Interpretation of Miao costumes [Miao history]
Almost every existing style and decoration of Miao costumes has a very old cultural connotation. A comprehensive interpretation system consisting of a certain clothing symbol system and the corresponding epic, myth, legend and custom interpretation plays a great role in following the tradition, tracing back to the source, describing the past and storing cultural information. Among the national costume gardens, Miao costumes can best reflect the historical consciousness of ancestor origin and war migration. A considerable number of Miao costumes can be said to be the symbol carrier of historical consciousness, and ancestral origin and war migration can also be said to be the eternal motif of Miao costumes.
Pine peach in northeast Guizhou and "flying horse" and "big wave" patterns of Miao nationality in western Hunan: the world, mountains, rivers and cities of Weining, Hezhang in northwest Guizhou and Yiliang Miao nationality in northeast Yunnan; The pattern of "Yellow River", "Yangtze River" and "City" of Miao people in southern Sichuan: On the outskirts of Guiyang, Gaopo Miao people have the pattern of "Seal of Chiyou"; "Imitation" of Miao Nationality in Kaili, Ping Huang, Shi Bing and Taijiang in Southeast Guizhou.
Patterns such as Yellow River, Ai Yu, Yangtze River, Gaixia and Military Flag are wonderful works in the historical tradition of China's clothing. They are the mothers and parents of Miao women wearing patterns, which means "mother flowers". That is, the main pattern "mother flower". The conception, design and modeling of patterns not only reflect the crystallization of Miao women's labor wisdom, but also show the memory and nostalgia of Miao people for their ancestral homes, wars and migration in history, and reflect many prototypes with huge psychological capacity and strong emotional color. It is the precipitation of social and historical significance and the profound symbol accumulation.
"flying horse"
The pattern is the most popular Miao lace and ribbon pattern in Fenghuang, Guzhang and Songtao. Its characteristic is simple and elegant color. The shape is: first, there is a big river full of floods. Miao language is called "bury the wheat and bury the clear", that is, "muddy water river"
Meaning. Miao women speak according to lace with background color. Lace patterns are composed of countless patterns like "horses", which are connected in a string across the middle of the river, indicating that ten thousand horses fly over the Yellow River and gallop across the Central Plains. Miao language is called "barley is my"
Or "stride long affairs", which means "crossing the river with a good horse". The image of "barley" or "flying horse" can be divided into "Mai Dan" and "Mai Dog".
More abstract. Just from the name, it can be associated with an upright horse mane and a bent or straight foot, and its shape is close to the original form of the Chinese character "horse" Although the composition is simple, it is full of fierce momentum of soaring in the air and contains brave and tenacious significance.
On both sides are numerous triangular or pagoda-shaped peaks alternately arranged, which is called "Gaoben Gao Jie" in Miao language.
And "high ratio". It means "Jinshan Yinshan"
(There are thousands of words in Miao ancient songs to describe the activity scene of "transporting gold and silver"), which means mountains and rivers, colorful. When weaving these patterns (pagodas), they are all embroidered with red, green, blue, yellow, orange and purple silk threads, giving people a sense of artistic conception of cliffs and deep valleys.
"flying horse"
On both sides of the pattern, a pattern similar to a rail is embedded and extends along the direction of water flow. Miao language is called "Naigou Arden", and Chinese means "footprints on the road" (this pattern is frequently used in the embroidery of Miao women's clothing in Qiandongnan, a central dialect). The local Miao language calls it "choking Europe", that is, "meaning of rivers"; This "River" of Miao Batik in Hainan Island
Patterns are also quite common).
The pattern of "Jiang Lang" on the ribbon is more obvious, showing two white horizontal bands, consisting of some tiny stars, and the pattern is faintly visible. Miao people say that the Yellow River and the Yangtze River are in the same direction, and Miao women call it "Ouduo Civil Affairs". There are some small earth slopes on the north bank, which women call "high-maintenance blades". In the south of the two big rivers, there are flowers that are both like flowers and trees, and like people taking a boat to form a flower cluster to symbolize the pattern of crossing the river. Women say it stands for Dongting Lake. Water wave patterns appear at the feet of these patterns again. Miao language says "Wu Ang is the foundation", and Chinese means "mother flower after big waves and sand washing". There is a path and a row of pine trees on the south bank, which symbolizes that the Miao people have come to the lush southwest mountainous area after hardships.
