Diet is an integral part of material culture and social customs that can best reflect national and regional characteristics. Chu is located in the south, with warm climate and fertile soil, which is suitable for planting rice, and there are many kinds and quantities of wild animals and plants. Chu people live on rice. In the southern city of Chu, charred rice remains were found in five places. The largest one is about 3.5 meters long, 1.5 meters wide and 5~8 centimeters thick. The basic non-staple foods of Chu people are mainly fish, meat and vegetables, which are obtained from animal husbandry, hunting, garden planting and collection. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, etc. It is also found in the bronze tripod unearthed from the No.1 tomb of Wangshan in Jiangling, and there are also many chicken thigh bones in the bamboo shed. Vegetables such as ginger and fennel were also found in Tomb No.1 and Tomb No.2 of Wangshan in Jiangling. Fruit cultivation in Chu is also very popular. In ancient times, there was a saying that "the orange of Jiangpu is the grapefruit of Yunmeng".
Chu is the most popular drinking place in China. The most traditional wine in Chu is citronella wine. Chu people used citronella wine to pay homage to Zhou Tianzi and worship the gods. Chu people have two drinking methods, namely "frozen drink" and "cold drink". "Frozen drink" refers to putting ice cubes outside the hip flask to make frozen wine, and "cold drink" refers to soaking the hip flask in cold water to make cold wine. These are the drinking methods of Chu people in summer. 1978, two ice (warm) wine vessels were unearthed from the tomb of Zeng Houyi in Sui County, Hubei Province. These containers consist of two kinds of containers. The inner square jar container is used to hold wine, and each square jar has a copper spoon. The external square detector is used to hold ice or cold water in summer and hot water in winter.
The architectural style and life customs of Chu people show rich and colorful characteristics. The organizational system and layout of the capital of Chu, like the north, basically adopts the twin-city system of big cities and small cities. The south city of Jinan, the capital of Chu (figure 1, the former site of Jinan, the capital of Chu) is rectangular, with a wall circumference of15560m. There are 84 abutments in the palace area in the southeast of the city, and the ruins of the city wall and the ancient river channel of the moat are found. The ruins of handicraft workshops in the north of the palace area, and further north, that is, the northeast of the city, are commercial areas. One of the main doors of the palace of Chu State is called Maomen. After Maomen, it is the court where the King of Chu ruled the dynasty. There are spacious halls, winding houses, deep rooms and small and exquisite south rooms in the palace, which are composed of palace buildings with different sizes, heights, floors, structures and complexity, forming a magnificent, magnificent and patchwork building complex. What best reflects the architectural characteristics and technical level of Chu people is not the palace buildings in Beijing, but the palaces and high-rise buildings in the tourist park. Wang Jian of the Chu State had a large number of palaces for them to enjoy. King Chu Cheng built the Zhu Gong, which was built on the water south of Du Ying. Zhanghuatai, built by King Ling of Chu, is an outstanding representative of terraced buildings in Chu (Figure 2, ruins of Zhanghuatai Palace).
In Qu Yuan's "Nine Songs", it was written that the characteristics of Ganlan architecture are that the first floor is overhead and the second floor is inhabited, with bamboo and wood structure as the main structure. Gan Lan architecture is the main architectural form of Chu people. This residential architectural style is still used by Tujia and Miao people in southern China. In southern water towns, fishermen mostly live on water and take boats as their homes, which is called "boathouse". "Boathouse" is mentioned in Qu Yuan's "Shejiang Book", which has facilities such as houses, beams and columns, porches and windows.
In terms of clothing. Different nationalities have different costumes. The costumes of Chu people have regional color, which was once called "Chu clothing" and "Chu system" in history. Compared with the nationalities in the Central Plains, Chu people are lively and unrestrained, full of innovative spirit, dare to be unique and express their individuality. This national character and spirit also promoted the Chu nationality to constantly bring forth the old and bring forth the new.
From the perspective of costume history, the costume materials of Chu in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty are the most found at present. There are not only a large number of paintings and modeling materials, but also a number of rare objects, which provide us with rich materials to understand Chu culture from one side.
There are two basic forms of traditional clothing in China, namely, under-clothing system and over-clothing system. In Chu State, these two kinds of clothes are used interchangeably. In ancient times, it was a dress and a petticoat. Chu's clothes include single clothes (Figure 3, Yi Long, a phoenix with purple silk tattoo) and double clothes. Clothes with a face and no lining are called single clothes, which Chu people call "clothes", and Qu Yuan's "Nine Songs of Mrs. Xiang" says: "Worry". The jacket is sandwiched between the face and the inside. A dress was unearthed from the No.1 Chu Tomb in Mashan. According to the season, clothes can be divided into spring clothes and autumn clothes. In Mashan No.1 Tomb, autumn clothes were written as [Qiu Qiu] clothes, and some objects were unearthed (Figure 4, [Qiu Qiu] clothes). According to Shuowen, a dress is a "lower skirt". Two kinds of single skirts were unearthed from the Chu tomb in Mashan; In addition, the lower skirt figures can also be seen on the lacquer paintings of Chu tomb in Xinyang and the bronze statue of bell rack in Zeng Houyi's tomb.
