Just as the status of women in the Tang Dynasty was unprecedented in the history of China, the clothing of women in the Tang Dynasty was unique in the history of clothing in China. Women's dress in Tang Dynasty is not only a wonderful flower in feudal society, but also a strong voice of "rebelling against tradition" and "challenging male chauvinism" on the historical stage of China, which still exists today.
Women's dresses in Tang Dynasty are mainly divided into three types: skirts, men's clothes and Hu clothes. Skirts with bare neck and bare chest (also called topless skirts) are a rebellion against the traditional dress system of "short without skin and long without soil" in the Book of Rites, while women wearing men's clothing is a challenge to "men and women can't wear clothes" in the Book of Rites. The connotation of the former is the expression of the legacy of "female worship" in clothing, while the latter is an open challenge to male power on the basis of "female worship" and the embodiment of women moving from "edge" to "center" in clothing. Let's discuss it separately below.
First of all, the skirt
The dress is mainly short coat, long skirt, satin and half arm, full of crown silk shoes or worsted sandals. The lapel is very short, and the neckline of lapel often changes. However, whether it is a round neck, a square collar, a diagonal collar or a chicken heart collar, the neckline is very wide, and women can generally be seen. This is a relatively rare style and wearing method in Chinese clothes.
In the murals of Princess Yongtai's tomb, the collars of court female officials all hang down to the chest, and the plump neck and upper body are exposed. The statue of maid-in-waiting on the sarcophagus of Li Chongrun's tomb in the Tang Dynasty in Shaanxi Province, wearing a wide-necked blouse with an open neckline, depicts the shape of exposed nipples. This topless dress is also depicted in Zhou Fang's "Lady with Flowers". This type of collar also appeared in the stone relief of Prince Yide's tomb in Tang Dynasty and many pottery figurines. Fang Gan's Pink Chest Half Covered with Doubt and Dark Snow (Being a Beauty), Flowers Bloom, Chest as Snow as Flowers (Nanxiangzi) and Zhou's Slow Girdling and Half Exposing Chest (Meeting Neighbors) are all images of this kind of dressing. Since the Song Dynasty, this kind of clothing has been called "the journey of fornication" by Taoist priests, but it has not been handed down, but has become the eternal swan song of feudal society.
Clothing is a cultural phenomenon in the final analysis. Shuowen said, "Clothes depend on the monarch." "Biography of the White Tiger" said: "Clothes are hidden. The dress is also clumsy, so it can't be seen. " "Ming Shi" says: "Clothes make people rely on it, and people rely on it to keep out the cold and prevent heatstroke." "Tongdian Lizhi" said: "The ancient system of hair without clothes. Later generations took Ma Yi as a mirror, took the prophet as the top, and made his clothes; When you know later, your clothes will be fine. " From these classic expositions, we can know that the original function of clothes is to keep out the cold and hide shame, but with the development of society, it has also become socialized.
According to The Duke of Zhou, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, China's clothing system was very complete, which made China people in a tight ideological bondage from ancient times to the present. "The Book of the Old Tang Dynasty Jade Fu Zhi" says: "In the past, the Yellow Emperor made car clothes to cover them up, but the ancient frugality was not the first class. Kings of three dynasties and five dynasties, not following the habit, changed the new moon, and easily took the color. Cars are different from chariots, and so are clothes. Wen dyeing, embroidery, dragon fire fractal, so the law is strong. " In addition to strict grades, there are also strict restrictions on the styles and sizes of clothes. In other words, China's clothing has been making a fuss about how to closely cover the body, instead of studying how to highlight the curvaceous beauty and healthy beauty of the human body. In the choice of clothing styles, moral standards always overwhelm aesthetic standards, and etiquette requirements often restrict practical purposes.
"Deep clothes" is the concrete embodiment of this idea. There is a special chapter "Deep Clothes" in the Book of Rites, which mentioned for the first time that "the skin is not covered when it is short, and the soil is not covered when it is long". Tang Kong said, "Therefore, those who call it deep clothes take the rest clothes and don't communicate with each other. This kind of deep coat is connected with clothes and the quilt is deep, so it is called a deep coat. " Both Book of Rites Quli and Book of Rites Neize emphasize "not caressing in summer" and "not caressing". The bronze ware "Picking Mulberry Banquet Pot" collected in the Palace Museum depicts a group of working women at that time. It can be seen that even in heavy labor, they still wear heavy clothes that tightly wrap their bodies, their skirts are dragged straight to the ground, and their cuffs cover their hands, which shows the great influence and deep bondage of ethical codes at that time. The influence of deep clothes is very far-reaching. Women's clothing in Qin and Han dynasties was still dominated by deep clothes. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty "Yu Fu Zhi" said: "Women who enter the temple to help silkworms are all dressed in thick clothes." Until now, our common cheongsam is also a deformation of deep clothes. This shows the influence of Confucianism on people.
In the Tang Dynasty, a generation worshipped Taoism, and Taoism always embodied a kind of female worship in its gestation and formation, and Laozi's theory, which constitutes its theoretical core, is characterized by female worship. The cave image culture in my essay "Tai Ping Guang Ji" proves that "cave" is the remains of female worship and the expression of the whole society's "returning to mother" complex. In other words, female worship is a subconscious expression of Tang society. According to Mr. Lv Simian, Lao Tzu means that women's rights are higher than men's rights, which is different from later generations. Cheng Weili thinks: "There are traces of reproductive worship in Laozi's books. Laozi has absorbed a lot of wisdom from women in China, summed up women's life experiences, and integrated them into his own philosophical system as some basic propositions. Laozi even regards returning to his mother as an ultimate pursuit. " Laozi was born in the world of patriarchal civilization, but stubbornly adhered to the ideological heritage of ancient goddess religion which was not allowed by the orthodox ideology of patriarchal civilization. He made chaos, as the mother of the world, play a leading role in the myth of cosmic occurrence, thus effectively rejecting the concept of male creator advocated by male-centered culture. Everything in the universe is the result of the birth of the original mother god, not the result created by the male god with supreme will and authority. Perhaps Laozi's female worship thought coincides with the environment of the "mistress" in the Tang Dynasty, and he is known as "the Great Sage Avenue, the Emperor of the Golden Que Yuan".
In primitive society, the most important thing is nothing more than survival and childbirth. Of these two things, women have the most important power and become the decisive force to maintain the survival of the nation. Female worship has become the oldest sex worship, and women have become the earliest idols with the most admirers. He said: "among all the ignorant people, among all the barbarians in the lower, middle and partially advanced stages of barbarism, women are not only in a new position, but also in a highly respected position." "At that time, there was still a newly extinct matriarchal system, which was almost incomprehensible to the Romans. They think that women are sacred and prophetic things, and they also listen to women's opinions on the most important things. "
"Preface to Yu Saito's Sub-genre of Literature in Past Dynasties": "The source of the Tang Dynasty originated from Yidi, so the rudeness of the boudoir is the same." Chen Yinque also pointed out in the article "On the Clan of the Ruling Class and its Rise and Fall History in the Tang Dynasty": "In short, the monarchs in the early Tang Dynasty, such as the mother of Gaozu and the mother of Emperor Taizong, were all Hu, not Han. Therefore, the maternal lineage of the royal family is mixed with the lineage of the Hu people. " Thus, judging from the maternal lineage of Li Tang royal family, its lineage does not belong to the Han nationality, but the descendants of the northern minority-Xianbei nationality. Li Yuanjia was an official in Wuchuan Town, Northern Wei Dynasty. Li Hu, the grandfather of Li Yuan, and Yu Wentai started Guanzhong together. He was one of the famous eight-pillar countries in Wei and Northern Zhou Dynasties, and his father Li Bing was also a general of the pillar countries. Therefore, the Li Yuan family is also a Xianbei Han nationality. Therefore, in the early days of Li Tang's founding, it was inevitably permeated with the spiritual temperament of the northern grassland people, and it inevitably retained the traces of matriarchal female worship. It is this cornerstone that serves as a potential social and psychological foundation. A generation of Emma Wu Zetian, as a female, "assisted the national government for decades, and its power was no different from that of the emperor. At that time, it was called' two saints', and later it was boarded by the emperor who had been monopolized by men, and "respected the emperor as a holy god and descended the emperor as an heir."
Although the skirt with the beauty of "dew" has far-reaching influence and attracted the attention of Confucian teachers in later generations, it not only appeared in the court of the Tang Dynasty, but also inspired the creation of poets and painters, and was recorded in the history books in time, which has to be said to be closely related to the concept of female worship.
The most important worship of women is female reproductive worship. For example, the nude portrait of pregnant women in Hongshan Culture in the late Neolithic period, the original painter exaggerated the curves of women's bodies, highlighted their plump hips and round abdomen, and fully showed the praise and worship of women's reproductive function. The painted pottery humanoid pot of Siba culture (BC) unearthed in Huoshaogou, Wumen, Gansu Province is also the image of a shirtless woman. The so-called "Venus of Verrando", a stone statue of the great mother in the Paleolithic Age, clearly shows the nature of women. Like a pregnant belly and a water sac, primitive fertility worshippers deify women naturally. In an environment of material poverty, they pin their greed for wealth on the mysterious power of women's bodies. As a whole, this great mother god is a symbol of creating new life. All parts of her body are not physical organs, but sacred symbolic centers in the field of life. Therefore, the self-expression of the great mother god, the display of her abdomen and even her body are all forms of manifestation. Therefore, in the cultural circle of Crete, what is important is a sacrament behavior that adapts to festivals. The goddess and her priestesses showed their full and nourishing lives. Giving women the typical characteristics of nutrition givers, according to the ancient Greek tradition, the first wine glass was modeled after Helen.
In short, the mother's abdomen and utensils are all symbols of fertility and vitality of human beings and the earth, and their yearning, praise and return are the externalization or materialization of the pursuit of wealth and tranquility by farming people. Xiao Bing, Ye Shuxian. Lao zi's cultural interpretation. Wuhan: Hubei Publishing House. Therefore, the topless skirt worn by women in the Tang Dynasty is the reappearance of "showing saints" and the expression of "female worship".
China belongs to a typical ideographic (introverted) national costume cultural circle. However, in the 1950s and 1960s, a costume drama, Bare Chest Movement, was staged in faraway France, just like China in the Tang Dynasty. This movement coincided with the women's liberation movement. This is an era when bare breasts began. If you don't do this, women will waste their lives. The women who bravely devoted themselves to this adventure began to untie the bra. This is an act of returning to nature, that is, women are natural and mothers are natural. This is a comfortable feeling of returning to the original, returning to the natural state as the opposite of civilization. Compared with the prevalence of topless clothes in the Tang Dynasty, the bare-chested movement in France was more than a year late.
Both the topless skirt in Tang Dynasty and the topless movement in France have a great relationship with women's own personality and ideological emancipation. The former was born in the Tang Dynasty, where women worshiped strongly, and the latter was born in the feminist movement, with a strong feminist color. No wonder Gao Luopei sighed and said, "But after the Song Dynasty, the breasts and neck were covered with the upper edge of clothes first, and then with the high and tight collar of underwear. To this day, the high collar is still a prominent feature of women's wear in China. "
Still at the conceptual level. Probably only on that day, when most women value physical comfort more than beauty, when bras are useless, when they have lost their sexiness like their necks or feet and are treated like other parts of their bodies, can women stand up and walk towards people. Women in the Tang Dynasty had already predicted that they would race with bulls. The day when women show their bodies generously is the time when history gives women equal rights.
Paired with a topless skirt, it is half-arm silk. Half-arm is a kind of short sleeve, which evolved from the costumes of Han and Wei Dynasties. Generally, it is double-breasted and waist-long, and the sleeves are wide and straight, but not longer than the elbows. "The Book of the New Tang Dynasty Jade Fu Zhi" says: "Those who wear half-sleeved skirts are often enshrined in the history of women in the East Palace." As for silks, it is recorded in China's Notes on Ancient and Modern Times: "Women have worn silks since ancient times. In the middle of Kaiyuan, twenty-seven women were ordered to go to banquets, attend banquets and wear silks. " Half-arms and silk can neither keep out the cold nor cover the body. They are completely the image embodiment of the social and cultural psychology of seeking novelty and beauty in the Tang Dynasty, and they are another leap from practicality to aesthetics.
Like the topless skirt, it is the abandonment of women in Tang Dynasty, which embodies the rebellious tradition and pursuit of women in Tang Dynasty. This is a towel for covering your face. Towel width is large, which can cover both face and body. It is consistent with the Book of Rites that "when a woman goes out, she must cover her face". The Book of the Old Tang Dynasty, Yu Fu Zhi, said: "During the reign of Wu Zetian and Zhenguan, many court officials rode horses according to the old system of Qi and Sui. ..... After the emblem, you use a curtain cap, drag the skirt around your neck, and gradually reveal yourself. ..... Day after day, the curtain cap grows bigger and dies. ..... In the early years of Kaiyuan, all riders from Imperial Palace appeared in Hu Mao with beautiful makeup, without any obstacles. The scholar's house is imitated, and the curtain hat system will never work. I am proud of myself, or I have doctor's clothes, boots and shirts, and I have always respected them both inside and outside. "We can see different power deviations from the female horse riding in the first cave of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes in the early Tang Dynasty and the Hokkekyo Flower City metaphor in the first and second caves. .
To sum up, the prevalence and decline of topless skirts showed the awakening of women's consciousness and the rebellion against tradition in the Tang Dynasty.