Cultural Connotation of Miao Embroidery
Miao Xiu's creation is full of profound ideological connotation and simple emotional color of Miao women. Every piece of embroidery is a catharsis of Miao women's heartfelt thoughts and feelings. "There is no luxurious tomb imitation painting, no flattering blowing stick theme, no pretentious, posturing and grandstanding whitewashing." (The origin and development of Miao Xiu and its plastic arts characteristics Ding Rongquan Long Xiangping) As a cultural carrier for Miao people to interpret the universe and record their history and life, Miao Xiu has been passed down from generation to generation by Miao people. The themes, shapes and colors of his works are all attached to the religious beliefs, ethics and folk activities of his own nation, and also absorbed the excellent cultures of other nations, forming a unique Miao Xiu culture.
1, creative theme
Art comes from life. Miao embroidery, whether it is practical in ancient times or as a work of art in the later period, its creative theme comes from Miao people's understanding and feelings about their living environment and life significance. Miao people have no writing, so they attach their own history to their clothes through the unique form of "embroidery". "No matter how far they migrate and how long they leave their ancestral homes, their descendants can receive information about their own history in this mysterious and primitive way." As a written symbol of Miao nationality and a carrier to express emotion, Miao Xiu's creative theme is very profound and rich.
Historical Review Miao costume is recognized as a "history book to wear" in the world, and people read Miao history from embroidery. Such as flying horse, river wave, shade, star flower, spider flower, flower, etc., all show the origin, war and migration history of Miao nationality.
Miao people in Zhenning, Guizhou call skirts embroidered with rivers "migration skirts", "three-mother river skirts" and "seven-river skirts". There are 8 1 horizontal lines on the skirt, which are divided into 9 groups with 9 lines in each group. Legend has it that Chiyou has 9 sons, each with 9 sons, and has ***8 1 offspring, forming 8 1 sibling clan, namely Jiuli tribe. The three horizontal lines embroidered and dyed on the "Three Mothers' River Skirt" represent the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Jialing River where the Miao migrated after the failure of Chiyou. "Seven Rivers Skirt" refers to the seven rivers that Miao migrated. The "Jiang Lang" on the "blue-rolled dress" worn by Miao women in northeast Guizhou is said to be a Miao woman named "Shi". In order to remember the process of moving south, she sewed a yellow line on her left sleeve when she left the Yellow River. Embroider a blue thread on the right sleeve when crossing the river; When crossing Dongting Lake, she embroidered the shape of a lake on her chest ... Every time she crossed a mountain and a river, she sewed a mark on a certain part of her clothes. Finally, when she settled in Wuling Mountain area, Juan Lan re-embroidered a set of exquisite women's dresses in different colors according to the symbols she remembered, and sent her daughter to get married. This folk custom has been passed down to this day. Miao women in Kaili, Shibing, Ping Huang, Taijiang and other places in southeastern Guizhou embroidered two colorful edge lines on the shawl and skirt of each floral dress, symbolizing the Yellow River and the Yangtze River.
"Flying Horse" pattern is the most common pattern on the lace of Fenghuang, Guzhang and Songtao Miao costumes. Lace is composed of countless horse-like patterns, which stand across the river, indicating that ten thousand horses fly over the Yellow River and gallop across the Central Plains. On both sides of the horse, there are countless triangles overlapping into mountains, indicating mountains and mountains.
There is also "starry sky flower", which means that Chiyou and Huangdi rely on the stars to guide their direction when marching at night; "Spider Flower" represents the indomitable fighting spirit of our ancestors when they were besieged. "Tiger Claw Flower" tells the story of killing tigers when Miao people moved to the deep mountains.
Looking back at history and remembering ancestors is an indispensable theme of Miao women's embroidery from generation to generation.
