Miao costume

    The Chinese national culture passes in many ways, and most of them do not achieve that goal in words, which is different from the Han culture. However, Miao, with small population, are different from many other nations without characters. They pass down their history not only by traditional oral literature, but also by pictures, especially for their costumes. 

    Costumes are very important materials in human life, for their indispensable practical value and the growing entertainment value. And gradually they has become the major carrier of national culture .Every nation always considers its unique costumes as a different and important ethnic symbol, as their "national emblem" in a sense. Master Pierre, a contemporary French dress designer, said after a Beijing Opera performance: “These costumes display certain status in the history and reveal their personality, embodying Chinese deep rich culture and aesthetic characteristics”. Miao costume culture has heavy traits in its own cultural identity, especially the women costumes, which are particularly noticeable in the mainstream system.

    Miao woman clothes are a masterpiece in the history of China or all over the world. Miao Costumes are typical female cultural treasures, and women dresses are the main carrier. Meanwhile, costumes are a primitive symbol of the Miao people, a symbol of the rules and conserve of history, a history book without a character and a silent language. Antique Miao embroidery butterfly flower costume is unique and colorful, like the ancient armor, records the ancient Miao history, Carries people's feelings, and be entrusted with the hope of a better future. The Miao folk art is sedimentation of history and a creation of wisdom. This integration of various elements filled with emotional beauty has a strong affinity, and is a common memory and symbol of all Miao people. 

    Miao has more than 100 branches and 100 costumes accordingly, which are colorful and magnificent. According to regional distribution, Miao Costumes can be divided into western Hunan type, eastern Guizhou type, South Africa-Guizhou, Sichuan, Guizhou , Yunnan and Hainan type and so on. 
There are different ways of embroidery, and commonly ways are: flat embroidery, convex embroidery, plaited embroidery, knit embroidery, and wound embroidery, stitching embroidery, stretching embroidery, rolling embroidery, embroidery with split thread and sticking embroidery and so on. Flat embroidery is the most commonly used methods. There are also various patterns of unicorn, dragon, phoenix, butterfly, bird, fish, insect, flower, fruits and so on. On embroidering, In their embroidery they always use paper-cutting as the base shape, then embroider according to the paper or spontaneously. Mostly embroidery is used for women's shoe-flowers, front of garments, belts, waistbands and baby carrier fans, hats and so on. 

    Plaited embroidery, split thread embroidery and stitching embroidery are unique of Miao. Decorative patterns in Plaited embroidery with embossments delight the clothing quite a lot. Split thread Embroidery is very delicate and beautiful; stitching embroidery is composed of triangle silk embroideries which can appear strange and beautiful decorative effects. Beautiful embroideries produced in all the three methods are called "flower dress", and must be decorated with silverware before it is finalized. Therefore, they are called "silver clothes" for their silverware. In the front, back, sleeves, lower hem of the silver clothes, and other locations, there are many squares, rectangular, semicircular nails pieces, silver bubbles, silver rings, etc. This exquisitely decorative embroidery may be of the most beautiful costumes in the costumes. Crape embroidery is very popular in every area of Miao district, especially in Guizhu and Zhijin Guizhou.

    The stitch way of Crape embroidery is different from that of needlework. Although it uses plain cloth as the bottom, first draw the profile, then insert needle in the cloth. That shouldn’t be a wrong try, then insert the needle from the back and gaze in the front; there is a needlecraft which has the same sight from both sides in western Hunan. Crape embroidery flowers appear mostly geometric shapes, colorful and attractive, and are often used for women clothes edge, cuff, shoulder, chest circumference and baby carriers, clothes, hats, and so on. 

    In Guizhou Miao costume, the most splendid dresses are of Miao girls in “Shidong”, which are famous for lots of silverware. Miao clothing of “Shidong” called embroidery clothes , which have beautiful patterns in sleeves and shoulders, because the back, the front, the cuff, lower hem are all decorated with silver piece, silver bubble, Silver ring and so on, so they are also known as the silver clothes. These are the gem of Miao costumes. Miao women in Taijiangyanban are dressed in a broad right-overlapping Chinese gown, and more than 30-40 self-made skirts. Skirts are nearly thick for about 40 cm to show their wealth and wisdom. Wearing a long waistband in the front perpendicular to the face of feet, wrapping 4-5 flower waist belts whose knit is floating in the back of figure, wrapping leg wrappings and flower shoots. 

    Women in Lei Shan Bridgeport wear a black tight coat inside, a deep red short jacket outside. For a 6-inch-long fine-layers skirt around the waist, the hip seems particularly large. Out of Mini skirts, they wear a waistband long to the knee in the front and long to heel behind. Meanwhile they wear flower waistband and eight vertical ones behind which look like the tail feathers of the peacock. 