Rivers and waves
The theme is "Lan Juanyi"
There are also vivid displays in the book. It is said that the origin of the "blue-rolled dress" worn by Miao women in northeast Guizhou (a kind of women's dress without a collar) is a Miao female leader named Juan Lan. When she led her Miao compatriots to move south, she thought of a way to remember the process of moving south with colored lines. When she left the Yellow River, she sewed a yellow thread on her left sleeve. When crossing the Yangtze River, she embroidered a blue thread on her right sleeve. When she passed Dongting Lake, she embroidered a lake-like pattern on her chest. Every time she climbs a heavy mountain, she always sews a small mark on the colored line. The farther south, the more mountains cross the river. The trace of her sewing runs from the neckline to the hem of her trousers. Finally, when she settled in Wuling Mountain area, Juan Lan re-used various colored lines according to the recorded symbols, and carefully embroidered a set of exquisite and beautiful flowered skirts as her daughter's wedding dress. Since then, girls have followed suit and spread it to this day.
Miao skirts in Guanling and Anshun counties in central Guizhou have similar contents. In order to remember the extraordinary migration and homeland, Miao women embroidered five parallel lines of different sizes on their long skirts, which are the five major difficulties in crossing rivers and mountains-Yellow River (Hunyong River), Wutai Mountain, Fengyuguan, Yangtze River (Qingshuihe River) and Poisonous Insect Rush, and they are not allowed to change them at will.
The colored lines on Miao skirts in Gongxian County, Sichuan Province have similar meanings. The old man explained that the blue wide bar above represents the Yellow River, the gear shape represents the gap of the Yellow River, the wider straight bar below represents the Yangtze River basin, and the sharp tooth shape represents the mountainous area. The diamond pattern at the bottom and the flowers on both sides represent the southwest. The implication is profound. The Miao people in southern Sichuan once lived in the Yellow River valley. Because of the war, they were forced to move westward. They live in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and live a land of fish and rice. Later, because of frequent wars, they moved west again and finally settled in the southwest mountainous area. They miss their homeland and draw migration routes on batik skirts.
Miao people, known as "big flower seedlings" and "small flower seedlings" in Ming and Qing Dynasties, are mainly distributed in Weining and Hezhang in northwest Guizhou and Yiliang in northeast Yunnan, with Wumeng Mountain as the center.
Pu 'an area in southwest Guizhou. It is located in a high mountain area. In order to adapt to the environment, most of their clothes are made of wool and hemp. Men's and women's clothes have the same style, and they are all decorated with large symmetrical geometric patterns, which has a unique style. Look from the back. Just like a dancing China. According to the recitation of an ancient song, this is the shirt of the ancient Miao leaders Yan Geyou and Guo Geye who led troops to fight. Miao language is called "Cuolu" and Chinese is called "Huayi", which is unique.
Patterns such as "heaven and earth", "mountains and rivers" and "countryside" are essential patterns for flower costumes. Its pattern is a symmetrical geometric pattern. Each pattern is decorated with zigzag patterns, wavy patterns and spiral patterns woven by red and black wool.
Leave a large area of white ground in the middle, decorate it with diamond patterns, and weave the diamond patterns with diagonal squares. The shoulder is a broad diamond-shaped area with clouds in it. The top of each pattern represents "heaven", the bottom represents "earth", the left and right are "mountains and rivers" and the middle is "countryside". According to the ancient legend, each pattern is a symbol of a flag. The pattern of the whole dress is surrounded by mountains and waters, and the fields are connected with buildings, just like a beautiful and rich pastoral landscape painting.
The pattern is on the card on its back. The back card is a back decoration, which is called "Laocuo" in Miao language, with a horizontal rectangle. Embroidery is the main craft, and it is also used for batik, embroidery and weaving. Decorative patterns include diamond patterns, sawtooth patterns, raised patterns and thunder patterns. These patterns organically and vividly form a plan of an ancient city. The formal style is three embroidery patterns, which is different from the old song "Geisha spends three times on the training ground".
