Queue (hairstyle)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The queue (or cue) was a specific hairstyle worn by the Manchus of central Manchuria and later the Chinese, in China. The hairstyle consisted of the hair on the front of the head being shaved off above the temples and the rest of the hair braided into a long ponytail, or queue. The ponytail was never to be cut for it would dishonor one’s self. In the early 1900's although the Chinese no longer had to wear it, many still wore it as a tradition. Many did not know what it meant. The queue was supposed to symbolize a horse's tail. Now, along with buck tooth and slant eyes, the queue became the stereotypical image of early Chinese immigrants

Contents 1 History 1.1 Queue Order 2 Resistance to the queue 3 References 4 Notes

[edit] History

The Manchu hairstyle was forcefully introduced to China by Nurhaci in the early seventeenth century. Nurhaci achieved the creation of a Manchu state in China, the Qing Dynasty, after having defeated the Ming forces in northern China. Once firmly in power, Nurhaci commanded all men in the areas he had conquered to adopt the Manchu hairstyle. The Manchu hairstyle was significant for it distinguished between the Manchus and the indigenous Chinese. It was a symbol of Han Chinese submission to Manchu rule. The queue also aided the Manchus in identifying those Chinese that refused to accept Manchu domination of the Chinese state.

[edit] Queue Order

The Queue Order (Traditional Chinese: 剃髮令; Simplified Chinese: 剃发令; pinyin: tīfǎlìng) was a series of laws violently imposed by the Manchu invaders of China in the seventeenth century.

Traditionally, adult Chinese did not cut their hair. According to the Classic of Filial Piety, Confucius said "the body, hair and skin, are inherited from one's parents, do not dare damage them. This is the beginning of filial piety." (身体发肤，受之父母，不敢毁伤，孝至始也。) Therefore both men and women wound their hair into a bundle or into various hairstyles. Manchu men, on the other hand, shaved their foreheads, leaving a long rattail called the queue.

When the Manchus broke through Shanhai Pass with the help of the treacherous general Wu Sangui in 1644 (year 17 of the Chongzhen era), they imposed the Queue Order in occupied territories, mandating that Chinese shave their heads like the Manchus. This resulted in widespread resistance by the Chinese, and the order was publicly revoked.

A year later, after the Manchus had reached South China, Dorgon reimposed the Queue Order, giving the Chinese 10 days to shave their hair into a queue, or face death. The slogan was "Lose your hair and keep your head, otherwise, keep your hair and lose your head". The Chinese people resisted the order and the Manchu conquerors struck back with deadly force, massacring all who refused to shave their hair. The Three Massacres at Jiading and the Ten-day Massacre at Yangzhou are two of the most infamous massacres, with death tolls of 50,000–200,000 and 100,000–800,000 respectively. The imposition of this order was not uniform; it took up to 10 years of almost genocidal martial enforcement for all of China to be brought into compliance.

The purpose of the Queue Order was to erase Chinese pride, identity and culture, and achieve psychological enslavement. The Manchus were quite successful, as during the early years of the Republic of China, many Han Chinese were unwilling to to cut off their queues as they thought they would be beheaded if they did, and ironically many had their queues forcibly removed.

[edit] Resistance to the queue

Chinese resistance to adopting the queue was widespread and bloody. The Chinese in Liaodong rebelled in 1622 and 1625 in response to the implementation of the mandatory hairstyle. The Manchus responded swiftly to this rebellion by murdering the educated elite and instituting a stricter separation between the Chinese and Manchus. In 1645, the adoption of the queue was taken a step further by the ruling Manchus when it was decreed that any man who did not adopt the Manchu hairstyle within ten days would be executed. The intellectual Lu Xun summed up the Chinese reaction to the implementation of the mandatory Manchu hairstyle by stating, “In fact, the Chinese people in those days revolted not because the country was on the verge of ruin, but because they had to wear queues.”

In the Colonial Hong Kong era, the fall of the last dynasty in China lead to a complete change in hairstyle almost overnight. The queue became unpopular as it became associated with a fallen government. Chinese citizens in Hong Kong changed to short haircuts collectively^[1].

[edit] References

• Ebrey, Patricia B. China. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Lu Xun. “The Story of Hair.” The Complete Stories of Lu Xun. Trans. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Tang. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982, 39-44.

[edit] Notes