Chengdu, a group of young people wearing Hanfu poured into the subway from four locations, all destined for Kuanzhai Alley.
Lu Xiaowei, who runs a Hanfu shop, led a team of people and set off from Wenshufang. This place, located 3 kilometers northeast of Kuanzhai Alley, is the birthplace of her first physical store. That was 13 years ago. At that time, people came and went in the scenic spot, but no one paid attention to her shop. For this event, there were hundreds of people in each team, and there were so many people who came after hearing about it without registering. The crowd monitoring system in the scenic spot was triggered, and the planned flash mob and group photo were temporarily cancelled.
On November 22, 2003, electricity worker Wang Letian, a Hanfu enthusiast, put on Hanfu for the first time and took to the streets of Zhengzhou, attracting the attention of domestic and foreign media. This day was later designated as Hanfu Travel Day by the circle. Various cities will hold relevant activities around this day.
Wearing Hanfu to travel is becoming more and more common nowadays. People wearing Hanfu to take photos can be seen everywhere in traditional festival activities, sacrifices and scenic spots. Hanfu is also seen in supermodel competitions and Chinese dance competitions. Actor Xu Jiao and lyricist Fang Wenshan have become stars endorsing Hanfu.
The amount of money spent on the shape of clothes makes this group look puzzling and harsh. Some people talked about the horror of this circle on Zhihu. They wore Hanfu to shoot videos, but accidentally got scolded for wearing wrong details. Some "Hanfu fundamentalists" fiercely criticized later enthusiasts, such as "wearing photo studio clothes" They are all betraying their ancestors." "Wearing Hanfu without combing your hair means you don't understand etiquette." "You just don't understand Hanfu if you mix and match dynasties."
Senior players in the circle also looked at the people who later got involved in the Hanfu circle with disbelief, despising their commercial purposes, but they did not deny that this was the universalization of Hanfu that they hoped for.possible directions. In the past 16 years, the Hanfu movement has developed from a niche identity symbol into a huge industry after lengthy discussions and disputes.
Contemporary Internet celebrities and first-generation players
In 2016, Lu Xiaowei began to expand her Hanfu physical stores across the country. At that time, she discovered that Lian Yuxin, who was born in 1994, became an Internet celebrity wearing Hanfu. This is a girl who has never appeared in the industry before.
This year's Double Eleven, the sales volume of Lian Yuxin's store rushed into the top 100 women's clothing stores on Taobao that night, surpassing Lu Xiaowei's 13-year-old store. Her identity is a fashionista and Weibo story celebrity. Three years ago, she just graduated. She recorded short historical videos on her mobile phone and taught girls how to style their hair in ancient costumes. Her Weibo followers exceeded 200,000. She believed that she looked like "Ping Ping curling up to thirteen years old, with cardamom sprouts in early February" in Du Fu's poem, so she named herself "Little Cardamom" and then opened a Hanfu Taobao store called "Thirteen Years Old".
Lian Yuxin attributed her love for Hanfu to the fact that her mother taught her to recite the Book of Songs since she was a child. When she went to school in Chongqing in 2012, she joined the school's Hanfu Culture Club and began to look for channels to buy Hanfu, and even wore them to class. When the TV series "The Legend of the Concubine" became popular, she recorded a video of herself styling the characters' hair styles and posted it on Weibo, which received thousands of retweets. Before that, her Weibo had only more than 2,000 fans. This led her to continuously send videos related to Chinese culture, such as "Cardammon Talks about Ancient Times", gradually gaining popularity.
Lian Yuxin doesn’t want to call herself an Internet celebrity because she feels that what she does is spreading Chinese culture. In the eyes of Lu Xiaowei and other people who were involved in the Hanfu circle in the early years, the emergence of "Little Cardamom" is more like a commercial product of this era, which is different from the situation of those senior Hanfu players back then.
