In film and television dramas, Qing Dynasty men all have hairstyles with yin and yang heads, but in real history, not all of them are like this. Most of the time, men's hairstyles in the early Qing Dynasty were kept like a small braid that could pass through the copper coin eye, commonly known as "money rat tail". The hairstyles of the Qing Dynasty also varied differently throughout history.
Judging from the excavated Shang Dynasty jade figurines, the Men of the Shang Dynasty were tied with hair, indicating that before the Shang Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, the hair tie was a symbol of Chinese national culture. It was not until after the fall of the Ming Dynasty that the Qing army entered the customs, and the Manchu rulers believed that only by shaving their hair and changing from Manchu customs could the Han people truly submit to it. So there was the cruel threat of "leave your head without hair, keep your hair without your head". It can be seen that for the Manchu rulers, the hairstyle was a symbol of domination and conquest.
The hairstyles of men in the Qing Dynasty had different styles in different periods. Shunzhi was the first emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the braid style of this period was like a thin rattail, with a special name: "money rattail", because the braid required at that time could be worn out of the copper coin hole, so it had this name.
Moreover, not only do you have to kill your head if you don't shave it, but if you don't shave correctly, you have to kill your head. The Qing Dynasty law had a stipulation: those who shave their hair is not as good as the style will also be cut. In the fourth year of Shunzhi, a man in Jiangnan was killed for only shaving off a little hair around his head, and although he had no intention of resisting, he was killed for violating the weather.
The "Money Rat Tail" hairstyle is restored in "DashengKui"
After more than a hundred years of rattails for men in the Qing Dynasty, during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing government made some improvements to the braids - the hair left on the top of the head was a slap in the face, and the braids were much thicker. At that time, foreigners came to China in large numbers, and this hairstyle was affectionately called "pig tail", and pigtail braids even became the main impression of Chinese men by foreigners.
Changes in hairstyles of men in the Qing Dynasty
In the late Qing Dynasty, that is, at the end of the nineteenth century, the hairstyle changed again, leaving more hair, and the braids were as thick as snakes, which is the yin and yang head in the Qing Dynasty drama we watched. Lao Tzu said: "The world knows that beauty is beauty, and evil is already evil." At that time, men were all a hairstyle, so they didn't think it was ugly.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, braid cutting became an important part of the revolutionary struggle, first a large number of young students began to shave their aspirations, and then after the Xinhai Revolution, the Nationalist government demanded that all people cut braids. At that time, the dying and struggling Sunqing royal family resisted for a while, and later Puyi took the lead in cutting his hair.
There are also a few people who keep that braid for the rest of their lives and bring the braid to the coffin. For example, Zhang Xun, a braided marshal, Wang Guowei, a master of traditional Chinese studies, and Gu Hongming, a famous scholar.
Gu Hongming