Queue (hairstyle)

Queue (hairstyle)
Chinese American man with queue in San Francisco's Chinatown
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	辮子
Simplified Chinese	辫子
Transcriptions Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin biànzi Min - Hokkien POJ pīⁿ-á (辮仔) Cantonese (Yue) - Jyutping bin1 zi2
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	頭鬃尾 or 毛尾仔
Transcriptions Min - Hokkien POJ mn̂g-bué-á/mn̂g-bé-á or thâu-chang-bué/thâu-chang-bé
Manchu name
Manchu	(soncoho)

The queue or cue is a hairstyle, frequently used in reference to men, in which the hair is worn long and gathered up into a pigtail, often braided. It was worn traditionally by certain Native American groups and the Manchu of Manchuria. The style was also fashionable among men of Europe and North America in the 18th and early 19th centuries.^{[citation needed]}

Manchu Queue

A European artist's conception of a Manchu warrior in China - surprisingly, holding the severed head of an enemy by its queue (which, actually, looks more like a Ukrainian Cossack oseledets). Later historians noted this as an inconsistency in the picture. (From the cover of Martino Martini's Regni Sinensis a Tartari devastati enarratio, 1661)

The queue was a specific male hairstyle worn by the Manchus from central Manchuria and later imposed on the Han Chinese during the Qing dynasty. The hairstyle consisted of the hair on the front of the head being shaved off above the temples every ten days and the rest of the hair braided into a long pigtail.

The hairstyle was compulsory on all males and the penalty for not having it was execution as it was considered treason. In the early 1910s, after the fall of the Qing dynasty, the Chinese no longer had to wear it. Some, such as Zhang Xun, still did as a tradition, but most of them abandoned it after the last Emperor of China, Puyi, cut his queue in 1922.

Manchu tradition

The Manchu hairstyle was forcefully introduced to Han Chinese in the early 17th century. Nurhaci achieved the creation of Aisin Gioro dynasty, later becoming the Qing Dynasty of China, after having defeated the Ming forces in southern Manchuria. Once firmly in power, Nurhaci commanded all men in the areas he had conquered to adopt the Manchu hairstyle.

The Manchu hairstyle was significant because it was a symbol of Ming Chinese submission to Qing rule. The queue also aided the Manchus in identifying those Chinese who refused to accept Qing dynasty domination.

Queue Order (1645)

Chinese circus performers soon after the Manchu conquest, wearing queues. (Drawing by Johan Nieuhof, 1655-57)

The Queue Order (simplified Chinese: 剃发令; traditional Chinese: 剃髮令; pinyin: tìfàlìng), or tonsure decree, was a series of laws violently imposed by the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in the seventeenth century. It was also imposed on Taiwanese aborigines in 1753, though the Ryukyuan people, whose kingdom was a tributary of China, requested and were granted an exemption from the mandate.

Traditionally, adult Han Chinese did not cut their hair. According to the Classic of Filial Piety, Confucius said

“

We are given our body, skin and hair from our parents; which we ought not to damage. This idea is the quintessence of filial duty. (身體髮膚，受之父母，不敢毀傷，孝至始也。)

”

As a result of this ideology both men and women wound their hair into a bun or other various hairstyles. Manchu men, on the other hand, shaved their foreheads, leaving a long tail (traditionally called "queue" in English).

A soldier during the Boxer Rebellion with queue and conical Asian hat

In 1644 Beijing was sacked by a coalition of rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, a minor Ming Dynasty official turned leader of the peasant revolt. The last Ming Emperor Chongzhen committed suicide when the city fell, marking the official end of the dynasty. The Manchus then allied with Ming Dynasty general Wu Sangui and seized control of Beijing and overthrew Li's short-lived Shun Dynasty. Then they forced Han Chinese to adopt the queue as a sign of submission.

A year later, after the Manchus had reached South China, Dorgon imposed the Queue Order for all Han Chinese, giving the Han Chinese 10 days to shave their hair into a queue, or face death. Although Dorgon admitted that followers of Confucianism might have grounds for objection, most Han officials had instead cited the Ming Dynasty's traditional System of Rites and Music as their reason for resistance. This led Dorgon to question their motives: "If officials say that people should not respect our Rites and Music, but rather follow those of the Ming, what can be their true intentions?"

The slogan adopted by the Qing was "Keep your hair and lose your head, or keep your head and cut your hair" (Chinese: 留髮不留頭，留頭不留髮; pinyin: liú fà bù liú tóu, liú tóu bù liú fà). The Han Chinese people resisted the order and the Manchu rulers struck back with deadly force, massacring all who refused to shave their hair. Rebels in Shangdong tortured to death the official who suggested the queue order to Dorgon and killed his relatives.

