#yuan

Background

History

Src: Yuan (Mongol) Empire c. 1300, Yuan dynasty, Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Yuan Dynasty was the first time that Han people were ruled over by what we’d consider an ethnic minority. You might remember that the major conflict during the preceding dynasty was between the Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty, or the 女真/nv3 zhen1/Jurchens, which we now call the Manchurians. Really there were a bunch of groups in the area fighting each other—the Jurchens, Mongolians, Khitans, and Han were all involved, with alliances and oppositions switching up between nations pretty quickly. Near the end, the Mongolians (at this point led by Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan) overwhelmed the Southern Song militarily.

*At this point I’d like to note that the Chinese perspective and the Mongolian perspective on the Yuan Dynasty is going to differ. Since I’m studying Han clothing culture, I’m primarily going to be looking at this from the Chinese side of things, but I want to acknowledge that there is a whole other side of this that I’m probably not going to be reporting on much, and I would encourage anyone who wants to get a better idea of what was going on to go look for Mongolian-perspective sources as well, because it does get kinda icky politically.

This was a big turning point for Han people, but to his credit, Kublai Khan fucked up a lot less for them than he could have. Coming into power, while there were obviously some pretty harsh actions made to prevent Han uprising/maintain power, a surprising amount of the existing Han political structure was preserved. He didn't mandate that Han people wear Mongolian clothing, didn't force them to adopt their religion.

I think that this willingness to keep Han and Mongolian peoples' culture separate was both the Yuan Dynasty's intrigue and also, later on, its downfall. The Mongolians did not have the same centuries of experience in administering/governing a massive country like China—they themselves had only been unified for maybe fifty years, under Genghis Khan. And governing China is hard—it's huge, and it's got a ton of people, and a very complicated economy.

It would have been much harder to force all of that to assimilate into Mongolian culture, especially when they were so outnumbered. I also remember reading that Kublai Khan's philosophy was much less ruthless than Genghis Khan's, who probably could've gone down that route; I don't think that he would've been willing to try that.

Src: Portraits of Shizu (Kublai Khan) & Chabi by Yuan Nepalese artist Araniko, cropped & cut for exhibit Age of the Great Khan, Taipei National Palace Museum

The other choice, which is maybe a bit closer to what they did, would be to adopt Chinese culture: the centralized structure, doing things in the same language, etc. But that came at a price: other powerful Mongolians understandably disagreed, losing favor with them. He also wasn't willing to fully assimilate, which meant the Han people would still feel disconnected from their 'foreign' rulers.

Straddling this line between culture was risky business. By maintaining separate cultures and separate identities, they made sure that neither culture was completely lost or assimilated while still allowing for the artistic and philosophical development that came with encountering unfamiliar influences closely; however, this unwillingness to pick a side also meant that both sides had something to be upset about. Lots of historians name this as the primary reason why the Yuan Dynasty, in the end, lasted less than a hundred years.

On the cultural side, a lot of introspective art surrounding culture and tradition arose out of this period, along with vernacular fiction and theater. Being under foreign rule called many artists to examine and question their own ideas of identity and ownership—might I say similar to how some of us third culture kids feel—and art has always been very much a political medium.

Nevertheless, this post is not about the Yuan Dynasty influence on Han clothing, because I'll be covering that in a different post for this collection when I explain the design for one of the 胡服騎射 Styles from the Steppes robes. Just know that there was a significant amount of cross-cultural evolution.

The Skirt: Research & Evidence

Artifacts

The sources for Yuan Dynasty hanfu are limited, partly because most hanfu enthusiasts don’t really consider the Yuan Dynasty a part of hanfu history. I will leave the choice of distinction up to the reader’s personal preference. Whether or not Yuan Dynasty clothing should count as hanfu, it still played a part in the history of the mamianqun specifically, bridging the hundred years between the fall of Song and the rise of Ming—in fact we really see the mamianqun take shape at this time. I think it would be remiss not to include it.