Nature worship Miao people believe in animism, integrate man and nature, and think that man can also create objective natural phenomena and have external forces that belong only to nature. This is the most primitive consciousness of human beings. Miao nationality still embodies the natural worship of heaven and earth and the mountains, the sun, the moon and the stars that make up heaven and earth in women's embroidery works. In Qiandongnan Prefecture alone, there are embroidery patterns of more than 50 kinds of clothing animals such as dragons, chickens, ducks, geese, cows, lions, dogs, pigs, horses, sheep and frogs. Some of these animals are displayed alone, some are combined with people, some are among flowers, fruits and trees, and some are human-headed animals. As an animal, man is mixed with other animals in Miao Xiu's works. Its image is not a primitive animal in nature, but an optimized and deified supernatural image. Peony, pomegranate, peach blossom, plum blossom, plum blossom and horseshoe flower are everywhere in Miao Xiu. Liquidambar formosana, in particular, is the "mother tree" of Miao people, the mother of all things and the source of life, and it is an essential pattern in Miao Xiu.
In the eyes of Miao people, dragons can protect villages and people and bring people good weather; The concubine bird is very beautiful; Butterflies are the ancestors of ethnic groups; Fish and shrimp mean rich food; Frogs and toads collect grains; Tigers are mighty and brave; Lions are lively and clever; Deer are gentle; As straight and firm as an elephant; Niu Li is generally strong, hardworking and so on. Among them, fruits, trees, flowers and plants show rich life, symbolizing the strength and source of life, and the gourd contains new life; Pomegranate means many children; Maple leaves symbolize longevity; Flowers symbolize girls and youth. ...
People hold flowers for Tibetans, and birds and animals live in harmony among the flowers. This is the good wish of the Miao people, and this good wish is expressed through embroidery and passed on to future generations.
Life perception has entered the era of civilization, and people are ashamed to talk about reproduction. Miao people are a nation that dares to worship and is good at worshipping, and their understanding of the meaning of life is different from their own. Through embroidery, they express their worship of reproduction by metaphor and metaphor, so that future generations can know the origin and significance of human life. Miao people believe that dragons represent women's genitals and symbolize people's life; Fertility is the result of birds entering women; Cattle and deer are symbols of life and yang, indicating the continuation of life; Butterfly in maple leaf, the ancestor of all things, is a pattern that must be preserved in Miao Xiu; Fish, as the sacred object of marriage, reproduction and reproduction worshipped by the people in ancient Central Plains, is the most prominent, highest and richest deformed pattern in Miao Xiu. It is the Miao people's worship of fish's vigorous reproductive ability, and they are eager to have as many offspring as fish larvae. There are also "birds occupy peony" and "birds peck pomegranate" patterns, which show Miao women's worship of reproduction; Pan Hu is also a symbol of Miao parents-in-law, and there are many patterns in Miao Xiu. Of course, no matter dragons, cows, deer, Pan Hu, maple leaves, butterflies and fish, Miao people will worship them as totems, and they will appear as totem patterns in Miao Xiu.
In Miao Xiu, Miao women openly publicize their reproductive ideas and praise human reproduction, so that their vitality can be sublimated in women's red culture.
In oral literature, there are many Miao myths and legends. At first, some fairy tales were embroidered on clothes by Miao women. Later, the Miao people passed on some classic fairy tales or characters to future generations. Such as Jiang Ying shooting at the moon, dragon and dog with six men and six women, mother butterfly, creating the world, dogs stealing food and seeds, dogs plowing the fields, roosters inviting the sunrise, Pan Hu, Chiyou, Wei Yan, a snake-headed man, and the birth of Jiang Ying, are all the key points of Miao Xiu's production. The totem images of maple leaf, butterfly, fish, dragon, ox, dragon, Pan Hu, snake and fish in Miao embroidery are more colorful and varied, which are all based on the imagination and creation of the embroiderer, or mainly based on them, or interspersed in the whole pattern. The wings of life in the embroidery pattern ride the dragon and lion Marunou, or ride the Long Feifeng, or fly the wings of butterflies, snakes, fish and birds; Or it curled up in the abdomen and stamens of animals ... fighting for divinity.