Consistent statement. In the design, there are walls, streets, watchtowers and guards. Legend has it that this is the "Wucheng" and "Plough City" built by the ancestor Chiyou. The old song goes like this:
Ge Chiyou and Yan Ge You Lao came to build a city, and the city was surrounded by nine bends, and the nine streets in the city were connected; The city walls are made of stone, and so are the gates. The gate is like a lion, and it is equipped with the position of Chiyou Lao. Wu Cheng and Li Cheng are shining inside and outside. Yan Ge is very old, and Ge Chi is very old. Embroider the good image inside and outside the city into a good card. Let the old man read all his thoughts and let the children read them for everyone.
The color matching material of the whole pattern is more complicated than that of the dress. Generally, the lower part of the back card is decorated with four groups of pendants, and the ends of the pendants run through Buddha beads and copper beads until the heel. In ancient times, it was said that this hanging system evolved from the flag beard.
For example, this "city"
The motif of this theme is also reflected in the square towel of Miao nationality in Kongtong River area of Zhenning County. The pattern on the shawl is divided into three rooms. There are 6 species of aquatic animals in the inner layer; There are three planning modes in the middle layer; There are two groups of vertical bars on both sides of the outer layer, each group has 9 small vertical bars, and there are three different colors of vertical bars in the middle of the two groups of vertical bars. According to the textual research of Mr. Yang, a local Miao cadre, the pattern on the shawl is to record the shape of Wuhan. The six small animals in the inner layer depict the fish in the Yangtze River. The three planning patterns in the middle layer are to record the form of Wuhan city at that time; Three vertical bars of different colors in the outhouse record the migrating Yellow River, Yangtze River and Jialing River. Each group has 9 small vertical bars, which are places to record the survival and reproduction of the nation. Legend has it that the ancestors of Miao people used to cross the Yellow River and live in the Wuhan area between Dongting in Peng Li, but they were forced to move away because of the war. In order not to forget their homeland, people embroidered fish and shrimps from fertile farmland, cities and rivers in the Jianghuai Lake area on flower shawls and handed them down from generation to generation.
Watertown Nankai "Little Flower Seedling"
The design of the vest shows the square symbolizing the city and farmland, the red color represents the fish in the field, the pattern represents snails, stars and forests, and the two long red and yellow stripes represent the rivers that pass through during migration. Legend has it that in ancient times, there was a war in the Yellow River valley. Several Miao brothers wanted to move south, but their elder brother had already left, and their younger brother was nostalgic for his hometown, so he painted the rural scenery of his hometown on his clothes.
The back card symbolizing the city is slightly different. The back card of Miao women in Gaopo, Guiyang City is said to be a big seal symbolizing Miao Wang Chiyou. In ancient migration,
Wars are frequent, and teams are prone to confusion. To avoid killing one of our own people by mistake. Wang Miao put Wang Miao's seal on people's backs as an easy-to-identify mark. The back card adopts white, red, green, yellow, orange, blue and purple multi-color silk thread, black cloth base and square geometric pattern. The two back cards are connected by cloth or satin, and the one on the chest is slightly smaller. The back card on the back is composed of three different patterns. The center of the back card is a square, and the center is a triangle and an octagon. There is also a "well" shape, with two squares at the intersection, like a seal of one side. It is an indispensable accessory in women's wear.
Based on the same consciousness,
Miao women in Anshun and Guanling areas of central Guizhou wear belts around their waists.
The left and right sides of the zigzag color map are said to commemorate the compatriots who disappeared when they moved to the "Fogai Mountain". As for the aforementioned "flower seedlings"
The prevalence of women's round vertebral bun and flat bun also stems from the casting of war culture. The former legend is that women hide grain seeds by migration to avoid being discovered by the enemy; The legend of the latter is that women roll coins in it when they migrate.
In case the enemy steals.
The pattern is located on the pleated skirt. Miao people in Weining area have geometric patterns with batik width of about 2 cm at the waist, with a large white background in the middle, and a small cloth with a width of 0.5 cm is added inside the batik, which is half red and half black. There are two groups of loop patterns and four groups of parallel lines of red and black fabrics on the white background, three groups are two segments, and two or four groups are three segments. Each section is about 18 cm long. The middle section of the third section is red and yellow, and the stacking lines represent the Yellow River ("upper wave") and the plain ("layout") from top to bottom.
