Hsuan Window, Is Dressing

One of the popular theme,“Female making up” is classified as “secular life”, generally most scholars simply describe it as the women routine life in Song dynasty instead of making research in depth. Not only is this one‐side and simple, but weaken the richness and diversity of culture and art in Song dynasty.This paper is focus on the images of female making up, especially the images in the mirror dating from Song to Yuan dynasty, including the tombs underground and the handed down artifacts overground. The discussion is mainly based on ways of seeing. We can tell from the images and documents that the male’s view points and the social ethics produced a profound influence on the female, mirrors play an important role in the process of female awareness. Meanwhile, with the development of Printing Industry and the popularity of female education, besides the other’s comments,the female themselves have their own ways of seeing, female literature and female self‐portraits are commonly used in this part. At the ending of this paper, a hypothesis is given based on the epitaph and the female words founded in Dunhuang grottoes: how does the female give their own voice in Chinese ancient society in which men played a central role. The paper concerns about digging a visual question, that is the vision expression in the process of social change.