Dujiangyan Confucian Temple Gong Pengcheng 2014-02-1311:09
[Introduction] China's clothing civilization happened very early, and the Yellow Emperor ruled the world by hanging clothes. Since ancient times, China has regarded nude tattoos as barbarism, which is totally different from the western body view of advocating bodybuilding.
Author: Gong Pengcheng (Professor of Chinese Department of Peking University, Director of Peking University Cultural Resources Research Center, Director of China Intangible Cultural Heritage Promotion Center)
"Nine doors of heaven reveal the imperial palace, and many countries bow to the pearl crown" is a scene when the poet Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty described the early Ming Dynasty, which can remind people of the grand occasion when the voice of the Tang Dynasty spread far and wide and all countries came to the DPRK.
Through this poem, let's rethink the dress relationship between China and other countries.
By the time of the Tang Dynasty, all the states that came to Korea were dressed. But in ancient times, when China people used clothes as a symbol of civilization, most of the surrounding tribes or chiefdoms were in the nude stage. This language, without contempt, only explains a phenomenon and the thoughts that accompany it.
Because the main decorative behavior of ancient people is not manifested in clothes, but in tattoos and feathers. Wash your face, tattoo or feather decoration not only has aesthetic effect, but also has ritual purpose, such as representing adulthood, marriage, authority and courage. And improve their status in the same family. Even after death, it is often necessary to paint and sanctify the body. Until the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period in China, wuyue still maintained this custom, so Zhuangzi Xiaoyao said that people in wuyue were "constantly tattooed". When Han Chinese moved in in Ming and Qing Dynasties, so did the aborigines in Taiwan Province Province. Modern European millineries are often decorated with feathers!
Compared with the tattoos, feathers, and hides of neighboring ethnic groups, China is special, and tattoos are replaced by clothes. Yi Cohesion Biography said that Yao Shun "ruled the world by hanging down his clothes". Clothes are a symbol that distinguishes Chinese civilization from other nationalities, and they are constantly distributed, so they are crowned; No tattoos, so clothes.
There are of course technical reasons for this. The ancient textile technology was underdeveloped, and it was difficult for people to wear clothes even if they wanted to. They could only do it by tattoos and feathers. However, textile technology was invented very early in ancient China, and the legend that the ancestors of the Yellow Emperor used silk to make clothes is not credible. However, it is not difficult to infer that silk technology was invented at least in the middle of Neolithic Age from the semi-cut cocoon found in the site of Yin Xi Village of Yangshao culture. Since then, silk has become a specialty of China, and it was not until the mid-Tang Dynasty (12, 3rd century) that reeling and cocoon peeling technology was introduced to Europe. China was 4000 years late in making clothes out of silk. The loom discovered by Hemudu culture in Yuyao dates from 3000 to 5000 years ago. Textile wheels have been unearthed in many sites around the world, which shows that textile technology is very common in China, and it is the earliest and most prosperous area in the world.
Judging from the materials unearthed today, Neolithic clothes are mainly through-the-head, single-draped and cloak-shaped, and have not been cut, probably because the cutting technology is underdeveloped. The Shang dynasty has cut clothes, with clothes on the top and clothes on the bottom, narrow sleeves on the neck, broadband on the waist and trousers. The materials are brocade, silk, silk and silk. The use of dyes is also very mature, such as madder red and gardenia yellow, which can be well mastered. Jacquard knitwear found in Chu Tomb in Mashan, Jiangling, Hubei Province is the oldest knitwear in the world.
At that time, the garment technology was so developed that when people around us were still wearing skins, feathers or naked, they naturally felt a sense of pride in civilization, thinking that they were "wearing clothes" and regarded clothes as a representative or symbol of civilization.
"Yi" Kun Gua 65: "Yuanji", like the legend: "Huang Shang, Yuanji, Wen is in it", that is to say. Yellow is the central color, and Yuanji means both internal and external cultivation. Wearing a central positive color dress shows the appearance of civilization and is a symbol of good luck.
The meaning of "Wen" of civilization also comes from this. Text, originally a pattern, has patterns on tigers and leopards, and people's patterns are displayed on clothes. Therefore, the text of the sky is the sun, the moon and the stars, the text of the earth is the source of mountains and rivers, and the text of people is mainly clothes. Ancient "Wen" and "pian" did not refer to words or chapters, but to chapters and sentences.
In other words, clothing has a special position in Chinese civilization and is the representative of Chinese civilization. Clothing is the basic point of ancient China people's experience and thinking about civilization. Wearing clothes or not is the difference between civilization and vulgarity. Naked meat shows people, symbolizing humiliating others (such as beating drums to scold Cao's naked meat) or humiliating oneself (such as naked meat when Lian Po offered a humble apology or naked meat when Sentence Jian surrendered); It is impolite to make a fool of yourself naked.