    They wear black tight pants, sharp embroidered shoes, a large chignon, a tall silver crown, and various silverwares. Miao women in Anlonghuali wear a short long-sleeved jacket with oblique lapel, broad skirt ledge as much as six meters. When being dressed, the skirt slaps on both sides of the body. In the middle of the skirt, there are exquisite embroidery and batik with a tiny girdle fastened to the waist and a long vertical belt behind. Miao men wear equal front-garment jackets, big front-garment long robes and big front-garment long sleeves and long pants, shorts. Few minorities people wear broad “BaiZhe” skirts and pants, and with belts mostly decorated with embroidered, woven patterns. The Liuzhi Miao young men dressed in are the most special: they wear white robes, black pants, black and white squares waist-belt, clemency thick gorgeous colorful embroidery sleeveless, towering exquisite plume crown. When they are playing the lusheng dance in the flower market, it appears in all the glory.

    Miao Costumes are different in gender, age, marriage, as well as region, but they all maintain the consistent traditional style of Miao from antiquity to modern times. Women Baizhe skirts have colorful pattern designs. Miao costumes, set brocade, batik, cross-stitch work, embroidery in a complex process and embody a lot of historical and cultural information, which can be recognized as a special non-word books.

    Miao women Bai zhe skirt featuring colorful patterns, are colored in red, blue, yellow, white, and black mainly, maintaining a "Miller" "good-colored clothes” ( "Han •n pretty Biography") tradition. Mainly the dress material were the residence-based raw materials, such as cotton, linen, wool and so on, which are woven by the families workshop.

    Miao man’s clothes are simple. They wear head-cover, short jackets with long and small sleeves, short and broad pants, and like wrapping light blue cloth around feet. There are two kinds of headbands: black and flower. They are more than one zhang and up to three zhang, which are as big as bamboo hat and usually wrapped as oblique cross. There are three colors in these coats: flower lattice (which is the most special), black, blue etc, primary with seven buttons. Some young men even wear more than seven clothes to stir other people’s envy of their bold and rich. They only fasten the last button of the outer clothing, and the last two buttons of the second layer of clothing, accordingly, until the seven pairs of buttons of the last layer clothing. Thus, layers of clothes can be seen from the outside, and represent unique sight. 

    In contrast to the Miao men’s simple clothing, the female dress system costumes are the main system, they are exquisitely complicated. Miao girl dresses called Baizhe skirts, in fact, there are more than 500 folds in a skirt with many layers as much as 30 or 40 layers in it. These skirts (from the textile fabrics to dyeing and sewing, until final drawing and embroidering) are independently completed by the girls, along with personally embroidered flower belt and flower chest undergarment, we can imagine how colorful and beautiful they are. There are two wide lines in “Weixin” women’s batik Baizhe skirts, and it is said that the top one stands for the Yellow River, the lower for the Yangtze River. Between "The Yellow River" and the "Yangtze River", there are many geometric squares. The quadrilateral stands for big Dam, and rhombus small dam. Inside of it, there are various pictures ,such as fish head and tail, water wave, snail and butterfly, and other patterns. The two vertical lines of the skirt indicating a tag mean that tying grass is the boundary. And the long line of little dots is called "ChiYou sector".

    Various batik patterns display and entrust deep memories of their ancestors once lived in the "country of fish and rice" deeply. It is said that in Chu State during the Qin Dynasty, Miao has their own pictograph. They used wax juice as ink, and recorded words in the silk cloth. Silk cloth is lighter and more easier collected than Bamboo. Later, the staining was invented, and that is the indigo soil. So they dyed silk cloth with words and boiled wax with boiling water, then blue background and white words came out. Miao people recorded their residence, safaris territories, and the important things and deeds with pictographic symbols in the cloth, as the nation's geographic instruments. In the end of the Warring States, Qin occupied other six states. Miao was defeated and forced to migrate. In order to preserve their own history and culture, in a time of fleeing from calamity, smart women wrapped the silk cloth with letters around their waists and creased into a skirt. From time to time, the Hmong batik Baizhe skirts came into being. Previous hieroglyphs were gradually replaced by all sorts of decorative patterns and semantic lines. 

    Speaking to the reasons of Miao’s colorful costumes system, that is their decoration which is the most important thing. Meanwhile accessories, embroidered work, pottery, batik and other peripheral decorations can’t be underestimated. They combine with the useful and no traces of decoration together, and make the brilliant Miao costumes the top of traditional Chinese dress.