Emotional sustenance As the creators and producers of embroidery, Miao women put their own understanding of life, feelings about life and feelings about motherhood into embroidery creation, and the feelings and wishes of embroiderers are all presented in embroidery works. For example, the pattern of "Mother Butterfly" is embroidered on the baby's swaddling clothes, praying for the blessing of Mother Butterfly. The collocation of lotus and fish means that "there are more years (lotus) than fish", and the magpie stands on the plum branch, which means "I like the sharp eyebrows (plum)"; Five bats form a pattern of "Five Blessingg holds longevity" around the word longevity, expressing Miao women's desire for wealth and longevity; A pair of mandarin ducks in the water or a pair of magpies in the flowers is the beautiful wish of Miao women to pursue love; The pattern composed of the words "Ruyi" and "Wan" symbolizes all the best, and so on. When Miao women give their husbands or lovers doormats, wallets and other small tokens, they will embroider patterns or words that can express their success, smooth sailing, promotion step by step and all the best, and embroider centipede, bee, gecko, snake and toad on their children's clothes, hats, Chinese-style chest covers and suspenders to express their thoughts of ward off evil spirits, eliminate disasters and get rid of diseases (Long Xiangping, Miao Xiu's modeling feature). Embroidery has become the only fashion carrier for Miao women to express their feelings.
In a word, every embroidery work created by Miao women not only embodies the level of embroidery, but also contains rich cultural connotations, reflecting the momentum, aesthetic level and joys and sorrows of producers, just like paintings written by painters, words written by calligraphers, novels written by writers and poems written by poets.
2. Modeling features
From the Miao costumes with the same structure, we can easily find that different clothing styles are formed due to different decorative patterns and different decorative parts, which makes the Miao costumes both integral and unique, full of Miao women's rich imagination, superb creativity and skillful embroidery skills. From the perspective of Miao Xiu's embroidery modeling, it will be more rewarding to explore the cultural connotation of Miao embroidery.
Tracing back to the origin of patterns in Miao embroidery, the patterns that appear most frequently and are widely used in this area are dragons, fish, phoenixes, birds, butterflies, whirlpools, flowers and plants, geometric patterns and so on. In feudal times, only the descendants of the royal family could own the dragon pattern, but the Miao people unscrupulously embroidered the dragon pattern on their clothes, regardless of class, and Miao women could embroider the image of the dragon at will according to their own imagination.
Dragon plus ox head, phoenix head, snake body, fish body, bird body, insect foot, and even flowers. Dragon patterns are mainly popular in southeastern Guizhou. There are also various names, such as buffalo dragon, silkworm dragon, centipede dragon, Ye Long, ichthyosaur, snake dragon, dragon and human head dragon. Every folk activity of the Dragon Boat Festival gives Miao people a new understanding of dragons. After thousands of years of dragon image precipitation, Miao women created strange dragon patterns.
Fish pattern is also a pattern with high frequency in Miao Xiu. According to Shan Hai Jing, Miao ancestors "ate fish in the sea", and the expression of fish patterns was related to the rice cultivation and fishing culture of Miao ancestors. Besides, fish is a symbol of fertility and life. Therefore, the fish patterns are interpreted by Miao people in Qiandongnan in many ways. The fish patterns in eastern Guizhou are more realistic, while those in southeastern Guizhou are both realistic and freehand. Fish patterns in eastern Guizhou are generally equipped with flowers and plants. The fish patterns in southeastern Guizhou are very rich, including human heads, leading fish bodies and fish with wings. Of course, there are several fish patterns with Tai Chi patterns, among which bird patterns are the most. Miao people think that birds are the soul of people, so bird patterns are the most common patterns in Miao embroidery. The bird patterns in southeastern Guizhou are the most abundant, with nearly 100 shapes such as insect body, bird head, two-headed bird, multi-headed bird, bird wing standing, bird wing knot flower, leading bird body and bird head dragon body. , especially Rongjiang Moon Mountain. When embroidering bird patterns, their shapes are basically composed of bird patterns with different expressions and shapes, both realistic and freehand. Legend has it that there was a conflict between Lei Gong and Jiang Ying, and Lei Gong flooded the earth. Only a pair of Jiang Ying children hid in the gourd and were washed to the edge of the cliff by the flood. It was the rock eagle (that is, the bird) that brought the younger brother and sister to the flat land, and the brother and sister got married and bred human beings. Drum and Tibetan Festival is an ancestor worship activity of Miao people. So Miao people worship birds as totems.