China poblana

Chinese woman from Puebla) is considered the traditional style of dress of women in Mexico, although in reality it only belonged to some urban zones in the middle and southeast of the country, before its disappearance in the second half of the 19th century.

According to descriptions written in the 19th century, the era in which the dress was very popular in various cities in the middle and southeast of Mexico, china outfit is made up of the following garments: Eso sí que no; yo soy la tierra que todos pisan, pero no sé hacer capirotadas.

Author José María Rivera notes that if a china woman would have seen a corset, she would have thought it a torture device such as used on Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins; and that her face was not some sort of "cake frosting", an allusion to the "proper" women whose faces would have to be washed to see if the colors run: [...] no conoce el corsé; si lo viera, desde luego pensaría que semejante aparato fue uno de los intrumentos que sirvieron para el martirio de Santa Úrsula y sus once mil compañeras [...] y está tan a oscuras en eso de cascarillas, colorete y vinagres radicales, que si se hallara tales chucherías entre sus limpios peines y adornadas escobetas, creería sin duda que aquello era para pintar las ollas del tinajero, pues, como dijo el otro, el novio de la china no tiene necesidad de lavar antes a la novia, como a las indianas, para ver si se destiñe, prueba a que deberían estar sujetas algunas hermosuras del buen tono.

...she knows not the corset; if she saw it, right off she would think that it such a device was one of the instruments that served to martyr Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand handmaidens...And she is so much in the dark in matters of facial masks (literally, husks), rouge, and radical vinegars, that if she encountered such trinkets among her clean combs and adorned hairbrushes, without a doubt she would believe they were for painting pots from the potterymaker, since, as someone else has said, the boyfriend of the china woman has no need to wash his girlfriend beforehand, like Indian women, to see if her colors run, a test that some "proper" beautiful women should have to go through.

The correlation between the china—as a popular figure—and the outfit worn by the historic China Poblana—the alluded-to Catarina de San Juan—is a product of the evolution of Mexican culture during the first decades of the 20th century.

Poblanas (women of Puebla ), in a 19th-century vignette. To the left appears a chinaco [ es ] .
"La china" woman, in a lithograph that accompanied the heading of the same name in the book Los mexicanos pintados por sí mismos about Mexican culture.
A Mexican fandango from the 19th century. In the image a china woman can be seen dancing with her characteristic fine attire, to the sound of a harp .
Girls wearing the China poblana dress.