CHINESE TRADITONAL CLOTHES

   A Magua  is a short-sleeved, loose outer garment of Manchu origin, designed for ease to put on and take off by wearers on horseback. This clothing was the standard military uniform for the Qing Dynasty Manchu's Eight Banners soldier.
     Since this is a military uniform & due to the fact that Manchu's Eight Banners soldiers had played big roll in implementing Queue and Costume Order, it is considered by many that this clothing was stained with the bloods of millions Chinese.

In 1645, just right after Qing Dynasty * was established in China, the Qing government enacted a law which is called the Queue and Costume Order . The law on queue imposes only on Chinese and not other ethnics in China and in this law, the government required all Chinese’s male to cut their hair half bald and the rest of the hair should be turned into a queue (pigtail) in the same time, all Chinese along with other ethnics should change their clothing into Manchurian clothing. Anyone that defies the law will have to face death sentence through beheading. Basically, the Qing government wants to forcefully force Manchurian clothing and culture (head half bald and queue) on the Chinese.

In order to protect the Chinese culture & ethnic costume from being perverted & destroyed by the new law, Chinese in the whole of China started to resist the order fiercely by taking up arms & rebel against the Manchu Qing government. In retaliation, the Qing government struck back with deadly force, massacring all who refused to follow the new law all around the country. This has caused lots of tragedies (plundering, kidnapping beautiful looking girl as an offer to the imperial court and rape) and genocides, one of the famous massacre is the Jiading Three 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 with a death toll estimating 30millions(mostly Chinese). The purpose of the law is to let the Qing government detects any Ming Dynasty loyalist (considered rebel) and in the same time destroyed the pride of the Chinese in order to let the Qing government an easy control of the Chinese so that the day to day governance will run smoothly.