In 2002, a post titled "Lost Civilization—Han National Costumes" appeared on the ship military forum. A netizen named "Chinese Bloodline" summarized the main characteristics and reasons for the disappearance of Han nationality costumes in the article, with the following words: Lots of pictures and mentions of Japanese kimono influences. The article was reprinted on overseas websites. Later, some Hanfu netizens looked back on this period of history and found that the article had nearly 300,000 hits in two years. After that, some thoughts on "Han national costumes" began to appear sporadically. The platforms hosting these discussions included Sina Military Forum, Iron Blood Forum, Tianya Forum, etc. It can be seen that many people in these early discussions were based on clothing. Based on this, a pan-ideological investigation was carried out. Netizens interested in Han ethnic costumes gathered in these communities one after another. Among them, there are academic researchers and nationalists. Their articles include, "A Nation Without Its Own National Costumes", "The Reappearance of Hanfu and China's Renaissance", and "The Sorrow of a Great Country - A Brief History of the Demise of Hanfu".
In the end, it was Wang Letian who became an important node in the Hanfu movement. On November 22 of that year, Wang Letian appeared in Zhengzhou wearing Hanfu.On the streets of the state, "Lianhe Zaobao" caught the news, and Hanfu attracted huge attention.
Fang Zhexuan, an early participant in Hanfu culture, saw these events happening in the forum and felt that she had found the answer to her long-standing confusion about the fault lines in the history and culture of the Han nation. She started publishing articles and taking action. After being admitted to the Renmin University of China as a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy, she organized the first offline Hanfu event in Beijing. Netizens from 33 forums in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and other places participated in this sacrificial event wearing Hanfu. The object of sacrifice was the anti-Qing Dynasty. The famous general Yuan Chonghuan.
After that, Fang Zhexuan also participated in the Confucian memorial ceremony wearing Hanfu alone, and wrote the article "A Personal Sacrifice", "I firmly believe that today, with the proliferation of Western thoughts, only Han culture can undertake the historical mission of reversing China's destiny, and Hanfu is to continue the severed ties of civilization."
Revival Symbol
In 2005, when Lu Xiaowei first heard people talking about Hanfu, the circle was niche, quiet, and even a little silent. One day, her boyfriend Sun Yi asked her, did you know that we Han people still have our own clothes? She was a little surprised, remembering that she had traveled to western Sichuan and Yunnan, and always envied the ethnic minorities wearing unique costumes, singing and dancing.
"There is a reason for death." Sun Yidian opened a website for Lu Xiaowei to see. This is a forum called "Han Net", which Sun Yi has been hanging out in for several months. There are many posts discussing the history of the Han nation. Lu Xiaowei suddenly understood, "The Han people were forced to lose their clothing. This is not something that will be eliminated naturally with economic development." She registered immediately.
"When China is rejuvenated, clothing comes first." After entering Hanwang, she immediately recognized this core concept. "Huaxia" is the key concept in the forum. Some netizens previously posted "We, the pioneers of the revival of Hanfu, are collectively called - Tongpao!" ", quoting the line "How can I say that I have no clothes, but I share the same robe with my son" in "Poetry". Afterwards, netizens in the forum agreed to use "tongpao" to refer to each other.
After visiting the forum for a day or two, Lu Xiaowei noticed the merchant section. She decided to order a set of Hanfu, "Since we want to revive it, we have to start with me." But her boyfriend Sun Yi feels that Hanfu is about spiritual recognition and the spread of ideas. At first, he refused to go out wearing Hanfu. Lu Xiaowei contacted a businessman named "Aqiu" on the forum alone.
At that time, only a handful of people published photos of themselves wearing Hanfu on the Chinese Internet. One of the "pioneer" figures is Wang Yuliang. He immigrated to Australia with his parents when he was 11 years old. He later appeared on Hanwang under the online name "Qingsong Baixue" and posted a selfie in the mirror, wearing his own clothes. Made in Hanfu. In the photo, he did not show his face, with his left hand raised flat, dark black sleeves hanging from his arms, and his lower body covered with a white skirt. He cut it himself based on the typical styles he could find.
