Author: Cai Xin
Gathering 186 exquisite cultural relics from more than 20 cultural institutions across the country, the "Yunxiang Clothing - Silk Road Costume Culture Special Exhibition" is being exhibited at the Chengdu Museum, presenting the grand and majestic costume culture on the ancient Silk Road, the prosperous and exquisite kingdom of clothing and crown, and the humanistic historical picture infiltrated with the self-confidence of a thousand years of culture for people, which has aroused a lot of attention.
Western Han Dynasty yellow-brown bird diamond pattern "yun embroidery", Hunan Provincial Museum collection
The phoenix flower pattern brocade robe excavated from tomb No. 1 of Mashan in Jingzhou not only embodies the basic standard of traditional Chinese clothing "dress show, brocade is the edge", but also shows the unique recognition of the noble and mysterious phoenix bird shape in the Imagination of the Chu people
The Qingcheng County Museum has a collection of Tang Dynasty painted Camel Figurines led by Hu people to witness the prosperity of silk road trade
The "Five Stars Out of the East and Li China" brocade excavated from the high-specification main tomb of the Niya site has been made into a necessary arm guard for locals when hunting, and it is likely to be a classic produced in the far western regions of Shudi
Baohua pattern is a Tang Dynasty for tuanqiao flowers, the shape is mostly symmetrical radial, the blooming or semi-blooming flowers, buds and leaves are combined together to form a more decorative group. The picture shows a treasure pattern brocade robe collected by the China Silk Museum
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the unique silkworm breeding technology originally created for China was transmitted west along the Silk Road. This is often shown on the "Wei and Jin Social Comic Strip" Gansu Gaotai mural tiles. The painting on the portrait brick shows the daily life scene of mulberry sericulture through the brick, which proves the spread of sericulture and textile skills at that time, and also allows us to see the silhouette of the popular costumes at that time from the costumes of the characters
From the allusions of mulberry forest praying for rain and the sacred tree Fusang, to the historical facts of domesticated silkworms and silk reeling, the story of silk highlights the harmonious idea of "the unity of heaven and man" in Chinese philosophy. Through the Silk Road, silk has a profound impact on the Chinese clothing culture and even the human civilization of the world. At the same time, China enjoys the reputation of the "Kingdom of Clothing", in fact, it is inseparable from the continuous development of traditional costumes in cultural integration. Especially when a piece of cloth, a piece of cloth, a strand of silk thread, and a cluster of silkworm cocoons go back and forth along the Silk Road with trade exchanges, ethnic integration, and technological exchanges, colliding and blending, extending the vivid plot of too much plump Chinese clothing and crown culture.
【Chu han splendid embroidery and the beginning of the Silk Road】
Witness material exchanges with the off-site existence of square objects
In Eurasia, people in various regions migrate frequently, invisibly deriving the exchange of clothing culture. The Scythians, the earliest nomadic people in history, moved eastward to the south, bringing the image and weaving of the pointed hat on the Persianpolis relief to the Turpan region in the east of the Tianshan Mountains. This straight and hard high-pointed hat with hair as the main material has become an important clothing symbol in the Subexi culture, one of the birthplaces of the "Three Ancient Cultures of Xinjiang". At about the same time, the silk of the Central Plains during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period also passed west across the Altai Mountains and then to the north through a natural passage that was not yet large and fixed.
Although it is difficult for people to distinguish the narrative authenticity of strange books such as "The Biography of Mu Tianzi", the romantic Chu Feng ornaments and the existence of the brocade produced exclusively by China at that time in the ancient tomb of Bazerek in distant Russia really reflect the highlight moment of Chinese culture carried by silk in this ancient past. The phoenix flower pattern brocade robe excavated from tomb No. 1 of Mashan in Jingzhou not only embodies the basic standard of traditional Chinese clothing "dress show, brocade is the edge", but also shows the unique recognition of the noble and mysterious phoenix bird shape in the Imagination of the Chu people. The silk cranberry bird pattern embroidery ma jing found in the ancient tomb of Bazelek is represented by the most traditional Chinese stitching lock embroidery originating in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties; the god bird with a rounded chest and abdomen and slightly curved lower limbs, a pronounced crown and a long tail, is connected with the graceful branches and leaves hanging upside down from the flower crown, and has a clear correlation with a series of exaggerated style phoenix patterns represented by the embroidery of the large silk floor of the brocade robe. From clothing to harness, it is also a kind of local custom on the Silk Road. This brocade robe is also a typical deep coat. The deep coat was the most popular item at the time, it replaced the two-part clothing of the early top and bottom, which can be described as a model of the materialized expression of traditional Chinese Confucian thought: the deep coat is embellished up and down, the silhouette is concise, the length is appropriate, and it is easy to wear, its hem is flush to symbolize fairness, the vertical seam in the back of the coat symbolizes integrity, and the collar is square to symbolize selflessness. As the regular clothes of the scholar and above, the auspicious clothes of the scholars, and the sacrificial clothes of the shu people, they are widely seen in the life of the world, and the color of the clothes changes according to the seasons, the identity status of the wearers, and the occasions of the dress.
