The style of traditional Chinese clothing has a long history going back several thousand years. A legend said, Leizu (嫘祖), the wife of Huang-Di (黄帝), started raising silkworms in captivity and invented a way to produce silk cloth. Huang-Di designed a beautiful type of clothing with the silk cloth.

In the Zhou Dynasty which existed from the 11th century BC to the 3rd century BC, the Qi (齐) State was an affluent country and the people loved beautiful clothing, so Qi became known as “the land of beautiful clothing” (冠带衣履天下).

From the Southern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty, Chinese culture showed its great influence on the Northeast Asia. So that today we still can see the basic style of ancient Chinese clothing from traditional Korean clothing named Hanbok and traditional Japanese clothing named Kimono. Wang Wei (王维), a famous poet of the Tang Dynasty, said that the clothing style accepted by Japan was from the Han Dynasty, a Chinese dynasty which existed from 202 BC to 220 AD.

The main population of China is Han Chinese. The ancestors of Han Chinese are called Huaxia. Therefore, nowadays we generally call traditional Chinese clothing as Huaxia Clothing or Han Clothing (Hanfu, 汉服). In the 17th century, the Ming Dynasty, the last empire that ruled by Han Chinese emperors, was destroyed by the Manchus. With massacres, the new ruler forced Han Chinese people to wear traditional Manchu clothing and keep traditional hairstyle of the Manchu tribes, as the symbol of allegiance.

Yike Jiang

Article category: Chinese Clothing