{"id":6579,"date":"2019-11-19T12:34:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T12:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/chinese-culture\/the-legend-of-the-hundred-birds-costume\/"},"modified":"2019-11-19T12:34:29","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T12:34:29","slug":"the-legend-of-the-hundred-birds-costume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/the-legend-of-the-hundred-birds-costume\/","title":{"rendered":"The Legend of the Hundred Birds Costume"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div style=\"padding:4px;\"><span>  <\/p>\n<p>Hundred Birds Costume is a well-told story in the  folk life of Guangxi Zhuang Auto<em><\/em>nomous Region, most typical of the  Baiyue ethnic minority group. The story reflected the happiness and  sorrow of people in the Zhuang auto<em><\/em>nomous region, their fighting against  the oppressors and their wish for beautiful life through the depiction  of the love between two unyielding young lovers. Early in the Song  Dynasty, the story of Hundred Birds Costume was quite popular among the  people of Zhuang minority in Xiaoyi Township, Henxian County of Guangxi  Province and its surrounding areas. It is handed down from generation to  generation and favored by the Zhuang people, enjoying a long history.<\/p>\n<p>Hundred Birds Costume is a folklore story full of fantastic myth  among people of Zhuang ethnic minority in Xiaoyi Town, Henxian County.  It has been co<em><\/em>ntinuously enriched with the development of the history.<\/p>\n<p>As the story goes, there was a young man named Zhang Yayuan who was  born in a poor family. His father was tired to death when working for  the Tusi (an official title). Thus, he and his mother relied on each  other, making a living by working for Tusi and gathering firewood to  exchange for rice. Zhang Yayuan was very good at gathering firewood and  hunting and built a robust body since he started doing these at a quite  early age. One day, a rooster jumped o<em><\/em>nto his basket for holding the  firewood when he was homebound, so he brought it back. After half a  year, the rooster became a fairy beauty and married him. They lived  happily with each other. Later, the Tusi learned of this and tried every  means to break their happiness, as he coveted for the beauty of Zhang  Yayuan&#8217;s wife and wanted to make her his concubine. Despite the  intentio<em><\/em>nal hindrance of the Tusi, Zhang&#8217;s wife always won the battle  with her wisdom. At last, Tusi finally forcefully grabbed Zhang&#8217;s wife.  Before the departure, his wife told Zhang Yayuan to shoot a hundred  birds and find her at the yamun with the clothes made by the feathers of  the birds. At that time, nothing was left for him with his wife being  grabbed, mother died from anger and family utterly shattered.<\/p>\n<p>Yayuan went into the remote mountain to shoot birds with hatred,  sorrow and hope as well. The lady in the yamun was full of sorrow and  languished day by day. In order to see a moment of her smile, Tusi  promised to grant three hundred silver coins for the one who could make  the lady smile. While Yayuan went through all the hardships by passing  99 rivers and 99 mountains to shoot down 100 birds in order to save his  wife. At the 100th day, Yayuan wore the clothes made by a hundred birds&#8217;  feathers and went to the yamun as his wife told him to do. The unhappy  lady smiled happily when she saw Yayuan waving his Hundred Birds  Costume. Tusi, avid for the costume and eager to please the lady, took  off his official robe in exchange for the costume, thus giving Yayuan a  chance to kill Tusi when he helped the latter to put on the clothes.  Then, they fled from the yamun to a very far place and led a blissful  life together.<\/p>\n<p>There is the Hundred Birds Costume in a branch of Miao ethnic  minority group. A lot of legends were a<em><\/em>bout it and the origin was from  the worship for the bird of the Miao minority. During the migration and  after they settled down, they would hunt all kinds of birds as their  food. Out of gratitude, they began to worship the birds. They not o<em><\/em>nly  embroidered bird patterns on the clothes, but also decorated the lap  with all kinds of feathers. The cloth of the Hundred Birds Costume is  self-spun and self-dyed and altogether 16-18 embroidered color band for a  skirt with feather balls attached to the lower end of it. Nowadays, the  feathers are all from the domestic poultry. The costume features  various color and bird patterns up to 100 of different sizes.<\/p>\n<p>  <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"chine-tie-zi-nei-rong-zhi-hou\" id=\"chine-3018951297\"><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1889418300638825\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display:block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1889418300638825\" \ndata-ad-slot=\"7273022922\" \ndata-ad-layout-key=\"-gw-3+1f-3d+2z\"\ndata-ad-format=\"fluid\"><\/ins>\n<script> \n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); \n<\/script>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hundred Birds Costume is a well-told story in the  folk life of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, most typical of the  Baiyue ethnic minority group. The story reflected the happiness and  sorrow of people in the Zhuang autonomous region, their fighting against  the oppressors and their wish for beautiful life through the depiction  of the love between two unyielding young lovers. Early in the Song  Dynasty, the story of Hundred Birds Costume was quite popular among the  people of Zhuang minority in Xiaoyi Township, Henxian County of Guangxi  Province and its surrounding areas. It is handed down from generation to  generation and favored by the Zhuang people, enjoying a long history.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2838],"tags":[134],"class_list":["post-6579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese-culture","category-chinese-folktales","tag-ethnic-minority"],"views":187,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}