The second week of the green challenge went by quickly.
Because of school work, I was able to resist the urge to buy anything. But as Thanksgiving
gets closer, it is getting harder to resist the urge. Every day, I keep getting
advertisements in my mailboxes, and the word “discount” appears everywhere. I
have to stop myself from looking at them by deleting emails or tossing mails
into trashcan.
In this week’s lecture, we talked about how Hmong people
pass their culture and tradition through clothes. They use complicated
techniques, such as applique, to retell their stories through textiles. This
idea interests me because I want to know if Chinese also do something similar. To
do that, I decided to rummage through my closet and found some traditional
clothes and accessories (pictures below). One commonality between these three
items is that they all have elaborate knots. Based on what I learned from an
article in Cultural China, elaborate
knot has been around for a long time. Each knot has a meaning that is
associated with its image. Elaborate knots continue to play an important role
in modern day hanfu because they represent China’s long history.
Even though my traditional
clothes are not fancy, they still tell a story. For example, the hanfu (top left) was specially made for my grandparent. My grandparents brought many
traditional clothes with them when they moved to the United States. To them,
having some traditional clothes was a way to connect to their old culture.
Seeing this particular hanfu reminds me of the struggles my grandparents had to
go through in order to allow us, the grandchildren, to move to the United
States.
Side note: in the Cultural China article, there are
details about accessories and other hanfu. The ones shown here may not look
entirely traditional, but they are the only ones I have.
References:
Ava L. McCall. “Speaking through Cloth: Teaching Hmong History and
Culture through Textile Arts.”
"Clothing and Ornaments." Cultural China. N.p., 2014.
Web. 21 Nov. 2014.
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