large floral medallions against geometric backgrounds, and narrow monochrome patterned trimmings.66
FIGURE 1.7. This rare Yangliuqing print, Ladies Enjoying Spring (Youchun shinü tu), is symmetrically divided across the two separate prints (duiping). The ladies’ clothing, in particular the waist-length layering, reflects the transitions from late Ming to mid-Qing styles. Qianlong period (1736–95). New print from historical print-blocks, 63 x 110 cm. Tianjin Yangliuqing Museum, reprinted from Feng Jicai, Zhongguo muban nianhua jicheng, Yangliuqing juan, with permission from the Zhonghua Book Company.
FIGURE 1.8. This Yangliuqing print awards the viewer access to a lavishly furnished niched-off room, where two young beauties play happily with two plump boys. Soothing the Infants (Fu ying tu), later Qianlong period (1736–95). Qi Jianlong printshop, 61 x 109 cm. Tianjin Museum. Reprinted from Feng Jicai, Zhongguo muban nianhua jicheng, Yangliuqing juan, 68–69, with permission from the Zhonghua Book Company.
The cloud collar was absent in this Qianlong Yangliuqing print, suggesting the fashion had not yet reached the north (other than in the palace; see fig. 1.5). But by the nineteenth century, the cloud collar was central to Han women’s celebratory dress, and it became an integral component of Yangliuqing print beauties, though styled rather differently than the versions shown in the earlier Suzhou prints.67 The example in figure 1.8 has a print-shop brand mark, the “Qi Jianlong old print-shop,” suggesting a late eighteenth-century dating.68 Though both women—shown inside a well-furnished alcove, playing with two plump male children, and accompanied by various auspicious accoutrements—wear decorative collars, the central woman’s four ruyi-lobed (sihe ruyi) style would become most popular.
By the nineteenth century, countless Yangliuqing prints, in particular those produced by the Daoguang period Aizhu Studio, would depict this style with its heavier, bordered outlines, worn over much embellished jackets and finely pleated skirts.69 It is this style that is described in the novel Tales of Heroic Lovers (Ernü yingxiong zhuan; ca. 1850), by Manchu bannerman Wenkang (ca. 1798–after 1865). The knight-errant heroine, Thirteenth Sister (He Yufeng), is wed dressed in “a crimson pifeng jacket embroidered with the ‘hundred flowers blossoming simultaneously’ pattern, and a sand-green gauze skirt embroidered with the ‘hundred butterflies meeting happily in spring’ pattern, matched with a ‘four joined ruyi’ cloud collar.”70
By the late Qing, the cloud collar jacket was integral to celebratory dress. In his description, Xu Ke quoted a poem that describes the cloud collar as metonym for fairy maidens—to secure one was to gain a night spent with such a maiden: “Women cover their shoulders with the cloud collar as adornment. Its use began in the Yuan dynasty with dancing girls. In the Ming it became ceremonial wear for women, and in this [Qing] dynasty Han women also wear it as wedding dress.”71 The Yangliuqing and Taohuawu popular prints enable us to understand how the cloud collar might have been visually spread across China, and how it became associated with Han women’s wedding attire; these beauty prints reference the values of beauty, fertility, wealth, cultural attainment, and happiness that women wished to evoke on celebratory occasions.
The wedding day was one of the few days in a woman’s lifetime that she could wear such gorgeous dress, and the preparation process would have taken months, indeed years in the case of a childhood engagement. Critically, weddings involved not only the labor of the girl herself, as accounts of dress production have typically emphasized, but increasingly over the early modern period, also the labor of strangers, employed both in and outside the home. The Qing period saw an increasing expectation of (and thus pressure to achieve) a rich material consumption to adorn ceremonial occasions—births, marriages, festivals—yet most women would have struggled to afford the embellished formal wear so expensive in tailoring, fabrics, and decoration. Small accessories like the cloud collar or decorative borders succeeded precisely because of their ability to allow a wider range of women to participate in celebratory consumption.
The cloud collar’s ceremonial role partly derived from its material presence, its ability to structure the shoulders, modifying the body shape to create width and presence, and offering a clear, auspiciously framed canvas to “carry” motifs of good fortune. Like other components of ritual dress—detachable neck pendants, overskirt lappet aprons, and belt hangings—the cloud collar created movement and presence that demarcated the ceremonial space in which the bride was transferred to her new home and family. The cloud collar was often trimmed with silver pieces, bells, and tassels, additions which ceremonialized the procession and drew attention to the bride. In Henan, for example, brides wore cloud collars with hanging ribbons and bells, their tinkling walk accentuating their movements.72
Equally, less prosaic points also favored the cloud collar. Its practical function in protecting the clothing from hair-oil was early noted by taste arbiter Li Yu (1611–1679): “Cloud collars are used to cover the clothes, to avoid dirt and oil, and made into the most beautiful shapes.”73 Many women could only afford one or two items of formal clothing for celebratory occasions, and protecting them from dirt was challenging— embroidered silks were not easy to wash.74 Cloud collars not only adorned, they also protected from and covered up stains, an association explicit enough in the early nineteenth century for Lin Sumen (ca. 1748–1809) to name the cloud collar “hair-oil collar” (you jian).75 They could also facilitate the rejuvenation of dated outfits and, like the growth of secondhand clothes shops, hire-shops, and pawnshops, should be understood as responding to the challenge of securing new clothes for New Year celebrations or other formal events.76
Both ceremonial associations and practical functions may have contributed to the appearance of a style central to nineteenth-century fashions: ao or shan jackets with appliqué cloud collar and coordinated bottom and overlapping front borders, as seen in the nineteenth-century Yangliuqing prints. The attachment of the cloud collar to the jacket had been anticipated by Li Yu, who advised coordinating the cloud collar’s coloring with the main jacket, so as to prevent the lining from being exposed through the cloud collar’s movements. After further thought he found this still unsatisfactory: “If the collar moves and the color is the same, it is still not as good as the collar not moving at all.” His solution to the problem was prescient: “The [cloud collar] is suitable for wearing at home, but if you go out visiting, then you must subtly afix [the collar] with threads, so as to avoid it coming apart from the clothing.”77
Ethnicity and Embellishment in Nineteenth-Century Fashions
These cloud collar embellished and bordered jacket styles, worn with similarly adorned skirts and trousers, defined the look of the late Qing. Taohuawu and Yangliuqing print shops filled the markets with these fashionable beauties, shown in their boudoir or garden accompanied by a younger maid or female relative, and rollicking sons. The rise of these beauties in popular prints occurred against shifts in the defining characteristics of gentlewoman and courtesan. The archetypical late Ming–early Qing courtesan was a talented beauty renowned for music, performance, and poetry. As companions to gentlemen in a society where men and women, even within the same kin unit, were not expected to intermingle, their presence effectively removed the function of education or culture on the part of the gentlewoman’s wife. But Manchu attempts to regulate entertainment quarters in cities like Nanjing or Yangzhou accompanied commercialization of the industry to make the late Qing courtesan figure a hollowed-out version of her late Ming rendition.78 This coincided with a growing acceptability, at least among affluent families, that daughters should receive a full and rich education, and an assertion by gentlewomen (guixiu) that their identities as wives and mothers should be defined not just by their gentry status, but also by their own cultural achievements.79
The gentlewoman’s newly articulated claims of culture