), the Yangtze River ("Xia Lang"). The white background symbolizes a clean sky. A waist skirt is simply a beautiful and moving geographical map of my hometown. There is a singing voice:
We left the muddy water. We said goodbye to our hometown. Running around every day, wandering every day, where can we survive? Where do you live? We went to pick wild flowers on the roadside and put them on the girl's head; Let's cut the sap and dye it on my sister-in-law's clothes. Let's cross the river Painted on grandma's skirt, don't forget that there used to be our placenta here, and always remember the place where our ancestors watered with sweat.
There is also a description in the ancient song about this kind of skirt: "Our girl is clever and wise/we weave a beautiful skirt/like a flat Zeguo water town/like an endless ridge/the roads are spacious and extending in all directions/the pattern on the skirt/is our original country/criss-crossing fields/clear running water, where rice seedlings are planted."
Different Miao friends who speak the first dialect of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan dialects in Gree, Zhenning County, central Guizhou, call skirts decorated with "rivers" Daib respectively.
naod、Deib tod at
Lake Babu, Delbe
Xangb tod laik means "migration skirt", "three mother river skirts" and "seven river skirts". The migration skirt is worn by elderly women, and its skirt has 8 1 horizontal lines, which are divided into 9 groups with 9 lines in each group. According to the local folk legend of Chiyou, in ancient times, an ancestor named Yan lived on the red dam on the bank of the Yellow River. He had nine sons and seven daughters. His nine sons each gave birth to nine sons, forming a brotherly clan of 8 1, and once established a military management system with nine commanders and 72 generals. The local Miao family claimed to be the descendant of the first of the 8 1 brothers. Due to the long-distance migration, this Miao woman embroidered the 8 1 horizontal line on her skirt to show that she is the descendant of Jiuli 8 1 brother. The so-called "three-mother river skirt" is embroidered with three lines. According to the opening words of the local Miao songs,
It is to record the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Jialing River through which their ancestors migrated. As for the "Seven Rivers Skirt", it is said by the people to commemorate the seven rivers that the Miao people trudged during their migration, second only to the Yellow River and the Yangtze River.
Coincidentally, this "river"
This pattern is also popular among Miao women in Kaili, Ping Huang, Taijiang, Shibing and other cities and counties in the southeast of the central dialect. Their flowered clothes are all made by their own hard work of planting hemp and cotton, spinning and weaving, dyeing and sewing, and carefully embroidering. In the pattern of the shawl and pleated skirt edge of each flowered skirt, there are two stripes embroidered with colored edges, symbolizing the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Miao language is called "artificial intelligence imitation" and "artificial intelligence education" respectively. There are scenes of mountains and rivers, countryside, cattle and sheep, villages and people's working life embroidered in the middle of the two patterns. As for the swastika ("under the cover") pattern used by the Nazis on the sleeves, it is said that it is the flag used in ancient wars. At that time, the flag was blurred because of the rush to cross the river in the battle. Later, in order to facilitate migration, it was embroidered on the cuffs of soldiers as a sign to prevent separation, so it was handed down from generation to generation.
In Wenshan Prefecture and Honghe Prefecture of Yunnan Province, it is said that the pleating of skirts is also a nostalgic expression of ancestral homeland. The geometric stripes in the upper part symbolize how they fled and crossed the Yellow River and the Yangtze River in the past. The dense and narrow stripes represent the Yangtze River, and the red and yellow wide and thin stripes in the middle represent the Yellow River, which is the birthplace of Miao nationality. The folds represent the water and fields of Dongting Lake, and the martial arts action patterns on the clothes symbolize ancient battles.
