China Popular Itineraries |
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1.1 The Inheritance and Development of Dress and Adornment Culture |
Dress and adornment culture is a culture formed in the course of protect-ing people's bodies and beautifying their images.
It is made up of dress and adornments including ornaments and jewelry. The former mainly functions as a physical protection with certain aesthetic consideration, and the latter displays appreciation of beauty, with protection as a minor function. So the culture has two functions: protection and aesthetics.
1.1 The Inheritance and Development of Dress and Adornment Culture
Dress Culture is characterized by distinctive development stages. Dress in different historical periods had different styles, though it was also featured by inheritance. Nowadays, the dress and adornments, even separate parts of gar-ments, can find their prototype in ancient dress.
In primitive times, people used leaves and grass to cover their bodies. As early as 18 thousand years ago, Upper Cave Man learned to make fur clothes with bone needles. During the Yang Shao Culture Period (six or seven thou-sand years ago), people learnt to twist linen into threads with stone or pottery spindles, then wove them into garments with primitive looms. The dress of that time was estimated by historians as being mainly constituted by three parts "apron, cloak and slip-overs, " that is, aprons to cover the legs, cloak to cover the upper body, and slip-overs, the whole body.
During the Shang and the Zhou dynasties, the ˇ°right-buttoned and hair-boundˇ°dress characteristics were formed. On the unearthed relics of the Shang Dynasty were carved the images of slave-owners, who wore flat cap, right-buttoned gown, around-waist belt, puttees and shoes with tips warped up-wards; while the slaves were depicted as hatless, round-collared and hands-fettered.
As for the hair-style, ancient Chinese all bound their hair upward with hair claps. Wearing long hair was an old tradition that basically had undergone no change from the remote ages to the Qing Dynasty. As was recorded in an ancient book The Book of Filial Piety, "Hair and skin are inherited from par-ents and should in no way be damaged, " ancient Chinese never cut their hair, except for very particular cases.
Of all the hats in ancient China, coronet had the longest history. Origi-nating in the Huang Di Period, it was fully developed in the Zhou Dynasty. Seven inches wide, one foot and two inches long, it had a round front and a square rear fastened with altogether twelve strings of white jade beads, a length of four inches drooped in front and three inches hung down at nape. The number of strings indicated different ranks. There were 12 strings on em-peror's crown, but only three on the coronet of the peers. People of lower ranks were forbidden to wear it.
Dress in the Western Zhou Dynasty inherited the customs of the Shang Dynasty with certain development. Men usually wore high hats, broad belt with pleats under it, while women wore low collared narrow sleeved blouse with pleats decorated beneath the waist.
In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, gown and Hu Dress appeared. Hu Dress means the dress of northern nomadic na-tionalities, that is, short coat, trousers and leather boots. In the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, men wore high hats, pleated gowns, women wore narrow-sleeved short shirts and leather boots, reflecting features of Hu Dress. Mean-while, with the appearance of Hu Dress, belt with hooks used by Hu national-ity were also introduced, which was a big progress compared with traditional Chinese belt.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, hat-wearing was a much emphasized rite. The loss of hats due to carelessness was regarded as discourtesy. The owner himself would regard it as a galling humiliation -- just like pants-drop-ping in public nowadays. It is recorded that the emperor of Qi lost his crown due to drunkenness, he felt so ashamed that he did not hold morning court for three days.
The dress of the Qin and the Han dynasties basically followed those of the Warring States Period. Gowns and belts with hooks were still popular. The tightly-wrapped gown was changed into loose one in the Eastern Han Dy-nasty. The gown was originally an underwear, and began to be worn as an outer garment in the Han Dynasty. After some transformation, soon it be-came a popular dress.
The pants of the Han Dynasty were equivalent to today's split pants. Furthermore, pants with crotch and short pants also appeared. Meanwhile, the Han Dynasty regulated hat-wearing: officials wore coronet, common peo-ple wore kerchief or had their hair worn in a bun. After Wang Mang took the throne, coronet worn with kerchief became popular and there were rules on their coordination.