In contrast, neither ancient Europe nor ancient India had this concept of clothing civilization, so they all took the body as the basic point of civilization and studied the physical and aesthetic nudity.
In ancient India, Brahmins were popular in learning physiognomy, so they should learn from the physiognomy of adults. Therefore, the wisdom of Brahmins emphasizes the skills of interacting with people. For example, in the third volume of Buddhist Scriptures: "(Bao Fan) can teach all Vedanta theories, and all four Vedantas have been collected. It also expounds the theory of tuo, word, sound, absurdity, curse, memory, world and world sacrifice. " The so-called "theory of the world" and "being good at dealing with adults" in the Brahmin Five Laws are physiognomy. Visible phase method is an extremely important talent of Brahmins.
Ancient Greece also attached great importance to human form. Aristotle's Physiology said: "In the past, physiognomists observed physiognomy in three ways; Some people observe the body from animals, assuming that all animals have certain shapes and minds. They first agree that animals have some kind of body, and then assume that anyone with a similar body will have a similar soul. Others also use this method, but not from the whole animal, but only from people's own class, according to a certain race, and think that people with different appearances and endowments (such as Egyptians, Thracians and Cycuses) have different descriptions of their hearts. Others sum up different properties from obvious personality characteristics, such as irritability, timidity, lewdness, and other various representations. " Therefore, stereology has a long history in Greece.
Because of the prevalence of stereology, the beauty of the body is studied and appreciated by them. A large number of carvings can prove this.
The first characteristic of China's body view is that he doesn't pay attention to formal beauty and nobody worships him (in order to emphasize this point, he often deliberately says that ugliness is virtuous and beauty is bad). The second feature is the separation of form and virtue. "Beauty" does not necessarily mean good appearance, but usually means good virtue. Third, the body is not an aesthetic object, but emphasizes the cultural significance and aesthetic value of clothing.
When the ancients talked about beauty, they often talked about "the beauty of prose and embroidery" ("The Book of Rites"). When it comes to capacity, it refers not only to appearance, but also to clothes, such as Xunzi's "Non-Twelve Sons": "A gentleman's capacity is majestic, and his clothes conform; Its tolerance, which is sudden, strong, bold, graceful, broad, bright and swaying, is the tolerance of a father and a brother. " This well-dressed article means "Wen" in ancient times, and the culture of a nation, an era and even a person is displayed here. Like Greece, the naked body is beautiful, and the ancients will regard it as shameless and call it barbaric, primitive and uneducated.
Throughout the ages, emperors have always taken "easy service" as their primary task when establishing new political power. This is the concrete expression of the idea that clothing is the representative of an era culture. By extension, some thinkers use clothes as a metaphor. For example, Yan Yuan's "Tao Yu Xing Bian Tao Yu Xing" said: "Heaven is muddy, like a cotton peach: the shell is covered with cotton, and yin and yang are also; Four petals, Yuan, Heng, Li and Zhen; Rolling, bouncing, spinning and weaving, two qi and four virtues in layman's terms mean giving birth to everything; Cut into cloth and make clothes, and strangers are born; Collar, sleeves, lapels, limbs, facial features, bones and sexual temperament. The collar can protect the neck, the sleeve can hide the hand, and the lapel can cover the front and back, that is, the eyes can see, the son can be filial, and the minister can be loyal. How could he! It can't be said that the four petals of cotton peach are cotton, and the rolling, elastic, spinning and weaving are all cotton, but the clothes made are not cotton, and it can't be said that the front and straight seams are cotton, and the oblique width and side killing are not cotton. If yes, is temperament and gender one or two? And it can be said that nature is good and temperament is evil? "
Besides, Shang Ji said to Yu, "I want to see the images of the ancients: the paintings of the moon, the sun, the stars, the mountains, the dragons, the embroidery of the algae, the colorful dresses, and you will know!" Draw the sun, moon, stars, mountains, dragons and Chinese insects on the clothes, and embroider Zong Yi, seaweed, fire, white rice and cockroaches on the skirts; Or change the parameters, such as taking the sun, the moon and the stars as the flag, the dragon as the scorpion, the insect as the crown, and the tiger as the martyr; Or take it as the difference between the upper and lower levels, such as the pattern under the male dragon, the image under the Chinese worm, the elephant under the algae fire and the pink rice. This is an image. Image is not the form of people, but the status of rank and clan, the system of composition and clothing, and the difference of honor and inferiority, which is manifested in the overall clothing. Looking at this image means looking at civilization. Shun asked Yu, "Do you understand?"
