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Miao ethnic costumes suffer a heavy loss
www.chinanews.cn 2006-02-23 16:51:37
Typical Miao women wear silver hairpins, which are regarded as both a
totem and a reflection of local farming culture.
Chinanews, Feb. 23 �C Traditional costumes worn by Miao ethnic women
living in southeast Guizhou is considered as most elegant and delicately
made among Miao clothing. The costume is unique in design and above all,
bears a rich cultural significance. Some people regard the costume as a
"characterless history book."
Foreigners also cherish these costumes that have once been worn by local
people for over hundreds of years. At first, they merely liked them.
Later, some foreigners started to collect them and even put them on sales
market.
The transaction results in a heavy loss of the costumes.
A local media reported that an assistant researcher, Lei Xiuwu from the
Guizhou Southeast Miao and Dong Prefecture Ethnic Research Institute once
talked with a curator from a private folklore museum in France and was
amazing to learned that the museum had collected more than 180 sets of
Miao ethnic clothing and 108 among the clothes are costumes of Miao
people living in southeast Guizhou.
The museum had collected a typical clothing, named "clothing with
hundreds of birds," which is usually worn by people in the Yueliangshan
area on worship ceremonies and has a high archeological and cultural
value. The museum had collected 15 sets of such clothes, even more than
the total number existing in Guizhou province. The curator once said to
Lei, "A century later, Chinese people will have to come to my museum if
they want to study the ethnic clothing culture of the Miao people."
Principal of the Guizhou Ethnic College Wu Dahua urged relevant
government to issue a law as soon as possible in order to protect the
Chinese ethnic cultural heritage. He said this was in line with the
international norm and was also an imminent task for China.
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