The Hakka hat is dedicated to Hakka women, and it is a unique folk custom created by the industrious and wise Children of Hakka with their own hands.
Legend has it that hundreds of years ago, in the midst of years of war, one of the refugees who fled from the north was a noble princess who fled to a small mountain village in the southern Guangdong area, and the enemy soldiers chased after them, and several smiths who were weaving in this mountain village cleverly buckled the semi-finished products of the bamboo hats on the heads of the fleeing female refugees, and the Hakka women next to them put black cloth turbans on the bamboo hats, blocked their faces, pulled them to work in the fields, and escaped a disaster.
There is no historical record of this beautiful legend about the Hakka hat, but it is well documented that more than 300 years ago, in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Hakka women had to go down to the fields like men to cultivate the land, and women at that time could not casually show their faces, and wearing a cool hat with a hat curtain could avoid disobedience. This hat has been continuously improved and slowly developed into today's Cool Hat for Hakka women.
Millennium Hat: A unique headdress for Hakka women
Hakka women in Fujian have been wearing cool hats for thousands of years. The shape of the Hakka hat resembles a flat rice sieve woven with bamboo, with a circle in the middle. Generally made of thin slices or wheat stalks woven into a round bamboo curtain, about 70 cm in diameter: there is a round hole of 10 to 15 cm in the middle, and the top of the hat is brushed with waterproof tung oil; the top of the bamboo hat is sewn with cloth, and some are also embroidered with flowers, and the front is outside, and the edge of the cool hat is embellished with a black curtain with lace that is about 16 cm long and folded uniformly: there is a tassel band on the left and right sides of the hollow under the cool hat. There are black, blue, white, and flower colors, different colors, and they look like flowing flowers from a distance.
Women at different stages have different colors of cool hats. The unmarried girl also weaves colorful ribbons at both ends of the draped cloth, and the ribbons become a sign of whether the Hakka girl is married or not. In addition, the identity of unmarried and married women can also be distinguished from the color of the tassel of the cool hat alone. The flower spikes of unmarried girls are white, the flower spikes of married young women are red, and middle-aged and elderly women mostly use cyan, black or red-green black variegated colors. Girls go out, go to the ground, and rush to the market, they all take white tassels and cool hats, and never take other colors, even if they are mother's or temporary. It is better not to wear it than to be misunderstood.
Because wearing this kind of cool hat is both light and can block the sun, rainproof, dustproof, sandproof, and the hanging cloth swings with the human body, fluttering and swaying, can attract a slight breeze, cool and pleasant, so Hakka women are accustomed to calling it "Cool Kasa Mile", but also a unique headdress for Hakka women. At present, only Some Hakka women in some mountainous areas such as Yongding and Wuping in Fujian Province and Dapu County in Guangdong Province still wear it.
The structure of the Hakka hat seems to be very simple, but the kung fu inside is sloppy, there are 33 main processes alone, not only bamboo weaving, but also weaving, dyeing, sewing, hat and other complex processes, as well as physical requirements of the program. Therefore, when producing Hakka hats, Hakka men are required to participate in the production.
The strong, beautiful hat is first of all based on the Hakka man's strong physique and sensitive teeth. "Broken bamboo" is the first process of making a cool hat. In this process, Hakka men cut the locally abundant single bamboo into a meter long, break it longitudinally with a broken bamboo knife, and divide it in two with the complete bamboo knot. As the frequency of swinging the broken bamboo knife increased, the complete bamboo knot became a hundred sacrifices and one meter bamboo sticks. After the bamboo skewer is smoothed, it is torn outward with teeth on one end of the bamboo skewer, and after a few rounds, a piece of bamboo that is flat as an ironing board and less than 0.1 mm thick is produced.
After the pieces of bamboo were evenly distributed in the hands of the Hakka women, they began to weave the central part of the bamboo hat. After completion, they also have a series of processes to be completed, such as sweeping tung oil, cutting hat rings, twisting hat pleats, weaving "hat snakes", cutting hat frames, bow hats, hats, hats, and tying vines.
The intertwined bamboo baskets have become exquisite cool women in the industriousness and wisdom of the Hakka people, which carry the simple essence of Hakka culture. (End)
The article is selected from the magazine "Fujian People"
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