Clothes made of ordinary cloth
It is said in Salt and Iron that ordinary people in ancient times could only wear silk clothes when they were eighty or ninety years old. Before that, they could only wear linen clothes. So people call it cloth.
Reading ancient prose, even recent works, you can encounter the word "cloth". "cloth" refers to the most common cheap clothes for ordinary people; "Cloth and food" often describes simple living; "commoners in cloth" is simply the working people.
"Buyi", as its name implies, is clothes made of cloth. Please note that the "cloth" here is not the "cotton cloth" made of 100% cotton! Tracing back to ancient times, "cloth" is the hemp product called flax today. So the "cloth" that describes the poor is the general public wearing linen! Not surprisingly, although linen is more expensive than cotton at present, it was just the opposite in ancient times. China was rich in all kinds of hemp in ancient times, with a long history of weaving with hemp, and the cotton yield was once very small. Things are rare, and cotton-padded clothes can only be worn by prominent families who are either rich or expensive. Before and after the Northern and Southern Dynasties, China's cotton cloth was imported from Nanyang, but the freight cost increased the value of cotton cloth tenfold, so ordinary poor people could only make do with linen clothes! It was not until the Yuan Dynasty that the famous Huang Daopo brought back the textile technology of Li nationality from Qiongzhou, and cotton planting gradually increased. After Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, it was stipulated that every cultivator with four acres of land must plant half an acre of mulberry, hemp and cotton. Those who own ten acres of land will double their cotton planting. Therefore, the cultivation of cotton has gradually spread throughout the country.
In ancient times, silk and satin were the first, cotton was the best, and flax was a common thing. I didn't expect the tables to turn. Now cheap silk is rampant, and the price of cotton cloth fluctuates from time to time. However, the clothes of the ancient poor have climbed to a new fashion peak in today's world. In ancient times, I used to be a rich man in silk clothes, but now I see beggars in silk coats!
Buyi is the name of Zhuang people in Tianlin, Nandan, Tiane, Donglan, Laibin and Huanjiang counties in Guangxi. Zhuang people in different places have different self-descriptions, but they can't do without the collective name of "cloth" and "general". "Cloth" and "Pu" mean people.