In Fujian Quanzhou Hui'an County, Huidong Peninsula seaside, there is a special ethnic group, is Hui'an women. They are famous at home and abroad for their peculiar dresses and strange marriage customs. Some people say that they are an ethnic minority, while others say that they are Han Chinese. The seven villages in this area have a total population of only a few tens of thousands, and although they are only a small part of the population of Hui'an County, they have attracted extensive attention from many scholars at home and abroad. Their images have gone from China to the world with the photographic lenses of literary artists, poems and music on the silver screen, books, newspapers and pentameters. People call their flowery headscarves, short tops, silver belts, and large pants "feudal heads, frugal shirts, bellies, and wasteful pants".
Hui On women's special dress, can be divided into Chongwu outside the city, Shanxia and small traffic, the net peak of the two types, the difference is that the former hat is larger, thicker, heavier, slightly curved edges; the latter hat is thinner, thinner, lighter, smaller. The latter also covered with a headscarf, but the headscarf is decorated with small red buds, young and middle-aged women more than double braids folded on both sides of the top of the head, wrapped in a headscarf seems to have a sense of pike horns. The hand also carries a yellow bamboo basket. In front of the top of the head, there are one to three plastic combs, unmarried young women's hair still have bangs. Hui'an female head hat coated with yellow paint, with the role of sun and rain. Flower headscarf for the quadrilateral, generally white background decorated with green or blue flowers, or green or blue background decorated with small white flowers, folded into a triangle package tied head, wind and sand, cold and warm and protect the role of hairstyle.
On closer inspection, one will find that the colors and styles of Hui'an women's clothing are similar to those of many ethnic minorities in China. For example, they wear bucket hats, somewhat like the Li and Jing people. Their short tops are especially like the Dai costumes of Xishuangbanna in Yunnan. Hui'an women like to wear green tops and black pants, which are almost the same as the costumes of Yunnan's Water Tribe in terms of color. On New Year's Day women wear butterfly-shaped hair style, because the butterfly is the totem worshipped by the ancient Baiyue tribe, so what is the relationship between Hui'an women and the ancient Baiyue tribe? People have many different opinions. It is true that some people say so, and this kind of basis is mainly based on two aspects. One is that in this area from the following ten years, found some small amount of the ancient Baiyue ethnic life traces, in the Hui'an Nü live in Dashan Zha Village of the mountains had also found a so-called Neolithic site. These things according to archaeology, more than two thousand years ago, here in Fujian lived the ancient Baiyue people, mainly the Min Yue people.
One hundred years ago, from the end of the Qing Dynasty to the 1920s, Hui'an women wore blouses with a wide waist and chest, a knee-length hemline, and a pleated skirt tied around the waist, a garment that had nothing peculiar about it in ancient times. At that time, the pants were just as wide, similar to the present trouser pattern, and both men and women in rural areas all over China wore this kind of pants often worn by Han Chinese. At that time, women did not wear bucket hats and turbans on their heads, and they wore this kind of headdress that weighed more than 10 kilograms.
The black veil, which is worn when going out, is used by newlyweds and women who have not given birth to avoid meeting strangers and their husbands. This black veil was only taken off when they slept, or even when the couple slept with the lights off, and it caused some couples to meet on the road without the husbands recognizing each other as their wives. By the 1940s and period, there was a big change in the style of Hui'an women's dress. The hemline of the original knee-length blouse was gradually shortened to the arm, but not so short as to expose the navel. At this time, the women's headdress has become a black cloth wrapped head, do not wear a flower headscarf, also do not wear a hat. There was a more obvious change in the dress of Hui'an women, which came after the year, when their blouses were cut shorter and shorter. Who invented this? It is said that this change came from the Great Leap Forward. At that time, young and strong women from all over the county concentrated on the construction of the Bird's Nest Reservoir. It was during the hard labor, in order to protect themselves from the wind and rain, the women of Hui'an had to learn from women in other regions, wearing a headscarf and a bucket hat, and it was not expected that this wear could never be taken off again, and it became a landscape that attracted people's attention.