The practical function of the skirt is to hide shame, not to prevent cold. Wearing a boastful skirt. In ancient literature, it was praised as "shin clothes", that is, sleeves worn on two legs. Today, the kua unearthed from the Chu tomb is not much different from pants, the crotch is not connected, and it is split at the back waist, which is similar to the open-backed pants that should be worn now. Just because boasting is public, it can prevent cold legs, but it can't cover up shame. Therefore, bragging means wearing a skirt. Kua is the embryonic form of pants. A pair of trousers was found in Mashan No.1 Chu Tomb, which is the earliest trousers in China (Figure 5, cotton trousers).
The typical representative of clothing with clothes is the "deep clothes" which has the greatest influence on ancient Chinese clothing. In ancient times, shirts and gowns all adopted this system of attaching clothes, and today's dresses are also attached clothes. Deep clothing is the clothing style of the Central Plains in the pre-Qin period, and it is also the main clothing of Chu people. The wooden figurines and painted portraits unearthed from Chu Tomb in Changsha are mainly deep clothes.
Robes are also clothes attached to clothes. They are winter clothes that can reach the feet and are covered with silk cotton. Chu Zhuangwang's main costume is "scarlet robe". The difference between a robe and a deep coat is that the deep coat is crooked and the robe is straight. Straight robe is a new national costume created by Chu people on the basis of deep clothes. Seven robes, divided into three shapes, were unearthed from the No.1 Chu Tomb in Mashan. The first shape, straight body and double sleeves, is cut diagonally and straight (Figure 6, plain cotton robe); The second style is straight-cut, with straight sleeves (Figure 7, light yellow silk robe with phoenix pattern); The third shape is also straight cut, but the sleeves are particularly long (Figure 8, small diamond cotton gown).
The crown styles of Chu people include single crown and high crown. The shape of the crown is high at the front and low at the back, which is made by imitating the shape of the horn. Because King Wen of Chu likes wearing a crown very much, Chu people actually follow suit. Because the high crown is towering above the head, it is also called the cloud-cutting crown by the Chu people. Qu Yuan, a poet of Chu People's Congress, is proud of wearing this high crown. In addition to wearing a crown, Chu people also wear a hat, which is a kind of headdress specially used to tie their hair. A hat was unearthed from Mashan No.1 Tomb (Figure 9, red-brown silk surface).
Clothing is an organic part of clothes. The costumes used by Chu people mainly include swords, jade (photo 10, Yu Pei group ornaments), flowers and hooks. Sabre is the main clothing of men, and sword is the main weapon of self-defense and attack in ancient times. Men in Chu like to wear swords, which is inseparable from the customs of Chu people practicing martial arts. The sword may also be a pure ornament, such as Shuo Yuan, which records that Chu Xiangcheng "took a jade sword" on the day when the monarch sealed it for the first time. On special occasions, swords also have religious significance. For example, the main purpose of witches' swords is to "ward off evil spirits".
Taking flowers and plants as ornaments is a distinctive regional feature of Chu ornaments. "Li Sao" says: "Hu Jiang left the company, and Qiu Lan thought it was admirable." Men and women wear vanilla, which not only plays a decorative role, but also can ward off evil spirits and make men and women like each other. In addition, women in Chu also make sachets with decorative flowers and plants as a custom. For example, among the silk crisis unearthed from Mawangdui Han Tomb, there are floral sachets, embroidered sachets and Luomo embroidered sachets, all of which were left over by Chu Customs.
Hairstyle not only produces aesthetic effect, but also is the most important symbol of national identity. According to archaeological data, there are four main hairstyles of Chu people: the first hairstyle is to put long hair at the back of the neck and droop naturally. The long hair on the head of No.2 woodcarver of No.1 Tomb in Mashan, Jiangling was combed to the back of the head and tied into a bundle with a belt. The lower end is naturally loose and drooping, and the hair is not braided. The long hair of two wooden figurines in Chu Tomb No.1 in Changtaiguan, Xinyang is tied behind their heads and naturally hangs down. The second hairstyle is to comb the long hair behind the head and weave it into a long braid that naturally hangs down the waist. This hairstyle can be found in the wooden figurines unearthed from the No.2 Chu Tomb in Baoshan, Jingmen. The third hairstyle is to pull the hair back. This is a woman's hairstyle on a silk painting of dragons and phoenixes unearthed from the Chu tomb in Chenjiadashan, Changsha. The long hair tied at the back of the head is tied with a ribbon to make it protrude backward and the end is slightly upturned. The fourth hairstyle is vertical analogy. This hairstyle combs the hair to the back of the head, weaves it into a bundle and enlarges it in the lower part of the bundle.
In addition, some of the main folk customs advocated by Chu people are worshipping witches and sacrifices, while John Lone worships phoenix, martial arts, left leaning and slim waist, so I won't go into details here.