织布机与老绣片

Weaving Machine and the Woven Cloth

苗寨凯掌村，一半的人家至今还有古老的织布机，但使用的人却大多是四、五十岁的中年妇女。以前苗族人的头帕、衣服、裙子都是用这些织布机加工而成的。苗族女孩十五、六岁就要学搓麻、裹麻、绕线、绞线、接线、织布、织背褡等，出嫁的时候，织布机是娘家陪送的必不可少的嫁妆。

In Kaizhang Village of the Miao nationality, there are old weaving machines in half of the Miao homes. In the past, the cidarids, clothes and skirts of the Miao women were all woven through these weaving machines. The Miao girls began to learn linen rolling, strand twisting, thread connecting, cloth weaving, suspender weaving, etc. at the age of 15 or 16. When they got married, the parents' homes of the girls would dower their daughters with weaving machines. To weave waistcoats take the same efforts as and more skills than to weave linen cloth. A waistcoat usually consists of 3 or 4 layers with mysterious designs on it: the sun becomes abstract geometric figures and the bird is transformed freely into expressive symbols, all of which are imaginative, colorful and primitive, containing cultural codes of the Miao nationality.