These costume patterns are inextricably linked with the history of the Miao nationality, especially the local scenery and war migration life of the Miao nationality. Their modeling series, from its occurrence, development to maturity and decline, are all practical arts with the same concept, which contains the cultural implications of the Miao people about their own origin, survival, reproduction, war and migration. It is believed that their ancestors originated in the Central Plains, where there are cities, pastoral areas (there are still Chiyou City, Chiyou Spring and Chiyou Village in Zhuolu County, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province), rivers and lakes. In ancient times, due to the failure of the war, they were forced to move south and came to the southwest mountainous area. In order to remember my hometown and ancestors, and to let future generations remember the ancestral home of the Miao family, they embroidered such patterns and patterns on their clothes to bow their heads and look back at their hometown. As an old song says:
Let's take a step by step look at Jiangpu, a vast land of flat hills. That's a real pity. We must leave a souvenir. Make a skirt according to the appearance of the field and put it on. Embroider Jiangpu's tile house on the pocket. My lovely hometown Jiangpu, embroidered with flowered clothes, will always be cherished by future generations.
The historical songs of Miao migration in three dialects also clearly prove this point.
According to ancient records and ethnological data, Miao ancestors belonged to Jiuli tribe in the north of China, which was composed of 8 1 clan. They live in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, with Chiyou as the commander in chief. They are the indigenous people in China, and they have a comment that "the owner of the headquarters in China once ruled before history" (in Wang Tongling's words). Because the three great inventions of religion, criminal law and weapons were so powerful that they shocked the world. They defeated Emperor Yan in the Central Plains and "ruled for Emperor Yan". Later, there was a battle between the Yellow Emperor and Chiyou, who was defeated and died in Yizhou. From then on, the leaderless Jiuli tribe was demoted to the "Four Fierces" and fell apart. Most of them submit to humiliation and retreat to the south of the Yellow River. To the jianghuai river and lake areas, three Miao countries were established. As for the recitation of the Miao people's song "Crossing the Mountains and Crossing the Water" in Qiandongnan, "From the former five cows/living in the east/from the former six ancestors/living in the east/near the water edge/mountains and rivers connected/waves rolled over/eyes can't see the edge" is obviously about moving to Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake. Warring States policy
"Wei Ce" records Wu Qi's words: "The former residence of Sanmiao people, the wave of Zuo Lipeng, the water of the right Dongting." The fertile land here is an ideal place to recuperate. Miao ancestors got a chance to live and work in peace and contentment for some time, but the good times did not last long. Then came the long-term war in Sanmiao, JUNG WOO, and Sanmiao was forced to move westward to Wuxi, Wuling. About the Han and Tang dynasties, the basic pattern of Miao distribution today was formed. For example, "A General Examination of Continued Literature" said: "Miao Miao, a descendant of Sanmiao, was born in Changsha, west of Yuanchen, and was called Quan Yelang (according to the report, Gu Yelang includes the whole province of Guizhou, east of Kunming, Yunnan, south of Sichuan, north of Guangxi and west of Xiangxi)."
The Miao Nationality's Song of Migration (also known as Xiu Ba Ma Xiu) in Xiangxi said: Miao ancestors first lived in the Yellow River (Miao language: affairs are sparse but sand) basin. Later, he was bullied by foreigners many times and forced to migrate by war and life. The song describes the first migration as "following donkey tracks/clues"; "Going into the river/opening steel boats and iron boats/being slow/others rowing wooden boats/walking fast/the good place is occupied by others"; They also "walked on the Yellow River/along the road/all the way/men and women followed each other/waded through mountains and rivers", overcame many difficulties and came to Zhanpu (Miao place name refers to the Yangtze River valley, a place in Chu State). They didn't rest here long before the enemy came to harass them again. After they fought a life-and-death struggle with the tenacious enemy, the remaining men and women gathered together again and were forced to leave Zhanchuchamp and migrate again. Going up along the river, along the hills, towards the place where the sun sets, a developer comes up from "fog rolling and fog whistling", "service flow and foam", "Wu Dongdong swinging" and "Dong Jiaodong Bay". Experienced a long intermittent migration, experienced ups and downs, ups and downs, bullying, war disasters. . .
The battle of Zhuolu, a Miao nationality in the western dialect, describes the battle of the Central Plains, but depicts the bloody atmosphere of the ancient battlefield with high passion: every time the Miao family raises its flag and moves south, it is carried out after the defeat of World War I. In every war, they sent thousands of cavalry. There are countless infantry-"they lead tens of thousands of cavalry/the infantry they lead cannot be counted; They defended the city in every war. After their failure, they abandoned the city and moved south. In a new place, they built cities and high-rise buildings-"built cities in the old state/built tile houses in the old state"; Later, the enemy invaded again, and they dispatched thousands of cavalry and countless infantry-"ten million horses/ten million soldiers/rushed to the enemy line together/everyone rushed to whip/showed their great power"; After the failure, they abandoned the city and moved to the south to rebuild their homes. ...
