This essay is to give careful consideration to a problem of Sinicization in the later period of Beiwei. Chinese Students have been arguing that the nomads including Xianbi, Xiongnu, Jie, Qiang, Di and so forth, who immigrated from Mongol Plateau, Manc ...
This essay is to give careful consideration to a problem of Sinicization in the later period of Beiwei. Chinese Students have been arguing that the nomads including Xianbi, Xiongnu, Jie, Qiang, Di and so forth, who immigrated from Mongol Plateau, Manchuria and Tibet Plateau, were adapted to Chinese civilization, or their culture, lifestyle and customs. I examined all the materials for nomads or pastoral men’s life and culture in the later period of Beiwei and found that they were not sinicized and maintained their own culture, lifestyle and customs, which they put on nomadic-style fur coats, hats, trousers, or riding breeches, ate mutton, other meats, and dairy goods. They went hunting, shooted an arrow with joy and military training, sang their nomadic-style songs, danced to the their original musics and enjoyed their nomad festivals. The wild geese courtiers, who had served in Luoyang court in autumn and winter and then had returned to their homes in pastoral region, slept in their ger or yurt, moving tent made of furs and wooden frames, in their pastoral birthplace in spring and summer. The nomad-oriented rulers in the later period of Beiwei were not actually sinicized facet. So I argues that the nomad people in Luoyang in the later period of Beiwei shoud not be entirely sinicized and maintain their own lifestyle and customs in part.
My other essay is to examine the commonly accepted view of the prohibition on Hu-style(Xienbei-style) garments in 494, which banned Xienbei-based nomadic or pastoral people from wearing Hu-style(Xienbei-style) dresses and hats. I overturned conventional wisdom of the prohibition on Hu-style(Xienbei-style) garments in 494, which was not observed thoroughly. I set forth evidence that after the ban of the emperor Xiaowen in 494 Xienbei people wore their traditional Hu-style(Xienbei-style) dresses and hats. In this essay, I examine the dress and hat of the pottery figurines in excavated in tombs of Beiwei period in Beimang Mountain, which is located in north of Luoyang, the capital of Beiwei period. If the dresses and hats of the pottery figurines in excavated in tombs of Beiwei period was reflected to that of Louyang residents, ratio of Hu-style(Xienbei-style) dresses and hats is 13.9%(or 10.8%), but that of Han(Chinese)-style garments and Western Region-style garments is 18.6% and 8.3% respectively. The mixture of Hu-style(Xienbei-style) and Han(Chinese)-style garments is 46.7%(or 49.8%). This showed that after the ban of the Xienbei-style garments, Hu-style(Xienbei-style) dresses and hats were dressed both Xienbei-based nomadic or pastoral people and Chinese, Xienbei and Chinese costoms were mixed and influenced mutually. I don't deny the fact that there was Xienbei people to wear Chinese costoms but it was applied in their public lives and they wore Xienbei costoms in daily lives. I brought forward a reason to break partly the emperor Xiaowen's ban on weaing Hu-style(Xienbei-style) dresses and hats that there was the decrease drop in temperature in period of Nanbeichao(Northern and Southern Dynasties) why Louyang residents wore the Hu-style(Xienbei-style) dresses and hats, which was better to protect them from the cold.