Yao Costume

01 · Historical Records

The patterns of the Nandan Yao costume preserve a veneration of the chicken. The chick-flower (jizaihua) is the main motif, seen on both men's and women's clothing: on men's everyday jackets one is embroidered on each side of the chest, while on formal dress the two sides of the waist and the lower edge of the back are set off with chick-flower and mi-character (rice-grain) patterns. The five red stripes embroidered on the knees of the white trousers are popularly said to be blood handprints left by a Yao king during a war with other peoples, a scar taken up as a pattern and worn for more than a thousand years. The dyeing approach carries a clear regional mark: women's jackets (guayi) and pleated skirts are both painted and dyed with tree sap, the skirt face divided into three sets of ring patterns, and the skirt edge trimmed with red non-woven silk pieces. In former times, uneven dyeing required repeated dipping, and once spoiled it was hard to remedy; the season for gathering dyestuffs and their concentration rested entirely on accumulated feel. The forms are layered by gender and occasion: men's dress distinguishes formal from everyday wear; women's dress is the guayi jacket in summer and a right-lapel, sleeved, buttonless garment in winter, while below the waist, hot or cold, they always wear a knee-length pleated skirt. Whether by embroidery, applique, inlay, or dyeing, these material forms have crystallized into a cultural symbol of the people.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Yao costume of Nandan County in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is highly distinctive among the Yao costumes of Guangxi, and is divided into men's and women's dress. Men's dress is further divided into formal dress and everyday wear. Of its decorative patterns, the chick-flower (jizaihua) is the main motif; it appears on both men's and women's clothing, reflecting a veneration of the chicken. The everyday jacket of Nandan Yao men is a blue-black standing-collar garment closing with lapped panels, with a chick-flower pattern embroidered on each side of the chest; the trousers are made of white cloth, ending just below the knee, with black cloth trimming the cuffs. The outer edges of the jacket of Nandan Yao men's formal dress are all trimmed with blue cloth, and the two sides of the waist and the lower edge of the back are embroidered with chick-flower and mi-character (rice-grain) patterns. Five red stripes are embroidered on the knees of the white trousers of Nandan Yao men; popular tradition holds that these are blood handprints left by a Yao king during a war with other peoples. The summer jacket of Nandan Yao women is called a guayi; it is sewn from two square pieces of cloth, front and back, the front being plain black cloth while the back is worked into various patterns by dyeing and embroidery. The winter jacket is generally right-lapel, sleeved, and without buttons. Winter or summer, Nandan Yao women wear a blue knee-length pleated skirt below the waist; the skirt face is painted and dyed with tree sap into three sets of ring patterns, and the skirt edge is trimmed with red non-woven silk pieces. Both the jacket and the skirt of Nandan Yao women's dress employ the distinctive tree-sap dyeing technique. Whether by embroidery, inlay, applique, or dyeing, their material forms have already become a cultural symbol of the people, expressing the Nandan Yao's taste for life and particular cultural ideas, and occupying an important position and value within the costume culture of China's ethnic minorities. Hezhou City in Guangxi lies in the mountainous region of the Wuling range along the Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi border and is a principal settlement area of the Yao people of China. Hezhou Yao costume is divided into three major categories: Guoshan Yao, Tu Yao, and Pingdi Yao. Among these, the Guoshan Yao costume alone divides its headdresses into three types and seven varieties: pointed, flat, and wrapped. For example, the pointed type is subdivided into tower-style, slanted, and small pointed; the flat type into baojin (wrapped brocade) and chansha (wound yarn); and the wrapped type into single-wrap and double-wrap. The decorative patterns of Hezhou Yao costume bear distinct historical features of the ethnic culture. For instance, the large numbers of animal and plant patterns reflect the Yao people's transition from a fishing-and-hunting economy to an agricultural economy; the large numbers of human-figure patterns and hui (回)-character patterns embody the deep influence of the Yao's primitive religious worship and of Buddhist and Daoist culture on the Yao people. In addition, Hezhou Yao costume also reflects the age, marital status, romantic attachments, and social standing of its wearers.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Yao villages of the Nandan area are built along the mountainsides, separated from one another by ridge after ridge, and differences in costume are largely settled within the village and not passed on lightly to outsiders. Men choose between formal dress and everyday wear according to the occasion: everyday clothes for daily labor, formal dress for festivals and ceremonies. Women's dress is the guayi jacket in summer and the right-lapel sleeved garment in winter, while below the waist, cold or hot, they always wear a knee-length pleated skirt; a single finished garment, from dyeing to sewing, often takes several months. Girls learning to make clothing usually follow their elders in the family from an early age, learning as they work, and the sequence of gathering dyestuffs, painting and dyeing with tree sap, and embroidering is passed down in the course of this daily life. Nandan and the other Yao settlement areas of Guangxi are interconnected yet each has its own leanings: the chick-flower, mi-character, and ring-dyed patterns also appear in neighboring regions, but each area makes its own choices in color scheme and trimming.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Yao Costume · Yao Costume.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The study and protection of Yao costume is of important academic value and practical significance. He Jinxiu (from the official archival record of the associated inheritor): female, of the Yao people, born in August 1965, a native of Nandan County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. In 1976 she began studying the techniques of Yao costume making under her paternal grandmother He Yanxing, her maternal grandmother of the Li family, and her mother He Damei. She has mastered more than thirty process steps of costume making, including spinning and weaving, the gathering and preparation of dyestuffs, dip-dyeing, paste-resist drawing, embroidery, and sewing. She is especially skilled in techniques such as paste-resist drawing and embroidery. The costumes she makes follow the aesthetic habits of the people: simple and dignified, with patterns well spaced, expressing a plain and genuine artistic style. For many years she has guided local women in making Yao costume, and has run costume-technique training classes in primary and secondary schools to cultivate a younger generation of inheritors of ethnic costume. She is a representative inheritor of the Yao costume project, included in the fifth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• He Jinxiu 05-3002
• Pan Jifeng 05-3003
• Li Sufang

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Yao Costume (Nandan, Guangxi) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. He Jinxiu · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