Miao Costume

01 · Historical Records

From ancient times through the modern era, the Miao people experienced several large-scale migrations, in the course of which a distinctive ethnic culture took shape. Miao women regard the colors present in nature as material to be selected and rejected in their daily lives, believing that these colors should be worn on the body, so as to create a beauty that originates in nature yet transcends it.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The most vivid and concrete expression of Miao culture is its richly colorful ethnic costume, and among these the attire of Miao women is the most representative. The Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture lies in the west of Hunan Province, on the border region of the four provinces and municipalities of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing, and Guizhou. The Xiangxi Miao comprise more than twenty branches, chiefly the 'Red Miao,' and each branch in turn contains a number of sub-branches; this makes Xiangxi Miao costume exceptionally diverse and gives it its basic character of one type (the Xiangxi type) and three styles (Huabao, Fenghuang, and Jilü). Xiangxi Miao costume includes head cloths, shoulder capes, upper garments, aprons, waistbands, decorative sashes, trousers, skirts, leg wrappings, socks, and shoes; these garments are decorated with several hundred richly imaginative and deeply meaningful motifs in geometric, animal, and plant forms. Xiangxi Miao costume is made through a whole set of traditional crafts — weaving, printing and dyeing, embroidery, brocade weaving, pick-flower work, yarn counting, wax-resist dyeing, and tie dyeing — each craft having its own distinctive production process and method of working. Within Xixiu District of Anshun City, Guizhou Province, four kinds of Miao costume are the most commonly seen. First, women wear a crescent-shaped red wooden comb, with the hair coiled into a bun wrapped around the comb and silver chains wound around the outside; the two lapels of the upper garment cross and close over one another, a long skirt is worn below, the waist is tied with a hemp or brocade sash, and the apron is usually edged with wax-resist dyeing or embroidery. Second, women coil the hair into a bun, around which a dark-blue wax-resist-dyed cloth with piped edging is wrapped and folded into a pointed peak; the clothing is mostly dark blue-black, trimmed with colored floral borders, and the front lapels carry two rows of white edging — on festival days the white edging is exchanged for bright multicolored bands, on which all manner of flower-and-bird patterns are made by embroidery or dyeing; below they wear pleated skirts longer than the knee with decorated hems, and the lower legs are wrapped in dark cloth bands. Third, women insert a bamboo strip bearing a small wooden comb diagonally into the hair bun, then wind the remaining long hair, supplemented with false hair, around the comb; the garment is a short jacket with diagonal crossed lapels, generally dark blue, blue, or blue-black, with floral edging on the cuffs and collar; on festive or celebratory days they wear colored clothing, mostly red, with skirts reaching the ankles in alternating dark blue or blue-and-white, secured with a brocade waistband and worn with a white apron. Fourth, women coil the hair into a bun decorated with an arched, bridge-shaped ornament of wax-resist-dyed cloth and wear silver hairpins on the forehead; the upper garment is a short jacket with diagonal lapels edged in patterned cloth at the sleeves and collar, and below they wear wax-resist pleated skirts alternating dark blue and white or blue and white, with a floral sash and apron at the waist. Guanling Miao costume consists of two parts: the garments and the headdress. Among the garments, three embroidered motifs of differing sizes and different designs — on the flat collar, the sleeveless vest, and the sleeves of the upper garment — symbolize the Miao homeland's Yellow River, Yangtze River, and Yuan River, while the different geometric figures within them represent the crisscrossing paths and farmland of these three great river basins. The large central motif on the skirt symbolizes Miao kin joined hand in hand; in the large rectangular colored embroidered panels on the chest and back of the upper garment, different patterns respectively signify the sun, the stars, flowers, and the like. The three vertical embroidered bands on the apron, arranged in the shape of the Chinese character chuan ('river'), respectively represent the three great dialects of the Miao language. Anshun Miao headdress is quite particular. Married women comb their hair from the temples into a bun twisted into a cylinder and coil it from left to right above the right ear, then insert a horn-shaped wooden comb in red-and-green floral colors. Unmarried girls, by contrast, part their hair from the forehead straight to the front, then braid it — together with lines twisted from loose strands — into a single plait, winding it from left to right around the head and leaving the end of the plait divided into tassel-like strands hanging above the right ear. The Qingmiao costume of Nayong, Guizhou, is the most completely preserved among all branches of Miao costume; its headdress is inserted into a high bun coiled into a V shape that resembles ox horns. It is said that 'Chiyou's sideburns were like swords and halberds and his head bore horns; when he fought with Xuanyuan, he gored people with his horns, and people could not face him.' The Nayong Qingmiao headdress accordingly carries the 'clan emblem' marks of the 'tufted topknot' and the 'touching horns.' Especially worthy of mention is the all-embroidered costume of Nayong, whose craftsmanship is superb and whose production process is plain and antique; it can be called the finest of Miao costume. Because different branches of the Miao differ in cultural background, living environment, and range of intermarriage, distinct costume culture circles have taken shape, and the Miao costume of Jianhe, Guizhou, is one of them. It is distributed over ten townships within the county, with twelve major categories and nearly a hundred styles; embroidery alone comes in more than twenty kinds, and the stitch techniques and methods are highly varied. The embroidery stitch techniques of Taijiang Miao costume are diverse, mainly including flat