A Preliminary Study On The Influence Of Mongolia-styled Clothing In The Ming Dynasty

The Yuan Dynasty established by Mongolians is the first territorially integrated empire founded by an ethnic group in Chinese history. A huge number of ancient objects, pictures and historical records have proven that in the Yuan Dynasty, Mongolian people's distinctive clothing style characteristic of their nomadic identity exerted an influence upon the Chinese fashion design of that period. Even after the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongolian style did not disappear but became even more popular in various forms throughout the Ming Dynasty. Some of the designs had even been inherited by the designers in the Qing Dynasty. This thesis attempts to take a serious study on the application and history of the Mongolian design in various forms in the Ming Dynasty.As a survey, this thesis is expected to be an elaboration of the use and development of the Mongolian fashion design in the Ming Dynasty. It chooses eight Mongolian styles that appear most frequently in the extant historical records and pictures. Among them, five are hats and three are clothes. Their names are listed below: Boli Hat, a hat like a cymbal; Zhiyan Big Hat, a hat with a plain brim; Skull Hat; Juanyan Hat, a hat with a reversed brim; Waleng Hat, a hat with four edges; The Plait-line Robe; Jisun, a suit of the same color and Bijia, a special sleeveless jacket.This thesis also attempts to describe the changes of Chinese society since the Jin and Yuan Dynasties through the study on clothing. This is the author's starting point in his historical research. By analyzing the fashion design field in the Yuan Dynasty, we are able to find clearly that after the population migration from the northern part of China to the southern part during the Jin and Yuan period, the clothing style in the Ming Dynasty was quite different from that of Tang and Song Dynasties. To some extent, the author believes that this might indicate another social trend. The inherited Mongolian design could be changed and re-designed in many other ways, so as to generate much more fashion styles later.In addition, the author also made an inspection of the clothing used in the Qing Dynasty. Interestingly, the author discovered that some Manchurian representative clothes and designs did not appear initially in the Qing Dynasty. Actually these so-called Manchurian clothing was widely used by the Han ethnic people before the establishment of Qing Dynasty. This is a breakthrough in our study on the society of the Qing Dynasty. By this means, we are able to feel the strong power of the historical tradition and we are also able to know the necessity of studying history from a macro-and long-term perspective. Accordingly, although the former studies only focus on a single dynasty and its social phenomena, we by now should not take a single dynasty as our only concern in many fields. Instead, we should study history as a whole.This thesis is also viewed as a foundation for the case studies in the author's later research characteristic of testifying the historical records through ancient pictures.