This is the idea of "taking five colors as clothes" as civilization. Image is not seen by form, and civilization is not seen by form. Therefore, the Book of Changes talks about "text" and takes the pattern of tiger and leopard as the theory. People's clothes are like stripes of tigers and leopards. His paper is about culture and never mentions the human body. Kun hexagrams, "Huang Shang in it, but comfortable limbs, born in the cause, very beautiful", is a proof. This not only shows that civilized culture is based on clothing, but also shows that China people pay attention to inner beauty rather than physical beauty, so it is necessary to spread inner beauty to the body and limbs.
Compared with China, they don't really pay attention to clothes. Because, when clothes regard the body itself as an aesthetic object or a civilized object, it is not important, but only plays the role of decoration or covering, or is used to express muscles and bones. In fact, the point is not clothes but body.
At that time, most of the clothes were like those of Neolithic age in China, mainly in the form of head, cloak and shawl. There are countless sculptures and portraits to prove it. Later clothing, of course, was constantly improved in tailoring and collocation, but it is still a very important idea to regard clothing as an accessory or extension of the body in Europe. Try to show your figure through clothes; Or decorate your body with clothes to create an illusion of your body. Susan Langer's book Emotion and Form once described that architecture is a fake folk field, sculpture is a fake sports volume, dance is a fake vitality and literature is a fake from the viewpoint that art is an illusion or a virtual image. According to the above, European fashion art can also be said to have created a fake body.
Today, European style is spreading to the East, and China people have abandoned traditional clothes and changed to foreign clothes. Fashion is second only to Europe and America. The concept of taking clothes as an extension of the body, or using clothes to create the illusion of figure, has long been "global", but China's real concept of clothing civilization is rarely heard. Looking back on the past is really touching.
At present, it is not that there is no orientalism, but that it absorbs the oriental elements in general under the condition of obeying Ouxi's body view. In the east, it was disassembled into some elements, such as color, material, pattern, buttons, cuffs, skirts and so on. In fact, these elements, divorced from the overall thinking of China's clothing concept, are just a bunch of fragmentary symbols. Collage and mosaic can certainly add a touch of style to European and western fashions, but it is like a house built by randomly moving and assembling European architectural vocabulary everywhere on the mainland, which is neither fish nor fowl and often makes people laugh.
It should be noted that the basic ideas of "civilized clothing" and "physical clothing" are different. For example, to reflect the human skeleton, clothes will naturally highlight the shoulders and chest, and sometimes even shoulder pads are needed to modify the problem that the body skeleton is not straight enough, and even women's clothes should be padded. Hanfu, on the other hand, has round shoulders, and the clothes hang directly from the neckline to the wrist connecting sleeves, and the joints do not pull to the shoulders. Only when such a coat is matched with a long skirt can we feel the feeling of "ruling the world by hanging clothes", and people will show the form of sitting like a clock and standing like a pine. This kind of feeling and form is not a natural sense of body, but a sense of culture. However, at present, many people lose this sense of culture when making or wearing medium-sized suits. According to the tailoring and pattern of suits, there are sleeves, shoulder pads, protruding breasts, round arms and full tailoring. Except for buttons on the front, or embroidered dragons, thorns and large flowers, there is no difference from suits. Not only vulgar, but also the whole feeling is wrong, like a shroud, like a gentleman, and like a wrong Zhongshan suit.
Another key point of the concept of clothing civilization is that clothing is used to embody the civilization of rites and music, and the relationship between clothing and etiquette is very close, but we have basically lost this aspect now. In different social classes, different products, different positions and different occasions, no one pays attention to what to wear and how to wear it, and the relationship between clothing and ceremony has long been lost. The president wears a suit like a taxi driver. Etiquette is a social stability factor. At present, fashion and innovation are the main characteristics of the clothing industry. Of course, few people care about the "service system" of the ceremony.
In addition, since China's civilization began with Guanfu's articles, later developed forms of art or civilization, such as writing, calligraphy and painting, naturally originated from clothing. Shun said: "The image of the ancients: the dragon worm painting on the Sun, the Moon, the Stars and the Mountain, the rice embroidery with algae and fire powder, and the five colors as clothes", which is the source of China's artistic image. Unfortunately, this part is rarely paid attention to by people around you.
In short, there are still many articles to be done on the comparison between "the concept of civilization in clothing" and "the concept of body in clothing". Through this comparison, it is believed that many new ideas in China's clothing industry will be stimulated, and a new pattern of breaking through European and American clothing concepts will be created. I would like to provide this historical perspective and comparative cultural methods for your reference. In my opinion, only in this way can there be a future. At present, the so-called new design and brand creation in the clothing industry are just knockoffs in Europe and America.