In terms of adornments, the nationality that has tile largest amount of adornments should be Miao minority whose adornments are almost all made of silver. It is fair to say that Miao's silver adornments are the most outstanding among all nationalities.Whenever wom need to dress up, they must wear silver adornments. There are a big variety of types including silver hair pins silver cattle horns, Silver hats, sliver combs, silver fans, silver neck rings, silver earrrigs, silver shawls, silver chest locks, silver waist chains, silver bells, silver bracelets and silver finger rigs etc..A Miao lady who is ill full dress might wear silver adornments as heavy as 10 to 15 kilos. Miao people believe that wearing silver adornments is not just to show their wealth or for the aesthetic needs, most important it is to pray for luckiness and drive the 
evils away.
Miao people have a long history and high level craftsmanship in making silver ornaments. There is a rich variety in designs and patterns, such as the silver bracelet, silver ring, hollow, solid wood shaving shape,hexagonal and column styles. Among Miao's silver adornments, tile ox horn style head adornment is the most stunning and representative one. This kind of silver ox horn adornment is very popular in Southeast regions of Guizhou. Women who are in full dress will plug in a silver ox horn in their tall hair chignon. A silver ox horn is made of white silver pieces of different thickness with tile two corners turning up. Like a water buffalo horn, it is about 1 meter if adding the height and width and weighs one kilo. The ox horn is decorated with flower patterned silver fans.
There is another kind of wooden ox horn head adornment, mainly popular in Miao living regions in Guizhou such as Guiyang and Bijie. This kind of ox horn ornament is made by wood, about 50cm long with two horns turning up and comb dents in the middle to wrap and secure the hairpiece. Women first coil up their long hair around head top, and then secure the wooden ox horn ornament to the head top with hairpiece and black cotton threads or silk threads. The reason why this kind of ornament imitates ox horn is because of primitive worship. Miao people worship cattle and consider them as sacred cattle from heaven that are sent to human world to help people furrow and plough and bring happiness to the human world. So they would celebrate birthday for the cattle every year and hold sacrifice ritual to respect and worship tile oxen. It is said among people that in ancient time, Miao men moved to their wife's family after getting married. In order to dress up the bridegroom and make him look masculine and strong, people would put on a pair of wooden ox horns on top of the head. Besides dressing up the bridegroom, making the wedding more extravagant, the ox horn ornament is also for the purpose of warding off the evils. In modern time, wedding tradition changes into women moving to their husbands' home after getting married, so the ox horn head adornment now becomes the bride's ornament. Till today, the ornament is not limited to wedding occasions and has become part of Miao's festive costumes. Besides using large amount of silver adornments, Miao's embroidered clothes are also very delicate. For example,on a bride's embroidered jacket,the number of decorative triangles folded by yellow pieces could reach 17,000. Girls start to make these
decorative triangles when they are six or seven years old. When these girls finally finish making their bride jacket with great efforts, they are about to reach the age to get married. Adornments accompany the whole life of Miao women.
People of Dong minority also like silver adornments. They attach great importance to the quantity and delicacy of the adornments. For Dong women's full dress, there are dozens of head adornments such as the silver flowers, silver hats, silver chest adornments, silver neck rings and silver bracelets etc. Some of the hanging chains are twist style and some are connecting rings style. For the silver ornamental hat, there are 18 arhats inlaid on the top layer, 18 plum blossoms on the lower layer and two male lions on both temple parts of the brim. The ornamental obiect shows not only Dong's exquisite craftsm
anship but also their wish for luckiness. After a woman gives birth to a child, her family will give the grandson silver adornments as presents including silver hats, silver locks, silver neck rings, and silver bracelets. Dong women like to wear clothes of simple and plain color. Mainly using black, blue, purple and white as the base color, they only use light green or light rose pink color when they need to do embroidery on some parts, which is similar to Shui national costumes. Shui people also like to wear black or blue jackets and silver chest locks,silver neck rings, silver bracelets,silver earrings, silver waist chains, silve combs and silver buttons etc.
The most well-known Maonan costume is the patterned bamboo hat. Its main function is not to shelter sunshine and rain, but mostly as a kind of adornment. In most occasions, it is used as the keepsake between lovers. The patterned bamboo hat is decorated by silver adornments, such as a hairpin, silver comb, and silver ring. The silver neck rings, silver kylins, silver plates or silver buttons adorns the outside of their black or blue clothes.
Li women who live in Hainan Island also cover their body with silver adornments including silver hairpins, silver bells in front of chest, silver neck rings, hanging silver plates, silver waist chains and silver foot rings. There are silver adornments arranged orderly even on the lower hem of the clothes. Not limited to silver ornaments, Li women also love neck rings made of copper coins, red cloth pendants, steel waist swords and bead ornamental strings made of beads of different colors. Even file gun carrying bag and power bag are all embroidered with colorful patterns.
Comparably speaking, Gaoshan people who live in Taiwan Island, even till the modern time, still keep many adornments that contain primitive meaning, which well document human being's childhood fun. For example, the shell adornments, glass beads, pig teeth, bear teeth, feathers, animal skin pieces, flowers, copper or silver adornments, ornamental coins or bones, silver buttons and bamboo pipes. Gaoshan Taiya people have a kind of very precious costume. They polish the shell pieces carefully and make them into small beads with holes. Then these beads were stringed with thin linen threads and sewn onto the clothes in rows. It is said that at least fifty to sixty thousand shell be needed to make such a bead coat.
It is hard to describe minority's adornments in just several pages of paper.Since 1980s, along with the reform and the open door policy,young people of minorities one after another walk out of the remote mountains and valley into cities. Some adornments have shown a tendency to die out.The Hah people's clothes are experiencing a tendency of westernization while minorities' costumes get Hanzified quickly. Facing the impact of the modern social industrialization, will these handicrafts made with heart and soul gradually die out?