Also, we're trying to encompass almost a century's worth of fashion across a massive country in one outfit, so obviously we're not going to be able to include everything; garment styles have been chosen based on available evidence to best represent the Yuan Dynasty but they are definitely not indicative of what must have been worn then.

Again, while the sources are limited, there are a few easily established facts. One, the Mongolian and Han women were allowed to maintain different clothing systems during the Yuan Dynasty. I briefed both—the prior because of a custom order I took from someone in the SCA—but for this project we’re focusing on the latter. They still impacted one another, and by quite a lot, but neither was ever forced to conform to the other like in the Qing Dynasty.

I was able to find three relevant Yuan Dynasty burial sites with skirt artifacts, though all of the sources are very bits-and-pieces, and most of the photos are like... unbelievably shitty, so bear with me here. These include the following:

無錫錢裕墓 / wu2 xi1 qian2 yu4 mu4 / Tomb of Qianyu, Wuxi

Src: Wuxi Museum exhibition page title banner graphic

The skirts from this first one don’t resemble the mamianqun much, but you can sort of see the beginning of the form starting to take place. The official report for this and some of the photos of the artifacts that are floating around seem to be at odds with each other sometimes, so I'd take this with a grain of salt.

Anyway, this burial site is in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province. There are a ton of burials near here, which makes sense considering its location (smack dab in the middle of the coastline). It was discovered in 1960; the report was written in 1964 (it takes a while to get everything organized). It belonged to a man named 錢裕/Qianyu who lived from 1247-1320CE, and was buried in 1321CE (I'm hoping this is a case of 'died at the end of the year and buried at the beginning of the next year' and not 'we forgot his body in the fridge for like ten months'). As a descendant of a king from the Five Dynasties period, he would've been a part of an aristocratic family.

In 1964, a short artifact report on the 154 items unearthed from this site states that there were 6 skirts uncovered, 3 lined and 3 unlined; a later restoration report + the Wuxi Museum database only has 5 total, so I assume at some point one of the unlined skirts got too damaged to rescue or something. I'm also like 90% sure someone fucked up entering the names into the database, because they gave two of the artifacts the exact same name, and all the names in the restoration report match up except for one.

I've pirated borrowed some screenshots of the report above. The passage concerning this skirt is inexplicably written in a weird combination of simplified and traditional Chinese; I am transcribing it in traditional because I like traditional.

裙共6件，古黄色。3件夹，2件面提花紋綢，1件素綢，裹皆素綢，独幅無折襉，前面鑲有繡大花圖案紗兩條，腰部合縫處有素帶一副，長82、腰圍160釐米（圖二六）。3件單：素綢，前面中間開交縫，2件腰部兩側縫折襇，腰合縫處有素帶殘存。長88–61腰圍、1.40釐米。 In total there are 6 skirts, in an antique yellow color. 3 skirts were quilted [lined], [and of these,] 2 skirts’ outer layer was made of damask jacquard silk, and 1 skirt’s was made of plain-weave silk, with a single roll's width of fabric with no pleats, and in the front there are two inlaid strips of embroidery of large flowers, at the waistband seam there are a pair of ribbons for tying, length 82,, waist 160cm (figure 26). 3 skirts were unlined: They were made of plain-weave silk, seamed together in the middle, and 2 of the waistbands have pleats on either side, and the waist seam shows signs of ribbons having been sewn there [that have since been destroyed]. Lengths 88—61,, waist [sic] 1.40cm.

If you're getting dizzy looking at this translation, it's not just you, the report is worded incredibly unclearly, and it's made worse by the fact that there's no way to distinguish between the two kinds of Chinese commas in the English translation (I preserved the punctuation placement so that those of you who kind-of know Chinese can try to match up the phrases), the second type of which 、 I represented with ",," double comma. It's really hard to tell which one of these skirts they're referring to when they're giving you these details. Also clearly someone fucked up with the units on the waist; unless this skirt was made for an alarmingly tall wasp, they probably meant 140cm or 1.40m.