The women in the Han Dynasty liked awl-shaped hair bun with orna-ments, such as Buyao and scarf. Buyao, according to the historical record, was an ornament with drooping beads, dangling when people wearing it were walking, which reflected the aesthetic standard of women of that time. A kind of waist-drum-shaped ear ring also appeared, whose way of wearing differed from that of today -- it was clipped directly to the earlobes. Chapter Six of God Searching Notes records, "In the Han Dynasty, Senior General Liangji's wife Sun Shou had thin and twisted eyebrows drawn as if putting a worried 1ook, applied little makeup under her eyes as if she had just cried, wore hair bun at one side as if she had fallen off horseback, and smiled without showing her teeth as if she had got a toothache. All the women in the capital imitated her.
From the Wei Dynasty to the South and North Dynasty, China was in a period of ethic merging. The dress of this period was characterized by diversi-fied styles and obsolescence. In general, it was classified into two categories: the folk dress and the official dress. The former was close-fitting, round-col-lared and vented, a prototype for a new style gown which became popular af-ter the Tang Dynasty; the latter was developed into ceremonial dress (formal attire).
The common men' s clothing in the Tang Dynasty included Futou (a kind of scarf in ancient China), round-collared and narrow-sleeved gown and boots. Meanwhile dress in the Tang Dynasty began to be connected with offi-cial ranks. Futou was a kind of cap in ancient China made by a scarf. In Futou binding, two corners were tied together in front to wrap the hair bun, the other two corners were tied behind. Because Futou was always made by black gauze, it was usually called black gauze cap.
Skirt-wearing was a fashion among women in the Tang Dynasty. Wom-en's clothing was mainly made up of three parts: skirt, blouse and shawl. The skirt hung down to the ground with blouse underneath and silk shawl on the shoulders, or they wore Hu Dress and cloth shoes. Women at that time still wore split pants, as children wear nowadays. The woman's face makeup tended to be more complicated: different cosmetics were applied to forehead, temples, cheeks, lips, eyebrows and between the eyebrows. And their eye-brows were so heavily blackened that they might leave traces on men' s clothes when hugging farewell, just as a poem in the Tang Dynasty depicted. "So sad to face my tinted sleeve, where my love's blackened eyebrows leave a print."
The dress of the Song Dynasty basically followed that of the Tang Dy-nasty. Men wore Futou, round-collared loose gown, women wore short-sleeved, central buttoned coat with skirt underneath. Silk shawls were becom-ing obsolescent, while foot-binding, bow shoes and flower-ornamented hats were gradually popularized. Compared with that of the Tang Dynasty dress was more closely linked with official ranks and dress of different professions was regulated.
Though the Yuan Dynasty was established by the Mongolians, its dress followed the custom of the Han nationality. Gowns were popular. Sometimes, men wore short-sleeved upper garments outside narrow-sleeved gowns; while women usually wore leggings underneath gowns. Most Mogolian men had a lock of hair drooped in front of their foreheads. The rest was plaited into two big rings hanging behind their ears.
What changed most in the Ming Dynasty was that official dress was clas-sified, Common men's dress was right-buttoned gowns with long sleeves drooping below the knees, long and coiled hair; while women wore loose-sleeved blouse, long skirt and hair bun.
Dress in the Qing Dynasty underwent great changes. Apart from more meticulous rules on official dress, hair styles changed greatly. After the Manchus dominated China, people were forced to accept their hair style. Though universally rejected by the Han nationality at the beginning, it was later accepted as a custom. Men usually wore long gowns, mandarin jackets and summer hats. Manchu women usually wore mandarin gowns, sleeveless garment, mandarin shoes and S-shaped hair bun. While the Han women in south China usually wore skirts, those in north China wore trouser legs, right-buttoned blouse and pleated skirt. There were diversified hair styles. Young girls usually wore hair in bangs or single braids. Adult women wore 1ong hair bun, while old women wore hair knot at the nape.
In modern times, influenced by western dress, men wore top hats, but still long gowns and mandarin jackets, cloth shoes or leather shoes; women wore reformed mandarin gowns. After the revolution of 1911, men had their hair cut, wore top hats, western-style clothes or Chinese tunic suit. Women' s dress did not change much, and more women had their hair cut short.
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