Miao Costume
01 · Historical Records
The starting point of Changning Miao dress is a piece of homespun cloth. Local Miao households grow fire hemp on the spot, strip the hemp fibers and spin them into yarn with hand-cranked machines, then weave the yarn into cloth on homemade looms; only after the cloth is woven, dyed and embroidered is it cut into garments. The fabric therefore carries both the coarse sturdiness of a mountain crop and the uneven thickness of hand-spun, hand-woven cloth. Once there is cloth, the form of the dress follows: a complete set of women's festival attire includes head wrapping, an upper garment, a cape, an apron, a waistband, short pleated skirts and the like — eighteen pieces in all, vividly called "eighteen pieces, one flower" by local people. Because the hemp cloth is narrow in width and sewing is laborious, a neatly finished festival ensemble often takes more than a month to make, and for that reason it serves as a measure of a family's craft and means. Miao women are not bound to fixed patterns; each sews designs of her own liking onto the hemp-cloth garments, stitching in her own hopes and dreams, so that even within a single village many personal styles with different embroidery emerge. Accompanying this set of processes are the songs "Planting Hemp and Spinning", "Spinning and Weaving" and "Embroidery", which join labor with singing and are oral literature handed down together with the dress. The origins of Changning Miao dress can thus be traced back along the lines of Miao migration and cultural sedimentation, and reveal the worldview the Miao formed in their struggle against nature.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Changning Miao dress is passed down among the Miao villages of Jie Township, Changning County, Baoshan City, Yunnan Province. Its raw material is mainly fire-hemp homespun cloth produced locally. Local Miao people spin the hemp fibers stripped from fire hemp into yarn with hand-cranked machines, then weave the yarn into fire-hemp homespun cloth on homemade looms. Miao women sew various patterns onto skirts and garments made of hemp cloth according to their own preferences and imagination, expressing their dreams and longings. A complete set of Miao women's festival dress includes head wrapping, upper garment, cape, apron, waistband, short pleated skirt and so on — eighteen pieces of varying size, vividly called "eighteen pieces, one flower". Bold use of color is a conspicuous feature of Changning Miao dress: its palette is dominated by red, yellow, orange and white, and it excels through embroidery. Changning Miao dress has a highly distinctive historical content and cultural significance; the songs "Planting Hemp and Spinning", "Spinning and Weaving" and "Embroidery" that arose alongside the dress crafts are treasures of the oral literature of the Chinese nation. From Changning dress one can trace the course of Miao history and its cultural sedimentation, and thereby see refracted the Miao understanding of the world formed in the struggle against nature.
Stripping hemp, spinning and weaving
Locally grown hemp is spun by hand and woven on a local loom into the base cloth.
The eighteen-piece festive set
Headwrap, jacket, shawl, apron, sash and short pleated skirt make up the eighteen-piece set.
Free motifs sewn on hemp cloth
Women embroider motifs of their own devising, expressing personal dreams on the cloth.
The hemp and embroidery songs
Songs sung at the spinning wheel and over the embroidery frame record the making process.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Changning Miao dress is passed down among the Miao villages around Jie Township, Changning County, Baoshan City. The exchange of patterns between villages relies mainly on marriage and market days: when a girl marries she brings garments she has embroidered herself, and when a daughter-in-law returns to her natal home she brings back new styles from neighboring villages; a single decorated band passes back and forth between generations, and in this way new patterns spread year by year. The technical threshold for weaving and cross-stitch embroidery is not high, but the processes are extremely long: from stripping hemp and spinning yarn to weaving cloth, drawing designs, embroidering and sewing, every step must be learned under someone's guidance. Transmission in Changning therefore relies mainly on oral teaching within the family, and women in the village with good skills naturally become instructors who are half teacher and half friend. The color scheme — excelling through embroidery, with red, yellow, orange and white as the main tones — is the most striking feature of Changning Miao dress: a whole set of garments laid out on the ground shows, from afar, a bright field of color, and only up close does one see the stitching. Bold use of color also brings strictness in color matching: only a few main colors are used, with patterns filled in between them, rather than relying on a miscellany of colors. In recent years local authorities have used dress exhibitions as occasions for dissemination. The representative inheritor Tao Meiyuan, known for Miao minor tunes and mountain songs and called the "lark of the Miao mountains", has been engaged in the transmission and protection of Miao culture for more than thirty years, training nearly a hundred disciples; the Miao villages around Jie Township largely take the dress styles she demonstrates as their model.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Changning Miao dress is a concentrated reflection of the values and aesthetic consciousness of the Miao people. Tao Meiyuan (from the official file of the associated inheritor): female, Miao, born in April 1965, from Changning County, Yunnan Province. She is also skilled at singing Miao minor tunes and mountain songs, and enjoys the reputation of the "lark of the Miao mountains". She is a representative inheritor of Miao Dress (Changning Miao Dress), a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the fourth batch. She has been engaged in the transmission and protection of Miao culture for more than thirty years, actively participating in Miao dress culture exhibitions, and has trained nearly a hundred disciples.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Tao Meiyuan 04-1970
- Yang Wenqin 05-3000
- Xiong Guangzhen 05-3001
- Jiang Laoben
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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