时间：2022-10-27 08:55:35
文：玉荣
Weight versus beauty
Women on the prairie of northern Tibet look the most beautiful in summer when the flowers are in full bloom.
The summer months, the best season on the prairie, are packed with horse races and trade fairs.
Young local women start to dress themselves up days before the races and fairs start.
As they never cut their hair, they have the luxury of pleating their long thick hair into dozens of thin plaits. After that, they strew the plaits with colourful amber and turquoise stones, coral and silver ornaments.
When their hair is done, they spend time selecting the best headwear, the best and most beautiful necklaces, and gold and silver hangings. Their robes are also patched with fine fur.
A full costume often weighs a few dozen kilograms. But such a weight is bearable for the sake of beauty.
As contemporary fashion has not reached the prairie, there has been little change in way the young women dress.
The costumes and ornaments are passed down from one generation to another, bearing the honour, pride and wealth that the women have inherited from their ancestors.
Fashion store without a name
The costumes on the prairie linger on for generations, but there are ample reasons for the local Tibetans in Lhasa to change their dress.
The capricious nature of a metropolis breeds desire for novelty.
Dawa runs a small shop at Barkhor Street in Lhasa. Occupying a floor space of 20-odd square metres, the shop does not even have a name.
Listening to a radio, he patiently waits for customers.
The best in his collection are hats and caps, which are indispensable to local Tibetans during festivities. And his collection of hats and caps are all hand-made.
òA steady return of old customers ensures a good business, Dawa says. Customers only remember the face of the store owner on their return.
There is no need to have a name for the store.
Dawa is not alone. A lot of stores on Barkok Street bear no names.
Most of the Tibetans involved in garment businesses like Dawa get their merchandise from India. Dawa?s wife goes to India several times a year and brings back cotton cloth and, especially, satin.
The kind of satin Dawa and his wife import has bright colours woven with golden thread. It is good for making laces or festival robes.
The Tibetans began to buy in the satin more than half a century ago and its import volume has increased dramatically.
Dawa and other Tibetan storeowners measure the length of the satin by the ka. A ka of satin costs between a few dozen yuan and several hundred.
Tibetan costumes have changed not in design but in the use of colours and materials.
Urbanites in Lhasa like the colours that neither sparkle nor are mundane. Dawa has a tough task to select the right colours for his materials, which decide how much money he will earn each year.
The most expensive costume
Tibetan costumes vary from one place to another.
In Lhasa, women?s dresses in the traditional Tibetan style are made with various materials for the four different seasons.
Because the dresses almost hang down to the ground, some young Tibetan women prefer such casual wear as pants.
But Dawa is not happy ? he often asks his own women folk to dress in traditional costumes.
Don’t you think Tibetan women look the most beautiful when they wear the Tibetan dresses’ he says.
He takes solace in the fact that Tibetan dresses not only have maintained their popularity among local women but also appeal to an increasing number of tourists.
As his business thrives, Dawa has opened a garment workshop of his own, in the hope that it will turn out the finest dresses from the most beautiful material.
Bianba, of Kham origin, whose ancestors passed down their tailoring skills to him, shares the same hope as Dawa.
He often goes to Dawa’s shop for the right materials, especially satin from India.
Bianba has a lot of orders to fill. The Kham people who work in Lhasa or come on a pilgrimage always go to him to get their dresses and robes made.
Bianba said he has seen a full costume with ornaments that was valued at around the 1 million yuan mark. The most expensive costume Bianba ever made cost 70,000 yuan. The average price tag for a tailor-made traditional Tibetan costume ranges between 40,000 and 50,000 yuan.
More than the money
A Tibetan costume shows more than beauty and splendor. Few would think it a waste of money to have an expensive costume made, because it is testimony to people’s statuette, position, prosperity and ancestry.
Bianba has a deep understanding of the meanings behind each costume, so he takes great care while making them.
Few actually know the exact traditional process of making a full Tibetan costume. So Bianba takes great pride in his traditional skills, which he has inherited and now learned by heart.