Short Skirt Miao Village at Qingman

Qingman Miao Village (青曼苗寨), or Qianman Short Skirt Miao Village perch on a mountainous slope approximately 23km to the southwest of Kaili City, Guizhou Province of southwest China. It has more than 300 households with a population of over 1,600. The residential houses here are constructed in an orderly manner like layers of a wedding cake, but appreciating Miao people’s costumes might be the highlight of a village tour.

Qingman Miao Village is one of the most typical short-skirt Miao villages in Guizhou Province. The female villagers’ clothing is distinct and colorful for both casual and holiday wear, which consists of a tunic top decorated with silver ornaments and gorgeously hand-embroidered designs of the dragon, phoenix, fish, bird, and beast, and a hand-knitted skirt no more than 20 centimeters long, hence the village is also known as Qingman Short-Skirt Miao Village. This whole costume constitutes an important facet of local folkways.

Short Skirt Miao Village at Qingman

One of the biggest characteristics in Qianman Miao Village is that the tourists who visit a household will may have witnessed the entire process of traditional Miao clothes-making. The main traditional clothing material is the homemade cloth span, woven, and dyed all by the Miaos. The widespread local song “Cotton Song” states the entire process of looking for the cotton seed, seed selection, land reclamation, sowing, harvesting cotton, getting rid of seed, bowing cotton, spinning, reeling thread, dyeing, and sewing. In each household you can see dye vats used for dying cotton material. This kind of dye vat is made of the cedar plank, approximately 2 and half feet high, one meter in diameter. The dye vat must be raised because it takes about one month to finish dying a bolt of cloth by indigo dying water and this process is called “raising vat”.

The best time to visit Qingman is at the 1st month, the 7th month and the 10th month of the lunar calendar. During these months, tourists can spend some special festivals with the villagers. Many interesting activities are held on the festivals, such as sacrificing, water buffalo fighting, cock fighting, bird fighting, singing, or dancing etc.