Introduction to Hanfu Dress

Hanfu, the traditional costume of the Han nationality, is also known as Han clothing, Huaxia clothing, Han costume, and Chinese clothing. It is the unique clothing system of the Han nationality (Huaxia) in the nearly four thousand years from the Yellow Emperor era to the end of the Ming Dynasty before the shaving of hair and changing clothes.

Hanfu is the external manifestation of the unique cultural temperament of the Huaxia people. Its basic features are cross collar, right lapel, lace, wide sleeves, and hidden buttons, which are obviously different from other traditional costumes of ethnic groups.

Hanfu is one of the oldest ethnic costumes in the world. It has profoundly influenced the costumes, etiquette, art, and aesthetics of the entire Chinese character cultural circle, so that the “Hua” in “China” refers to Hanfu culture. Japan, North Korea, and Vietnam have all enacted laws to imitate the Huaxia crown and clothing system.

Hanfu includes clothes, hats, hairstyles, facial decorations, shoes, accessories and other combined overall clothing system, which condenses the outstanding crafts and aesthetics of Chinese culture such as textiles, batik, embroidery, and brocade, inherits more than 20 Chinese national intangible cultural heritages, embodies the reputation of splendid China, and reflects the cultural etiquette of the Han nationality. The core of Han civilization is etiquette culture, and etiquette culture is rooted in clothing system, just as Confucius said in “The Book of Changes·Xici”: “Huangdi, Yao, and Shun hung clothes and the world was governed.”

In the early Qing Dynasty, the Manchu rulers implemented the policy of shaving hair and changing clothes, that is, the so-called “keep the head but not the hair, keep the hair but not the head”, strictly prohibited people from wearing Hanfu dress, and killed a large number of people who refused to shave their hair and change clothes. Since then, Hanfu has disappeared from people’s lives. In contemporary times, there is a trend of reviving Hanfu in society, hoping to let the Chinese people recognize the importance of their own traditional Chinese culture through the revival of Hanfu.

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