At the Yugu Folk Museum in Sunan Yugu Autonomous County, Gansu Province, 64-year-old Ke Cuiling is finishing a traditional Yugu headpiece. Coral beads the size of rice grains, red and green silk thread, and a red cloth base come together over two or three months of hand sewing. The result is a headpiece decorated with agate, pearls, and shells, the kind of garment once prepared by mothers for their daughters’ weddings.
The Yugu costume tradition
Yugu is one of the ethnic groups unique to Gansu. The group’s traditional dress is described as a “wearable art form,” developed for a pastoral life along the Qilian Mountains. The most recognizable features are the high collar and the red-tasseled hat. Married women also wear a headpiece called “kaibashi” in the Yugu language. The headpiece is long, often nearly the wearer’s height, and is worn across the chest and back. Historically, it also served as a portable store of family wealth, since its materials could be converted from livestock savings into coral, pearls, and other valuables.
Four tribes, four styles
Ke Cuiling has systematically documented the clothing styles of four historical Yugu tribes. The Helaigejia tribe favors fine embroidery; the Yalagejia tribe uses rainbow patterns; the Datoumu tribe’s headpieces are especially luxurious, with some antique pieces worth more than one million yuan; and the Xibagejia tribe’s dress absorbs Tibetan influences, combining coiled embroidery and horsehair embroidery. The variety shows how a single ethnic costume can carry regional identity within one group.
Ke Cuiling began collecting old Yugu garments and objects at age fourteen. She later studied art at Northwest Minzu University and joined the Sunan County Cultural Center, turning her childhood interest into a career. After decades of fieldwork, she has rescued sixteen traditional crafts that were close to disappearing. Her mother had warned her that if these items were discarded, future generations would lose the physical evidence of their ancestors’ lives.
Updating tradition for modern wardrobes
Ke Cuiling follows a two-track approach of preservation and innovation. With her family, she extracts symbols such as ram heads and sacred deer and simplifies traditional ruyi and scroll patterns into smaller accents. These motifs are then applied to modern clothing such as blazers, hoodies, workwear skirts, and vests. She has exhibited the work in South Korea and the Taiwan region of China, and recent visitors from Hong Kong and Macao have also come to study the craft.
For readers tracking Chinese traditional dress, the Yugu case is a useful counterpoint to Hanfu. It is a minority pastoral costume, protected as national intangible heritage since 2008, and it is being kept alive through both ceremonial use and modern adaptation. Ke Cuiling’s work shows that heritage clothing can retain its symbolic value while becoming part of contemporary wardrobes, one stitch at a time.