I am looking for information on the national accessories of the Rongshui Miao people. If you have specific information, it would be better if there is a Chinese and English version. Thank you~~~

You are asking the right person. I am a Miao girl from Rongshui Miao Autonomous County. When I was in college, my teacher had a PhD in ethnology, and I compiled a short paper of mine for her. Some are based on my own experience, and of course I also refer to some literature.

The clothing culture of Rongshui Miao people

My hometown is in the beautiful Rongshui Miao Autonomous County. It is no exaggeration to say that it is beautiful. Compared with Guilin, Rongshui Miao Autonomous County's simple folk customs, original ecological scenery, and pollution-free river water, I would say without mercy, are even worse. Although it is not as famous as Guilin, it also allows us to maintain the ecological balance of Miaoshan. Rongshui can be described as a "paradise" hidden deep in the mountains!

Studying the course "Language and Culture" inspired my desire and strong curiosity about the culture of my hometown. On December 1, 2012, Rongshui Miao Autonomous County held its 60th anniversary celebration. The colorful and overwhelming performances full of Miao customs made me more interested in the culture of my hometown.

I am also a Miao nationality, and I have been deeply influenced by my own culture since I was a child. Moreover, I went to an ethnic middle school in junior high school. In the ethnic minority class, I gained a more specific understanding of the Miao culture and history.

The Miao people are an international ethnic group that originated in China. In the 2010 census, the total population of the Miao people was 9.426 million, mainly distributed in Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guangxi, and other provinces. The Miaoling Mountains and Wuling Mountains, where the Miao people live, have a mild climate, surrounded by mountains and rivers, and dotted with large and small fields and dams.

Rongshui Miao branch: This branch calls itself "Mu". The Miao people in Rongshui are divided into five types based on language and clothing: partial Miao, red-headed Miao, flower Miao, white Miao, and plain Miao. Its various costumes complement each other. The most beautiful ones are the flower seedlings. Hua Miao's costumes are more complex, with layers of layers and varied colors. The most common ones in meltwater are actually white seedlings. It is also the familiar Bai Miao who is accustomed to dressing up in silver jewelry.

Miao costumes are also divided into casual wear, festival wear, and wedding wear. I belong to the Bai Miao ethnic group and have my own set of costumes, which are festive costumes. Of course, Rongshui's Miao costumes have undergone a lot of improvements in order to facilitate movement and performance.

Generally speaking, Bai Miao costumes will have many totems or symbols of dragons and birds. Each tribe or branch has its own Tut. The Miao people in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County worship dragons and birds. Some websites say Phoenix, which is actually wrong. Our festival attire has a unified name-Hundred Birds Clothes. This is enough to show that we Miao people actually worship the sacred bird rather than the phoenix.

First of all, let me introduce the casual clothes of our Miao people.

Casual clothing only refers to its style and convenience. But no piece of Miao Yi's production process is simple. Casual clothing mainly consists of purple-red bright cloth and blue indigo cloth. Making such fabric requires multiple processes such as dyeing, bleaching, drying, hammering, and painting. It is roughly as follows: use twine to weave white cloth. After the white cloth is taken off the machine, it is washed once with warm water, dried, and then put into a large dyeing vessel containing indigo and glutinous rice sweet wine boiled from a special plant and stirred evenly by diving. After dyeing in the barrel, take out clean water, dry it in the sun, and then dip and dye it. Repeat it several times a day. It will take five or six days to dye it into a blue-black color, which is called indigo cloth. To process indigo cloth into purple-red bright cloth, you need to boil dried cowhide into a glue liquid. The filtered juice after pounding the yam and glutinous rice straw gray water are put into the bucket together. Then the cloth is repeatedly soaked and dried in the sun several times, and the cloth becomes Hardened. Then spread it out, mix it with egg white, beat it repeatedly with a special mallet, and then let it dry. This procedure will be carried out about three more times. After beating it evenly for several days, use a duck feather to dip a brush in warm water on the cloth to prevent cracks. Of course, when I was a child and accompanying my grandma to make seedlings, I would often complete this process. Girls have followed their female elders to make Miao clothes since they were young, because among the Miao people, fine craftsmanship is the first consideration for girls. Otherwise, I can't get married. It is a pity that this tradition has gradually been forgotten. This kind of cloth is made into clothing, and then lace is embroidered with patterns and dragon patterns. It was made into casual clothes. Miao clothing is not accustomed to using buttons. It is usually folded on the upper left and right sides of the front, and tied with a rope around the waist. Of course, some of the current Miao clothing are sewn with hidden buttons for ease of wearing. Wear a pleated skirt or trousers underneath.

It is for convenience of movement and farm work.

There is no headgear in casual clothes. After the woman puts her hair up, she simply wraps her head in black or blue soft cloth. There will definitely be "foot bindings" tied to the feet. It is also tied up with rope cloth. There are also regulations on how to tie them.

Next, the holiday costumes are quite gorgeous. Rongshui is also known as the "Hometown of Hundreds of Festivals". The Miao people are hospitable and enthusiastic, and they also like to entertain each other with songs and dances between villages, so there are many customary festivals and slope fairs. What is indispensable is the beautiful bird's clothing, which is simply a beautiful scenery.