The three massacres at Jiading is one of the most infamous massacres, with estimated death tolls in the tens (or even hundreds) of thousands. The imposition of this order was not uniform; it took up to 10 years of martial enforcement for all of China to be brought into compliance.

Since the Qing Dynasty grouped Muslims by language, they grouped the Han Hui (currently known as Hui people) with Han Chinese since both of them spoke Chinese, and made them wear the queue. Turkic Muslims like the Chanto Hui (Uyghurs) and Sala Hui (Salars) did not have to wear the queue.

However, after an invasion of Kashgar by Jahangir Khoja, Turkistani Muslim begs and officials in Xinjiang eagerly fought for the "privilege" of wearing a queue to show their steadfast loyalty to the Empire. High ranking begs were granted this right.

The purpose of the Queue Order was to demonstrate loyalty to the Qing and, conversely, growing one's hair came to symbolize revolutionary ideals, such as during the White Lotus Rebellion. Taiping Rebellion being called the Long hairs (長毛) or Hair rebels (髮逆).

Resistance to the queue

Han Chinese resistance to adopting the queue was widespread and bloody. The Chinese in Liaodong rebelled in 1622 and 1625 in response to the implementation of the mandatory hairstyle. The Manchus responded swiftly to this rebellion by killing the educated elite and instituting a stricter separation between Han Chinese and Manchus.

In 1645, the adoption of the queue was taken a step further by the ruling Manchus when it was decreed that any man who did not adopt the Manchu hairstyle within ten days would be executed. The intellectual Lu Xun summed up the Chinese reaction to the implementation of the mandatory Manchu hairstyle by stating, "In fact, the Chinese people in those days revolted not because the country was on the verge of ruin, but because they had to wear queues." In 1683 Zheng Keshuang surrendered and queued.

The queue became a symbol of the Qing Dynasty and a custom except among Buddhist monastics. Some revolutionists, supporters of the Hundred Days' Reform or students who studied abroad cut their braids. The Xinhai Revolution in 1911 led to a complete change in hairstyle almost overnight. The queue became unpopular as it became associated with a fallen government; this is depicted in Lu Xun's short story Storm in a Teacup in which Chinese citizens in Hong Kong changed to short haircuts collectively.

Foreign reaction

The Manchus' willingness to impose the queue and their dress style on the men of China, and their success in suppressing the resistance, were viewed as an example to emulate by some foreign observers. H.E.M. James, a British administrator in India, wrote in 1887 that the British rulers ought to act in a similarly decisive way imposing their will in India. In his view, the British administrators should have outlawed the suttee much earlier than they had actually done it (1829), and in James' own day they should have acted similarly severely against Indian journalists expressing opposition to the British rule.

Other Queues

Curley Bear with queued hair.

• The queue is also a Native American hairstyle, as described in the book House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday. It is a Navajo way of dressing both men's and women's hair. The hair is rolled and tied with white yarn or cloth. It is called a tsiiyéél in Navajo.

• British soldiers and sailors during the 18th century wore their hair in a style known as the queue. While not always braided, the hair was similarly pulled back very tight into a single tail, but was wrapped around a piece of leather and tied down with a ribbon. The hair was also often greased and powdered in a fashion similar to powdered wigs, or tarred in the case of sailors. It was said that the soldiers' hair had to be pulled back so tightly that had difficulty closing their eyes afterwards. The use of white hair powder in the British Army was discontinued in 1796 and queues were ordered to be cut off four years later. They continued to be worn in the Royal Navy for a while longer, where they were known as "pigtails". Officers wore pigtails until 1805 and other ranks continued to wear them until about 1820.

Painting of the Battle of Leuthen with the Prussian soldiers wearing the soldier's queue

• In the 18th century, European soldiers styled their traditionally long hair into a queue called the "soldier's queue" (Soldatenzopf), which was until then only allowed for noble Officers. That hairstyle first became mandatory in the Prussian army and several other Holy Roman states' forces under Frederick William I of Prussia. An artificial or "patent" queue was issued to recruits whose hair was too short to plait. The style was abolished in the Prussian army in 1807.

See also

• Rattail (haircut)
• Braid
• Cheongsam
• Chupryna
• Foot binding
• Han Chinese clothing
• Pigtail
• Pigtail Ordinance
• Sikha

References

• Also mentioned in "Dragonwings", by Laurence Yep, Chapter 4

Further reading

• Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers' Jaws - By Struve, Lynn A. Publisher：Yale University Press, 1998 (ISBN 0300075537, ISBN 978-0-300-07553-3) (312 pages)