The hats, which never leave the body, hide many secrets of women's families. Seaside climate changes, especially in the Huidong Peninsula Bay, sometimes the sea breeze is particularly cold, but why Huian women's tops are made shorter and shorter? When we came into contact with Hui'an women, we found that the shorter the clothes were, the more obviously the colorful belts around the waists of unmarried women and the silver belts of married women were exposed. It is said that the silver belt is a wedding bride-price from the man, and it shows how much wealth the family has. Perhaps that's why saving shirts are made shorter and shorter to expose the belly button!
The wedding clothes of Hui'an women vary with the times and their styles, and the wedding customs also change with the times. In the 1950s, Hui'an women have a long custom of living in their mother's home, they will be married three days after the mother's home to live, only in the Spring Festival, the Qingming Festival, and the Mid-Yuan Festival, that is, the 15th of July, and the winter solstice and the busy farm time back to her husband's home, and the other is the birth of a child, the long live in her husband's home.
The custom of staying at the mother's house is formed when the man goes out to fish and work, and the woman stays at home to engage in sideline work and agriculture. The custom of living in the mother's house has brought misfortune to many Hui'an women in the past, and with the development of the times, there have been many changes in these old customs.
The bride walks through the fireplace out of the ancestral house of her mother's family, which is a program of the traditional wedding customs of Hui'an women. The red flame is said to herald a red-hot life for the newlyweds. Like the traditional custom, the bride usually wears a very peculiar headdress. Only on the big day of the wedding can a Huian woman wear such a beautiful headdress. It is combed for four hours by five or six dexterous women to make it successful. But if the bride accidentally messes it up, it is impossible to comb it again by herself. Why then did these women comb the bride's headdress, which was so difficult to organize? What is the mystery here? It turns out that in the old wedding custom of staying at the bride's house for a long time, it had a supervisory role for the bride on her wedding night. It is said that the bride returned to her mother's home three days after her wedding. If people found her hair disheveled, sisters of her generation would ridicule her. Therefore, in order to keep her hair neat and unruly, usually the bride does not lie down to sleep during the three days and three nights of her wedding, and avoids sleeping with the groom by all means.
Hui'an women wear pants, where women over 40 or 50 years of age wear Chinese "Kuang (wide) pants", and young women wear wide-barreled suit pants, made of black thread cloth or nylon cloth. The waist is tied with red and blue plastic pants belt, married people often add silver pants chain, the width of a strand to eight strands ranging to multi-strand is better. Pants small waist, hip circumference, trouser tube is only thirty centimeters, both beautiful and easy to labor.
In addition, the older Hui'an women also have a gold tooth on each side of the incisors as a decorative custom, is no longer prevalent.
The men around Chongwu went out to make a living or went fishing, Hui'an women naturally became the main force to build their hometown. They open highways, repair water conservancy, planting, mending fishing nets, honoring their parents-in-law, teaching their children, inside and outside a hand, can be called all-round daughter-in-law. Hui'an women are famous for their beautiful, hard-working, virtuous and peculiar costumes, which not only become a unique folk landscape of Chongwu Ancient City, but also add an unspeakable charm to Chongwu Ancient City, attracting a large number of tourists to come to the city.
///////// the coastal areas of Fujian, whether in Putian busy streets, Dongshan charming island, or in Zhangpu bustling set, can often see some of the attire is extremely peculiar women. They all come from the vicinity of Chongwu Township, Hui'an County, Southern Fujian Province, and are often referred to as "Hui'an women".
Hui'an women are known for their hard work, mostly in the fishing industry. According to local people, hundreds of years ago, they moved here from the Central Plains, because of the seaside life for the wind and wear a flower-colored scarf and orange hat, flower scarf on the weaving of small flowers and colorful small ornaments; the upper wearing tight, short clothes, exposing the lower belly; the lower wearing a particularly loose and fat pants, the belt is tied in the navel below. People then jokingly called them "feudal head, belly, saving clothes, waste of pants".
Why do they have to show their belly? Here is a legend: once the emperor's southern tour to pass through this place, the local officials for the people under its jurisdiction is very rich, so ordered to make silver belt tied to the waist of the woman's pants, while getting a short blouse in order to let the silver belt is exposed. Since then, wearing a silver belt has been passed down as a symbol of wealth.