The very grainy picture on the right from the report is only listed as "素綢夾裙," aka plain-weave silk lined skirt, and you can see that it definitely has some sort of embroidered trim going on, so I'm reasonably sure it's either this one (F76 元棕褐色缠枝牡丹纹缎镶妆花罗边饰女夹裙) or this one (F75 元棕色素罗镶妆花罗缘夹裙), shown below:

L: F76 元棕褐色缠枝牡丹纹缎镶妆花罗边饰女夹裙 Brown Winding Branch Peony Patterned Brocaded Trim Lined Skirt // R: F75 元棕色素罗镶妆花罗缘夹裙 Brown Plain Luo Silk Brocaded Trim Lined Skirt // both from Wuxi Museum, im not writing the pinyin out for this it's way too long, just go google it or something

The caption for the one on the F76 says "袖长82，腰围101，裙边长160" aka "sleeve length 82, waist 101, skirt side length 160." Obviously something was entered into the system wrong because this skirt clearly does not have sleeves. I think they meant the skirt length was 82cm and the waist is 160cm across, which would then match up with the text in the report.

However, two things don't match up: First, the skirt in the figure appears to have the embroidered trim going down the middle, but not at the hem, and both of these skirts have hem trim. Second, the report says that the skirt shown in figure 26 doesn't have pleats, but lo and behold this photo from... probably (possibly?) legal sources that I will not be disclosing because I don't wanna get sued, and you shall see... pleats.

So yeah, idk what's going on here. Regardless, the important thing is that you can sort of see some evidence pleats in the mamianqun structure, even though they're not in the same place yet: you'll notice that the pleats on either side are folded in opposite directions, mirroring each other, which is characteristic of the mamianqun pleats, whereas earlier and simpler knife pleats were unidirectional.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that this F76 artifact looks like one-half of a mamianqun: If you were to take two of them, overlap them, and join the waistbands, I think you'd get a (very wide) traditional mamianqun. Who knows, since it's clear that the waistband has been reconstructed, maybe it was half of an early mamianqun.

華容元墓 / hua2 rong2 yuan2 mu4 / Huarong Yuan Tomb

The Yuan Dynasty tomb site in Huarong, Hunan is kinda weird because I can't find a technical report anywhere, but there are a lot of pictures available of the stuff there because China Silk Museum has an online virtual gallery of it from when it was exhibited in conjunction with Hunan Museum. It's a little buggy and takes a while to load, but if you like looking at clothing artifacts I'd highly recommend clicking around for a few minutes!

Anyway, it belonged to an unnamed woman who died in ~1287CE aged 32 years old. To qualify this a little, she would've spent more of her life in Southern Song than Yuan, even though she was buried in the Yuan Dynasty and thus it's a Yuan Dynasty archaeological site. Still, I do think it's worth looking at as a transitional period, especially when we're looking at the evolution of the mamianqun as a whole.

Src: Hunan Museum database 元烟色缠枝荷花罗褶裥裙 artifact page, they've been doing weird shit to their website so a better way to access it is to go to this artifact's Baidu page, scroll to the problem where it says 参考资料 (references), and then click the link there that says 烟色缠枝荷花罗褶裥裙- 湖南省博物馆, which will open a more stable copy of the page through Baidu.

There are two well-preserved skirts that I could find data on for this site. One is the picture above, taken from the database of the Hunan Museum, 烟色缠枝荷花罗褶裥裙 / yan1 se4 chan2 zhi1 he2 hua1 luo2 zhe23 jian3 qun2 / Tobacco-Colored Winding Lotus Branch Luo Silk Pleated Skirt. It's hard to see exactly what the construction is like since the pleats have slightly lost their shape, but the three flat skirt doors + pleats on two sides are definitely there.

