A Study on the Traditional Sash of‘She’Ethnic Group in China

중국 소수민족 이족의 채대

This paper is focused on the traditional sash weaving handicraft of‘She’ethnic group, which is located in Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong province of China. This research is main-ly based on the field work, analyzed and inter-preted the traditional sash in systematic and reasoned way. The summary of this study are as follows : 1. On its technological aspect, weaving structure of the traditional sash is made of warp rod backed weaving. The used tool is primitive one but the weaving process includes scientific method. 2. From the social-cultural point of view, the sash ha been the symbol of love towards her lover. Every woman of this group had taken training for this sash weaving from a child. 3. On its ethnological aspect, it has been long history and has interchanged with other ethnic group like Miao, Han and also Okinawa country of Japan. The pattern inside this sash are almost looks like characters, but they are not Chinese characters whereas are the inde-pendent code of‘She’ group and have been inherent from ancestors and which will be tran-smitted to their posterity. These independent code of‘She’group are the traditional message to their later generation implicating their natural circumstances, human relationship, ethnic myth, spirit etc. 4. I recognize that the pattern inside the sash is defined as the communicative code and in comparison to language, it is more repetition and less apparent as close code. Nowadays China has been developed es-pecially in the economical fields rapidly. Under the circumstances traditional weaving culture of ethnic groups has been facing a crisis of disappearance, which will be a great loss for the country as well as the human beings. For this reason, I emphasize that it is very immediate to make co-researches into the material culture of Chinese ethnic groups.