Hani Women In Traditional Costumes And Symbols

This paper takes Hani women's traditional dress and personal adornment as the object of study. According to literature and fieldwork material, with the symbolic theory, it probes into the cultural meaning, mainly including the dress and adornment's style, color, ornament worn as a pendant, designs of the dress and adornment, the procedure of the dress' making and clothes-changing. Furthermore, it discusses the significance of this symbolic system in cultural interpretation of Hani nationality.The body part consists of forward, five chapters and the conclusion.The forward mainly introduces the study background, the current research situation of this issue and research methods this paper used.Chapter One gives the general picture of Hani women's traditional dress and personal adornment. Taking the three branches Yiche, Aini, Biyue as examples, it probes into the cultural information implied in the dress and personal adornment.Chapter Two introduces the color of Hani women's traditional dress and personal adornment. Black, red and white are the favorite colors of Hani women. This chapter analyses how this idea comes out and how it changes with times in order to explore the cultural and symbolic meaning of the color.Chapter Three introduces Hani women's ornament worn as a pendant, especially introduces the silver adornment, fish designs and feather adornment enriched with varied meanings.Chapter Four introduces the designs of Hani women's traditional dress and personal adornment and reveals their cultural meaning. The meaning refers to various aspects of Hani people, from mythology about the creation of heaven and earth to animism, from personal emotions to this nationality's history.Chapter Five introduces procedures of the dress-making, clothes-changing and symbolic meaning of Hani women's traditional dress and personal adornment.The conclusion part makes a summary and stresses that Hani women's traditional dress and personal adornment is a symbolic system implied various meanings and play an important role when we try to interpret Hani nationality's culture.In a word, this paper is the synthetical study of Hani women's traditional dress and adornment. It will help us have the concept of viewing the situation as a whole. On the angle of cultural interpretation, it will help us better understand the symbolic system of Hani women's dress and personal adornment and their unique cultural significance.