Src: 雅韵湘传 virtual exhibition page (click the link at the top of the page to access the virtual gallery, I quite literally screenshotted stuff off it), joint exhibit by Hunan Museum and China Silk Museum

This one above looks even more similar—it's the 串枝牡丹菊花紋綾夾裙 / chuan4 zhi1 mu3 dan1 jv2 hua1 wen2 ling2 jia2 qun2 / Threaded Peony & Chrysanthemum Branch Pattern Lined Silk Skirt. All the elements are there: Three flat skirt faces/doors, symmetrical pleating on either side, two-panel construction. In total there are 2 pairs of pleats on each side not including the skirt doors, which is much fewer than most Ming Dynasty mamianqun do (minimum 4 usually).

苏州吴张士诚母曹氏墓 / su1 zhou1 wu2 zhang1 shi4 cheng2 mu3 cao2 shi4 mu4 / Tomb of Lady Cao, Mother of Zhang Shicheng of Wu, in Suzhou

This site from Suzhou belonged to the mother of 张士诚 / zhang1 shi4 cheng2 / Zhang Shicheng, the king of the rebel states of Zhou and Wu during the latter half of the Yuan Dynasty. He was directly involved in the Red Turban Rebellion that eventually toppled Yuan completely. We don't know her name, just that she was his mother and her maiden clan's name was 曹/cao2. She died in 1365, one of the last years of the Yuan Dynasty, and would've witnessed most of the dynasty. We found her in 1966, and her burial site has been affectionately termed 娘娘墓/niang2 niang0 mu4/Mother's tomb (娘娘 is like, a 'motherly' address for powerful women like queens and empresses, it doesn't exactly mean mother but it sort of implies a respectful matronly relation).

Unfortunately we have scarcely any pictures of the skirt garments from this tomb, but there is a publicly available short report from Suzhou Museum. There is one singular extremely grainy photo of one of the skirts, simply titled 緞裙/duan4 qun2/satin skirt, and a paragraph describing the six skirts buried with her.

There were 6 total skirts, 2 of which were significantly damaged. The report states that

全用三幅料制做， 前幅左右縫折間， 平校素綢里子。 All skirts were made with three widths [pieces] of fabric, the frontal pieces with pleats sewn on the left and right, and lined with plain-woven silk.

The report also says that all the skirts have a width of 340cm, which seems suspicious to me; I suspect they may have been referring to the 擺/bai3/hem length of the skirt rather than the waist width. The lengths are all between 82 and 93cm, which is in line with the other skirts found from this time. The pictured skirt is a satin silk skirt woven with jacquard patterns of the Eight Heavenly Objects and clouds and dragons.

Figurines

Apart from physical artifacts, we can see the emergence of side pleats in sculpture. There are a ton of Yuan Dynasty figurines made from grey ceramic. You can tell the Han and Mongolian figurines apart both by their clothing and by their hairstyles. 

Src: 彩繪雙髻女陶俑, from 中國國家博物館 National Museum of China, unearthed 1956 from 段繼榮墓 Duan Jirong tomb in Shaanxi Province, buried 1266, third year of the Yuan Dynasty in that region (still Song Dynasty in some other places)

The Han ones are almost always wearing skirts and short tops, and if you take a look at their sides, you can see that there are clearly defined pleats running from the waist to the hem on both sides. It’s hard to see how many exactly, and we can’t really see if the skirt is constructed with two panels or not, but given artifacts from adjacent time periods (and the few we have that are confirmed to be from the Yuan Dynasty), it seems like these were the most rudimentary forms of mamianqun, with straight outlines and only a few pleats.

Src: 女侍俑, 元代黑陶, Xi'an Jiaotong University Heritage & Exhibition Online

So it seems like the first introduction of side pleats happened during the Yuan Dynasty. I can’t say for sure how much exactly Mongolian garments contributed to that, and I haven’t found any sources directly suggesting that, but I would be personally surprised if they didn’t—despite the (tbf debated) social classism Han people were subject to, they were still living side by side in a mixed environment with both Han and Mongolian influences.