The marriage customs of Hui'an women are very peculiar, as shown in the movie "Widowed Village," which looks a bit hard to understand and accept. On the day of the wedding, the bride, dressed in black pants - known locally as black clothes - and a black umbrella, is accompanied by friends and relatives from her mother's family, and the man does not send anyone to meet her. It is said that on the first night of the wedding, the bride is not allowed to go to bed, but can only stand by the bedside for the night. At first light the next day, she must run back to her mother's house, and it is not until New Year's Eve of that year that the husband may take his wife home for one night, and then the next day he must return her to her mother's house. Thereafter, only until the larger traditional festivals come, the husband can take his wife back to live for one or two days, and so on, until the wife gave birth to a child, can be justified long to the in-laws with the husband **** with life.
According to the locals, child marriages were very serious here in the past, and children as young as 13 or 14 years old could not take on the responsibilities of their families, so they had to use this compromise. This custom has continued for hundreds of years.
Nowadays, the times have progressed, and the influence of outside culture has quietly changed the dress code of Hui'an women. Young Hui'an women's tops are no longer short enough to expose the navel, pants are no longer wide lantern-shaped, just gold bucket hats and colorful headscarves are still the same, there is still a unique landscape. A new generation of Hui'an women, most of whom have gone to school, accepted new ideas, new things, from the backward, conservative way of life out; many of the young women from the fishing villages to all, business, engaged in transportation, go out to work, walking their own road to a new life in the spring breeze of reform and opening up to pursue a better dream. Hui'an women's special dress, can be divided into Chongwu outside the city, Shanxia and Xiaozha, Jiefeng two types. Each type can be seen in the late Qing Dynasty to the thirties, the forties to the fifties, the sixties to the eighties in order to see the evolution of their costumes at various stages.
The modern Hui'an women wear yellow bamboo hats and flower headscarves, which are coated with yellow paint to protect them from the sun and rain. Flower headscarf for the quadrilateral, generally white, green or blue flowers, or green or blue small white flowers, folded into a triangular package tied to the head, wind and sand, warmth and protection of the hair and other roles. They also often carry small yellow lacquer bamboo baskets. Hui'an women wear "saving shirts", which are more decorative than the past "sleeve shirts" and "embellished shirts". That is, minus the past complicated splicing process, bust, sleeve contraction close to the chest and arm, fully set off the curves on the body of the women; sleeve length to only half of the arm, cuffs rolled two links, a ring of yellow or gold, a ring of flower cloth; clothing length to the umbilicus only, the edge of the garment is a large oval, curved outward to the sleeve, so that the waist of the multicolored plastic ribbons and silver trouser chain to show off the show, but also to avoid dirtying the labor! Clothes along the sleeves. Cloth color in winter and spring more blue, black, summer more apple green, white wicker thread or two-color sets. Women's wedding clothes with a full set of black silk dress.
The pants worn underneath, where women over 40 or 50 years of age wear Chinese "kuang (wide) pants", and young women wear suit pants, made of black thread cloth or nylon cloth. Pants small waist, large hips, pants although narrow, both beautiful and easy to work. Folk say: "Shirt, feudal pants; saving shirt, waste of pants" is the beginning of liberation to this day, the women's special dress is summarized.
Small Chad and Jingshong type, and Chongwu outside the city, Shanxia is different: they also wear yellow hats, hats are also decorated with a variety of pompoms and plastic flowers. Also covered with a headscarf, but the headscarf is decorated with small red buds, young and middle-aged women more than double braids folded on both sides of the top of the head, wrapped in a headscarf seems to have a sense of pike horns. The hand also carries a yellow bamboo basket. In front of the top of the head, there are one to three plastic combs, unmarried young women still have bangs in their hair. Due to modern women more to the field to do labor, contact with the outside world and see more, clothing has also changed. But the length of the blouse is still not over the umbilical cord, the cuffs are about twelve centimeters, and the pants are only thirty centimeters. They also often wear red with green wool undershirt. Pants are mostly wide-barreled "open pants" or pants, waist tie with red and blue plastic pants belt, married people often add a silver pants chain, the width of a strand to eight strands ranging to multiple strands is better. In the past, the folk proverb: "pants off off, the top of the head into the cow bone, navel pro (really) like potatoes (peanuts) cave. Hui'an women, known for hard work, but the most impressive and famous is Hui'an women's distinctive clothing: yellow headscarf, blue shirt, silver pants chain, large folding pants, mysterious and charming, unique in the national costume culture.
