaments as Zhuang brocade at that time. There is also a "mine cloth", is hemp and silk products, indicating that as far away as the Han Dynasty, the ancient Zhuang people planted hemp sericulture, to provide raw materials for clothing. The bamboo cloth of the Three Kingdoms era, the banana cloth of the Sui and Tang dynasties, the fine white linen cloth, and the cloth in the tube, were all tributes at that time. In the Yuan Dynasty, cotton was first planted and jibe cloth was woven. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Zhuang brocade jewelry production and weaving reached a peak, colorful. From the expert monograph in the review of the exposition, can be seen in the Zhuang clothing products, from banana fiber, hemp fiber to cotton fiber evolutionary process. Dress printing and dyeing process, Zhuang indigo dyeing is famous, until now, some Zhuang village women, still with indigo dyeing black fabric, to sew black clothing. For example, the black-clothed Zhuang in Baise City, the Zhuang in the area of Jinlong, Longzhou County, Chongzuo City, who call themselves "Budei", and the women of Bunun in Panchu, Daxin County, who wear black clothes on the stage to show off their beauty, have become the highlights of the characteristics of the Zhuang costumes. After the cloth is dyed, it is passed through the ox-horn glue, folded and flattened, and shines. Some of them use rice paste to pulp over, dry and flatten.

The Zhuang, with a population of more than 15 million, live in Guangxi and are distributed in Wenshan, Yunnan and Lianshan, Guangdong. In such a vast area, the economic and cultural development is unbalanced, and the costumes of each region have their own characteristics, i.e., the costumes of different regions and different plates of the Zhuang people constitute a diversified and integrated Zhuang costume.

Mr. Liang Tingwang, a scholar of the Zhuang people, in his monograph "Introduction to the Culture of the Zhuang People", divides the culture of the whole vast area where the Zhuang people live and are distributed into nine cultural zones: the cultural zone of the middle and lower reaches of the Hongshui River, the cultural zone of the Liujiang River and the Longjiang River, the cultural zone of the northwestern part of the Gui, the cultural zone of the Guiyue River, the cultural zone of the southern part of the Yong, the Yongjiang River and the right river, the left river, the Guibian cultural zone, and the cultural zone of the Wenshan Mountains, in order to examine and analyze the cultural characteristics of each region. The cultural characteristics of each region are examined and analyzed. The investigation, excavation, collection, research and display of the Zhuang costume culture, the same can be carried out with the concept of geography.

Another method is to collect, excavate, organize and display the Zhuang costumes by dividing them into river basins, such as the Hongshui River Basin, the Left and Right River Basins, the Yongjiang River and the Yujiang River Basin, etc. The water culture is closely related to the costume culture. Water culture and dress culture also has an inseparable relationship, such as the Red River Basin, Donglan, Bama, Fengshan, Nandan, Frog Woman worship customs and cultural festivals, festivals show the dress is also full of rich ethnic characteristics.

My personal observation over the years, I found that the Zhuang costume is still relatively retain the traditional characteristics, such as the western Gui have Longlin, Xilin, Napo, Jingxi and other counties, the Zhuang costume characteristics are more intense, with blue and black colors as the main color. In Bama County in northwest Gui, the Zhuang women's costumes are colored in blue and white, in contrast to the black-clothed Zhuang costumes in Napo. It is hard to find white or yellow or blue colors on the men, women and children of the black-clothed Zhuang in Napo. Southwest Gui Longzhou, Jinlong around the cloth generation of men and women's clothing, with black as the main color, women wearing clothes, pants, jackets, black long skirts, black scarves on the head, wearing black cloth shoes, from head to toe, are black, coupled with the person's skin color white and pure, the formation of a contrast between black and white, complementary to a unified aesthetic whole of the dress. The costumes of Bunun women in Banjiao Village, Daxin County, southwestern Gui, are also unique: short clothes, long pants and skirts, light thread flower headscarves, flower shoes; gold teeth, silver bracelets and other decorations.

They often sing Zhuang Huan by the stream, and pound glutinous rice patties in front of their homes in the sunshine ping, a distinctive image of the rice-plowing nation and its spiritual style. Longsheng Zhuang clothing in northeast Gui, also quite distinctive, women wear flower head scarf, blouse is collarless open corset, two buttons, wide hobnail pants, wearing cloth shoes. Other regions also have characteristics, such as Wenshan, Yunnan, the Zhuang costume, characterized by outstanding.