For those who love ancient - style makeup and hairstyles, whether you watched the show Nian Jin during the Spring Festival Gala or followed The Ballad of the Southern Kingdom before, you might be confused about why the characters always have a hanging hair strand on their foreheads. It seems a bit 'crazy' at first glance, but it's not the makeup artists' random choice. To understand this style, we have to start from the 'head'.
This style can be seen in The Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies and The Illustrations of Women of Virtue and Wisdom. Its formal name is the Chui Shao (垂髾) hairstyle. Pei Yin's Collected Annotations on Records of the Grand Historian quotes Guo Pu as saying: 'Shao refers to the hair hanging from the bun.' That is, the bun is on the top of the head, some facing backward, and the hair ends are combed out from the upper part of the bun and hang down behind the earlobes.
From various portraits, we can commonly see two types of this style: one is the Chui Shao at the back - of - the - head bun, and the other is the Chui Shao at the temples. If you think this is 'crazy', you haven't seen the real 'crazy' ones (keep reading to the end of the article). Also, if you've read our previous articles, you may remember that 'Chui Shao' also refers to the hem of women's Guiyi (袿衣) dresses.
However, some current TV dramas seem to misinterpret the concept of Chui Shao. For example, combing the hair down in the front is actually more like having disheveled hair. We can only say that it's overdone.
It has to be said that there are quite a few 'crazy' hairstyles in ancient times. For instance, the above - mentioned hairstyle is called the Buliaosheng Ji (不聊生髻). After seeing it, you might feel that it's worth the experience. According to The Book of the Later Han -五行志: 'During the Yuanjia period of Emperor Heng, women in the capital city wore sad eyebrows, crying makeup, the falling - horse bun, the waist - bending walk, and the tooth - decay smile.' Liu Zhao's annotation in The Biography of Liang Ji says: 'Women in Liang Ji's family also had the Buliaosheng Ji hairstyle.'
After looking at many murals, you'll find that the Buliaosheng Ji is probably a variant of the Chui Shao hairstyle. It's like when we mess with our hair for a long time and finally give up.
Let's take a look at the 'Teletubby' hairstyles of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the 'Mickey Mouse' hairstyles of the Tang Dynasty. Sometimes, we really think that some aspects of ancient people's lives were strange but cute.
To be fair, our modern people also have a very active imagination. Maybe the strange hairstyles in current ancient - costumed dramas just haven't been unearthed or discovered yet 😂.