Hanfu is actually a general term for a large category of clothing. at present, the shape of Hanfu is classified by Tongpao into four basic categories: "clothing system", "deep clothing system", "robe system" and "skirt system". The "clothing system" is the oldest, that is, the upper and lower garments are divided into separate parts. It is believed in the industry that it originated from the Yellow Emperor Yao and Shun and continued to the Ming Dynasty. It is not limited to men and women. "Shenyi" was formed in the Zhou Dynasty. Clothes are cut into pieces and then sewn together at the waist. They are divided into two categories: "curved skirts" and "straight skirts". They are still not limited to men and women. "Robo" was born in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. It is obviously different from Shenyi. It is seamlessly connected from top to bottom. It can be divided into many types such as round collar robe, mandarin robe, gown, straight robe, Taoist robe, monk's robe and so on. During the Song and Ming dynasties, Popularity. The essence of "Ru skirt" is still a top and lower skirt. After the development of the Han Dynasty, it specifically referred to short clothes and long skirts for women. Later, styles such as high-waisted skirts, half-arm skirts, double-breasted skirts, and chest-length skirts were derived. With the revival movement, the aesthetics and style of Hanfu have been continuously adding fashionable pattern elements in recent years, and there have been huge and rich changes in these basic shapes.
In 2005, there were very few opportunities to come into contact with Hanfu in real life, and few people bought it on forums. The big reason is that the cost is too high. The so-called merchants are basically the same as Aqiu. They make goods privately. After understanding the demand, they look for suitable fabrics, determine the design ideas, and then find a tailor to make them. Lu Xiaowei was working as a reporter on a TV station with a monthly income of about 8,000 yuan. She valued the quality of Aqiu at a high price. That's a set of qujing that costs more than 700 yuan. It took more than half a year from placing the order to receiving the clothes. She didn't have a companion, so she asked Sun Yi to accompany her in ordinary clothes and go for a walk in Jinli, because there were statues of ancient ancestors like her in cross-collared clothes.
There is a skirt on the inside, and a curved train on the outside. The collar is crossed to the right and wrapped in thick fabric. On the bus, she heard the people behind her discussing, was this person Korean or Japanese, or was he engaging in cosplay? She heard another girl whisper to the boy next to her that she must be Japanese. She saw the girl's indignant eyes, clenched her hands into fists and said "beat little Japan". Lu Xiaowei was very angry, turned to the girl and said, "I am Chinese, this is Hanfu, not Japanese clothes."
In the summer of 2006, Lu Xiaowei and Sun Yi both went to the Civil Affairs Bureau wearing Hanfu. They fixed themselves and their clothes on the marriage certificate and wore them for the wedding.
(A Hanfu design studio in Changsha, Hunan. Photo/Xinhua)
Moderate Revival
When Lu Xiaowei was at work, she was ridiculed by her colleagues for wearing Hanfu to work, and her boss suspected whether she had joined a cult. However, at her wedding, she found confidence. She and Sun Yi completed their wedding wearing Hanfu, and no one among their relatives or friends thought it was inappropriate. She realized that whether they were villagers in the village or colleagues in the city, whether they were literate or not, and whether they knew about Hanfu or not, they all showed support and appreciation at the wedding. In fact, until now, more and more people think that Hanfu can be used as a formal dress, but it is not suitable for daily wear.
In 2006, when Lu Xiaowei got married in Hanfu, "Tianhan National Culture Forum" (hereinafter referred to as "Tianhan.com") became another major gathering website in the Hanfu circle. A netizen of Han.com named "Xishan Qinkuang" left the forum and became the general administrator of Tianhan.com, proposing the slogan "Start with clothes and end with Boyuan". He constantly corrected the previous fierce nationalist attitude, causing Hanwang and Tianhan to form two camps. They faced off for a long time, and the concept of "reviving Hanfu" in a gentle way gradually matured.
The initial netizens quickly became divided, and offline movements in various places continued to show their prominence. Traditional festivals and traditional weddings have made Hanfu appear in the news. In 2005, Fuzhou Confucian Temple held a ceremony to commemorate Confucius. Several enthusiasts wearing Hanfu tried to participate, but they were considered to be wearing strange and unruly clothes and were expelled. The matter was published by the local metropolitan newspaper and occupied two pages. Zheng Wei, who works in the court, saw the report and was very moved. Since he was very interested in traditional culture, he searched for this forum based on the name "Fujian Hanfu World" mentioned in the newspaper and found several participants. Because of his organizational skills, the loose association elected him president. Zheng Wei realized that he must rely on official recognition in order to carry out activities legitimately.
