Chinese minority costumes are famous for their.vivid color, fine handicraft and rich varieties. The fact that they attach great importance to costume details is related with their nationalities' origin and history.Those patterns, design and adornments, which had been handed down for generations, are not only delicate handicrafts, but also extensions of the minority cultural traditions. People could taste the rich social meanings and explore the customs and taboos behind.
In southwest border area of China, there live the old De'ang ethnic group people. The most typical costume feature in De'ang costumes is the dozens of rattan hoops around girls' waist. It is said that the ancestors of De'ang came from gourd. Men all looked the same and women flew into the sky when they came out of gourd. It was the god of heaven who differentiated the facial features of men and helped men to catch women. Tile god tied women with rattan hoops and women were no longer able to fly. Hence women started to live together with men and multiply for generations and generations.
The waist hoops are made by bamboo strips. Some use bamboo strips in front and screwy silver threads in the back. Waist hoops are in different width, painted with red, yellow, black and green color, carved with patterns or coated with silver cover. The more waist hoops people wear and the more delicate the handicraft, the more honorable they would feel. For two people in love, those waist hoops that are made with elaborate efforts could show the cleverness and deftness of the fancy man and the sincere love for the girls. The more waist hoops adult women wear and the higher the grade of the material, the stronger their husbands' commercial power is and the higher is her position in the family.
