Recently, Li Ziqi, a well-known video self-media, announced his comeback, and the updated video became popular all over the Internet. In particular, the two Qing Dynasty costumes highlighted in the cloakroom attracted the attention and discussion of netizens at home and abroad.
Screenshot of Li Ziqi's video. All images in this article are provided by the author
Some netizens said that this was a Qing Dynasty Hanfu, but it was immediately corrected and said that "the Qing Dynasty did not have Hanfu";
Some netizens said that this is a cheongsam, but this is too far from the cheongsam in the public perception;
Some netizens said that this is actually "Qingmin Girl" - this name sounds very academic and should not be wrong, but what is "Qingmin Girl"?
First of all, it should be noted that there is really no such thing as "Qing Dynasty Hanfu" - the Qing Dynasty has always implemented the system of "shaving hair and making it easy to wear", requiring all ethnic groups, both men and women, to change their clothes and hairstyles to Manchurian styles. If you don't change it, you will cut off your head, that is, "keep your hair without your head", which is how the famous "money rat tail" in the Qing Dynasty came about.
"Money rat tail" sounds like today's curse words, but it is actually the Qing Dynasty's own name for this hairstyle, such as the famous sentence in the early Qing Dynasty: "Money rat tail is the elegant government of the new dynasty; Eguan Bo belt, the bad rules of the country. ”
The reason why it is so called is because at that time it was stipulated that all the hair around the body should be shaved off, and only a bundle of hair the size of a copper coin was allowed at the back of the head; And this bundle of hair, when combed into a braid, must be as thin as a mouse's tail, and must be able to pass through the copper coin hole. This was the "standard" for shaving the head at that time, if you shaved your hair but did not meet the standard, you should also cut off your head, and the Qing Dynasty stipulated that "those who shave their hair is not as good as the style will also be beheaded".
For example, in the fourth year of Shunzhi, a peasant named Ding Quan was sentenced to be beheaded for leaving too much hair, even if he made a mistake unintentionally, and even his parents, neighbors, and local officials were convicted of this - yes, your neighbor's hairstyle is not up to standard, and you were also guilty in the Qing Dynasty.
In later generations, there was a saying that "ten from ten do not follow", that is, "men do not obey women, officials do not obey, Confucianism does not obey monks and Taoism...... Some people think that only male Hanfu is banned, and female Hanfu has been retained in the Qing Dynasty.
However, the Qing court officially promulgated the "Ten from Ten Obedience", but explicitly ordered that "all Han officials and men and women should dress in Manchurian style" ("Qing Taizong Actual Record Manuscript"), which clearly stipulated that women must also obey the Yi Yi Order. Moreover, the Qing Dynasty officials also wore Manchurian clothing, and there was no "official subordinate and official disobedience".
Even the Taoist priests who the public thought had been growing their hair were shaved in the Qing Dynasty. In the cabinet inscription book of the early Qing Dynasty, there were many cases of Taoist priests who were beheaded after failing to meet the standard.
The Taoist priests in Qing Dynasty paintings were also shaved into a big bald scoop, but the "rat tail" part was not combed into braids, but coiled up and stuffed into a Taoist crown or Taoist scarf. It was not until the late Qing Dynasty, when the ruling power of the Qing court weakened, that the Taoist priests took the lead in restoring the full hair.
Qing Dynasty Baiyun Temple Taoist portrait, the head is shaved cleanly all around.
The shaved Taoist priest in the painting of the Midyear Festival in the middle of the Qing Dynasty.
Therefore, "men do not obey women" is not a historical fact, but it does have a bit of a historical prototype, that is, the progress of women's easy clothing is slower than that of men:
Although the Manchu Qing Dynasty successfully entered the customs in 1644 (the first year of Shunzhi), it was not until 1662 (the first year of Kangxi) that the Southern Ming Dynasty was completely eliminated, and in 1683 (the twenty-second year of Kangxi), the Ming Zheng was destroyed.
Therefore, from the Shunzhi to the Kangxi period, in order to reduce the resistance of the Han people, the implementation of shaving and easy clothing was relatively relaxed: men could also wear several Ming Dynasty headscarves, such as scarves; Because it is difficult for women to resist with arms anyway, they even acquiesce to it.
Portraits of the great thinkers of the Ming Dynasty, Wang Fuzhi (top) and Huang Zongxi (bottom), after entering the Manchu Dynasty.
Portrait of Ming Dynasty playwright Tang Xianzu, wearing Ming Hanfu and a scarf. Tang Xianzu is known as the "Chinese Opera Saint" and "Oriental Shakespeare", and his masterpiece "The Peony Pavilion".
