The live-action movie Mulan sparked a heated discussion about what women’s popular makeup looks like in the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

　　BEIJING, July 8 (Yuan Xiuyue) On the 8th, the Disney live-action movie Mulan made its debut. As soon as the trailer was released, Liu Yifei’s makeup caused a heated discussion on the Internet.

　　In the film, Mulan was arranged by her family to go on a blind date, and she was carefully dressed from clothes to makeup. However, Mulan’s makeup seems a little out of line with modern aesthetics. A red face, a yellow forehead, black eyebrows, and red flowers painted between them. Some netizens commented that such makeup could not even hold up the "fairy sister".

　　Then, in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, how did women make up, and what popular makeup did they have?

　　There is a cloud in Mulan Poetry: "When the window is decorated with clouds, it will be yellow for the mirror." Among them, "flower yellow" refers to forehead yellow makeup. In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, influenced by Buddhist culture, women took the makeup of Buddha statues as beauty. Some women were also inspired by the Buddha statue and painted their foreheads yellow. In poetry and prose, the forehead yellow is also called crow yellow, pistil yellow, about yellow and flower Huang Zhi.

　　For example, in the poem "Three Butterflies" by Li Shangyin, "Princess Shouyang wears makeup when she marries, and the eyebrows in the eight-character palace are yellow." Liang Jian Wendi Xiao Gang’s "Beautiful Women" also said: "About the yellow energy efficiency month, cutting gold and making stars skillfully."

　　In addition to painting the forehead yellow, there are yellow hard paper or gold foil cut into patterns and pasted on the forehead. Because it can be cut into stars, moons, flowers, birds and other patterns, it is also called "flower yellow". In Chen Houzhu’s "Picking Lotus Songs", there is: "Note the mouth with the appropriate cleverness, and the flowers will be yellow."

　　In fact, as early as the Warring States period, women began to apply powder and makeup. After the Han dynasty, the number of people wearing red makeup increased day by day. In "Mulan Poetry", there is "A sister hears that her sister is coming, and she will manage the red makeup." The raw material of red makeup is rouge, which is mixed with lead powder and rice flour and applied to cheeks. There are faint red makeup, peach blossom makeup and oblique red makeup.

　　In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there was plum blossom makeup, that is, plum blossom-shaped makeup was attached to the forehead. It is said that Princess Shouyang, the daughter of Emperor Wu of the Southern Song Dynasty, was lying on her back on the seventh day of the first month. The plum tree in front of the temple was blown by the breeze, and a plum blossom fell right on the princess’s forehead. The forehead is stained like a petal, and it can’t be washed away. Seeing this, women in the palace followed suit and cut plum blossoms and stuck them on their foreheads. Later, plum blossom makeup gradually became a fashion.

　　During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, women attached great importance to face makeup, and developed a variety of styles, including white makeup, purple makeup, Buddha makeup, crow makeup, half-face makeup and so on.

　　White makeup is to apply white powder to the face, not rouge, and pursue the beauty of elegance. Purple makeup, as the name implies, is to apply purple powder to the face, which is made up of rice flour, Hu powder and sunflower juice. Buddha makeup is similar to forehead makeup, except that the whole face is painted yellow.

　　During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, some weird makeup styles were popular, such as crying makeup and half-face makeup. Crow makeup is to apply powder under the corner of your eyes, just like crow marks. Half-face makeup is only half-face, which comes from Xu Fei, the concubine of Emperor Liang Yuan.

　　In fact, whether it is forehead yellow makeup or red makeup, it reflects women’s pursuit of beauty at that time, leaving an indispensable stroke for China’s makeup history and an infinite imagination space for us today. (End)