Son of the Easter, the job does not come. Son of the Westerners, Cantonese clothes. The son of the boatman, Xiong Yi is Qiu. The son of a private man, the Hundred Officers is trying. - "The Book of Poetry and Dadong"
In the view of the ancients, there are four major needs in the lives of the people, which are for food, clothing, shelter and transportation, of which "clothing" is ranked first, which shows the importance that China's ancestors attached to clothing. As stated in the first verse of the Book of Poetry, clothes are not only used as a tool for keeping warm, but also become a status symbol with the changes of the times.
Therefore, the official offices of successive dynasties have been different, even between the same dynasty, but also because of the grade, position, season and other reasons will change the official uniform. As early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the existence of official uniforms was already clearly recorded.
In 221 AD, after Qin Shi Huang unified the Jiangshan, he immediately began to unify weights and measures, and at the same time, including official uniforms, began to be standardized. He abolished the original six kinds of official uniforms in The country, leaving only one kind of black crown dress, so that the marriage and funeral of the dynasty were all black, and the emperor could not distinguish who was who, what identity and what rank.
This situation also continued to the Han Dynasty, which also wore black all year round, and the only way to distinguish the rank of officials was to see the style of the crown hat, that is, at that time, "picking the black yarn" also meant deposing the official. However, the Han Dynasty followed the Zhou Dynasty's ribbon Yinjue, and by verifying these things, it is still possible to determine the approximate identity.
This situation continued until the Sui and Tang dynasties. In 590, after the Sui Emperor Yang Jian unified the north and south, he began to use color to distinguish the identity of all people and the rank of officials. From the bottom up, it is not black, white, yellow, blue, green, red, purple, among which butcher merchants and so on can only wear black, after all, heavy agriculture suppresses business.
Officials below six pins use red and green, and officials with more than five pins can wear purple. The so-called "big red and purple" in ancient times was the official worship of the six pins to get ahead, and now it refers to the fire famous.
By the time of the Tang Dynasty, official uniforms had become more diverse, and in 622, Li Yuan issued the Clothing Edict, and the emperor's clothing was increased to 12 types, and divided into crown clothes and crown clothes, of which there were a total of 6 kinds of crown clothes. There are 10 kinds of dresses for the courtiers, 6 and 4 kinds of crown clothes, respectively.
At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the history of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms was opened, in which the war was continuous, resulting in the disappearance of many of the etiquette and standards of the Tang Dynasty in official uniforms, and when it came to the Song Dynasty, on the one hand, the Song Dynasty speculated about the official clothes of the Tang Dynasty with the remaining historical materials and inherited them, on the other hand, combined with the royal regulations of the Song Dynasty itself.
In 1080, Emperor Shenzong of Song abolished the Sui and Tang dynasties' stipulation that officials should be determined by the rank of officials, and instead used the type of official position to determine the type of official uniform, and divided it into 7 types. But either way, there must be a white thing on the top and bottom of the circle at its neck, and now it can often be seen in many TV series with song as the background, this thing is historically called "square heart curved collar", but not just as an ornament.
Qu ling actually appeared in the early Han Dynasty. In the official uniforms of that time, there would be a semi-circular hard lining on the collar, just like the collar of the shirt now, in order to support the outermost collar of the official uniform, so that the underwear inside would not "slip out" and appear indecent.
This curved collar also continued to the Tang Dynasty, but the Tang Dynasty put this lining on the outside and added a square ornament under the round collar, expressing the ancient cosmology of the heavenly circle.
The strength and prosperity of the Tang Dynasty became the object of emulation of later dynasties and generations, and the Song Dynasty also wanted to follow the official uniforms of the Tang Dynasty, but the chaotic world in the middle made the middle "information file broken", resulting in the Song Dynasty can only speculate from the history books and design its own "square heart qu collar".
Although the square heart curved collar of the Song Dynasty is similar to that of the Tang Dynasty, the curved collar of the Song Dynasty does not have a hard lining and cannot make the collar stand up. However, compared with the Square Heart Qu collar in the Tang Dynasty, the Fang Xin Qu collar of the Song Dynasty became larger and heavier, and it could suppress the collar and make the official uniform obedient, but it was also similar to the Tang Dynasty official dress.