The cultural function of costumes of the ethnic groups in China

文：耀

Clothing is the first refuge for a person when he or she comes to the earth nakedly.

Even if this person grows up and becomes an adult, clothing is still a shell for him or her to resist against external powers, such as natural and social forces. A person without any clothing is definitely vulnerable to any possible attacks.

Apart from such a protecting function, dresses and adornments put on by ethnic groups also bear a function to sense the super powers existing in the nature, which seem mysterious to the outside world.

Given such a cultural background, the dresses and adornments of ethnic groups shoulder two kinds of functions - pragmatic and imaginary.

It is because of this that ethnic dresses and adornments bears a colour of godship in addition to its original nature of offering a covering for the human body.

1 ) The function of protecting the human body

Warmth and food are the two fundamental factors for human being to survive and dresses and adornments exactly provide human being with the warmth they need.

To resist coldness, human being made things like fur and kudzu the earliest covering of human body, and to prevent the hurt of stabbing by woods or sharp stones, people also wore leg and arm guards.

Such a way of dressing is still seen commonly among ethnic groups living in mountains and forests in China - the bamboo leg guard of the Delong ethnic group and leg wrappings of the Yi and Lahu ethnic groups.

With the upgrading of human being’s capability to survive, people demanded more for the warmth, comfort and convenience of clothing. And the diversification of materials and styles of dressing in turn expanded the living space of the human being.

Another basic instinct of the human being to survive is sex, which has been under protection by being covered by things ranging from animal skin and leaves to a kind of bamboo board the Nu people in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province use to hide themselves.

Such covering was not, as many took for granted, the origin of clothing. Rather, the covering of sex should have been invented after ideas of religions or ethics took their shapes.

The covering of sex might have been done due to the sense of ostentation, or taboo as well.

For example, to get the right to inherit a property, it was important for one to take a predominant role in sexual relations. However, sexual impulse was eased and sexual taboos were enhanced effectively by relevant dresses and adornments.

2) The function of adjusting to natural surroundings

One major reason why China’s ethnic groups design their dresses with various colours and styles is related to where and how they live. Their ways to dress up, which have been formed in the long run, is a result of adjusting to natural surroundings.

Throughout thousands of years of cultivation and migration, China’s ethnic groups have been putting on clothes according to where they live and different seasons, choosing the materials their habitats served them to make clothes and adornments, and dying their clothes with

different colours while observing colours in the nature.

The materials they have chose range from grass, wood, animal skin and fur to kudzu, flax, cotton, silk and shells, while the colours and patterns on their clothes and adornments range from that of worms, fish, birds and beasts to that of stones and bines.

3 ) The function of differentiating social roles

Every one has a certain role in the society, which may be a gender, an age, an ethnic or a vocation. And what one wears is the most direct symbol of his or her social role.

The initial disparity occurred between a man and a woman and originated from the different jobs they did and the physical demands they had. Even the ancient Jingpo people, among whom both genders put on skirt, designed different decorative patterns to identify men and women.

The influence of ages on clothes is especially notable in ethnic groups in Southwest China, with each of them having a set of traditions and rites under which people change their clothes when in different ages.

When a baby is born, what is used to be wrapped it is clothes that is gifted of special ethnic meaning. The undergarment covering the chest and abdomen and shoes worn by the Yi babies, for example, are made with tiger veins and head, symbolizing that the Yi people are the offspring of the òtiger ethnicó.

Clothes keep being changed as a baby grows. A Bai baby, for instance, is dressed with what has been worn by a dog seven days after its birth. A Naxi baby wears a long shirt that is made of old clothes when it is one month. A Zhuang baby, when one month, receives brocade gallus, clothes, hat, shoes and socks from its grandma. When the Mosuo people of the Naxi ethnic group and the Primi people are thirteen, they have a rite at which they put on skirt. Sixty-year-old Hani people put on red-cloth hoops on head or hats that is decorated with 105 (considered a lucky number) silver little balls. And girls under 18 among the Va people add a bamboo cane loop on their feet every time they become one year older.

People doing different jobs also have disparate clothes. In some ethnic groups, for example, those do religious rituals wear unique clothes, such as those of Tibetan and Naxi lamas and Dai monks. Handicraftsmen and those doing business among some ethnic groups have characterized signals on their clothes.

4) The function of making people abide by etiquette and common practices

As the Chinese tradition attaches great importance to etiquette cultures, the awareness to show respect to collective interests and abide by daily life criteria is reflected by people’s dresses and adornments.

The first thing to do by many ethnic groups at a baby’s birth ceremony is always linked to clothes. Meanwhile, most groups change their clothes and wear those bearing ancient meanings during a wedding or when babies are born, and due to a tradition of paying respect to the old and the dead, the most importance is attached to funerals, at which special clothes is put on.

5) The function of sensing the fantasy of gods on heaven and under earth

The Book of Changes, an ancient Chinese book, says the Huangdi emperor, who is considered the ancestor of all Chinese, stipulated the regulations of clothing in reference to Qian and Kun (together stand for the universe).

People at that time believed Qian stood for the sky and the colour of it was black, while Kun meant the earth and its colour was yellow. Therefore, people believed that the clothes put on the upper part of the body should be black because it symbolized the sky, and that put on the lower part of the body should be yellow because it symbolized the earth.

Given that, the ancient people thought what they wore could respond to the universe.