It is recorded in the song "Over the Mountains and Over the Water" of Miao people in southeastern Guizhou that the reason for migration is that "after the cultivated land is reclaimed, there are some empty places/wide places like horse pens/steep places like eaves."
The population is expanding and life is difficult. There is no trace of war, so it is a pity to argue with this article. However, a guide song named "Burning the Middle Song" reveals the information of migration due to war, and also has the shadow of "Zhuolu War"; The battlefield is: On the Yellow River, the leader of Miao nationality is Gong Yan. Every time the enemy attacked from the upper reaches of the Yellow River, they were defeated by the warriors led by Gong Yan. But later, the enemy joined forces with another tribe and shot Gong Yan, the first tribe of Miao nationality, with a long bow and arrow. The Miao army was in a panic and was finally defeated. Finally, it tells the horror of bloodshed, which was occupied by the enemy and forced to flee everywhere. Mr. Yan Bao thinks this is the battle of Zhuolu. The Drum Club Festival, which has been popular to this day, has to hold several performances, such as "toppling bamboo, attacking the city and inspecting the city", which seems to be a legacy or exercise of ancient wars.
In this war that lasted for thousands of years, the law of the jungle, killing each other, plundering each other and annexing people and land, the Miao really failed. They were driven out of their homeland again and again, abandoned wells and villages, and drifted around. It is this profound historical tragedy that has caused the unspeakable spiritual creation and mental load of the Miao group. The emotional and psychological repression of pursuing the distance and being cautious in the end, coupled with the subsequent threat of survival, will inevitably gush and vent on some spiritual carrier, and art seems to be the best object-this of course includes practical arts and crafts such as clothing. Because the collective sufferings of the Miao people since ancient times have been condensed in the collective consciousness, many hero worship idols created in Miao epic mostly have the symbolic significance of "defeated heroes". Such as Chiyou, Yalu (), Zu Delong (Nord Middle), Qing, Shi, Yang Daliu, etc. Being defeated and becoming a hero is the conscious expression of the Miao collective subconscious in art. What symbolic significance did Wang Yang's collective subconscious sea create for the Miao costume patterns? Clothing patterns are not oral literature such as myths and epics, nor dynamic art such as dancing. As a solidified cultural symbol, the collective subconscious also plays a role, but its manifestation is different from the above. I think this influence is reflected in the Miao people's clothing patterns, just like Japanese Torii Ryuzo summarized the Miao people's personality in his investigation report. On the whole, it is a vigorous, gloomy and tragic style, and its symbolic significance has something in common with the theory of scum heroes in literature. Recognizing this, we can understand why the Miao people spend time and energy embroidering important events and figures in history (for example, a woman's dress collected by the Guizhou Provincial Department of Culture in Shibin Pingzhai on 1988, the author carefully embroidered the "Xian Tong Uprising" led by Zhang Xiumei, the leader of the Miao peasant uprising in the Qing Dynasty, with nearly 100 people and a huge scene, which is the largest and longest in China's modern history. In the Miao villages around Jianhe and Taijiang, you can often see silver ornaments decorated with prancing horses and figures holding knives, and also record the historical facts that Zhang Xiumei led the rebels to attack the dike city in that uprising.
