A Study on Traditional Costume of the Miaos, one of China's Minorities

중국(中國) 소수민족(少數民族)인 묘족(苗族)의 민족복식(民族服飾)에 관(關)한 연구(硏究)

The Miaos who is the minority people mainly living in the southwestern part of China, expressed their indicator and solidarity through the costume in order to maintain their racial character while experiencing numerous adversities over thousands of years, where the costume has served as a source of cohesion as well as a primitive religious thought, and also showed their faith, desire, longing and aspiration. This study examined the Miao's traditional costume by classifying it into the following; hair style, headdress, upper and lower garments, and other costume. And the silver ornaments used for attire and their symbolic meaning were examined. The result of the study is summarized as follows. 1. The reason that types of the costume has been diversified is because there was promise of ancestors who intended to differently express the type of a kind as symbol of the racial branch that is the Miao's special type of society. Thus, the costume type could tell where a tribe live. Another reason is because only marriage between families with different surname but the same type of costume was accepted. 2. As women made and wore the costume themselves, it also served as a means of being proud of their skill or wealth, they tried to make it more beautiful and it was also used as a token of marriage or love between relatively enlightened men and women. 3. The design used on the costume was expressed as a symbolic meaning of indicator to strengthen the racial solidarity because it connoted worship to ancestors who had experienced lots of adversities. 4. The hair style was expressed in various styles by using Kache such as Chukye, Byunbal and Kokye. It is likely that ornaments used on the head of women in the form of cow's horn or silver crown were used as one of the methods to stress the valuableness of the cattle that were essential to agricultural life. In addition, various styles of turbans were used to indicate the respective regions. 5. Cock's feather ornaments or silver ornaments in the form of pheasant's feather on the edge of women's skirts, peasant's feathers that men wore on their head, or Baekjoui and men wore resulted from the Miaos' thought of adoration for birds, which implied a primitive religious meaning. 6. As the region where the Miaos live yields much silver, the silver ornaments were mostly used to be proud of wealth, which symbolized light and pureness.