The Hundred-Niao Clothing is a costume of a branch of the Miao people. It has a long history and there are many legends about it. It comes from the Miao people's worship of birds. During their migration and after they settled down, the ancestors of the Miao people would hunt various birds in the mountains to thank the birds for bringing them food, and the worship of birds was born. Not only are birds turned into patterns and embroidered on clothes, but various feathers are also decorated on the hems of clothes. The fabric of the bird's clothing is self-dyed, self-woven indigo cloth, or purple-red bright cloth. In addition to the cloth, the shoulders and waist are wrapped in layers, and are embroidered with bird patterns, which can reach hundreds of large and small. The strictly traditional Bai Niao Yi has 68 strings of native pearls, with 9 beads in each string, totaling 613. There are 10 downs hanging from the end of each string, totaling 680. Plus a variety of lace handkerchiefs embroidered with velvet. The skirt is composed of 16-18 embroidered colored strips, and the lower ends of the colored strips are studded with feather pom-poms, mostly white feathers. The inner skirt is a pleated skirt, with hundreds of straight pleats pressed and ironed one by one. A completely handmade bird's clothing is worth tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan.

Bainiaoyi men's clothing includes tops, vests, headscarves, belts and leggings. Women's clothing is very complicated, including Miao silver headdress, neck collar, longevity lock, top, shawl, belt, ribbon, pleated skirt and leg warmers. Because there are many layers of clothing, it is usually the grandmothers at home who help the young girls put them on. Because there are particularities in how to wear different parts, you can’t go wrong no matter how you tie the leg warmers. If the girl wears a wrong procedure, an expert can tell it at a glance, and she will be laughed at.

Of course, if such a complicated women's bird's clothing is made of purple-red bright cloth, it would be a bit sad that you are covered with heavy Miao silver decoration, but you can't sit on it.

Regarding the wedding dress, I have never really seen it, because my grandma passed away early and my parents had already settled in the city. I don't have any wedding clothes either.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know much about the wedding attire of Miao girls. It is said that this is a home with girls, and the mother has been making it for girls since they were young. Then teach the girls Miao embroidery and batik step by step. Until the girl gets married. This kind of wedding dress can only be worn once in a lifetime. I only saw it once at my aunt's house in the countryside. It was so amazing. But that is no longer a traditional wedding dress, it is an improved one. Due to the complicated craftsmanship and the use of a lot of real silver, almost no one in the younger generation can make it. Maybe it has been frozen in history.

But I learned from my aunt that a kind of unmarried women of the Miao ethnic group have to learn embroidery, and there are still many people who can do it. It's called pre-wedding embroidery, also called flower-stitching show.

Cross-stitch embroidery is a handicraft that best embodies the beautification of life of Miao girls. In addition to carefully embroidering festival costumes, they also secretly embroider handicrafts that only they can understand in their hearts. This is the "pre-marriage embroidery" of the Miao family, also known as "secret embroidery".

The so-called pre-wedding embroidery is actually embroidering floral hats, small floral clothes, quilts, suspenders and other accessories for future children. In order to prevent others from gossiping, the Miao girls did not show it to outsiders when they were embroidering these supplies, and they were also embarrassed to let their father and brothers see it, especially not to be discovered by younger brothers of the same age. Even if their mother or sister-in-law discovered it, they would not Can't make it public.

"Secret embroidery" usually ends on the eve of a girl's wedding. Generally, there are four or five small flower hats of various kinds, seven or eight small flower clothes, two or three quilts, and three or four suspenders. The girls wrap these embroidery items and give them to their mothers for safekeeping. But if the mother dies, it will be handed over to the sister-in-law for safekeeping. These exquisite and beautiful embroidery products have to be put away in the natal family for many years. After the girl gets married, it is not until after the birth of her first baby that the relatives and friends of the two families happily drink full moon wine together. Take them out and place them one by one on the long table in the main room for everyone to admire.

Miao women are also good at batik. They spread white cloth on the table, put beeswax or rosin in a small pot, heat it to dissolve into juice, and use bamboo needles or wax knives to draw on the cloth, usually without proofing. , painting based only on ideas, the various patterns painted are well-proportioned, with flowers, birds, insects, and fish, and the texture is vivid. After the painting is completed, it is put into a dye vat for dyeing, then taken out, boiled in clean water, and rinsed to remove the wax. The pattern of white flowers on a blue background or white flowers on a black background will appear.

Miao silver jewelry is all made by craftsmen of this ethnic group. Silver ornaments include silver headbands, silver crowns, silver collars, silver bracelets, silver medals, silver chains, silver feathers, silver hairpins, silver flowers, etc. The production is all done by hand, which requires many steps and is labor-intensive. For example, to make a silver headband, the silver must be pulled into slightly thick silver wires, and then dozens of silver wires must be gathered into a multi-edge silver ring. The silver crown is more exquisite, and the crown frame is decorated with silver flowers, silver birds, silver needles, silver butterflies, silver sticks and other ornaments.

After entering the 21st century, the Miao people, like other ethnic minorities, have been greatly impacted by foreign culture. Most of them wear ordinary clothes. They only wear ordinary clothes when celebrating festivals and participating in festive activities. Some people put on their ethnic costumes.