Hui'an women, to be precise, does not include all the women of Hui'an, but refers to the women who grew up in the rural areas along the eastern coast of Hui'an, and people used to call them Huidong women. Huidong female costume culture has a long history, its formation, development process has been the Chinese and foreign anthropology, folklore experts concerned about the subject. There are various legends about its origin, which are still inconclusive. According to historical records, in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, Huidong women wore black or purple long-sleeved blouse and black pants. Clothes long, chest, waist and back wide, slightly curved along the lower edge of the outward, and the Qing Dynasty popular "Dafu shirt" (long placket) is similar. The difference is that the cuffs are narrow, the sleeve to catch a long, so the name "sleeve shirt" also known as "roll sleeve shirt" to catch the sleeve is very interesting, in order to let the bride into the cave when the long sleeve to cover up a blush; after 3 days, only half of the long sleeve rolled up to meet the fixed. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the "sleeve shirt" part of the slight contraction of the curved edge of the garment lengthened, the width of the arms and outward curved stretch, the waist around the Chinese-style buttons at the reduction of climbing, the two together, the cuffs around the edge of the blue cloth. The embroidery pattern on the collar is changed from simple to complex, and the square color cloth under the collar root is changed to triangle. Chest, back center line on both sides of the two square black, dark brown silk cloth, its four sides each set with a tricolor-shaped color cloth, renamed "embellished to do shirt". Pants for the "big folding pants" also known as "big tube pants", commonly known as "Han suit pants". The pants are generally made of black cloth, but blue cloth is also used. The leg width of the pants is about 1.2 feet, and the front of the pants is about 2 feet, with a 5-inch blue cloth border sewn on. Its style from the mid to late Qing Dynasty has not changed much, but the quality of material from the old days with coarse cloth, today changed to universal black silk cloth. Huidong women's clothing, traditionally attached importance to the part above the waist, especially with the most prominent headdress, a variety of patterns, different occasions, different age headdresses have obvious differences.
Huidong women get married or go out to celebrate occasions such as guests, headdress highlights a "happy" word, pay attention to brightly colored, rich and colorful. Comb big bun, inserted a variety of gold and silver jewelry, between a variety of styles of pompoms, dressed up as if the spring is full of small flower beds. At the same time with a black silk scarf from the side of the bun back with the clothes along the length of the scarf on both ends and then connected with black silk, and green silk thread sewing out a variety of floral patterns. Usually at home, headdress is throughout a "simple" word, the pursuit of simplicity, really, but never casually. They tend to insert a few ornaments and pom-poms, the top of the head set a piece of black silk for the face, sewed inside a layer of black coarse cloth patchwork rectangular cover, with three bamboo support, half of the forehead out, while the black silk made of crocheted triangles erected on the tip of the tip of the sewing of a red ribbon. Live in the mother's home (Huidong women's wedding customs, the first three days after marriage to live in the husband's home, and then live in the mother's home until after the birth of a child to return to the husband's home to settle) or widowhood, abide by a "light" word. No bun, do not insert any jewelry, only the end of the bun rolled up, half wrapped in the black turban, half exposed in the turban, like a bunch of facial lines, commonly known as "pleated job". The former indicates that there is no constraint, the latter emphasizes the observance of the festival.
Huidong older women in general in the back of the head comb a bun, almost rectangular, and then set on the hairnet, flattening, left and right each inserted a pin, above and in the middle of each inserted a plum blossom, and then surrounded by a black scarf, decorated with beads and flowers on the pins.
Hui'an women appear in the Spring Festival gala
January 30, 2011, Fujian Dance Theater performs the dance "Hui'an women" at its headquarters in New York. On the same day, the annual Chinese New Year Cultural Gala at the New York headquarters, Deputy Chen Jian, 60th President Eliasson and officials watched the performance to celebrate the Chinese New Year.