Why does the Monkey King in Beijing Opera have two hairs on her head? What are these two hairs for?

Why does the Monkey King in Beijing Opera have two hairs on her head? What are these two hairs for? Today I brought some related contents to share with you.

In Beijing opera, the costumes of some characters are quite different from those in movies and TV plays that we usually see. For example, the "belt" on the waist of an official is as big as a hula hoop and must be held by hand. Some military commanders carry flags, ride horses, hold whips, and so on. Very abstract. And there is a strange thing that has been used in TV series, that is, two long hairs on Sun Wu's shorts. Not only Sun Wu is short, but Lu Bu is also short. What are the names of these two hairs? What role do they play in traditional drama?

If you have seen relevant dramas, including some traditional paintings, shadow play and other works of art, you may notice a phenomenon. The Monkey King, Lu Bu and other heroic figures often have two long feathers on their heads. These two kinds of feathers are called "pheasant feathers" or "wings" in clothing and can be found in many operas.

Besides male characters, female military commanders in Beijing Opera often wear pheasant feathers. For example, many female generals have pheasant feathers. Although they are only two simple feathers, they add a little heroism to these women. Some people further developed the pheasant feathers into a set of special wings, and expressed the feelings of the characters by turning or resting the wings.

So, what is the source of this pheasant feather? From the perspective of drama history alone, I'm afraid it's not clear, because the early materials are scarce, especially the video evidence. However, if we look at the practice of "double feathers" to decorate the head from a broader historical perspective, we will find that it may be related to a special crown worn by military generals in history, which can be traced back to Zhao in the Warring States Period.

This crown is a "harmony" crown, and its shape is recorded in detail in Yu Fu of the later Han Dynasty. Its written record is as follows:

As the saying goes, the military attache is the big crown. The tassel is not tied around it. It is made of green silk and has a pair of tails. Stand left and right to form an ancient cloud. The five senses, the left and right samurai, Yu Lin, the commanders of the five legions, and the left and right prison soldiers in Yu Lin all wore cormorants and tulle. Cormorants are brave pheasants, and their fighting is the end of death. Therefore, Zhao Wuling is the military commander of Qin Guohe.

According to this document, we can know that there was a kind of crown in Han dynasty, called military attache or senior official. If the eagle tail of Pisces is inserted on the left and right, it becomes the osprey crown. In the Han Dynasty, brave warriors like Samurai and Yu Lin wore osprey heads.

The military attache has a clear image. In addition to murals, stone carvings, reliefs and other materials, the physical objects of military attaché s in the Han Dynasty have also been unearthed. Archaeologists excavated the tombs of A Xin's Mang era in Wuwei, Gansu. The owner of the grave wears a military crown on his head.

The feather of this bird is chosen because it is very aggressive and is considered as a brave pheasant. Cao Zhi once wrote an article specially.

Modern researchers believe that the ancient osprey is a brown eared pheasant. This is a bird unique to China. It has long tail feathers and is really aggressive.

It seems that the ancients liked the aggressiveness of the brown pheasant and wanted to use it to supplement the heroic spirit of soldiers. It is said that he was related to Wuling of Zhao Qihao during the Warring States Period. How did this happen?

It turns out that Osiris originated in Wuguan, and we have explained this clearly. However, ancient scholars believed that the military attache was made in the tomb of the King of Wu in Zhao State, and some characteristics of the dress of Hu people were adopted when riding and shooting. This is specially prepared for soldiers. Later, when Qin destroyed Zhao, it absorbed such a crown. Today, some images of Zhao Wuling are specially decorated with osprey crowns.

From the perspective of cultural relics, there were not only military crowns but also osprey crowns during the Warring States period. The picture below shows the pattern on the bronze mirror of the Warring States period unearthed in Luoyang. This is shown by the wrong gold and silver technology. We can see a samurai crouching on horseback with a sword in his hand, a crown on his head and a feather on each side. This is the prototype of the osprey crown.

After the Han Dynasty, cormorants continued to be used, but their shapes gradually changed. For example, the cormorant in the Tang Dynasty, as shown below, cancelled two feathers of the brown pheasant and added a bird-shaped decoration directly in front of the crown. But the custom of putting feathers on the top of the head has not disappeared, but has been passed down.