go behind the costume scene in Mengzi

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Back into Mengzi I of course check out some market, but the Yuguopu market was not that interesting, most of them were Yi whose only kept kind of headdress, an ready-made towel with some feather pompons on both ends. The worse was not any desirable snack could raise my appetite. Also I cross the border into Pingbian for Xinhua market, as I heard there should be some Puyi like in Laozhai market, but again...was disappointed, only Miao and Nong-Zhuang there. Anyway...the journey from Mengzi was rather pretty with valley of karst hills, nice village setting.
I caught up with Cai, my friend from Maande, he just brought a mini-van so we decided to do something different, we went looking for minority villages and asked them to show us their costume, with Cai...he spoke the local dialect and processed a smooth way to persuaded the others, I guessed he got it in his nature-self, and being a teacher...he sure know how to communicated with people, which I had lose all those skills for a long time! I was surprised how easy we got into their houses and then they were ready for us to took their picture, of course...we did promised to give them back some photos. First we hit the Puyi village, and surprised to find that most of the young women still got their costume, "we wear it for dancing show in festival" a young girl said, and added they just performed one week ago in torch festival. Shit...should had came here if...I knew it! I saw this Puyi costume the first time in Laozhai, but couldn't get much closer look, but now everything was there in front of me. The headdress was a crown shape circular headband with many pikes shoot out around the circumference, real hair was inside the headband and coming out from one end of the crown. Long sleeve shirt with a longer back panel, top with a tight sleeveless vest, girdle and front apron, long baggy trouser with patterns on the lower end, trousers either in blue or green colour. Married woman should covered their headdress with a scarf. This tribe of Puyi lived only in this north-east corner of Mengzi around the Yanshan border.

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