The tomb of Mashan Chu also unearthed a famous dancer animal pattern brocade, a brocade with a pair of dragons, phoenixes, unicorns, and dancers in a zigzag frame, which is considered to be the oldest wide-width large-pattern jacquard fabric in China. Although the brocade pattern at this time was not exquisite, slightly monotonous and childish, China was the only country that mastered the production technology of brocade, and simple geometric brocade was also transmitted to the Bazelek Basin.
In the Han Dynasty, on the one hand, the government "hollowed out" the desert oasis Silk Road and operated the western region, and on the other hand, vigorously developed the official weaving institutions, which provided a guarantee for silk to become a commodity in the east-west trade and gradually became a representative cultural symbol of Chinese civilization. In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, the phenomenon of Hu people wearing Han costumes and Han people wearing Hu costumes began to appear; in the early Eastern Han Dynasty, the clothing and crown system centered on imperial power was fully implemented.
Judging from the external exchange of silk as an important material, in the western region and the western world, it has left a colorful mark of Han-style jingjin. During the Qin and Han dynasties, the emperor paid special attention to the ceremony of sacrificing heaven and earth, and Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han all climbed Mount Tai to hold the Zen ceremony, so Han Jinshang also highlighted the characteristics of the times with otherworldly clouds and rare birds and beasts. The Chinese style "cloud qi animal pattern brocade" has a relatively fixed color combination and pattern combination, following the five-color flower of the yin and yang five elements theory, the continuous cloud pattern of the mountain, the real or imaginary animal, and the inscription interspersed with good wishes. Such exquisite fabrics that embody the core ideas of classical Chinese philosophy are also irreplaceable high-end gift options. The "Five Stars Out of the East and Li China" brocade excavated from the high-specification main tomb of the Niya site has been made into a necessary arm guard for locals when hunting, and it is likely to be a classic produced in the far western regions of Shudi. If you look closely, there are also ostriches, peacocks and other animals produced in the Central Plains that roam the clouds of Xiangrui. In a similar period, exotic elements such as grapes and hunting of beasts of prey also jumped on the silk. After the opening of the Silk Road, the multi-cultural exchange or not, the grand situation of the interplay can be seen.
【Wei Jin and Hu Han in parallel】
Witness the mixing of customs and customs with the mutual learning of Huhan costume pieces
Over time, the cultural integration that took place along the Silk Roads became deeper and more frequent. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the unique silkworm breeding technology originally created for China was transmitted west along the Silk Road. This is often shown on the "Wei and Jin Social Comic Strip" Gansu Gaotai mural tiles. The painting bricks on the mulberry drawing, the yarn collection machine tow diagram, the clothes drying diagram, the cutting cloth diagram, the box opening diagram through the "brick" (picture) to show the mulberry silkworm breeding, silk weaving and other daily life scenes, supporting the spread of silkworm farming and textile technology at that time, but also let us see the silhouette of the popular costumes at that time from the character dress.
In the Han Le Fu poem "Mo Shang Sang", the beautiful and firm Qin Luoshi is described as follows, "The silk is the lower skirt, and the purple qi is the upper skirt". Women wearing top and bottom skirts have appeared as early as the Warring States period, Han Dynasty men wearing tops and bottom hakama is also common, to the Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties period, typical Han costumes and skirts once again prevailed, and the size of the skirt sleeves reflect the wearer's social class. From the Wei Jin Tomb in Jiayuguan New Town, known as the "world's largest underground gallery", the travel map portrait brick, the milking picture portrait brick and the lady portrait brick were excavated. The protagonist in the milking picture is dressed in a small sleeve skirt, indicating that she is a civilian who works daily. The waistline of the small sleeve skirt gradually increased, mostly with heterochromatic aprons, and continued to be popular until the Sui and Tang Dynasties. There are also large-sleeved skirts based on small-sleeved skirts, mostly used by noble women, and like male skirts, they are affected by the wind of the dress, wide sleeves and flowing.
