BEIJING, Jan.18 -- When Lei Xiuwu, a research fellow with the Ethnology Research Institute of Southeast Guizhou Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, visited a private folk museum in Paris recently, he was surprised to learn that the museum has collected some 180 folk costumes belonging to the Miao minority.

    

A Miao girl wearing beautiful silver ornaments stands out at the Guzang Festival.(Photo: China Daily)

Among the costumes that came from Southeast Guizhou Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, 15 were the rare "Hundred Bird Costume" (Bainiaoyi) from the Yueliang Mountain region in Rongjiang County.

    That was even more than the costume collection in museums in Guizhou, said Lei.

    "But what surprised me the most was that the French curator told me, in 100 years, when the Chinese want to study Miao clothes, they'll have to visit his museum," said Lei.

    Wordless annals

    The Miao people have a history spanning back several thousand years. They were forced to move into southern China from the middle reaches of the Yangtze River because of several major wars.

    They did not have their own written language in history until the 1950s, when the central government dispatched linguists to minority regions and helped local people to create written language.

    Throughout history, clothing has been an important and practical way to record their long, eventful past.

    Through interactions with other people, their special dress was documented in written records. The earliest book that mentioned the peculiar costume of the Miao people is "Huainanzi," compiled by Prince Huainan (Liu An) of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).

    The book says that the Miao people mixed hemp in their hair and then wrapped their hair around their head.

    In the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), Emperor Taizong once met a southern tribe leader who was wearing a dress adorned with many birds' feathers. This is just one of the many stories related to the "Hundred Bird Costume."

    The "Hundred Bird Costume" goes back a long way, with the best preserved one over 300 years old, being held at Yueliang Mountain.

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