Mongolian clothing seemed to also have incorporated pleats and side-pleats before this—not necessarily in skirts, but often on the lower part of their segmented robes, terligs/deels, which the Han people would later adapt into the 貼裡/tie1 li3 and 曵撒/ye3 sa4 robes (but that’s for later). I think it’s very likely that seeing this silhouette around might have influenced some design decisions at the time, or at least got some people thinking.

Design

From what I know I believe our design for the Yuan Dynasty would've been closer to that of a mid- to high- status woman closer to the northern side of China at the time, which had slightly different trends than the south.

Skirt

The design for the Yuan version of 龍馬附圖 Metamorphosis is an early form 馬面裙 with a black body and red trim.

The black body material is a custom-woven jacquard polyester. Once again I will elaborate more on the design of the fabric in future posts (probably the next one, Early Ming).

The red trim is jacquard rayon, specifically short-fiber viscose. In comparison with the previous skirt, the trim has migrated from the sides of the skirt panels to just on the hem. This is to represent how many of the artifacts also have trim that's separately sewn onto the skirt.

The hem length of this skirt is 4.5m, on the shorter/more standard length for mamianqun. This is because there are not that many pleats, which means we need less fabric to make them work, and also because it's much lighter that way. The pleats are straight knife pleats, with four pairs of pleats on each side.

Four pairs of pleats is a little more than the skirt artifacts introduced above, but having fewer than four can make it hard to see the structure of the skirt coming into play, and it can also limit the movement at the hips a little more. This is less of a problem if you're using very light and soft silks, which is likely what was depicted in the figurines given the way the fabric wrinkle in the front, but when you have a stiffer fabric (and when it's not, you know, really expensive silk) it gets a little harder to move around. (I do think maybe 3 pairs would do it though, I might revise the design in the future.)

Other Outfit Pieces

Cami underlayer: 抹胸 / mo3 xiong1 / "Wrap Top"

Src: 雅韵湘传 virtual exhibition page , joint exhibit by Hunan Museum and China Silk Museum

The innermost layer for the Yuan Dynasty set is a very simple 抹胸/mo3 xiong1. It's essentially just a rectangle you wrap around your torso and tie. These have remained virtually unchanged in structure between the Song and Yuan Dynasties, except that the ribbon ties for the Yuan Dynasty artifact (mostly the Huarong one) are particularly thick. Ours is made of red jacquard viscose and lined with a layer of cotton. I believe there's also one from 黄澄存夫妇合葬墓 but I don't have a good picture of it.

Pants: 開襠褲 / kai1 dang1 ku4 / "Open-Crotch Trousers"

Src: 雅韵湘传 virtual exhibition page , joint exhibit by Hunan Museum and China Silk Museum

Practically identical to the Song Dynasty version, these pants are also called 開襠褲, or open-crotch pants. There's another one from the Huarong tomb site. It's made of red jacquard viscose.

Shirt: 飛機袖對襟短衫 / fei1 ji1 xiu4 duan3 shan1 / "Airplane-Sleeved Parallel Collar Short Top"

L: 印金罗长袖衫, China Silk Museum // R: 罗质夹袄, Gansu Provincial Museum

This sleeve shape persisted into the Yuan Dynasty for Han women, with multiple examples of similar garments. The one above is from China Silk Museum's collections. Notice that the connection point of the sleeve to the body has migrated inwards towards the shoulder, more similar to western garments (not replicated by our design, but interesting to look at nonetheless). The artifact on the right from Gansu Provincial Museum also has a mismatched collar length, meaning that it was likely meant to be worn crossed over, so that the empty space on the shorter side would be covered. Also notice that in this case because it's the right side of the collar that's shorter, this would mean it was meant to be worn right-over-left (左衽 / zuo3 ren4）rather than left-over-right （右衽 / you4 ren4）which is/was traditional for Han people.

