Ewenki Costume
01 · Historical Records
The origins of Evenki costume are directly bound up with a mode of production and life combining hunting and pastoralism. The climate of the Chen Barag Banner area is cold and damp, and hides and furs were an inexhaustible supply of raw material, so the earliest garments had animal hide on the outside and woolen cloth as the lining; only when cotton cloth later reached the area did costume divide into two parallel lines, one of hide and one of textile. The Tungus tribe is one of the three Evenki tribes, and its traditional costume retains the most complete local characteristics in cut and pattern. In modern times the form of the dress has changed with new fabrics and the sewing machine, yet the crafts of flat seamless shoulders, dense hidden stitching, and woven strap braid have never altered; they have been passed down from generation to generation without drifting.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Evenki costume is the traditional ethnic dress of the Evenki people, handed down from generation to generation. Men's garments and girls' garments are made with a flat-shoulder seamless technique; girls' garments are cut close to the body, with pleats in the skirt. Married women's garments, besides having pleated skirts, also have pleating deliberately worked into the shoulders to create a raised-shoulder effect, and a sleeveless jacket is worn over the top. The decorative elements on the costume are rich in symbolic meaning. On festive occasions and at folk festivals the Evenki wear ornaments of auspicious meaning, such as headpieces, shoulder ornaments, skirt ornaments, and waist ornaments, thereby heightening the atmosphere and expressing good wishes. The costume-making craft of the Tungus Evenki is expressed chiefly in cutting, sewing, embroidery, braiding, and hide processing. Sewing work covers hide, cloth, applied borders, and dense hidden stitching. Embroidery is expressed mainly in the technique of embroidering auspicious patterns on the heel of boots. Braiding work includes round strap braid, flat strap braid, colored strap braid, and border braid. Tungus Evenki girls begin to learn the basic techniques of making traditional costume at the age of eleven or twelve, passing them down from generation to generation through family transmission.
Flat-shouldered seamless tailoring
Men’s and girls’ garments are cut with flat shoulders and sewn with almost no visible seams, fewer joins meaning fewer snags in the brush.
The fitted pleated costume of girls
Girls’ costumes are fitted to the body with pleated skirts, a practical cut suited to the first years of work, and quite unlike the married women’s raised shoulders.
The raised shoulders and waistcoat of married women
Married women add pleats at the shoulders to create a raised effect and wear a waistcoat over the pleated dress, marking their status in cut alone.
Four kinds of braided banding
Braiding is done in round banding, flat banding, coloured banding and edged banding, each answering a different part of the garment.
Auspicious patterns at the heel
The most demanding embroidery falls on the heel of the boot, an unfashionable spot everyone looks at, and its patterns match those on hats, shoulders, skirts and belts.
Learning from the age of eleven or twelve
Girls begin learning the basic making of the costume at eleven or twelve, taught within the family without school or timetable, one finished garment at a time.
The four ornaments of festival dress
Head, shoulder, skirt and belt ornaments each carry an auspicious meaning; wearing all four shows how much the family esteems the day.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Tungus tribe is one of the three Evenki tribes; its traditional costume has strong regional and ethnic characteristics, forms an important part of Evenki costume, and is distributed mainly in Chen Barag Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Tungus Evenki costume is an ethnic dress gradually formed in the course of a life of production combining hunting and pastoralism, adapted to the character of the local natural and social environment; it fully displays the aesthetic taste of the local Evenki people, their deep understanding of nature and society, and their boundless longing for a better life. By cut, Tungus Evenki costume divides into men's garments, girls' garments, and married women's garments.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Tungus Evenki costume vividly reflects its wearers' customs of production and daily life, aesthetic consciousness, and ideals, embodying cultural meanings such as love of life and reverence for nature; it is an important cultural vehicle of the people's historical memory and a bond sustaining ethnic identity, and it has historical, artistic, social, and cultural value that cannot be underestimated. Qimude (record of the associated inheritor's official file): Female; Evenki; born in May 1965; native of Chen Barag Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. From the age of sixteen she learned the sewing techniques of traditional ethnic costume from her maternal grandmother Yangjima, becoming an inheritor in the household of the Buqin clan. In 1992 she founded an Evenki costume tailoring shop, and later an Evenki ethnic costume processing workshop, producing and processing four-season traditional life ensembles of the Tungus Evenki. In 2007 she organized a Tungus Evenki ethnic costume performance troupe, which took part in various performances and competitions and achieved good results. She is a representative inheritor of Evenki costume, a fifth national-level intangible cultural heritage item. She insists on teaching the craft free of charge and actively promotes the protection, transmission, and development of ethnic culture.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Qimude 05-3064
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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