The "broad clothes" of the "clothing belt" is the true portrayal of Wei Jinfeng's bones in clothing. Wei and Jin celebrities were popular, calmly entering and leaving, looking forward to the gods, and the Clothing Belt was more sought after by literati and doctors in the Southern Dynasty, and also penetrated into all classes. The king and his ministers in the story of the Buddha on the east slope of the 290th cave roof of the Northern Zhou Of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes are dressed in a bo belt, and the Xiangshi on the right side holds the prince in his hand, wears a hat, and has his hair in pigtails behind the hat, reflecting the parallel characteristics of Huhuhan. Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty implemented the "Taihe Reform System" and absorbed a large amount of Han culture, and the later Western Wei and Northern Zhou regimes implemented the policy of attaching equal importance to Hu and Han, which also promoted the establishment of a costume system for the integration of Hu and Han.
During this period, there were frequent regime changes, wars, the rise of metaphysics, the introduction of Buddhism, the gradual development of Culture such as Persia and Greece, and the ups and downs of multicultural thought were also recorded in the pattern of clothing.
On the tapestries unearthed in Qinghai and Xinjiang, a pattern of combining the Greek sun god and Buddhist cultural elements has appeared, represented by the Northern Dynasty cluster of four clouds and pearls of the sun god brocade excavated from the hot water tomb in Dulan County, Qinghai.
A circular pattern located in the middle of the brocade, the outer ring is composed of beads and cirrus. Looking back at the cloud pattern on the brocade of the Han Dynasty in China, this cirrus pattern has obvious Hellenistic artistic characteristics, so it is also called "swirling cloud pattern"; the bead pattern is a symbolic decorative element in Sassanid Persian art. In the visual center of the pattern unit, helios, the sun god of ancient Greek mythology, sat cross-legged on the lotus throne, wearing a crown and a canopy, wearing a cross-collar shirt, with a light gathering behind him and a meditation seal in both hands. The pattern also contains the Tenma, the Dragon Head, the Buddha Banner, and the Chinese characters "Chang" and "Ji" that are symmetrical to the left and right outside the bead circle. Multicultural symbols are gathered here, borrowing from today's popular discourse – without any sense of contradiction.
Zoroastrianism, which originated in Persia, was popular in Gaochang, Khotan and other places in the western region during the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Animal figures symbolizing the gods in Zoroastrianism, such as wild boar patterns and pterodactyl patterns, also appear in large quantities on fabrics and clothing, full of exoticism.
【Sui and Tang Dynasty gorgeous and multi-source confluence】
Witness innovation after cultural overlap in novel styles
The Central Plains region's feat of connecting with the outside world and expanding its local cultural influence is at its peak with the performance of the Tang Dynasty. At that time, when the political reunification of the North and the South was realized, when foreign relations extended westward to Central Asia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Mediterranean region, and to the east, the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Island were involved, and Chinese culture opened a new chapter of inheriting the past and opening up the future.
The Tang Dynasty established a system of "color clothing", which determined the color of clothing by official qualities, and clearly distinguished the ranks of respect, inferiority, nobility and inferiority by color. The crown service system cooperates with the government's complete bureaucratic hierarchy, and makes detailed provisions on the crown dress and collocation according to the different grades and occasions. Among them, the dresses that need to be worn on major occasions such as sacrifices and political activities are the embodiment of the spirit of the traditional Confucian aesthetic and ceremonial system. Later, official and regular clothes were also included in the costume system. It can be seen that the rulers have perfected the marking system with clothing as the symbol, and on this basis, they have the resolute will and strong execution to consolidate political power and stabilize the social order.
In the Tang Dynasty, men's clothing not only inherited the Han-style crown clothes, but also naturally chose the easy-to-wear and practical categories in the northern nomadic system such as headbands, round-necked robes, leather belts and long boots. The painted male figurine excavated from the tomb of Zhao Zigou Mutai in Qingcheng County, Gansu Province, is a common figure of a man in the Tang Dynasty, who wears a black head, wears a white flower collar underwear on a black background, and a black right dragging robe, and the left hem of the robe is lifted under the black leather belt at the waist. As an important first dress in men's clothing, the head of the head was developed from the scarf of the Eastern Han Dynasty; emperor Wudi of Zhou cut four feet on the square pa, and lengthened the four-legged knot backwards, hence the name of the head.
