Research Huayaodai Headdress Yunnan Xinping County

Living in the area of Red Valley of Ailaoshan Mountain in Yunnan Province, Flower Waist Belt Dai as a branch of the Dai ethnic group, is called "Flower Waist Belt Dai"(pronounced as Huayao Dai in Chinese), because women wearing colorful ribbons around the waist, which is different from the Dai ethnic group in the area of Xishuangbanna and Dehong. Flower Waist Belt Dai (referred to as Huayao Dai in the following text) live mainly in the hot area of dam of Jiasa River in the Yi and Dai Autonomous County in Xinping County of Yunnan Province. In this piece of rich land with beautiful natural environment, generations of Huayao Dai People have created a glorious and resplendent culture, of which Huayao Dai clothing is an important part. Huayao Dai dress is elegant and noble with brilliant multi-color, attracting many scholars’attention home and abroad. Huayao Dai clothing is known as "wearable art, history written on the body". It not only has the rich national characteristics of art and unique aesthetic value, but also carrying the nation’s history with the clothing."Clothes are like the ’history’ without a word", of which the details vividly embodied the traditional culture and historical information of the nation, making the dress culture to cross the river of history and be inherited from generation to generation.Headdress is an indispensable part of a nation’s dress, an outstanding external sign of the nation, and an aggregate of the nation’s aesthetic psychology, economic mode, and customs. Beautiful Huayao Dai headdress is a symbol of Dai People’s wisdom, the carrier of the national culture. Its unique modeling, decorative arts reflect the national social norms, aesthetic taste and value orientation. At present, although there are a lot of monographs, papers, audio-visual materials on Huayao Dai clothing, but the study of Huayao Dai headdress is incomprehensive. Most of these studies regard the headdress as a part of the clothing and insert the headdress as an integral element in the research of Huayao Dai jewelry, which lack system and integrity. In view of this, the author attempted to make a deep analysis and thorough research of the Huayao Dai headdress in a case study.This paper did a research on the Huayao Dai headdress of Xinping County in Yunnan Province mainly on the basis of theories in art, aesthetics, ethnology and other related principles. Through the field investigation in Mosha town and Jiasa town in Xinping County, with the extensive collection of information and material related to Huayao Dai headdress as well as the first-hand information collected by taking a lot of pictures, the writer got to understand the essence of Huayao Dai culture and carried out an in-depth study of Huayao Dai headdress of Xinping County.This paper is divided into five parts:Introduction, the Origin of Huayao Dai Headdress, the Features of the Huayao Dai Headdress, the Function of Huayao Dai Headdress and the Status and Heritage Protection of Huayao Dai Headdress. Firstly, through the theory of origin of headdress, this paper explained that the utility function of the headdress appears prior to its aesthetic function. Through the analysis of historical data, the paper sorted out the historical origin of Huayao Dai ethnic group and the environment for the survival of Huayao Dai headdress. Secondly, based on field investigation and extensive data collection, this paper made an in-depth discussion of the artistic features of the three different branches of Huayao Dai headdress, an introduction of the technological characteristics of the bamboo craft, dyeing and weaving process, silver ornament techniques, brocade of the headdress, and a summary of the links between the dress color, fashion decoration, clothing material, clothing pattern and Huayao Dai headdress. Thirdly, as different ethnic headdress contains abundant cultural connotation of the nation, based on the understanding of the Huayao Dai culture in field research, this paper illustrated the cultural function of the headdress: utility function, totem worship, ethnic identification function. Finally, this paper introduced the status and protection of Huayao Dai headdress of Xinping County, and through the field investigation, found the changes from traditional Huayao Dai headdress to modern ethnic headdress and interpreted the difference between them. The paper also analyzed reasons accounting for these changes from the aspects of modern factors as well as the fusion of ethnic culture with the Han culture. At the same time, the writer put forward independent proposals and ideas on protection and inheritance of Huayao Dai headwear according to the problems found in the investigation.