Generally speaking, myths and historical stories are good at narrative, and dance can also be narrative; As an art category, costume design is superior to costumes with poor expressive force and difficult narration. The Miao people successfully used it to vividly describe the difficult history of national origin, war and migration, which is a remarkable example of costume design replacing the written language function and exerting the cultural value of pictures and words among the Miao people who do not have their own common characters. Moreover, because it artistically and accurately describes the historical achievements of Miao people's survival, development, war and migration, Miao people without words find their own unique words in the solidified patterns in their costumes. Miao costume patterns fully show the value of their own characters and cultural historical materials, so it is not an exaggeration to say that they are hieroglyphics. At least in the Miao people's own view, the geometric patterns on costumes are used as a kind of text symbol. According to Mr. Yang's investigation in 1939, it is considered that "the original book of the Miao people was lost because the Chiyou Xuanyuan moved south because of the defeat of the Miao people in the battle of Zhuolu conflict. When the ship was forced to cross the river, it could not be built in time, and the books it carried were afraid of being wet by the water when crossing the river, so it was put on its head. When we reached the Yangtze River, many seedlings scrambled to cross the river. In the middle stream, the water is fierce and the people are not over half. Books are lost, too. We'll talk about it later. At first, some people tried to embroider their writing style on clothes as a souvenir. Therefore, the patterns on Miao costumes still have historical sites. " Jing emphasized that the popular pinyin characters in Huamiao were not created by Baglai, a British missionary, but by Miao people according to the geometric patterns of their own costumes. This is one side of the problem.
On the other hand, most Miao people in western Hunan, northwestern Guizhou, northeastern Yunnan, Gaopo in central Guizhou and southeastern Guizhou live in the foothills of Wuling Mountain, Wumeng Mountain and Miao Ling at an altitude of about 800 to 2,000 meters. There are few phenomena of feeding and riding horses, no rivers or even the sea, let alone cities and plains. Therefore, its clothing patterns all take "Flying Horse", "Big River", "City", "Plain", "Yangtze River", "Yellow River", "Dongting Lake" and "Wang Miao Yin" as essential parent patterns, which is not without profound historical reasons. This kind of "history", with its distinctive traces, strengthens the emotional power in pattern art, increases its boldness, and its realm is profound and broad. Due to the burial of history, the Central Plains itself has become history. The design is in a broad atmosphere, which makes us feel the Miao people's strong homesickness and expanded historical and moral local consciousness. All these ancient plains, the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, city walls, tile houses, flying horses, great rivers, huge waves, Yin and so on. , full of the meaning of "solidifying history", arouses our understanding of history, nostalgia for our ancestors and continuous homesickness. Because most of the members living in the specific environment of Miao culture are familiar with each other, in this "established context, they often have a lot of known associations" and "they are all communicative". It symbolically satisfies the Miao people's "living in the past" in the form of art.
With the perfect symbols of "farewell" and "forgetting", a realistic process is artistically restored. Therefore, the symbolic return to "farewell" and "forgetting" may be the best form of self-comfort that Miao, an exiled person, can choose for himself.
It should be emphasized that the creation and dissemination of these "frozen history" models undoubtedly had a clear utilitarian purpose from the beginning. One is the historical witness of the bitterness and humiliation of ancestors, and the other is the road sign of returning to their homeland in the future. Later, the harsh reality made the desire to return home vanish, and its utilitarian purpose was gradually replaced by its ideological significance: people regarded it as the historical display and inheritance of their own nation, not as a road sign for returning home in the future. The creation and inheritance of these patterns have objectively created a new era of the true national history of the Miao nationality without words, cultivated the quasi-historical consciousness of the Miao family, and always remembered the birthplace and painful experience of their ancestors.
At the same time, these patterns, as the oldest history and the most repetitive experience related to the survival of the Miao people, are expensive emotional materialized symbols, which enable the Miao people to have their "Yellow River", "Yangtze River", "Plain", "City", "Wang Miao Yin" and "Flying Horse" in artistic form, and complete their magnificent "spiritual return to their hometown". A typical person is an old man who must wear a life jacket decorated with this pattern after he dies. Remember your genealogy before you die, and recognize your ancestors after you die. Folks believe that only when the dead put on this kind of clothes can they get the approval of their ancestors and the soul can return to the place where their ancestors lived.
This shows that Miao costumes shoulder the responsibility of "Where do we come from? Where are we going? Who Are We? An important duty of Gauguin is the concrete embodiment of history, which can be called "a history book to wear". "
Its pattern tells the world silently: we are Miao, we come from the bank of the Yellow River, the bank of the Yangtze River and the waves of Dongting; We suffered from war and smoke, and we migrated long distances and experienced hardships; We have a long history and a very long culture. At this point, Miao costumes have constructed an intuitive image of Miao people related to history and reality for historical readers. This dual relationship clearly emphasizes its two most important original functions as an epic, namely, historical function and aesthetic function.