The costumes of the Heba Yao people in Majiang County are the representative costumes of the "Yu" branch of the Yao people in Guizhou. The Heba Village in Longshan Township, Majiang County is a representative example. Majiang County is located in the central part of Guizhou Province, in the upper reaches of the Qingshui River, and the county seat is 109 kilometers away from Guiyang. The total area of the county is 1,201 square kilometers. The total population of the county is about 230,000, of which ethnic minorities account for 76.2%, and the Yao population is 6,732, accounting for 3% of the total population. The county is high in the west and low in the east, and is located in the slope area where the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau transitions to the Hunan-Guangxi hills. Low mountains, low-middle mountains, hills and river valley basins account for 78.4% of the total area of the county. It has a subtropical monsoon humid climate. The county has beautiful natural landscapes, with overlapping mountains in the east, continuous peaks in the west, and towering mountains in the north. The Yao people in Majiang County call themselves "Yu", also known as "Ayao" and "Yaojia", and historically known as "Yaojia", "Yaomiao" and "Raojia". In October 1992, the Provincial People's Government agreed to approve the recognition as the Yao people. Yao language belongs to the Yao language branch of the Miao-Yao language family of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The Yao people in the territory speak "Raojia dialect". The Yao people have no native language and generally use Chinese. It is said that the Yao people's ancestral home is in Jiangxi and Huguang. After migrating to Pingyue (now Fuquan City), they were divided into two branches. One branch moved to - and Lantu in Sandu County. Around the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, they moved from Lantu to Jichang in Duyun, and then moved to Niuchang area, and finally settled in Heba area in Majiang County. The Yao people in the territory "live in deep mountains", which is historically known as "living in groups along the valleys", and their economic development is slow. Clothing is mainly spun, woven and dyed by themselves by planting cotton. There is no written record of clothing before migrating to Guizhou. Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, some historical records such as "Qianji", Kangxi's "Guizhou Tongzhi", and "Duyun County Chronicles" record that "Yao Miao" in "- Lantu Yaoba, sew wooden leaves as upper clothes, and wear short skirts". The Republic of China's "Guizhou General Records" recorded in the ninth chapter of the Local Records of Guizhou, "Draft of Guizhou Records": "The clothes are black. They are not longer than the knees and only reach the waist. Women's clothes are made of colorful silk brocade, painted with pig blood, decorated with Haiha (white seashells), and the hair is tied on the top of the head and decorated with silver bubbles." "Guizhou Geography" records: "Both men and women prefer blue clothes", "Huangping Prefecture Records" records "women wear long skirts", and "Majiang County Records" of the Republic of China records: "Women wear long skirts with thin folds". Since the late Qing Dynasty, Yao women have changed to casual clothes for the convenience of labor and sewing. Casual headwear removes silver ornaments, but still wraps handkerchiefs and headscarves. The top is a knee-length low-collared shirt with right lapel, and the bottom is still wide-legged trousers, not long skirts. The feet remove leggings and upturned shoes, and wear light cloth shoes and thin-nosed rice-core straw shoes instead. Now they only wear formal clothes for festivals, weddings, visiting friends, and going to banquets. According to the legend of the Yao people, from ancient times to the Qing Dynasty, men had long hair and braids. After the Xinhai Revolution, they shaved their heads like the Han people. The old men shaved their heads, but wrapped their heads with blue or blue cloth. In the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, men's clothing was mostly blue earth cloth long gowns. After the Republic of China, they gradually wore blue and blue earth cloth short jackets. Now most of them wear Han clothing. Yao clothing is mainly blue and blue. Women's clothing is mostly red with patterns. Yao clothing is divided into men's clothing, women's clothing, and children's clothing. Men's clothing and children's clothing are relatively simple, while women's clothing has more patterns. 