The shape of the scarf in Korean dramas: The scarf was a popular headdress for men and women in the Ming Dynasty, but unfortunately it is rarely shown in today's Ming Dynasty costume dramas, but it is often seen in Korean dramas. Because Lee's Joseon was a vassal state of the Ming Dynasty, he studied the Ming Dynasty Hanfu in its entirety.
It can be seen from the portraits of the early Qing Dynasty that although men had shaved their hair at that time, they still wore scarves from the Ming Dynasty. The clothes are only added to the Ming Hanfu with the factory placket and a long foot buckle (commonly known as centipede buckle), and the overall version and sleeve shape of the Hanfu are still retained.
However, such a compromise shape only existed in the turbulent early Qing Dynasty. When the Qing Dynasty completely unified the Han Dynasty, from the end of the Kangxi Dynasty, especially after the Qianlong Dynasty, the shaving of hair and clothing immediately increased the intensity again.
Men's hairstyles, hats, and even the version and sleeve shape of their clothes must be exactly the same as those of Manchu, and the scarf will disappear completely; The women's Hanfu was also gradually banned, and there was also a distinction between "people's women's clothing" and "flag women's clothing", behind which was the Qing Dynasty's "flag to control the people" system.
The Qing Dynasty divided all people into two types: "banner people" and "people", the banner people were military rulers, who had money without paying taxes, commonly known as "hardcore crops", and lived in the inner city; The people were the ruled, and they had to pay taxes to support the bannermen, and it was forbidden to raise horses or possess firearms, and they were not allowed to enter the city, and they were not allowed to intermarry with the bannermen.
The banner people are mainly Manchuria, and there are also a small number of Mongols, Han Chinese and even Russians (that is, commonly known as the Manchurian Eight Banners, Mongolian Eight Banners, Han Army Banners and Russian Bannermen). No matter what nationality, as long as the flag people must learn Manchu, wear Manchurian costumes, and can only intermarry with the flag people.
Old photograph of the late Qing Dynasty, a Russian flag man in Manchurian costume. The Russian flag people belong to the Yellow Banner, known as the Albazin in Russian, and their origin is similar to that of the Han Eight Banners, and most of them are captives who surrendered or were captured during the war with the Qing Dynasty. Because only intermarriage with the flag people is allowed, they will look like the Orientals after a few generations.
Nian Qianyao wrote to Yongzheng in Manchu recital: Nian Qianyao was the Han army with a white flag, and Yongzheng brought into the Han army with a yellow flag in the first year. When the bannermen wrote a recital to the Qing Emperor, they had to use Manchu and call themselves slaves to distinguish themselves from the ministers of the people. Many Han military flags with poor Manchu language skills had to spend money to hire Manchu people to write recitals on their behalf.
The people include the vast majority of Han Chinese, as well as Miao, Yao, Zhuang, Dong, Tujia, Bai, Yi and other ruled ethnic groups, and the men of these ethnic groups are not allowed to wear their own costumes, but must wear Manchurian costumes; Women were not allowed to wear their own costumes, but they were also forbidden to wear Manchurian costumes.
You can't wear the clothes you used to wear, and you can't wear a full suit, so what exactly do you wear?
The answer is to wear a kind of clothing that looks very similar to Manchurian women's clothing, but cannot be exactly the same, this is "Qing Minnu", the full name is "Qing Dynasty Minren Women's Clothing".
Before shaving their hair and making it easy to wear, Han women in the Ming Dynasty originally wore jackets and skirts, that is, upper jackets and lower skirts. The most famous skirt is the horse-faced skirt, the jacket is long and short, there are many changes, the long jacket is basically a robe to the foot, the short jacket is similar to the modern top.
The short jacket of the woman in the Ming Dynasty's "Xia Jing Merchant Picture".
A woman wearing a long jacket with a vertical collar in an ancient painting of the Ming Dynasty.
In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, both men and women wore similar robes, and women did not wear skirts. The Manchurian robe is characterized by a factory placket and centipede buttons, and likes heavy fabrics, mostly dark and cold colors, especially stone blue.
Portrait of Qianlong's first-class guard Zhanyinbao.
Portrait of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang.
In order to ensure the perfect implementation of the order of shaving and easy to obey, and to ensure that the women of the people are different from the women of the bannermen, the Qing Dynasty stipulated: only the bannermen can wear Manchurian robes regardless of gender; Folk women were only allowed to wear blouses and skirts (they could also wear tops and trousers, but not robes), and the details of the clothes had to be changed to the same as Manchurian costumes.