The idea of responding to the universe generated the theories of Yin and Yang (female and male, sky and earth, and every pair of things that are opposite to each other) and Wuxing (five basic elements of the world - gold, wood, water, fire and soil) in ancient China. According to the theories, social development and the replacing of different dynasties were seen as the circulation of the universe and Wuxing.

Emperors, whose rights were believed to have been granted by the gods, then put on clothes according to such theories to show their response to the universe.

For example, black was preferred during the Xia Dynasty, white in the Shang Dynasty, red in the Zhou Dynasty, black in the Qin Dynasty, and yellow in the Han Dynasty. All of the choices was made according to the Wuxing ideas.

Therefore, claiming they are the offspring of Xia and Shang dynasties, Qiang, Tibetan, Primi, Bai, Naxi and Tu ethnic groups make their clothes or adornments in white, and Yi, Hani, Lisu, Jingpo, Jino and Lahu ethnic groups make theirs black. All of this is of the meaning that they are sensing and responding to gods or their ancestors.

Since clothes has such a sensing and responding function for a nation or a ethnic group, they are naturally believed to be able to sense personal fortunes.

Still take the colour of clothes. Qiang wizards decorate their hats with white shells, put on white clothes, use white drums, and wear white shoes, so that they can contact gods. Hani people believe once in white, they can hedge against the possibility of being possessed by ghosts. Naxi people even link the birth time of people with the colour of their clothes and believe people born in a certain time should be in a certain colour.

Besides, dresses and adornments also, more or less, have such sensing and responding relations with the worships towards totem, nature or ancestors and other primitive beliefs and religions.

6) The function of recording ancient stories and rules

The functions of knowing or symbolizing of clothes might have come into being before characters or letters were invented.

One example is that the dresses and adornments of primitive tribes had the function of identifying different roles or positions.

Therefore, a hawk claw or tiger teeth was a silent declaration that the wearer was a brave and agile hunter and special and bizarre clothes were what the person chairing sacrifice rituals in a tribe put on, who also wore long feather and horns, when contacting the gods.

Rope knots or carves on wood, which were used to recording events by migrating ethnic groups, were taken by those people and acted as adornments.

For ethnic groups that did not invented any characters or letter and only spread their cultures orally, the function their dresses and adornments played as recorders was then especially crucial.

7) The function of decorating and beautification

The pursuit for beauty was concealed beneath the mind of human beings when they put on the first clothes that was made of beast skins or leaves and wore the first selected adornments.

Symmetry, smooth, changes as well as the contrast or harmony among different shapes, colours and pictures, which were sought by ancient ethnic people deliberately or unconsciously, were the seeds generating aesthetic feelings. And so were the joys all of those brought to the ethnic people themselves.

The aesthetic function of clothes and adornments has been turning diversified and enhanced at times when the functions of them in the cultural aspect tended to be complicated.

Any single clothes or adornment, as long as it contained pictures, had its shape and colours, can been seen as a collection of aesthetic tastes.

Even if all its functions in the cultural aspect, as mentioned above, were ignored, a clothes or adornment still could be seen as a single art work and an object to be enjoyed from an aesthetic perspective.

At the same time, a notable and inevitable tendency of the development of dresses and adornments was that they had been shaking off their tasks gifted by wizardry, religion and the demand for recording history and social rules, and turning to things for people to make their life more enjoyable.

In modern times, especially, to wear fashionable clothes and adornments has become an art style and the function such clothes and adornments play in aesthetic field has to great extent overridden any other functions they do in the cultural aspect.

8) The superposition, transformation and variation of the functions in the cultural aspect

Although the function modern clothes and adornments play is turning from that in the cultural aspects to that in the aesthetic field, it is unreasonable to look at it in such a simple way as even the most artwork-like modern clothes is in fact not playing a single function.

It is inevitable that the cultural functions played by the clothes and adornments of China’s ethnic groups experienced, or is experiencing, superposition and overlapping.

One example is that the wax-dyed skirt and woven and embroidered shawl of the Miao ethnic group bear both an aesthetic taste and the function of adjusting to the climate in the mountainous region the Miao people live. They also play as symbols recording the history and identifying different social roles.

The cultural functions played by clothes and adornments of ethnic groups will change and transit with the changes in people’s traditional way of life and the reevaluation of value and social rules.

Some functions have ebbed away or been hiding behind the scene throughout the history due to a lack of support from different cultures, while some have become more important.

For example, the clothes and adornments of the Miao people have played more an aesthetic function than a function as to record the history.

Today some aged Miao people always frown on the fact that young Miao people, in pursuit of the sort of beauty they prefer, frequently recompose tradition-defined patterns, colours and even styles for clothes and adornments. And so do young people in other ethnic groups.

òHow ridiculous that nowadays young people do not understand traditional rules and embroider and wear whatever looks good!ó the aged Miao people have claimed.

In some ethnic groups, even if the styles, colours and patterns are not changed, some cultural functions of clothes and adornments have lost gradually.

The Yi people in regions such as the Tanhua Mountain in Dayao, Yunnan Province, used to commemorate a girl, who saved others at the cost of her own life, by a òclothe contestó festival in each March. During the festival a contest for the most beautiful and best-designed clothes was held. Later on, however, the goal to commemorate the girl has been made less and less important with the major activity at the festival, which is to design and make beautiful and delicate clothes, getting more attention.

All of such facts have shown that the cultural functions of clothes and adornments of ethnic groups have been changing.