Miao costume

1. Miao costumes are an important part of the Miao cultural system. From the costumes, we can see the historical development process and cultural deposition of the Miao nationality, which reflects the Miao nationality's understanding and sublimation of things in the struggle with nature, and also produces the Miao nationality's aesthetic consciousness here. There is a saying in Wenshan: "Miao people live in the mountains, Zhuang people live in Shuitou, and Han people live in the streets." This proverb outlines the distribution of Wenshan ethnic minorities, and also reflects the geographical environment and conditions of Wenshan Miao people's life. Their environment laid the foundation for Miao people to change their perceptual knowledge to rational knowledge of things in the mountains. Clothing is one of the means to identify ethnic groups and one of the characteristics to distinguish ethnic groups, which directly reflects a nation's aesthetic or worldview. Wenshan Miao people can be roughly divided into white seedlings, seedlings, flower seedlings and Han Miao. According to the classification of Miao costumes by Miao experts, Miao costumes in Wenshan Prefecture include geometric flower shawl type (namely Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan type), Maguan type (namely embroidered pleated skirt type), Qiubei type (namely white skirt type) and Kaiyuan type (namely ribbon type). These three clothing styles include Miao people who call themselves Meng Dou, Meng Grasp, Meng Shi, Meng Pei, Meng Cuo, Meng Ba and Meng Shua. They all speak the Miao language of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan dialect, and their cultural customs are similar, but their costumes have changed slightly, which can be distinguished.

Maguan Miao costumes are mainly distributed in Maguan, Malipo, Wenshan and Xichou County, Qiubei Miao costumes are mainly distributed in Qiubei, Guangnan, Funing, Malipo, Xichou and Yanshan County, and Kaiyuan Miao costumes are mainly distributed in Yanshan, Qiubei, Wenshan County, Kaiyuan, Mengzi and Maitreya counties and cities in Honghe Prefecture. Although these three clothing styles have their own characteristics, most of their patterns are conceived as abstract geometric and spiral patterns in the shapes of snails, ferns, chicken mouths, crabs or some animals and plants. The costume patterns of Miao people in Wenshan are not as realistic as those in Qiandongnan Prefecture of Guizhou and Xiangxi, Hunan Province, while Wenshan is freehand and delicate. Then, how do we distinguish Maguan style, Qiubei style and Kaiyuan style? Due to historical reasons, after the Miao people moved to Wenshan, most of them lived in mountainous areas with harsh environment, and the differences in costumes of various branches were often related to the climate and environment. Such as Maguan-style clothing, because this part of the Miao people live in the subtropical ravine south of the Tropic of Cancer, with a hot climate and many mosquitoes. Their clothing styles are mostly right embroidered tops with single-layer batik pleated skirts for ventilation, and single-layer embroidered leggings wrapped in calves to prevent mosquito bites; Qiubei Miao people live in the mountainous area of the Tropic of Cancer in Beihai, and the climate is cold in winter. Their tops are split, and double-layered white pleated skirts and multi-layered embroidered leggings wrap their calves to resist the cold. Kaiyuan Miao people also live in a relatively gentle mountainous area north of the Tropic of Cancer. In winter, the cold wind attacks people. A right cardigan was embroidered on it, and a batik pleated skirt was worn under it. Together with an embroidered trench coat, it almost covered the whole body and had a wide waist. According to historical records, a small number of Miao people moved to Wenshan in the Tang Dynasty. In the Ming Dynasty, Miao people began to move into Wenshan Qiubei and other counties in large numbers. In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, after the suppression of the anti-Qing uprising in Hunan and Guizhou failed, Miao people moved from Guizhou and Guangxi to Wenshan in large numbers and entered Vietnam, Laos and other countries in Southeast Asia. At that time, as war refugees, the Miao people had to hide in the deep mountains and forests after arriving in Wenshan, forming a distribution pattern of "Miao people living in mountains". It is this living environment and climatic conditions that make the Miao costumes with the same cultural customs and the same national language have differences related to the environment and climate, which also leads to the diversity of Wenshan Miao costumes. It can be seen that the difference of natural environment and climatic conditions is an important factor to determine the diversity of Wenshan Miao costumes.