Women's clothing in the Tang Dynasty inherited the popular skirt dress since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, wearing a skirt, shirt, jacket on the upper body, and a skirt on the lower body, and it was popular to add half arms and draperies to the outside of the skirt. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, it is likely that under the influence of Guizi and other regions, the wearing method of half arms and drapery together appeared. It is a kind of "fashion" produced in China under the influence of West Asian culture, and gradually developed into the Xia Shuai in Song Ming women's clothing. Half-arm, also known as half-sleeved, is a short-sleeved top that is worn over a long-sleeved shirt. The round neck and diagonal placket pattern half arm collected by the Chengdu Museum are particularly elaborate, and they highlight the characteristics of the times in terms of style and pattern. The main pattern is a large tuanbao flower, which is symmetrical up and down, left and right, gorgeous and rich.
The China Silk Museum has a treasure pattern brocade robe, and the treasure flower of the big one has eight front petals as the core, and then eight blooming side-style treasure flowers as the second layer, and the outermost layer is also a treasure flower with eight flowers and leaves, and the layers of treasure flowers bloom. Baohua pattern is a Tang Dynasty for tuanqiao flowers, the shape is mostly symmetrical radial, the blooming or semi-blooming flowers, buds and leaves are combined together to form a more decorative group. The treasure flower was relatively simple in the early stage, and later combined with the popular honeysuckle and curly grass in the Mediterranean, as well as grapes and pomegranates in Central Asia, forming a more complex and magnificent pattern.
Not only at the level of patterns, the traditional Chinese weaving technology and clothing culture in the process of western transmission, but also absorbed the essence of the rapid development of central Asian weft brocade at that time, and created new varieties. The emergence of weft brocade is an important milestone in the history of Chinese textiles, and gradually becomes the mainstream of weaving and embroidery in later generations. He Chou, who is recorded in the Book of Sui, and Dou Shilun, mentioned in the Famous Paintings of The Past Dynasties, are two masters of arts and crafts who have made outstanding contributions in this process. After Receiving the exquisite gold brocade from Persia, Emperor Wen of Sui asked He Chou to imitate it and obtained more exquisite fabrics than the original. During the reign of Emperor Taizong of tang, Dou Shilun broke through the decorative style of traditional brocade weaving, absorbed foreign cultural elements, and organized and designed many new brocade and aya patterns on the basis of baohua. Its main feature is that it is a ring of flower clusters or curly grass, which contains corresponding animal patterns such as pheasant, fighting sheep, xiangfeng, and youlin. Later, because Dou Shilun was named "Duke of Lingyang", these patterns were also called "Lingyang Gongshi".
The technique of silk reeling may have come from the western region of the silk reeling technology, and silk products have appeared since the Tang Dynasty at the latest. The silk adopts the so-called "warp and weft breaking" weaving method, with the natural color as the warp, the color silk as the weft, and the various colored weft lines are woven according to the drawing with plain weaves. Developing into the Song Dynasty, silk made many ingenious arts and crafts works, and then to the Yuan Dynasty, it became the main craft of the Imperial Family of the Mongol Empire to make portraits of the Imperial Family.
The charm of China, the long culture; the good costumes, the echoes of the Silk Road. Cultural exchanges on the Silk Roads reached the Tang Dynasty to form "paragraph-like summaries". In the subsequent regime change, the costume system was still inherited and the technological innovation was continued. The costumes of the Song Dynasty were mostly inherited from the Tang Dynasty in terms of style, and Zhu Yuanzhang, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, "restored the crown of clothes like the Tang system" at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and always regarded the establishment of the costume system as an important measure to consolidate the Jiangshan Sheji. Overseas, the island of Japan and the Korean Peninsula are also deeply influenced by Chinese culture, often using the Tang as the reference point; the "Twelve Singles", which represents the kimono classic, as a typical aristocratic female costume, still retains the influence of Tang culture. The Korean Peninsula adopted Tang Dynasty official clothes after the unification of the Three Kingdoms of Silla, and in a considerable historical period, "Tang clothes" were still used to refer to dresses used for ceremonies, major festivals, etc.
On the Silk Road, the integration of cultures of various ethnic groups and regions is an important driving force for the renewal of Chinese culture. With the in-depth development of ethnic integration, the composite clothing culture formed by multiple cultural exchanges has finally merged into the new Chinese cultural symbol system.
(The author is an associate professor at the School of Fashion, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University)
Source: Wen Wei Po