became the daughter-in-law of the headman of the tribe and married the third princess. At the wedding day of Pan Hu King, the bride's mother gave his daughter a very precious phoenix crown and a phoenix dress decorated with jewels to show her bless to her daughter. After marriage, she gave birth to three sons and one daughter and lived happily. When her daughter got married, beautiful and elegant phoenix magically flew out of mountain (hence this mountain was named Phoenix Mountain, located inside the Guangdong Province now), hoIding in mouth a very colorful and fancy phoenix dress. Since then, She women have been considering phoenix dress as the most beautiful holy dress that could bring them luck and safety.The phoenix dress nowadays is embroidered with red, peach red or yellow patterns and more delicate ones are embroidered with gold or silver threads to represent the fancy feathers of phoenixes. The phoenix crown represents the exalted phoenix head. Because phoenixes are the musicians in the fairy world who understand music, phoenix dresses will be covered with tinkly silver adornments, representing the singing of the phoenix.
Yi minority people, who live in the Small and Big Liang Mountain, have unique costumes with a long history. Yi People worship leather loricae, because they believe loricae could protect the safety of family and individual. It was said that ancient people used rhinoceros skin and elephant skin to make loricae, and what we could see now are mainly made by cattle skin with rawhide as the roughcast. They are coated with lacquer and decorated with colorful lacquer pattern. The animal patterns used are dragon and python surrounded with arrowheads and the edge decoration is clouds. The implied meaning is that dragon and python are the animals sent to the human world by deity to help tile loricae's owner to conquer enemies. They could protect loricae wearer's safety and help them win the victory by shielding lance and arrows. Among Yi people, they divide the loricae into two types: male and female. The color of male loricae is mainly red while the color of female loricae is black. In Yi's other artworks, they also like to use black, red and yellow colors. Black color signifies sobriety, red signifies courage and passion, and yellow signifies beauty and brightness. Yi people worship black, military force and respect fire, which are well displayed in their leather loricae.
Dai women like to embroider peacock pattern on their costumes. Besides showing their remembrance to their ancestors, they believe that peacocks could bring luck to Dai People. A long Dai poem describes the story of a beautiful and kind peacock princess who flies into the lake to bath one day. A prince who was deeply in love with her took her peacock dress away. The prince hoped that in this way he could keep the peacock princess. Later they fell in love, and then got married and lived happily. The peaco
ck king got irritated after knowing this and sent troops to go on a punitive expedition. The prince led soldiers to meet the attack, but the prince's father believed in slanderous talk and planed to kill the peacock princess. The princess requested to dance with the peacock dress before her death but took this chance to fly away. The prince prayed for the help of magic dragon and crossed mountains, rivers and oceans to reunite with his princess. To commemorate this lovely couple, Dai people started to wear peacock clothes during festival days or embroider the peacock pattern on their costumes. People dance together to display Dai people's supplication to beauty and happiness.Men of Yao minority who live in Guangxi wear white trousers. These are not plain white trousers, but decorated with five or seven strips of red cloth on the knee part and some are embroidered with red threads and decorated with small patterns of all different shapes. This practice of sewing red cloth on white trousers also came from a very touching ancestor worship story. Long long ago, their ancestors lived and worked in peace and contentment, but suddenly there came a demon who asked people to present their food supplies and girls and also take orders from him. A handsome and brave young guy in the tribe led his tribe people to fight with the demon. He took the lead in chasing the demon into a mountain. When people arrived, they found the young guy had already perished together with the demon. In his hands, he still seized the demon's hair. Bloodstain scratched by the demon's big paws was left on his clothes. To recall this hero who drove away the evil demon for the people, Yao people began to embroider or sew red vertical stripes pattern on their white trousers to signify the blood mark scratched by the demon, to commemorate the ancestor and to spirit up themselves.
