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Auspicious-Dress Hat of a Qing Beile

Material forms, ritual meanings, and the historical record

The auspicious-dress hat (jifuguan) belonged to the prescribed costume of a doroi beile. It was not an interchangeable everyday hat: Qing regulations distinguished types of.

Written by MING YECulture & Everyday LifeManchuCulture Wiki
Source-based English editorial manuscript · Historical details subject to final source verification.

Historical Background

The auspicious-dress hat (jifuguan) belonged to the prescribed costume of a doroi beile. It was not an interchangeable everyday hat: Qing regulations distinguished types of headwear according to the occasion and separated winter and summer versions with differing materials, linings, and finials. The beile rank was a hereditary imperial-clan distinction.

Forms and Practices

In volume 4 of the Illustrated Regulations for Imperial Ritual Paraphernalia, the winter jifu hat prescribed for a first-rank prince could be made with specified marine-otter or sable furs and topped with a ruby. The code explicitly extends this design through the grades from heir apparent to beile. The summer provision describes plaited plant materials, rattan, or bamboo fibres, a red silk or gauze lining, dark-blue gold-patterned edging, and a finial following the winter regulation.

Interpretation and Evidence

These details show that beile headwear was governed jointly by noble hierarchy and season. The source transmits the rule by extending a higher-grade article to specified lower ranks; it should not be cited as though the code contained an entirely separate and independent beile hat passage. The illustrated code provides normative specifications rather than individual evidence that every surviving hat was manufactured or used precisely as prescribed.

Sources and Bibliography

  1. Source reference 1 — zh.wikisource.org
  2. Source reference 2 — zh.wikisource.org
  3. Source reference 3 — www.dpm.org.cn
  4. Source reference 4 — www.shidianguji.com

References reproduce links supplied with the Chinese research manuscript. Individual historical claims have not all been independently verified against the primary sources.