A queue or cue is a hairstyle historically worn by the Jurchen and Manchu peoples of Manchuria. During the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, it was required to be worn by male Han Chinese subjects. The top of the scalp is shaved and the back portion of hair on the head is often grown long and is braided. The distinctive hairstyle led to its wearers being targeted during anti-Chinese riots in Australia and the United States.
The edict that Han Chinese men and others under Manchu rule give up their traditional hairstyles and wear the queue, the Tifayifu, was met with resistance, although opinions about the queue did change over time. Han women were never required to wear their hair in the traditional women's Manchu style, liangbatou, although that too was a symbol of Manchu identity.
Short queues were also worn by soldiers of European and North American armies in the 18th century, a custom that ended during the Napoleonic Wars.
Predecessors and origin The queue hairstyle predates the Manchus. The Chinese word for queue, bian, meant plaited hair or a cord. The term bian, when used to describe the braid in the Manchu hairstyle, was originally applied by the Han dynasty to the Xiongnu. Jurchen people wore a queue like the Manchu, the Khitan people wore theirs in Tartar style and during the Tang dynasty, tribes in the west wore braids. The Xianbei and Wuhuan were said to shave their heads, while Xiongnu had queues. Other evidence from Chinese histories indicate that the Tuoba or Tabgach groups of the Xianbei wore braids, since they were called "braided" by the southern Chinese. However, their hairstyle is hidden in depictions due to a hood they wore. The Liu Song dynasty's records called them "braided caitiff", suolu, while Southern Qi's history said they wore their "hair hanging down the back" (pifa), and called them suotou, "braided". A braid of hair was found at Zhalairuoer in a Tuoba grave.
Han Chinese also made the peoples they conquered undo their queues. To show submission to the Han Chinese of the Sui dynasty, the people of Turfan (Gaochang) undid their queues, as did the Göktürks upon surrendering to the Tang dynasty. Hairstyles showed affiliation to a tribal confederation or dynasty. In the Western Wei cave 285 at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Xianbei people are depicted with small queues hanging from their necks.
After overthrowing the Mongol Yuan dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the first Ming emperor passed a law on mandatory hairstyle on 24 September 1392 mandating that all males grow their hair long and making it illegal for them to shave part of their foreheads while leaving strands of hair, which was the Mongol hairstyle. The penalty for both the barber and the person who was shaved and his sons was castration if they cut their hair and their families were to be sent to the borders for exile. This helped eradicate the partially shaved Mongol hairstyles.
The Tangut people of the Western Xia may have inherited hairstyle influences from the Tuoba. It resembled a monk's hairstyle but was not exactly like their tonsure, it left the face to be framed on the sides and forehead by a fringe of hair by shaving the head top and leaving it bald. This made sure the Tibetans and Song Chinese could be told apart from shaved Tanguts. It was imposed by the Tangut emperor, Jingzong, threatening that their throats would be cut if they did not shave within three days. The emperor was the first one to shave. Unlike the tonsure of the Tangut Western Xia, the Jurchen hairstyle of wearing the queue combined with shaving the crown was not the invention of an emperor of the dynasty but was an established Jurchen hairstyle which showed who submitted to Jin rule. This Jurchen queue and shaving hairstyle was not enforced on the Han Chinese in the Jin after an initial attempt to do so which was a rebuke to Jurchen values. The Jin at first attempted to impose Jurchen hairstyle and clothes on the Han population during the Jin but the order was taken back. They also banned intermarriage.
Manchu Jurchen men had queues, while Mongol men swept their hair behind their ears and plaited them, Turk men wore loose hair and Xiongnu men braided their hair. Khitan males grew hair from their temples but shaved the crown of their heads. The Han Chinese men living in the Liao dynasty were not required to wear the shaved Khitan hairstyle which Khitan men wore to distinguish their ethnicity, unlike the Qing dynasty which mandated wearing of the Manchu hairstyle for men. Khitan men left only two separate patches of hair on each of the forehead's sides in front of each ear in tresses while they shaved the top of their head. Khitan wore felt hats, fur clothes and woolen cloth and the Liao emperor switched between Han and Khitan clothing. Khitan officials used gold ornamented ribbons to found their hair locks around their foreheads, covering their heads with felt hats according to the Ye Longli's (Yeh Lung-li) Qidan Guozhi (Ch'i-tan kuo-chih). Khitan wore the long side fringes and shaved pates. Tomb murals of Khitan hairstyle show only some hair remaining near the neck and forehead with the rest of the head shaved. Only at the temples were hair left while the crown was shaven. The absence of Khitan clothes and hairstyles on a painting of riders previously identified as Khitan has led to experts questioning their purported identity. Khitan men might have differentiate between classes by wearing different patterns on their small braids hanging off their shaved foreheads. They wore the braids occasionally with a forehead fringe with some shaving off all the forehead. Some Han men adopted and mixed or combined Han clothing with Khitan clothing with Khitan boots and Han clothes or wearing Khitan clothes. Han women on the other hand did not adopt Khitan dress and continued wearing Han dress.