Secondly, with the progress of society and the development of economy and culture, the life of Miao people is getting better and better, and their costumes are constantly developing and changing. The clothing style has developed from the original single tone of dark blue and black to a colorful style, which is closer to the art stage. Miao women think that the colors existing in nature are all the color materials they need, and they should wear them to form a kind of beauty that originates from and transcends nature. Judging from the development and evolution of Wenshan Miao costumes, its costume style has developed from being fat and loose in the 1950s and 1960s to advocating the length of various branches of costumes to show the aesthetic realm of curvaceous beauty of women, which is engraved in Miao women's hearts and reflected in their inherent and self-expressive aesthetic taste. "Nature, as the opposite or supplement of life society, is the easiest to attract people into this aesthetic realm. And induce aesthetic comprehension. This is because the external form of nature can make people feel beautiful and daydream, whether in showing vitality or in the unique harmony and charm shown in various things. "

Therefore, Miao women's awareness of all natural objects in the mountains and their understanding of the colorful colors of nature have prompted them to daydream about natural objects and embroider them on cloth to form perfect patterns, thus obtaining psychological pleasure and satisfaction. This kind of pleasure and satisfaction makes them feel proud in front of the opposite sex and show their talents in order to attract the attention of the opposite sex. This is the instinct of animals and the motivation of Miao women's clothing patterns. Because Miao women must learn embroidery from their elders when they are seven or eight years old. In their ideology, older girls who can't embroider will be looked down upon or even married. It is this ideology that has dominated Miao women's constant hunting, processing and sublimation of natural objects for a long time and won the praise of the opposite sex or people. In addition, the Miao nationality constantly absorbs the patterns of other nationalities to enrich itself, but it is not copied in general, but screened and added with patterns suitable for the aesthetic characteristics of the Miao nationality. Some people say that the Miao nationality is an adaptable and harmonious nation. No matter how bad the natural environment is, they can adapt to and absorb the excellent cultures of other nations, and keep their own traditional culture to survive and develop, and become a world-wide nation. Even the Miao people who emigrated to Europe and America can keep their traditional culture intact and develop rapidly with the nationalities in developed countries. This is a precious thing for the Miao people, and it is also the way for the Miao people to survive. No matter what kind of environment, Miao people are proud to wear their own national costumes and show their excellent traditional culture. Miao costumes, like other works of art, have become works of art with national characteristics through elaborate design, embroidery and batik by Miao women. Judging from the form and content of the work, it has distinct aesthetic value and artistic characteristics, and has high artistic collection value.

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value

1, artistic value. Miao costumes go through a series of complicated processes, such as planting, harvesting, polishing, spinning, bleaching, weaving, embroidery, batik, cutting and so on, and finally become a set of exquisite costumes, which all reflect the diligence and patience of Miao women. Miao women's abstract embroidery and batik patterns reflect and express their inner emotional world, and at the same time express their knowledge and understanding of nature and their yearning for a better life. When a Miao girl gives her embroidered ribbon to her lover, she doesn't need more flowery words to express her loyalty to her lover. She only needs to embroider a ribbon, so she can include everything the girl wants to express, and truly achieve the emotional realm of "silence is better than sound". Miao nationality is an emotional nation, and its exquisite embroidery and batik technology fully illustrate this point.

2. Ornamental value. Miao embroidery and batik patterns pay special attention to "regularity" and "symmetry", that is, the needle points of cross-stitch and the dyeing distance during batik have certain specifications and certain changing rules, which are equidistant, symmetrical or repetitive. The pattern structure is rigorous, giving people a sense of neatness and compactness. Especially in embroidery patterns, it is easy to find the center of the circle. No matter whether it is folded horizontally or vertically, the coordinate axes are symmetrical. Many patterns, not only the whole large combination pattern is symmetrical, but also the large pattern and the small pattern are symmetrical. At the same time, it pays great attention to the color matching of patterns and emphasizes the integrity and unity of colors and patterns, which seems to have been accurately calculated in advance. When appreciating Miao Xiu batik patterns, whether the mathematical formula and geometric principle can be included in the calculation, the equidistant symmetry relationship between the pattern structures is exactly the same.