embroidery, embroidery on brocade, split-thread embroidery, braid embroidery, and coiling embroidery — more than twenty in all. Its compositions include symmetrical, left-and-right, and center-focused styles, among others; artistically they display the qualities of variation and exaggeration, with strong conceptual content and a clear hierarchy of primary and secondary elements — a single composition is a story — and historians have called it a 'history book worn on the body.' The 'Hundred-Bird Feather Skirt' of Baibei Miao costume is unique in style and is the most representative kind among the Miao costume of Rongjiang County, Guizhou. Its garment-and-skirt patterns take the forms of a hundred birds as the main body, with dragon and phoenix figures interspersed among them, reflecting this Miao branch's worship of the bird totem. The front lapels, sleeves, apron and skirt, lower hem, and other areas are covered with further motifs, chiefly fish, shrimp, freshwater mussels, spiders, snakes, chains, flowering trees, and mountains and rivers. The making of the costume must pass through many process steps such as rolling, pressing, kneading, and pounding, in the course of which crafts such as wax-resist dyeing, woven patterning, and embroidery are used in alternation; the whole production is fine and full of creativity, displaying a distinct ethnic and regional character. The color expression of Suojia Qingmiao costume is very pronounced: both the colored wax-resist dyeing and the pick-flower embroidery costumes, made mainly by hand, use natural raw materials. The colored costume of the Suojia Qingmiao (chiefly women's dress) preserves much ancient cultural and customary information; its distinctive motifs, lines, and various expressive and symbolic signs have become an important component of Qingmiao culture. Danzhai County, Guizhou Province, lies on the slope belt at the southern edge of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. In this multi-ethnic mountain region the Ganao branch of the Miao forms the main body, and the relatively independent geographical environment has enabled the Miao who live and work here to form their own distinctive costume culture. Through development, the costume of each sub-group has become increasingly differentiated, but they still share one common point: each does everything in its power to display, through embroidery or wax-resist dyeing, the bird totem worshiped by the Ganao branch of the Miao, expressing bird patterns to the utmost. The extreme worship of birds has created the artistic charm of Ganao-branch Miao costume; costumes such as the 'Hundred-Bird Robe,' the 'Golden-Pheasant Dress,' and the 'wax-resist antique-style costume' concentrate the group consciousness of bird worship and have become important cultural symbols of the Ganao branch.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Miao living in the high-altitude mountain areas of southern Tongzi County, Guizhou Province, mostly adopt opposed-lapel styles for the upper garment in order to withstand the severe winter climate of the region; below they wear wax-resist pleated skirts and pick-flower aprons, with pick-flower sleeve covers drawn over the arms and multiple layers of pick-flower leg wrappings on the lower legs. The Guanling Miao costume of Anshun is a relatively representative costume of the Miao of the Chuan-Qian-Dian (Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan) dialect group; it is concentrated mainly in the Miao settlement areas of Dingyun, Guansuo, and Huajiang in Guanling County, Guizhou, and is also current in the surrounding counties of Qinglong, Xingren, Anlong, and Zhenning. The Miao costume of Taijiang, Guizhou, is famous at home and abroad for its rich content, diverse forms, plain and mysterious styling, and bold, ingenious color schemes. Divided according to local Miao dialect, its types comprise nine major categories — Fangni, Fangjiu, Fangbai, Fangxiu, Fangnan, Fangweng, Fangli, Baxiang, and Wengmang — with more than a hundred styles in all. Jianhe Miao costume stands as a type in its own right because of the differing cultural backgrounds, living environments, and intermarriage ranges of its branches, and is one of the costume culture circles of the Miao of southeastern Guizhou. It is distributed over ten townships within the county, divided into twelve major categories and nearly a hundred styles, with more than twenty kinds of embroidery alone and highly varied stitch techniques; in the locality, identifying a garment often requires first determining which category and which township it belongs to. Its motifs and shapes are widely recognized as rich and colorful, plain and mysterious, with unusual layouts, full and rigorous compositions, a clear hierarchy of primary and secondary images, and strongly contrasting color decoration, giving it considerable aesthetic value and a distinctive ethnic style. Comparing the surviving ancient garments one by one, later observers have found that the differences among the seven sub-groups' ancient costumes are very slight; of these, the Hundred-Bird Robe of the Yahui type preserves the original appearance best, and this feather skirt has therefore become the benchmark for judging the origins of local Miao dress. The other side of such numerous and finely divided categories is the pressure of transmission: with more than a hundred styles and twenty-odd stitch techniques existing side by side, oral transmission within single households cannot cover them all, and after the older embroiderers have gradually dwindled, some stitches and patterns can no longer be recovered.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The motifs and shapes of Jianhe Miao costume are rich and colorful, plain and mysterious, with unusual layouts, full and rigorous compositions, a clear hierarchy of primary and secondary images, and strongly contrasting color decoration, giving them unique aesthetic value and a distinctive ethnic style. Comparing the ancient costumes that can presently be collected, one finds that the differences among the ancient dress of the seven sub-groups are very slight, and among them the Hundred-Bird Robe of the 'Yahui type' best preserves the original appearance.

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

1. Miao Costume (Jianhe, Guizhou) · China ICH Official Project Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