Jurchen queue Jurchen men, like their Manchu descendants, wore their hair in queues. In 1126, the Jurchen ordered male Han within their conquered territories to adopt the Jurchen hairstyle by shaving the front of their heads and to adopt Jurchen dress, but the order was lifted. Some Han rebels impersonated Jurchen by wearing their hair in the Jurchen "pigtail" to strike fear within the Jurchen population.
The Manchu queue
The queue (called soncoho in Manchu) was a specifically male hairstyle worn by the Manchu from central Manchuria and later imposed on the Han Chinese during the Qing dynasty.Jia Sheng (), 宋金时代的“留发不留头” ("Keep the hair, lose the head" in the Song-Jin era) The hair on the front of the head was shaved off above the temples every ten days and the remainder of the hair was braided into a long braid.
The Manchu hairstyle was forcefully introduced to Han Chinese and other ethnicities like the Nanai in the early 17th century during the transition from Ming to Qing. Nurhaci of the Aisin Gioro clan declared the establishment of the Later Jin dynasty, later becoming the Qing dynasty of China, after Ming dynasty forces in Liaodong defected to his side. The Ming general of Fushun, Li Yongfang, defected to Nurhaci after Nurhaci promised him rewards, titles, and Nurhaci's own granddaughter in marriage. Other Han Chinese generals in Liaodong proceeded to defect with their armies to Nurhaci and were given women from the Aisin Gioro family in marriage. Once firmly in power, Nurhaci commanded all men in the areas he conquered to adopt the Manchu hairstyle.
The Manchu hairstyle signified all ethnic groups submission to Qing rule, and also aided the Manchu identification of those Han who refused to accept Qing dynasty domination.
The hairstyle was compulsory for all males and the penalty for non-compliance was execution for treason. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912, the Chinese no longer had to wear the Manchu queue. While some, such as Zhang Xun, still did so as a tradition, most of them abandoned it after the last Emperor of China, Puyi, cut his queue in 1922.Lao Lu (), (Thoroughly changing the customs officially established for 200 years: the story of queue-cutting in the early Republic of China period)
The Nanais at first fought against the Nurhaci and the Manchus, led by their own Nanai Hurka chief Sosoku before surrendering to Hongtaiji in 1631. Mandatory shaving of the front of all male heads was imposed on Amur peoples like the Nanai people who were conquered by the Qing. The Amur peoples already wore the queue on the back of their heads but did not shave the front until the Qing subjected them and ordered them to shave. The term "shaved-head people" was used to describe the Nanai people by Ulch people.
Queue order
The Queue Order (), or tonsure decree, was a series of laws violently imposed by the Qing dynasty during the seventeenth century. It was also imposed on Taiwanese indigenous peoples in 1753,清朝乾隆23年清政府令平埔族人學清俗 and Koreans who settled in northeast China in the late 19th century, though the Ryukyuan people of the Ryukyu Kingdom, a tributary of China, requested and were granted an exemption from the mandate.
Traditionally, adult Han Chinese did not cut their hair for philosophical and cultural reasons. According to the Classic of Filial Piety, Confucius said:
As a result of this ideology, both men and women wound their hair into a bun (a topknot) or other various hairstyles.
Han Chinese did not object to wearing the queue braid on the back of the head as they traditionally wore all their hair long, but fiercely objected to shaving the forehead so the Qing government exclusively focused on forcing people to shave the forehead rather than wear the braid. Han rebels in the first half of the Qing who objected to Qing hairstyle wore the braid but defied orders to shave the front of the head. One person was executed for refusing to shave the front but he had willingly braided the back of his hair. It was only later that westernized revolutionaries began to view the braid as backwards and advocated adopting short-haired western styles. Han rebels against the Qing like the Taiping retained their queue braids on the back but rebelled by growing hair on the front of their heads. This caused the Qing government to view shaving the front of the head as the primary sign of loyalty rather than wearing the braid on the back, which did not violate Han customs and traditional Han did not object to. Koxinga criticized the Qing hairstyle by referring to the shaven pate looking like a fly. Koxinga and his men objected to shaving when the Qing demanded they shave in exchange for recognizing Koxinga as a feudatory. The Qing demanded that Zheng Jing and his men on Taiwan shave to receive recognition as a fiefdom. His men and Ming prince Zhu Shugui fiercely objected to shaving.
In 1644, Beijing was sacked by a coalition of rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, a minor Ming dynasty official turned leader of a peasant revolt. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell, marking the official end of the Ming dynasty. The Han Chinese Ming general Wu Sangui and his army then defected to the Qing and allowed them through Shanhai pass. They then seized control of Beijing, overthrowing Li's short-lived Shun dynasty. They then forced Han Chinese to adopt the queue as a sign of submission.