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Queue (hairstyle)
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The queue or cue is a hairstyle in which the hair is worn long and gathered up into a pigtail. It was worn traditionally by certain Native American groups, Indian Brahmins (see Kudumi) and the Manchu of Manchuria. In the 18th century it was common for Europeans to wear their hair long.
Chinese queue was a specific hairstyle worn by the Manchus from central Manchuria and later imposed on the Chinese in China.
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Encyclopedia
The queue or cue is a hairstyle in which the hair is worn long and gathered up into a pigtail. It was worn traditionally by certain Native American groups, Indian Brahmins (see Kudumi) and the Manchu of Manchuria. In the 18th century it was common for Europeans to wear their hair long.
Chinese queue
The Chinese queue was a specific hairstyle worn by the Manchus from central Manchuria and later imposed on 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 justify execution as treason. In the early 1910s, although the Chinese no longer had to wear it, many still wore it as a tradition.
The Manchu tradition
The Manchu hairstyle was forcefully introduced to China by Nurhaci in the early 17th century. Nurhaci achieved the creation of a Manchu state in Manchuria, later becoming the Qing Dynasty of China, 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 because it meant that they did not like slavery. It was a symbol of Ming 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.
Queue Order
The Queue Order , or tonsure decree, was a series of laws violently imposed by the Manchu invaders of China in the seventeenth century.
Traditionally, adult Han Chinese did not cut their hair. According to the Classic of Filial Piety, Confucius said A a result of this ideology 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 in 1644, they forced surrendering Han Chinese to adopt the queue as a sign of submission. A year later, after the Manchus had reached South China, Dorgon imposed the Queue Order for all Han Chinese, giving the Han Chinese 10 days to shave their hair into a queue, or face death. Although Dorgon admitted that followers of Confucianism might have grounds for objection, most Han officials had instead cited the Ming Dynasty's traditional System of Rites and Music as their reason for resistance. This led Dorgon to question their motives: "If officials say that people should not respect our Rites and Music, but rather follow those of the Ming, what can be their true intentions?"
The slogan adopted by the Qing was "Keep your hair and lose your head, or keep your head and cut your hair". The Han Chinese people resisted the order and the Manchu rulers 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 estimated death tolls in the tens (or even hundreds) of thousands. The imposition of this order was not uniform; it took up to 10 years of martial enforcement for all of China to be brought into compliance.
The purpose of the Queue Order was to demonstrate loyalty to the Qing and, conversely, growing one's hair came to symbolize revolutionary ideals (such as during the Taiping Rebellion).
Resistance to the queue
Han 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 killing the educated elite and instituting a stricter separation between Han 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.”
The queue became a symbol of the Qing Dynasty until 1911, when the Xinhai Revolution led to a complete change in hairstyle almost overnight. The queue became unpopular as it became associated with a fallen government. See, for instance, Lu Xun's short story Storm in a Teacup. Chinese citizens in Hong Kong changed to short haircuts collectively.
Native American queue
The queue is also a Native American hairstyle, as described in the book House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday. It is a Navajo or Diné way of dressing both men's and women's hair. The hair is rolled and tied with white yarn or cloth. It is also called a tsiiyeel in Diné.
See also
Further Reading
Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers' Jaws
Struve, Lynn A. Publisher:Yale University Press, 1998
ISBN 0300075537, 9780300075533 312 pages
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