Woman's Hand-woven Cloth Dress with Silver Plates Buttons and Belt Made of Thin Bamboo Slice

The dress for a De'ang woman is made of hand-woven cloth, and the buttons are made of silver plates. The waist is decorated with rattan waistband. Traditionally, the De'ang wear a rattan waistband, and they believe the more they wear, the more beautiful and honorable they are. A De'ang folktale says that the ancestors of the De'ang came from a gourd, and after the man and woman flew out of the gourd, the man placed rattan hoops around his wife's waist so that she would not fly away. Though in this telling it is a symbol of patriarchal domination, today the bands are mostly regarded as merely ornaments.