The major museums in the country have their own treasures of the town hall, full of dazzling and exquisite products. This column will show you the story behind the cultural relics and uncover the unsolved mysteries.
In the prominent position in the center of the prologue hall of the China Wetland Museum, there is a set of very precious ethnic clothing, which is regarded as the only symbol of the ethnic group by the Hezhe ethnic group in the north of the mainland.
Made from the skins of 38 salmon, the costume includes a long-sleeved coat with a diagonal placket, a pair of wide-legged trousers and a pair of tassel booties, which can be described as "fully equipped" and is the daily clothing of the locals.
It is now located in the Fishskin Clothing of the China Wetland Museum
In addition to admiration, people may wonder why the Hezhe people use fish skins with fish skins with fishy smells and unsatisfactory firmness to make costumes.
This is actually closely related to the environment in which the Hezhe people live.
The Hezhe are one of the less populous ethnic minorities on the mainland, with only 4,000 or 5,000 people at present.
For a long time, the Hezhe people lived along the Ussuri River, Heilongjiang and Songhua River in the northeast, where the climate was cold and the traffic was closed, and people could not plant cotton, hemp, mulberry, etc. that could be used for weaving cloth like the farming peoples, nor could they obtain fur by raising cattle and sheep like nomadic peoples, but the fish resources there were extremely rich, rich in salmon, mackerel, pike and other special fish.
Therefore, since the Shang Zhou Dynasty, the Hezhe people who have lived in the Sanjiang River Basin for generations have been feeding on fish meat and fish skins. The "Classic of Mountains and Seas and overseas east classics" has written: "The country of Xuangu, in the north of black teeth, is a man dressed in fish." ”
In the "Imperial Qing Dynasty Tribute Map", an important qing dynasty style monograph compiled and painted by Qianlong King, the Hezhe people are also specifically referred to as the "fish skin tribe".
Why did this fishskin coat from the northern peoples come to Jiangnan?
In 2009, the China Wetland Museum was inaugurated in The Xixi Wetland in Hangzhou, and in order to better showcase the wetland culture of the Sanjiangyuan in the north of the mainland, the museum preparatory team decided to send personnel to the northeast to collect a set of traditional fishskin clothes of the Hezhe ethnic group.
However, when the recruiters came to Sanjiangyuan, they found that the local Hezhe people did not wear fishskin clothes at all, and even there were almost no people who could make fishskin clothes.
Originally, with the development of the times and the continuous integration of nationalities, the fishskin clothes with the most Hezhe ethnic characteristics have long faded out of people's lives, and the production technology of fishskin clothes has become a national intangible cultural heritage.
This made the recruiters feel the urgency of collecting fishskin clothes. After several turns, they finally found a 60-year-old Hezhe lady on the bank of the Songhua River, as the inheritor of the traditional fish skin clothing making skills of the Hezhe people, she is the only person in the local area who is proficient in this skill.
The bride told the recruiters that the fish skin is different from other materials, its toughness is far less than that of animal skins and cloth, and the surface is also covered with hard fish scales and full of mucus, so it is necessary to carry out a series of special process treatments on the fish skin to turn it into a "fish skin cloth" suitable for sewing clothes.
As she spoke, the bride brought out a complete set of tools made of wood hard birch and tulip trees, including uniquely shaped mallet beds, wooden tooth saws, mallets, wooden knives, etc., and demonstrated the process of scraping, descaling and repeated pounding and tanning of fish skins for the recruiters, until the fish skin was processed into a tough and elastic clothing fabric.
Finally, the eldest lady took out a set of fish skin clothes made from the skins of 38 salmon and offered 5,000 yuan.
She said it was because it was hard to see larger salmon in local rivers, and it was only possible to use smaller salmon instead of making them, otherwise the price would have to be multiplied several times. The recruiters immediately made a decision and bought back this set of fishskin clothes in the hands of the eldest bride.
If you look closely at the exhibits enclosed in a glass cabinet, one will find that the most striking thing is the fishskin shorts: the placket is embroidered with a beautiful cloud pattern, and the placket is embellished with a beautiful buckle, showing the simplicity and elegance of traditional Chinese clothing.
In fact, the beauty of fishskin clothes should be more than that -
The "fish skin tribe" Hezhe tribe worships fish as a totem god, and thus creates the unique national art of fish skin painting. Fishskin painting is a kind of use of natural fish skin cut, spliced into a flat arts and crafts work, the main use is to decorate fishskin clothing, fishskin shoes and hats and fishskin bedding, its picture content is usually based on daily life and religious beliefs, some are simple landscapes, clouds, flowers, birds, butterflies, etc., there are also vivid totem gods.
The fish skin paintings with the totem god spectrum as the content are more complex, reflecting various folk stories circulating within the clan, such as the "fish god", which tells the story of the Hezhe people who regard themselves as the descendants of the fish, and whenever they go out to the river to fish, they must worship the fish god and pray for a safe harvest.
This fishskin painting shows both patterns and faces
Fishskin clothing takes natural scenery as the source point, both the shape and the pattern are elegant and exquisite, beautiful and generous, very national characteristics, fully reflecting the Hezhe people's advocating psychology and aesthetic taste for nature.
Because of this, the fishskin coat has become a unique symbol of the "clan emblem" in the minds of the Hezhe people.
Now that ten years are fleeting, the fishskin suit of the China Wetland Museum has become a priceless treasure.
Located in the southeast corner of Xixi Wetland in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the China Wetland Museum was completed and opened in 2009, and is the first national-level professional museum with wetlands as the theme. The museum comprehensively displays the beauty of wetlands through the restoration of typical wetland scenes, multimedia interaction, graphics and physical displays. At present, the museum has a collection of more than 20,000 precious animal and plant specimens and wetland cultural relics, and is a national second-class museum.
Producer | First of all, Hongming
Edit | Yu Xin
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