Behind each authentic ethnic costume is an individual who made it by hand, using techniques passed down by older generations. An exhibition in Beijing highlights this fading craft.
It's rare for young women in the city to practice sewing or needlework like their mothers and grandmothers did in order to clothe their families.
But in the underdeveloped villages of Southwest China's Guizhou Province, Miao women still hold fast to the tradition of embroidery and brocade weaving.
Pan Wenzhen grew up in Zhijin County of Guizhou, home to hundreds of the Miao minority people.
The unique ethnic clothes she wears display both a compounding beauty of different handicrafts and the ancient aesthetic values treasured by the Miao group.
Her sleeves are stitched with flashy embroidery pieces, which feature vivid designs of animals, including the imaginary phoenix, a tiger and a cat.
The back of her collar was sewn into a brocade piece woven by Pan's mother. The brocade distinguishes itself with complicated geometric patterns, an example of the unique handmade textiles of Guizhou's ethnic groups.
Pan's distinctive dress has drawn admiring glances at the Museum of Ethnic Costumes at Beijing University of Clothing Technology, where a special exhibition highlighting a selection of 600 costumes of Chinese ethnic minorities is on show till July 8.
Organizers have invited Pan and nine other women of the Miao and Dong ethnic groups from Guizhou to give brocade-weaving demonstrations for a week.
Like many Miao women, Pan began learning to embroider when she was 7 years old. She started operating the wooden weaving loom, under her mother's instruction, at the age of 11.
There was no guidebook telling these women how the loom functioned. A weaving formula was orally passed down from older generations.
The method remains the same today, and young Miao girls keep the tradition alive by practising weaving after school.
Visitors to the costume show may have noticed that Pan murmured the formula while working on the loom. It reminds her of the particular order in which to pick up sets of white cotton thread.
The brocade Pan worked on was to be used as a waist decoration. It takes an experienced weaver like Pan two months to produce a one-meter-long piece.
Pan felt a little nervous being surrounded by curious people and exposed to camera flashes. She said that in her hometown, women usually gather together at someone's house. They sing and talk over family and village affairs while weaving and embroidering.
They don't make as many exquisite costumes these days as their ancestors did.
"We only wear our ethnic clothes on special occasions, like the wedding ceremony and traditional festivals," said Pan. She herself usually wears daily clothes produced in modern factories.
Some of the gorgeous clothes worn by Pan's forebears are on display in the glass boxes around her at the ethnic costume show.
Liu Yuanfeng, the deputy principal of Beijing University of Clothing Technology, explained that many ethnic people, especially the younger generation, leave behind their traditional costumes.
"However, ethnic clothes are themselves dynamic tangible cultural treasures. They also embody rich information that belongs to the intangible section," said Liu.
"The information, for example, reveals the development of the ancient cloth-making technologies and the changes in the favor for colors and designs. They have enriched our research into the living style and values of the past," he said.
During the last two decades, Liu's colleagues have collected more than 10,000 ethnic minority costumes from across the nation. Half of the collections come from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and the early 20th Century.
After they founded the Qing Dynasty, the nomad Manchus people from northern China were conquered by the advanced Han civilization.
The Qing costumes preserved the magnificence of previous dynasties, with a new look blending the aesthetic essence of the Manchus people.
The weaving technology was pushed forward to a new height at that time. And the textile industry boasted a great quantity of gorgeous fabrics, which were turned into imperial clothes and ornaments.
The ongoing exhibition highlights a section of royal treasures of the Qing period. It contains robes and official uniforms of the Qing imperial court, as well as the attire and delicate headdresses worn by ancient nobles of northern and western China's ethnic tribes, including the Manchu, Tibetan, Mongolian and Uygur minorities.
The museum features another 1,000-plus costumes of more than 100 branches of the Miao group inhabiting Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.
It holds three permanent exhibitions displaying these authentic handicraft works covering embroidery and weaving fabrics, garments, silver accessories and dyed clothing.
Rarely seen even in their native lands, many of the pieces represent top artistic levels of the Miaos.
The protection of ethnic costumes and the technologies used to make them has not been deemed as important as preserving of other cultural relics, such as bronze wares, porcelains and antique paintings.
A considerable number of refined traditional clothes and decorations have been taken abroad by private collectors during the past decades.
Among many minority groups, the distinctive costume handicrafts are less and less attractive to young learners, meaning the art is in danger of fading out.
Meanwhile, a lot of scenic ethnic minority neighborhoods have become popular resorts in recent years. Experts believe tourism has had a negative effect on the ethnic costumes.
"Quite a few ethnic dresses in shops in those resorts are actually a bad mix of clothes of several different minority groups," said Yang Yuan, curator of the Museum of Ethnic Costumes.
"Sometimes, you can only find the original ethnic costumes in the poverty-stricken areas where there are almost no tourists," she said.
Yang has been devoted to collecting ethnic costumes and saving ancient handicrafts for two decades. She has visited numerous minority neighborhoods across the country, and built close relationships with the ethnic locals.
In 1999 and 2000, Yang and her colleagues took a close look at the fish-skin clothes made by Hezhe people living in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
For centuries, the Hezhe people donned in fish-skin clothes and shoes in the summer while fishing. But the custom of wearing the unique fish-skin outfits has gradually disappeared in the new century.
Yang and her colleagues used a video camera to record You Cuiyu, an elder Hezhe woman, making a suit out of fish skins.
As she had no one to inherit her skills, You passed on all her techniques to Yang when she left the village. The old woman died a year later.
"On one hand, we should no longer ignore the preservation of declining ethnic costumes. On the other, we should also think about how to enliven these ancient clothes and ornaments," said Liu.
China has seen a recent interest to adopt patterns and colors of the traditional attire in the new clothing industry. The new style has captured customers from both home and abroad.
"But a larger part of them are of low quality and need better designing," said Yang, who wore a blue jacket made by her student and featuring Chinese-style decorations.
"The education and research of the modern costume design are still on their early stages now in the country. Our textile products could not distinguish themselves on the international market with a lack of support of the ethnic culture," said Liu.
(China Daily June 28, 2006)