Just in 2006, Fujian Hanfu World was established with the approval of the Cultural Affairs Bureau and registered with the Civil Affairs Bureau, becoming the first officially recognized Hanfu Cultural Association in the country. Zheng Wei put forward the "Five-Year Plan" in a stylish way - starting from festivals and etiquette, and using Hanfu as a carrier to revive traditional culture.
The demand for activities in various places is increasing, but there are not many channels to purchase Hanfu. In 2006, Lu Xiaowei participated in the Sichuan Hanfu organization's activities from the Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Chinese Valentine's Day, and Mid-Autumn Festival. She discovered that the Hanfu worn by her colleagues were all made from fabrics bought at wholesale markets and made by themselves at a cost of more than 100 yuan. , very inferior. At that time, Hanfu practitioners would usually go to Hanwang to look at the cutting pictures published, buy the cloth themselves, and then use the pictures to find a tailor to make it. This seems unrealistic to many outsiders who want to try. Another way, just like Lu Xiaowei's purchase back then, is to find a merchant on Han.com, and provide the other party with pictures first, then transfer the money, and wait for the merchant to find the fabric and then send it over. This will take a long time to wait, and thenIt's possible that you sent the payment but the clothes didn't arrive as expected. In short, without a trading platform, everything is trouble.
Lu Xiaowei noticed that what many people want is a dress that can be worn, and what they want is quality. After the idea of opening a store was born, there was opposition from many parties. The family feels that as the first female college student in the village, working at a TV station in a provincial capital city is decent and stable, but doing business is not safe. The more important opposition comes from colleagues. "They believe that the revival of Hanfu is spiritual and very noble, but letting it smell like copper and using it to make money is a sin." Lu Xiaowei told China News Weekly . Now it seems that this idea is so simple that it is almost childish.
Lu Xiaowei still made up his mind to resign, rented more than 30 square meters of space in an antique building complex next to Wenshu Square, and hung only 17 sets of Hanfu on the wall.
She didn't know the customers or the source of goods, so she went to Aqiu, the merchant where she bought Hanfu for the first time. She wanted Aqiu to be her source of goods. After getting the finished products, Lu Xiaowei labeled them with his own brand. In order to attract customers, Lu Xiaowei wears Hanfu and hangs out in front of the store every day. Sometimes he takes a round fan to the Wenshufang Scenic Area, and several people follow him curiously when he comes back. There is a printed leaflet in the store, with simple black characters on a white background and two sides, introducing the cultural background of Hanfu. Knowing that she couldn't sell Hanfu, she simply prepared a rationale, "When you come to Wenshufang for a trip, you don't need to take away Hanfu, but you can take away some knowledge about Hanfu."
"At that time, I felt that the patriotic sentiment in the entire society was very strong and would affect young people." This made Lu Xiaowei feel that it was very possible to persuade others. In the first month, she remembered that a Chinese who came back from the United States bought the clothes. This person has been in the United States all year round and said that Chinese people wear cheongsam and Tang suit when they gather. Lu Xiaowei told him that these cannot represent China, but Hanfu can. Finally, the other party was convinced and bought a few sets.
She also taught herself guzheng and played it in front of the store, but still very few people came. Some old people passing by the scenic spot would come to the store to argue with her, telling her that this was feudal dross and was against the trend of the times and should not be done. Her business was not going well.
Business
There are very few purchase orders, and what keeps Lu Xiaowei afloat is the rental business. It costs ten yuan to rent for half an hour, and photo services are provided for two yuan per photo. During the Spring Festival in 2006 and 2007, she made tens of thousands of yuan just by renting out Hanfu. After that, she opened a Taobao store, but the sales business was still bleak.