1. Men's clothing: Hair style. In the Qing Dynasty, Yao men always had a bun and braids, and wrapped their heads with a blue cloth scarf that was 12 feet long, about a foot wide, and with tassels at both ends; Clothing. They all wore blue or blue cloth clothes. In spring and summer, the elderly wore a short-collared middle-length shirt with a right lapel (historical records say "left lapel"), and young people wore a single-collared middle-length shirt with a short lapel and a cloth button. In autumn and winter, they all wear long gowns with right lapel and single collar. They wear a woven flower belt around their waist. The two ends of the flower belt are decorated with red thread tassels, which are allowed to hang down on the left leg. When going out, they wear a waist bag for tobacco, smoking utensils and coins; trousers. They all wear three-piece wide-legged trousers. A horizontal waist cloth is added to the upper end of the trousers, and the trouser legs are folded; footwear. They wear blue cloth leggings on the calves. The elderly wear cloth socks made of two pieces of white cloth, which were called "Ketou Aizuz" in ancient times ("Jiajing Tujing"), and later they mostly wear leather shoes. 2. Women's clothing. Women's clothing is divided into two types: formal clothing and casual clothing. Formal clothing, the Yao people call it "Xiangyu" (meaning clothes for family members). Yao women dress from head to toe, which is collectively called formal clothing. Hairstyle: Yao women all have long hair that is as long as a bowl (a bowl is placed upside down on the head and the hair around it is shaved off). They do not wear braids, but wear a high bun at the back of their heads. A silver gourd with a handle as big as an ox-eye cup is inserted into the bun. A double-ring silver chain more than a foot long is hung on the edge of the silver gourd. Several silver flowers are inserted on the top of the bun. The edges of the silver flowers are decorated with several short-handled hemispherical small silver bubbles. They wear a folded and flat headscarf on their heads. There are tassels at both ends of the headscarf, and two white or red cloth strips are placed horizontally on the ends of the tassels. On the top of the head, they wear a white flower scarf with a green background and tassels of about an inch at both ends. Silver studs are hung on the earlobes (girls wear maple leaf-shaped ear studs; married women wear ear-shaped hollow ear studs). They wear several silver collars of different sizes on their necks. Flowery clothes: Yao women wear right-fronted monk-collared, buttonless embroidered clothes. The whole set is 6 pieces. They are not longer than the knees and only reach the waist. From the inside to the outside, each one is shorter than the other, just revealing a pattern at the bottom of the clothes. The same is true for the length of the sleeves. The whole set is divided into two layers, with 3 pieces in the inner layer and 3 pieces in the outer layer. When wearing a single layer, married people wear the inner 3 pieces, and unmarried people wear the outer 3 pieces; when wearing a full set, they also add a flowered dress that is dyed and "painted with pig blood, which is very expensive" (Qing Duyun Zhi) and starched with egg white. The front is decorated with four-color cloth and a colorful brocade with four edges, and there is a brocade lace on the shoulder. When wearing it, three sets of flower belts are tied on the right side. Pants: Pants and skirts are worn as a set, with straight-cut wide trousers inside and a cyan and blue pleated mid-length skirt as an outer layer. A waist piece with a four- or five-inch wide lace at the bottom is tied in front of the skirt, and an embroidered handkerchief is also placed on the left side of the waist. Footwear: The calves are wrapped with leggings decorated with dozens of sea clams (white seashells). The leggings are 1.5 feet long and 1.2 feet wide. There are flower belts woven with colored threads on the left and right sides, and the sea clams are hung down to the ankles. They wear embroidered boat-shaped high-nosed shoes. The front half of the shoes is made of blue cloth, and the uppers are embroidered with various patterns. The back part is made of light blue cloth, and white cloth is cut into spiral petals and pasted together, and then nailed along the edge of the petals with colored threads. Neck ornaments and hand ornaments: Women wear silver necklaces and several silver hand ornaments on their wrists. Casual clothes. Since the late Qing Dynasty, people gradually imitated Han customs. Except for festivals and grand occasions, they wore casual clothes, which were called "Xiangran" (meaning "Tujia clothes" in the local dialect). Casual clothes are knee-length shirts with right lapel. Two blue cloth strips are nailed on the shoulder edge and cuffs. A short waistcoat is tied around the waist. There is a trapezoidal embroidered waistcoat plate on the chest