Specific manifestations of dress folklore

General Features of Chinese Minority Clothing Culture

China is a unified multi-ethnic country. After the founding of the People's Republic of China*** and the State of China, there are fifty-six nationalities in China*** after careful scientific identification. In addition, there are a number of people***somes that have yet to undergo further ethnic identification.

The formation of the Chinese nationalities has gone through a process of differentiation or fusion for at least two thousand years. From China's ancient texts have long appeared in the "Xia", "Rong", "Di", "Jingban", "barbarians", "Pu", "Baiyue" and other ethnic names, our country as early as before the Qin dynasty has been a multi-ethnic country, and the establishment of the Qin dynasty feudal autocracy, make such a The establishment of the feudal autocratic system of the Qin Dynasty made such a multi-ethnic country highly unified under the central authority. It is for this reason that the cultures of all ethnic groups in China have a long history of development, including the culture of dress. From the real situation to examine, China's minority dress culture has the following five general characteristics;

First, China's ethnic minorities are diverse, widely distributed, and the vast minority areas have long been inconvenient transportation, communication difficulties, so the ethnic dress colorful and rich in dress culture, inexhaustible dress resources.

China's 55 ethnic minorities, living in the country's more than 2,000 counties in 70 percent of the county, a wide distribution. Among these minorities, some of them have many branches, such as the Miao nationality, which is divided into five categories: red Miao, black Miao, white Miao, green Miao, and flower Miao, among which the flower Miao includes the big-headed Miao, one-horned Miao, Monza Miao, and flower-footed Miao, all of which are divided into different costumes. In this way, not only different ethnic groups have different costumes, but also different costumes within the same ethnic group due to different branches, making the costumes of China's ethnic minorities extraordinarily rich. String 4

China's ethnic minority costumes are very rich in terms of material and color, as well as in terms of style and tattoos. Yunnan Province, which has 25 ethnic minorities, held an ethnic arts festival with thousands of ethnic minority cultural and artistic teams, which are also thousands of ethnic minority costume performance teams. Kunming Ethnic Song and Dance Troupe to "sun, moon, wind and fire" as the theme of the national costume lyrical ball, divided into "spring sunshine", "summer moon dissolve", "autumn wind to send refreshing ", "winter fire" four scenes show three hundred sets of national costumes, the variety of varieties, styles of strange, colorful, complicated pattern is amazing. A short one and a half hour performance, convincing proof: Yunnan is not only a sea of songs and dances, but also a sea of minority costumes. And this is a microcosm of multi-ethnic China.

Secondly, due to the differences in the natural environment and ethnic customs and aesthetic tastes, the costumes of China's ethnic minorities show great differences between the north and the south, the mountains and the grasslands, and display different styles and characteristics.

China's natural conditions are very different between the north and the south; the north is cold and snowy, with wide forests and grasslands, and the ethnic minorities in the north rely on hunting and animal husbandry to make a living; in the south, it is hot and rainy, with mountains and mountains, and the ethnic minorities living in the south engage in farming. Different natural environments, modes of production and lifestyles have resulted in different national character and psychology, as well as different clothing styles and clothing characteristics. Living in the plateau pasture and engaged in animal husbandry Mongolia, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Yugu, soil and other ethnic minorities, wearing more from livestock fur, with sheepskin sewing clothes, pants, overcoats are mostly for the light plate, some in the collar, cuffs, lapel, hem set with color cloth or fine fur. Tibetan and Kyrgyz with precious fur trimmed robes and skirts look elegant and thick. The Kazakh "kup" is a coat lined with camel's hair, which is very light and warm. Their clothing style is wide robe and big sleeves, thick and solemn. Southern minority areas are suitable for planting hemp and cotton; self-woven linen and cloth is the main use of dresses and skirts. The tools used are very simple, but the fabrics are exquisite, and the patterns are marvelous. Because of the hot and humid weather, the need to open chest and legs, dresses and skirts are more short, narrow and thin, and its style is more lively and lively, a variety of styles, not the same. In short, the variety of styles and different characteristics are very prominent, constituting another feature of Chinese minority dress culture. String 9

Thirdly, due to various historical, geographical, political and economic reasons, China's ethnic minorities were still at different stages of social development and corresponding levels of productivity until the middle of this century, and the resulting differences were so profound that they have not yet been completely overcome, so that the cultural contents expressed in the ethnic minorities' dresses have obvious hierarchies.

Because of various historical, geographical, political and economic reasons, before the liberation of China's ethnic minorities, some of them already had a clear sprout of capitalism, while others remained at the end of the primitive commune, which demonstrated the extreme imbalance of social development. In this regard, Yunnan Province, which has been called "a living history of social development" by scholars of ethnicity, can serve as a typical representative. Before the liberation, among the twenty-five ethnic minorities in Yunnan, capitalist factors had developed considerably among the Bai, Hui, and some of the Yi; the vast Zhuang, Hani, Naxi, Bai, Yi, and other ethnic groups had entered the feudal landlord system; the Dai had entered the feudal lord system; and the Yi of the Xiaoliangshan Mountains were in a more typical slavery system; whereas quite a number of ethnic minorities, such as the Kino, the Brown, the Jingpo, the Dulong, the Nu, and some of the Lisu and Wa, remained at the end of the primitive communal period; and some of them, like the Kino, Brown, Jingpo, Dulong, Nu, and Wa, remained in the end of the primitive communal period. At present, the Yongning Naxi (Mosuo) still retain the remnants of matrilineal system. This situation also exists to varying degrees in other provinces and regions inhabited by ethnic minorities, but it is not as complete and typical as in Yunnan Province. In this way, the cultural content reflected in the costumes of ethnic minorities is also hierarchical. At the same time, this hierarchy also determines the hierarchy of minority dress culture. Some people have a misunderstanding that all the special features of minority costumes are "primitive" and specific manifestations of primitive culture, which is obviously not true. The hierarchy of minority dress should be analyzed according to the actual situation.

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Fourthly, China's ethnic minority costumes are facing the impact of the overall modernization of society and the requirements of reform, and some traditional costumes have changed.

Reform and opening up have brought great changes to the way of life of the people all over the country, and the development of the commodity economy has injected vitality into the originally closed and backward mountainous areas of the ethnic minorities and transmitted information in many aspects, which also includes information on many modern and trendy fashions. Under such circumstances, Chinese minority dress culture is facing a huge impact. Due to the fact that some ethnic minority garments use a lot of materials, have complicated decorations, complicated craftsmanship, are difficult to make, are inconvenient to wear, and are difficult to wash, many young people in ethnic minority areas have changed to wear Han Chinese garments, and in some areas, ethnic garments are not even seen anymore. In view of this situation, on the one hand, it is necessary to actively and urgently rescue minority dress resources, so as to avoid the disappearance of certain characteristic national dress culture; at the same time, it is also necessary to take the initiative to guide minority people to carry out dress reforms in a purposeful, organized and planned way, and to organize a number of specialists, scholars and costume designers to design new national costumes on the basis of listening to the opinions of their own ethnic groups, so that the basic characteristics of the national dress can be maintained. On the premise of maintaining the basic characteristics of national costumes, they are designed to be generous, beautiful, simple and suitable for production and life, and to facilitate the organization of large-scale machine production in the future, so as to meet the needs of modernization and construction. It can be said that this is both the current stage of China's ethnic minority dress culture is urgently needed to solve the problem, but also the current stage of China's ethnic minority dress culture is a feature.