During the two sessions in 2007, Ye Hongming, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, proposed establishing Hanfu as the "national costume." National People's Congress representative Liu Minghua suggested that Hanfu-style academic uniforms should be worn when conferring doctorate, master's, and bachelor's degrees in China. More than 20 websites, including Tianya Community, Hanwang, and Qiuyan Literary Community, also jointly issued a proposal recommending that the 2008 Olympic Games adopt Hanfu as the clothing for the Han members of the Chinese delegation.
Lu Xiaowei’s business has arrivedThere was finally a breakthrough in 2014. She officially registered the company, and the staff gradually expanded to 200 people, including more than 20 designers. Designers need to undergo training, and Lu Xiaowei will first explain conceptually, such as what each dynasty is roughly like. In addition, a design assistant who prefers to do research collects relevant cultural relics and books, including the works of domestic experts on ancient Chinese costumes, books by the curator of the China Silk Museum, and information related to Dunhuang murals, for design.
Lu Xiaowei will also go to Beijing to listen to relevant forums and come back to share information. Sometimes, I go to museums in various places and take pictures of some cultural relics in order to determine the dynasty, style, pattern details and size. On this basis, we make original designs, and we are required to come up with fifty or sixty styles every month, and then select about 30 of them to put on the shelves.
Nowadays, Hanfu has appeared more and more on the streets. While it is slowly being accepted by everyone, some alienation has also appeared within the circle. On Zhihu, many Hanfu players who have just started complaining that they were walking on the street wearing Hanfu, but some senior colleagues came up to them and loudly scolded them for their wrong Hanfu matching and details. Some people claim that you cannot wear glasses when wearing Hanfu because this modern vision correction equipment does not match the ancient style on your body. Others reported that some people who do not understand Hanfu saw boys and girls wearing Hanfu and praised them for being beautiful in ancient costumes. However, Hanfu lovers will scold them for forgetting their ancestors, so they tell them seriously that this is not called ancient costume, but Hanfu.
In any case, Hanfu has been known to more and more people. Except for those narrow-minded "Hanfu fundamentalists", most Hanfu enthusiasts are choosing a way to promote Hanfu that they think is appropriate.
Some of them are writing a textual research on the history of Hanfu, some found a house by Taihu Lake, tended the garden, planted plum blossoms, and spread the culture they recognized from the perspective of poetic life. Some insisted on tying up their hair in a bun and wearing traditional Chinese clothes when going to work every day. In Hanfu, there are also people who organize students to read scriptures in small towns in Suzhou... Some of these colleagues recognize each other, and some also disagree with each other.
At the same time, Hanfu has also transformed from niche clothing into a mature business. A post on Han.com titled "Hanfu Merchants Certified by Han.com" shows that the earliest merchant certified by Han.com was "Yuelanshan" in Shenyang. Founded in October 2005, it was certified by Hanwang on April 15, 2006. Several stores subsequently certified were "ufe", "Xianni Xiaozhu" and "Qianlong". The first one to exceed the 10,000 crown transaction volume on the Taobao platform was the "Rumeng Nishang" store in Beijing. It was founded in 2007 and became a crown seller in February 2011.
According to the survey data of Hanfu merchants on Taobao in January this year by "Hanfu Information", the top three in terms of annual total output value in 2018 were Guangzhou's Hanshang Hualian, Chengdu's Return to Hantang and Hangzhou's Shisanyu . The total output values were 80,027,148 yuan, 52,880,854 yuan and 37,092,032 yuan respectively. 2017 and 2018, the total output value of the top ten Hanfu merchants on Taobao has grown by about 50% every year, reaching 316 million yuan in 2018.
The number of Hanfu fans nationwide reaches two million. In the survey of Tongpao, those who only love Hanfu increased from 15.23% to 34.33%, but those who believe that they want to revive the national cultural spirit decreased year by year, from 77.8% in 2014 to 56.8% in 2018. . Among Hanfu enthusiasts, women account for 85.54%, and they have been increasing year by year. The average age is 21.66 years old. College and undergraduate degrees are the backbone.
"This is more than just a piece of clothing." Many Hanfu enthusiasts have told China News Weekly more than once. After years of development, Hanfu enthusiasts have extended more content beyond clothing, but revival is still a slogan.