of the waistcoat, and the waistcoat belt is embroidered with flowers, and there are thread tassels at both ends. The upper end of the waistcoat is connected with a silver chain and hung around the neck. Casual wear: remove headwear and hand ornaments, do not wear long skirts, do not bind legs, and do not wear upturned nose shoes; still wear a head scarf or a headscarf, wear wide crotch trousers, wear light cloth shoes, rubber shoes or leather shoes, and also wear rice core straw shoes with narrow nose edges and ears. 3. Children's clothing. Both boys and girls wear hats. In spring and autumn, wear dog-skin hats with embroidered tops, in summer, wear open-topped hats with colored cloth chrysanthemum petals on the forehead, and in winter, wear tail hats with embroidered tops and tassels. Boys tie a "tile" on their temples, and girls tie a spoon of hair on each ear of the head, which looks like a dog's drooping ears. Both boys and girls wear long gowns without embroidery, do not wear skirts, and wear split-crotch pants. The most distinctive craft of making clothes by the Yao people is "maple fat dyeing", which is to boil maple oil (called "gejiu" in the Yao language), butter or sheep oil together, put it in an oil bowl, and then use a dipping knife to dip maple fat oil to draw patterns on the clothes, which is called "dotting flowers". Then put it in indigo dye for dyeing, fish it out and dry it, and then remove the maple fat oil to reveal the background pattern. To date, maple fat dyeing as a secret has not been passed on to outsiders, and is only taught among the Yao people. The Yao people's full set of formal clothes is 6 pieces, and the hem and cuffs of the clothes are required to be shorter than the previous one in turn. Therefore, according to the body shape of the wearer, the clothes are cut at once according to the inner length and the outer length. At the same time, Yao embroidery is a highly intensive labor accumulation activity. A one-foot square back card pattern often consumes a girl's half a year to a year of slack time in farming; girls start to learn to embroider dowries from the age of seven or eight, planting cotton, weaving cloth, raising silkworms, and picking flowers. When they are satisfied with the exquisite skirt embroidery, they have reached the age of puberty to be engaged. The Yao women's costumes, a full set of 6 pieces, take several years or even a lifetime of slack time to make a set. The Yao people, who have lived in Majiang for generations, have always been homeless and migrated everywhere. At the same time, they have little contact with other ethnic groups and are relatively closed, so they have completely preserved many traditional cultural characteristics of the nation. Yao costumes, especially women's costumes, are not only finely crafted and beautifully composed, but also rigorous in overall structure and unique in dressing. In the case of language but no writing, in addition to oral transmission and personal teaching, costumes are also an important carrier for inheriting their historical culture. Yao costumes embody the ancient Yao totem worship, carry many historical and cultural information and primitive memories of the Yao people, and embody the spiritual beliefs and value orientations of the Yao people. They fully reflect the artistic aesthetics, superb craftsmanship and creative talent of the Majiang Yao people, record the formation and development history of the Yao national costumes, and reflect the profound cultural connotation of the Yao people. Historically, the Majiang Yao people did not intermarry with other ethnic groups, and had few economic and cultural exchanges with other ethnic groups. The costumes did not change much, and the traditional styles and production methods were preserved intact. But since the late Qing Dynasty, for the convenience of labor and sewing, most men wore Han costumes, and women also changed to casual clothes in daily life. After liberation, the exchanges between ethnic groups were frequent, and they gradually intermarried with other ethnic groups. Young people gradually accepted foreign textiles and various popular clothing. By the 1990s, the Yao people rarely wore formal clothes except for weddings and festivals. With the process of global economic integration, various popular cultures have also strongly impacted the traditional culture of the Yao people. Many people go out to study, join the army, and work. A large number of young people go out to work. Most of those wearing Yao costumes are elderly people. It is urgent to rescue, excavate, and preserve the unique cultural carrier of Yao costumes in a timely manner. (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.) (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.)