Coat: 貉袖 / he2 xiu4 / Half-Sleeve Coat

TL: 蓝地菱格卍字龙纹双色锦对襟棉袄, 北京大运河博物馆 // TR: 妆花凤戏牡丹纹绫夹衫, Gansu Provincial Museum // BR: 元棕色素缎镶深褐色罗直襟夹袍, Wuxi Museum

The 貉袖 / he2 xiu4 / Tanuki-sleeve is a short half-sleeved garment we know about from the text 說郛 / shuo1 fu2, a late Yuan–early Ming text by 陶宗儀 / tao2 zong1 yi2. In the chapter 因話錄宋曾叫異蠶鵲 / yin1 hua4 lu4 song4 ceng2 jiao4 yi4 can2 que4, there is a description of a late Song Dynasty short lined jacket called the 貉袖 with sleeves only going up to the elbows. Similar garments matching this description have been unearthed from several Yuan Dynasty tombs. The trim placement imitates a different longer Yuan Dynasty robe also shown above from the same Qianyu tomb as one of the skirt references. Ours is made of viscose and lined with a silk-cotton-poly mix, shown bottom left above. I'm probably gonna do a separate post on this one at some point; if I do I'll link it here. Design note—initially I had a sleeve cuff trim on this thing in addition to the collar and hemline, but after examining a lot of the artifacts it looks like none of them have sleeve trim so I took it off.

Other Styling

I don't have a lot to say on this part this time that hasn't pretty much been covered by the previous section, but I'll go over some things quickly.

Makeup was pretty similar to the Song Dynasty stuff, with similar pearl face ornamentations and a more classic curved/arched brow. The pearls are a little sparser this time, with a pair of them in the 面靥 / mian4 ye4 / dimple locations, and two on the forehead, imitating the shape of the 葫芦/ hu2 lu2 /gourd. Both the gourd shape and the inclusion of pearls were popular motifs for both Mongolian and Han fashion well through the Yuan, and Ming Dynasties.

Hair was relatively simple, mimicking the high buns sported by the black ceramic figurines of Yuan Dynasty women referred to previously. Single and double buns have both appeared in these figurines; one commonality between hairstyles of Han women at this time seems to be a visible middle part, so we made sure to include that.

Accessories

Src: 新编对相四言, essentially an illustrated dictionary made for children from the Yuan Dynasty, specifically the entry for 鐶 / huan2, the character for one type of earring. Wikimedia Commons.

Earrings: The hulu gourd shape seemed to take off in popularity around this time, and it didn't fade out for a while—it was sort of a quintessential Imperial Chinese motif. Lots of gourd-shaped earrings already exist; I thought that was a little bit boring and decided to fuck around with it a bit. The concept of the gourd shape is really very simple, it's just a bigger bead on the bottom and a smaller bead on the top.

I had some beads lying around that my mom bought from Taipei like... six years ago; it's hard to see the details but the bigger bead is clear with gold Chinese characters inscribed on the surface. The smaller one is a simple round cloudy white bead. I added a spacer in between them to ease the transition of the 'waist' of the gourd, and I wrapped the loop at the top to make the whole shape more cohesive.

The chain detail in the back is just a thin necklace chain I cut with pliers, plus a jump ring with a tiny pearl bead threaded onto it. You may notice, if you look closely, that the jump ring is actually silver, because I did not have any gold jump rings on hand oopsies.

胸帶 / xiong1 dai4 / chest ribbon:

Src: 陶女俑, 新00122312, 北京故宫博物院 Beijing Palace Museum

Many Yuan Dynasty figurines of women show a ribbon tied around the bust as a decoration. My guess is that this can also help keep open-front tops together. Our recreation of this was not... totally accurate, because the red ribbon we had was quite long compared to the figurines, which seemed to end right after the knot with short tails, but hey at least we tried. Also we filmed this on 12/21 which was very close to Christmas and it was very Chrismast-y.

Ending disclaimer—I will be elaborating more on the Mongolian-Han fashion culture during the Yuan and Ming Dynasties in a different post in the future, but it might be like May-ish, after the photoshoot content for the Steppes line comes out.