ID Number

Title

Item Name

Culture

Material

Place Made

Date Collected

Collector

Date Owned

Owner

Owner

Acquisition Date

Source

Source

Measurements

Item Classes

Condition

Accession Number

Description

Narrow band with woven pattern and tassels. The pattern has red and orange edges surrounding a centre green band. The ends have long tassels of green, red and orange.

Iconographic Meaning

The prevalence of red in this band symbolizes the fact that it was worn by a married woman, probably relatively young. Unmarried girls wore bands in which colours such as blue or purple predominated, and elderly women may no longer have worn bands in which there was red. This band is unusual in having a simple striped pattern, as they often were woven with named patterns picked out in the weaving process. These patterns had symbolic meaning. The colour combinations, the materials, and the overall configuration of the band also symbolized the wearer’s place of origin.

Narrative

Mrs. Yau Chan, Shek-ying had a very good understanding of the need to save traditional objects that were no longer being used so that they could be donated to the Museum of Anthropology, despite the fact that she was illiterate. She donated many from her household, and also introduced Elizabeth Johnson to various relatives and fellow residents of Kwan Mun Hau Village and persuaded them to do the same. This band is an example of the latter. She and Elizabeth Johnson knew each other well, as Kwan Mun Hau Village was the location of Elizabeth Johnson’s doctoral and later research. Hakka people are one of the two original land-dwelling groups that settled the area that became the New Territories of Hong Kong. Their spoken language, and some customs, differed from those of the other original group, the Cantonese or Punti. The Cantonese arrived first and settled on the best rice-growing lands, while the Hakka began to arrive after the late 17th century and settled the more hilly lands.

Specific Techniques

Hand-woven on a very narrow backstrap loom. The weaver started by winding the circular warp, using the colours that will appear at the edges and in the central patterned area. The tension was created by putting one end of the circular warp around a stool and holding the other with a chopstick tucked into a tape tied around the weaver’s waist. The tassels were created by inserting strands of silk thread in between the two layers of warp. The weaver then created the pattern by inserting the weft across the band and away from her body, hand-picking the pattern with a beater made of hardwood and approximately the size and shape of a western large sharp knife. As one layer of the warp is white (in this case) and the other red, she picked out the pattern by pulling the red through the white in accordance with the designs. As the work progressed, she moved the warp around, and when it was finished she cut the warp, thus adding it to the tassels.

History Of Use

Hakka women in Hong Kong wore very plain clothes, black, purple-black, brown, or dark blue. The only decoration was perhaps simple stitching around the neck of their tunics, or at the top of their aprons. Their clothing consisted of tunics, pants, simple aprons, rectangular head cloths that hung down at the back, and flat hats, open at the top, with a curtain-like veil around the edge to protect them from the sun and dust while they were working outdoors.
Patterned bands added ornamentation to this simple clothing, however. They were worn in a number of ways: to fasten their aprons at the back, to wrap around their head cloths so that the tassels hung at one side of their faces, or over the top of their hats with the tassels hanging at both sides.
They also had ritual and ceremonial uses. They were hung from the lanterns raised in the ancestral halls to celebrate the birth of sons, and young women .wove many of them in the period just before their marriages to give away to relatives. A band of this type would have been worn to hold the wearer’s head cloth in place. The band would have been wrapped twice around her head on top of the cloth, and tied so that the tassels hung at one side of her face. As the Hakka women in Tsuen Wan had very heavy outdoor work to do, including farming and carrying heavy loads as wage labour, as well as caring for their children and households, they rarely had time to do this weaving. Those with the skill to do it did so on rainy days or whenever they could find a little time. After the mid-twentieth century the New Territories of Hong Kong began to undergo fundamental changes. The people who had been settled there before 1898, when the British colonizers claimed the area, began to give up rice agriculture and coastal fishing, turning instead to wage labour and increased employment overseas. By the end of the century, educational opportunities leading to the possibility of white-collar work also increased, together with western influences. Twentieth-century changes meant that objects and clothing once useful and appropriate were no longer needed and generally were discarded. Some were saved by their owners, who sometimes were willing to donate them to museums, sharing, also, their knowledge of how they were made and used.