Manchu Costumes And Cultural Change Research

Manchu is one of China's fifty-six nationalities, which has once set up the last feudal dynasty of our country. During the development of the history of China, Manchu's society, economy, culture and many other aspects have also undergone many changes and the costume of Manchu has its developing and changing law and track in this changing process. The elements of raiment of Manchu and its forefathers enrich the dress cultures of the Chinese nation. The well-known cheongsam, waist coat and mandarin jacket are generally accepted by our country's people in recent and modern times and become the typical representatives of the Chinese nation's costume, which is the result of inheritance and mixture of Manchu's costume. How is the effect of the cultural and natural environment on Manchu's costume during its changing process? How does the Manchu's costume change? What is the decisive element influencing the changes of Manchu's costume in different periods? What's its reference meaning on the development of the current Chinese nation's costume? How to make cultural interpretation on the current costume by tracing back the origin between Manchu's costume and culture, history and society? How to protect and develop the ethnic minority cultural heritages? These are the questions that this thesis wants to resolve. The developing history of Manchu's dress culture can reflect Manchu and its culture's developing and changing history. This thesis makes analyses on the diachronic development of Manchu's costume and the synchronic changes of Qing Dynasty's Manchu's costume to expound its apparent and recessive changes occurred in every aspects. Taking Manchu's costume as the theme and the natural environment and social cultural environment as the background, by researching the relations between them to describe the changes of Manchu's costume and dredge up its deeper cause. It also deals with its effect on the development of the recent and modern Chinese dress culture. It has initial creativity in the academic world to discuss Manchu's costume in these aspects.Manchu's dress culture is the most important part of the Chinese culture, especially the ethnic minority's culture, and the most important part of cultural heritages as well. It not only inherits the Manchu's dress advantages but also maintain its national feature which go through testing, practicing and confirmed to meet the need of the life. It combines inheriting, borrowing, innovation and regeneration organically, which is one of the important empirical of the Chinese history and the current national unity, national fusion and cultural reference. The formation, development, changes and regeneration of Manchu's costume provide a practical example for the interaction among Chinese national dress. The developing and changing track and law of Manchu's costume are of great significance on the research of relation among Chinese national dress and developing the common prosperity of the Chinese national dress culture as well as the combination of the traditional dress element in the modern clothes design and product vogue.Based on the collection of a great number of historical documents and wide field investigation, this thesis, in the first time, makes the diachronic sorting on the Manchu's costume and analyses its cultural changes. It's our generation's responsibility to combine the traditional and modern dress elements with the world's dress elements to design the dress with the national feature, especially in the cultural prosperity and developing society. How to maintain the host culture feature of our nationality and also get along harmoniously with the other country's in the world to achieve cultural consciousness and let the culture develop in the inheriting and innovate in the reform. This is a difficult problem that we must confront with at the present time. The research on the cultural changes of Manchu's costume will be of great significance on the intercommunication, mutual fusion and harmonious coexistence in China with fifty-six nationalities and in the world. Form the changing process of Manchu's dress culture, this thesis has sought a possible way to solve this difficult problem.This thesis mainly adopts historical literature research method, ethnological fieldwork investigation method and multiple-discipline method, which is the research of combination of ethnology, cultural anthropology, art science, aesthetics and history, and these subjects are all considered the human and its culture as the main research objects to explain all kinds of phenomena occurred in the current society. This thesis combines the unearthed relics and ancient documents with the field investigation data to research and put them on the same research platform to make comparative and comprehensive research.