Putting China’s Traditional Hanfu on the World Stage

LONDON — The qipao, with its distinctive mandarin collar and body-hugging shape, is what most people imagine when it comes to traditional Chinese clothing. Whether on Maggie Cheung in “In the Mood for Love” or the caricatured versions that appear on the Street Fighter character Chun-Li, it’s an outfit that rings familiar to many around the world as a signpost of Chinese tradition.

“The concept of Hanfu started from a group of classic culture lovers,” said Yiheng Zhao, a research assistant at Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, herself a Hanfu enthusiast. “They want China to adopt it as traditional formal wear like the Japanese kimono and Korean hanbok. It is the symbol of a cultural renaissance that encourage people to follow the ancient Chinese traditions.

Liang Ming, a social worker and founder of New York Hanfu Corporation, said wearing Hanfu offers overseas Chinese a tangible connection to their heritage. In addition to help promote Chinese culture to other communities, it can also be a useful way to network. The third type, which has rapidly emerged within the last few years, are people who are steeped in gaming and anime culture. They wear Hanfu to showcase their love of history, as well as broadcast their personal style.

At the same time, philosophies like Confucianism and Taoism are now commonplace in modern China’s education system. Compared to their parents who lived through the Cultural Revolution and were asked to renounce these ideas, a younger generation has been encouraged to connect with traditional culture.But the idea of Hanfu is not to replicate what the historians excavated from tombs or ancient texts.

“Heritage is a very big movement now in China; they want to know what’s behind this artisanship,” he said. “Millennials, and especially Gen Z, are into this idea of knowledge capital. There’s a big paradigm shift coming.…I think people are going back to exploring their roots, and seeing how the hand can create beautiful, artisanal objects.

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