So from the Qianlong to the Daoguang period, women's Hanfu first processed the placket and centipede buckle, and then comprehensively studied Manchurian clothing, and re-walked the road of the disappearance of men's Hanfu.
Knowing this, when looking at old photos and Qing Dynasty paintings, you can see who is the woman of the banner and who is the woman of the people.
For example, in the three old photos above, the first one is a flag girl, the second one is a people's girl, the third one is a people's girl on the left, and the flag girl is a flag girl on the right. Those who wear robes are flag girls, and those who wear tops and skirts or tops and pants are people's girls, which is very simple.
Now let's go back to the beginning, Li Ziqi's two clothes: both are tops, so they should be "Qing people's girls"?
Unfortunately, it's not.
Because the Manchurian costume not only has a long robe, but also likes to wear a short coat outside the robe, that is, the so-called "cheongsam horse coat":
Portrait of Zeng Guofan wearing a yellow coat on the outside of his robe.
Coloring old photos, women wearing cheongsam + short coats.
Because the gown is worn on the outside, the hem of the robe will look a lot like a skirt, be careful not to get it wrong. In addition, the flag people also like to wear a vest over the cheongsam, that is, a sleeveless or short-sleeved top, and the effect is similar.
Banner woman in robe + vest.
The flag man has a family of three, all wearing vests over the cheongsam.
There are so many types of vests that we can open a single one, so let's not care about it for now.
Let's just say that this horse coat was originally a coat to protect against the cold when riding a horse, so it was first worn on the placket. Later, the women of the flag people also liked to wear it, and the style of the factory placket appeared-but there was always a slit at the bottom of the placket, and the prototype of the placket remained.
The top is the "stand-up collar factory placket short wide-sleeved Han women's jacket", and the lower is the "stand-up collar factory placket short wide-sleeved horse jacket", one is the "Qing people's girl", the other is the flag costume, the difference is whether the hem is slit or not.
So the green shirt worn by Li Ziqi is indeed a "Qing people's girl"; And the red shirt that hung up, with a slit underneath, was actually a flag suit.
Many people will sigh that the people's women's jackets and flag women's coats in the Qing Dynasty look almost the same, who can tell the difference?
There was no way, the Qing Dynasty wanted to shave their hair and make it easy to wear, and they wanted to distinguish between the dignity and humility of the banner people, and finally made this general difference of "everyone comes to find fault".
In the late Qing Dynasty, the control weakened, and there was indeed a situation where the gown was not distinguished, and the people wore the gown, and today's "Chinese wedding" on the bride wore a dragon and phoenix gown, and the source was here (the bride crossed the brazier, crossed the saddle, and the groom shot an arrow at the bride, these are also old Manchurian customs, not the Han wedding tradition - the cross saddle is especially obvious).
In this case, why did Han women wear cheongsams again?
This is because after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, it was believed that men could wear robes and women could only wear tunics and skirts, which was a form of sexism.
Women in the Republic of China didn't know much about the Ming Dynasty long jacket, so they directly wore men's long shirts to show the equality of men and women - to this day, many dialects still call cheongsams long shirts, such as Cantonese and Hunan.
But at that time, in the public perception, women's robes = flag women's clothes, so they were called cheongsams by the people - of course, in the final analysis, it was not wrong. After all, the men's caftan of the Republic of China is a product of shaving hair and easy to wear, which comes from the robe of the banner people of the Qing Dynasty.
Therefore, the women's cheongsam of the Republic of China has a lot of net elements, unlike the pattern and edging of the Qing Dynasty flag women's clothing. Because the cheongsam of the Republic of China was first derived from men's caftan gowns, even if it was transformed out of female aesthetics, it would not be as fancy as the Qing court costumes.
However, in recent decades, cheongsams have become more and more expensive. And it seems that there is no standard: Western-style dresses + a few decorative centipede buttons, which are also sold at a high price as cheongsam.
During the Republic of China, cheongsam was basically only popular in big cities, and women of all ethnic groups in remote areas were basically still wearing "Qing people's women" - so when you travel to ethnic minority areas today, you will often find that women's clothing of all ethnic groups looks similar to Qing Dynasty clothing.
This is also why the "Qing Folk Girl" cannot be called the "Qing Han Woman" - this is a class costume rather than a national costume, no matter what nationality, as long as it is the ruling class, it must wear the "Qing Folk Girl"; In turn, after entering the flag nationality and becoming the ruling class of the Qing Dynasty, even Han people had to wear flag women's clothes.
• (This article is the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)
Sukhuliji
Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin