A purse is a small bag of odds and ends that people carry with them when they wear traditional clothes in China. The shapes of wallets are round, oval, square and rectangle, as well as peach, wishful and pomegranate. The patterns of the purse are complex and simple, including flowers and birds, animals, insects, landscapes, figures, auspicious words, poems and figures, which are very decorative.
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The predecessor of wallet is called "Lotus Bag". Load, load; Bag, bag also. The so-called "bag" is a small bag used to hold odds and ends of fine things. Because ancient clothes had no pockets, some items that had to be carried with them (such as towels, stamps and coins) could only be stored in such bags. The earliest lotus bags can be used with both hands and shoulders, so they are also called "holding bags" or "pulling bags". Later, I gradually felt that my shoulder was inconvenient, so I hung it on my waist, forming a custom called "side bag". Lotus bags are usually made of leather, so they are also called "bags". For example, a piece unearthed from Subhas's tomb in Shanshan, Xinjiang, is made of sheepskin, rectangular, 6.7 cm long and 3.7 cm wide, with a lace at the mouth for hanging. The earliest existing capsules are relics of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
After the Han Dynasty, following its custom, the book Bei Tang Shuchao quoted the biography of Cao Zang 136: "(Cao) is easy to operate, wearing a small bag to pack towels and fine things." "The Book of Jin Deng Youchuan" also records that Deng Youmeng saw a woman walking at the water's edge, and the beast cut off its capsule from behind. It can be seen that in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, both men and women carried bags with them. The bag is decorated with animal head patterns, also called "animal head bag". This kind of capsule image decorated with animal head pattern can also be seen on the stone relief of a Han tomb in Yinan, Shandong Province: the eastern part of the north wall of the middle room is divided into upper and lower compartments, both of which are engraved with character stories. The two people in the small box are wearing cloth hats, tied behind their heads with straps, with sleeves rolled up and straps around their waists. One of them added a belt on the left, and a tiger's head bag hung down from the right waist belt. The bag is relatively large, exquisite in workmanship and embroidered with lace. The same purse is painted on the case of the west section of the north wall of the middle room. The difference is that the characters are wearing in different directions, and a tiger-headed purse is hung on the left waist belt.
In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the satchel system was formally established. The bags people wear are not all leather, but also silk fabrics, but they still use the name of the bag. "Six Rites of Sui Shu": "Sacks (Northern Dynasties), more than two kinds of gold wisps, three kinds of gold and silver wisps, four kinds of silver wisps, five kinds, six kinds of colorful wisps, seven kinds, eight kinds, nine kinds of colorful wisps and animal claws. If there is no official seal, it is not worthy to wear bags and claws. " To the Sui Dynasty, it was specially applied to the wheat clothing below Emperor Liang to bid farewell to the beast head sac of the concubines. "Sui Shu Etiquette Seven": "Liang Di, the bow of clothes, the buckle of silver, is like his job. Pei, Qingshou, eighty songs, one foot six feet long, with claws. I am a contemporary woman. Lin Bao, eight characters, cloth exhibition clothes, copper ring buckle, the text does its duty. She is wearing water and jade, alas ... a claw bag. " Animal claw bag, one of the bags, is a small bag woven with animal claw patterns, which was often worn around the waist by officials in the Northern Dynasties to seal the ribbon.
In the Tang Dynasty, the official seal, fish symbol (turtle symbol) bag and the bag containing exquisite things were used separately. According to the record in the Forbidden City, "In the first year of last year, more than nine kinds of bags were sharpened with knives, made into the shape of fish, and taken as the symbol of strength." Sharpen bags and fish-shaped bags are called "fish bags" and "seven wastes" in the old and new Tang books. These seven things are sabre, knife, whetstone, action truth, punch, syringe, flint bag and so on. Seven Things to Waste Time should be the former name of Seven Things Pocket (Chapter 78 of Qi Lu Deng). Women in the Tang Dynasty especially like to wear purses. Most of this wallet is round with different patterns on it. Most of the women wearing satchels are dressed in Hu clothes and belts around their waists, dressed as western women. However, lotus bags are usually hung on the waist, such as the stone carving of Wei tomb line in Wangcun, the maid in Tang Li Chongrun's tomb and tomb murals.
In the Tang Dynasty, many ethnic minorities had the custom of wearing lotus bags. For example, in the funerals of princes of various countries in Cave 158 of Dunhuang Mural, it can be clearly seen that there are two minority figures with lotus bags hanging around their waists, and the lotus bags made are very distinctive. For example, in the first row, a man kneeling on one leg is cutting his nose. His left waist is hung with a heart-shaped wallet, which looks like a cloud. In the second row, there is a waist-shaped purse hanging on the left waist of the man with his hands on his chest, and the color is the blue edge of Baidi Lake. These two wallets both look exquisite and have exquisite workmanship. The lotus bag worn by Tibetan emissaries in Yan Zou Ma Tu in Tang Dynasty also reflected the customs at that time.
According to research, most of the "fish bags" and "turtle bags" carried as ornaments in the Tang and Song Dynasties were bags for holding things. Wallets became precious decorations in the Tang Dynasty. "Feng Shiwen, Birthday" in Tang Dynasty shows: "In the seventeenth year of Xuanzong's reign, the Prime Minister said that the birthday on August 5th was a thousand-year rhythm, and people presented gifts." Du Mu's poem "The Main Building of Guo Qin": "The name of the festival will be empty in the future, and Ruth will not inherit it." The dew-bearing bag, that is, the purse, evolved from the eye-catching bag (the custom of eye-catching bag: in the early morning of the first day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, women use colored silks to bloom on trees and flowers, which is said to wash their eyes and improve their eyesight for one year). The name of Guan Bai's sacrificial capsule is "dew-bearing capsule", which is a metaphor for bathing the emperor's favor. Folk imitations are given as holiday gifts and used as decorations. Men and women often put them around their waists to hold sundries.
In the murals of Cave 189 of Qizil Grottoes in Xinjiang, there is a patron saint of Qiuci nobles painted in the 6th-7th century A.D., with a girdle around his waist, a short knife hanging on it and a heart-shaped lotus bag of a chicken. The map is now in Berlin, Germany.
There are many things hanging on the belt of the Uighur king in the map of the ritual Buddha of the Uighur king in the east wall of Cave 409 in Dunhuang during the Five Dynasties. Among them, the hanging purse is unique in shape and looks like a gourd, but the upper mouth is trumpet-shaped, the bottom is round and the upper part is small. The color is white, which may be caused by fading. At the same time, the purse with the same shape was also found in the tunnel of Cave 39 in Yulin Cave, and it was also seen in the Uighur aristocratic ritual Buddha map.
Another example is the donor statue in Cave 169 of Baizixi Grottoes in Turpan. A lotus bag is hung on the right belt of the eight-body Uighur donor, and there is a bead at the top of the lotus bag. Lotus bags are the same in style and size, but different in color. This painting is now in Berlin, Germany.
The name "purse" appeared after the Song Dynasty. Fashion says: "Notes on Neng Gai Zhai contains Liu Weiming's poem" Xiqing Lotus as the Symbol ",while Ouyang Xiuqi uses purple lotus as the symbol and turns red medicine, all of which are read as the symbol of lotus. Today, when I say "purse", I have to wear a robe to show my respect, or is it because of Zilian? " This is a suspicion that the purple lotus in the Song Dynasty is a purse. Under Yuan Mei's Essays with the Garden, there is a "purple lotus is not a purse" to clarify its right and wrong. This formulation is common in Yuan Zaju and Ming and Qing note novels. The so-called purse is actually the purse in front, the side purse and the purse. Wang Ji, a Qing Dynasty official, recorded in "The Original Meeting of Things": "In" Yu Fu Zhi "of the Jin Dynasty, all the officials of the civil and military departments wore ribbons, and the eight ministers were purple, which was a load, not a canal. Today, it is said that the wallet is this. "
In the Yuan Dynasty, people also wore lotus bags, such as the portrait of a Mongolian donor in Cave 332 of the Yuan Dynasty in Dunhuang murals, with lotus bags hanging on both sides of the front two people's waists.
At the end of the year, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty often gave money to ministers. "Xiao Ting Continued" records: During the reign of Ganjia, "all princes and ministers gave gifts at the end of the year; All the ministers in power gave the Year of Peace a purse.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the purse was also called "eggplant bag" and "straight bag". In the third episode of Jin Ping Mei, Ximen Qing "takes out (silver) from the eggplant bag and gives it to Mrs. Wang to prepare wine and food". This is what the Song people call it. According to Yu Fu Zhi, the history of Song Dynasty, the main objects of gold are jade belts and eggplant bags. Chapter 24 of Street Lamp: "Shao Wen took out a book from his pocket and handed it to Xia Fengruo."
There are a large number of physical objects handed down from generation to generation in Qing Dynasty. It is usually made of silk with colorful embroidery on it. Because of the different materials and shapes, the names of bags are different. Some are small in shape, large in volume, and some are folded at the waist, which looks like a gourd, so they are called "gourd bags". Some are made into large and small chicken hearts, commonly known as "chicken heart pouches". In some large and medium-sized cities, there are workshops specializing in the production of this kind of jewelry. For example, "A Brief Introduction to the Cultural Relics of the Old Capital" said: "Hebao Lane sells nine official samples, gold embroidery and various designs." It is said that this kind of wallet was originally used by men to hold tobacco leaves. Later, everyone thought it was beautiful, so they rushed to imitate it, and both men and women liked it. "Zhuzhici" in Beijing said, "In order to hold tobacco leaves, we made all kinds of purses. I don't know who passed it on, and every family draws a gourd. "
In addition to purse, men in Qing dynasty also hung wallets, fan covers, sachets, knives, glasses cases and other items around their waists, which were both decorative and practical. It is rare for women to wear this kind of clothes. Usually hang one or two small ornaments on the skirt, such as ear spoon, tooth picker, tweezers with less hair, etc.
With the development of the times, the change of costumes and people's cultural psychology, purse has become a collection of people in cities, but it is still popular in rural areas and ethnic minority areas. One of the main contents of Buyi youth marriage is "playing with a purse". The purse culture has left people not only folk artworks for appreciation, but also rich and profound cultural connotations.
On the Dragon Boat Festival, every family eats zongzi, hangs wormwood and calamus on the door, wears purses for children and hangs colored silk thread, and drinks realgar wine in dragon boat races to commemorate Qu Yuan and so on. Besides commemorating Qu Yuan and eating zongzi, so many customs are related to exorcism.
China's embroidery is famous at home and abroad. It came into being with the feudal society of "men plowing and women weaving" and adapted to the characteristics of small-scale peasant economy combining agriculture and handicraft industry. The varieties of embroidery are all over the daily necessities, and the content of embroidery almost reflects all aspects of life. Through those exquisite, bright and beautiful patterns, people can feel the pure beauty of working people. Among many embroidery techniques, the most prominent one is embroidered purse.
Shanxi has a long tradition of planting cotton and linen. From the Northwest Plateau to Jinnan Basin, almost every family has looms. Women are not only good at labor and housework, but also good at textile embroidery. Rural girls have been practicing embroidery since they were teenagers, and their mothers and grandmothers are naturally her first teachers. In the long night of winter, in the leisure time of spring and autumn, they will pick up needle and thread, cloth art, red painting and embroidery, and form an exchange of thoughts and feelings between mother and daughter and sisters through embroidery. When the youth comes, every girl is weaving her own dreams. These dreams are the interweaving of emotion and meaning, the fusion of ideal and reality, and accompany the daughters through the most passionate and intelligent years. With exquisite embroidery skills, they recorded these colorful dreams, embroidered them into wallets, fan bags, mirror bags or sachets, and gave them to their lovers. A small purse, with endless affection, is beautiful, pure, subtle and clear, which is not only a daughter's secret, but also a representative feeling of human beings. In the process of daughter's love, engagement and marriage, these ordinary objects shoulder a special mission. Although the purse is small, it "wraps" all feelings, love, thoughts and love, and becomes a fine product with folk symbolic significance. If you wander in the Loess Plateau in the northwest of Shanxi, in the grassy ditches and in the rolling Yamanoue, you will hear crisp and melodious songs, which will bring people into the ancient and beautiful, profound and magnificent art world. This is Shanxi's famous folk song "Embroidered Pocket":
The height of the moon from the first day to the fifteenth day,
The spring breeze swayed the tops of poplars and willows.
Peach blossoms in March, lovers bring books,
Take books, letters and a wallet.
The tune of this folk song is only two sentences, and the lyrics have a certain formula, but the content can be freely added or deleted according to the needs of expression and expression. This song was written by a lover's message, from buying needle and thread, selecting silk material, cutting patterns, to embroidery. It describes the whole process of embroidery, and the content of embroidery is also closely related to the surrounding life, showing the hero's specific inner feelings:
Embroider sails for the boat,
Guess what this means, lover.
Two embroidered mandarin ducks live by the river,
You say goodbye, I rely on it, and we will never be apart.
In the song, the image is used as a token of love, and at one moment it is affectionate, expressing love for the lover, and at the other moment it is slightly sad, telling the thoughts of parting. Finally, I sang my inner hope: "After receiving this purse, Lang, you should come back early." Small wallet has become a token of young men and women's love and a symbol of pure and faithful love. Therefore, young men receive this unusual gift, even if they go to the ends of the earth or go to work, they wear it on their bodies and cherish it all the more.
Shanxi folk embroidery purse has various forms, mostly for practical application. The shape and size of a wallet depend on the style of the items it contains. For example, the small mirror bag is round, the glasses bag is oval and the folding fan bag is rectangular. These clever folk women, with their highest enthusiasm and association, turned a beautiful picture of life into an embroidered picture. There are various patterns in the purse, such as "Butterfly Love Flowers", "Fish Playing with Lotus", "Phoenix Wearing Peony", "Kirin Sending Children", "Magpie Kwame" and "Pomegranate Giving Birth to Hundred Flowers", which convey the mystery in my heart very implicitly.
In folk purses, sachets account for a considerable proportion. The sachet is filled with herbs and other medicines, and the surface of the sachet is embroidered with "five poisons", namely scorpion, snake, centipede, gecko and toad. They were originally seasonal commodities for the Dragon Boat Festival in May. In order to prevent all kinds of poisonous insects from ravaging the human body, people give gifts to each other and hang them on skirts or account hooks to avoid the "five poisons." As far as shapes are concerned, there are tiger-shaped, chicken-shaped, wishful-shaped, peach-shaped, and braided-shaped, which means happiness, luck, longevity, happiness, auspiciousness and wishful thinking. Embroidered purse has a profound national psychological foundation and shows great vitality in folk culture.
Shooting bag of Jingpo nationality
On holidays, the girls hang embroidered purses on bamboo poles with fine wool and shake them from side to side with branches for the young man to shoot. Whoever shoots the wallet first will spill water on his mouth first. A wallet usually contains a coin, some millet and some decorative beads as a symbol of happiness.