Girls in Gorgeous Dresses and Adornment in Shigutun Village

They are dressed in extremely beautiful dresses and accessories today. On their loose jacket made of satin in various colors such as red, purple, blue, etc., there are floral patterns decorated hem and a silk waist belt with fringing. To go with the jacket they put on a skirt decorated with dyed floral patterns. All the flower motifs on them are the big patterns in ancient style.
As for accessories, apart from the coral beads earrings and necklaces with lock-shaped pendants made of gold, silver or coral, some of them also wear coronets made of red coral beads, while a few others choose as many as dozens of round silver plates to adorn their head wraps. Shinny with so many bright colors, these girls look like butterflies flying around flowers. It must be very expensive for dresses and accessories like this.
Girls from poorer families choose dyed cloth instead of satin, and beads of manmade material as opposed to coral. So they look as brilliant as the others. They’ve applied powder to cover their inborn dark skin color, but a little too much. Maybe in order to imitate the fashion girls, they put on shoes with floral patterns, but with naked feet. The jackets and shirts, however, are shinny enough to offset the not so cheerful footwear.

Quote from pages 86 & 87 in Investigation Report on The Qiang and Rong Ethnic Minorities by Zhuang Xueben