Hanfu and Qipao: How China Reclaimed Its Traditional Threads

In 2003, a man named Wang Youshen walked onto a subway train in Changde, Hunan Province, wearing a reconstructed Han Dynasty robe — a loose-sleeved jacket over crossed-collar robes, tied with a sash, following designs he had researched from historical texts and archaeological finds. Other passengers stared. Some laughed. One person called the police, reporting that someone in costume had entered the subway. Wang was not in costume. He was wearing his own civilization's clothing, a clothing tradition that had been interrupted, suppressed, and nearly erased — and that he was trying, at considerable social cost, to restore.

The Hanfu movement that Wang Youshen helped launch has grown from a handful of eccentric hobbyists to a mass cultural phenomenon. By the mid-2020s, the Hanfu industry in China was estimated to be worth over 10 billion yuan annually, with tens of millions of regular wearers, dedicated Hanfu festivals, Hanfu-themed tourism, and a subculture of hanfu designers, makers, and influencers that has developed its own aesthetic vocabulary. The movement is both nostalgic and forward-looking — a search for Chinese aesthetic roots that simultaneously addresses questions about cultural identity in the globalized present.

What Hanfu Actually Is

Hanfu (汉服, "Han clothing") refers to the clothing traditions of the Han ethnic majority from the Qin Dynasty (221 BCE) through the late Ming Dynasty (1644), before the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty imposed Manchu clothing traditions on all Chinese subjects. During the Qing Dynasty, Han Chinese were legally required to adopt Manchu hairstyles (the queue) and clothing. When the Qing fell in 1912, Han Chinese did not uniformly return to pre-Qing clothing — the qipao (旗袍) and the tunic suit both emerged from the early Republican era as new, modern Chinese clothing forms. The traditional Han clothing that had been worn for two millennia simply... disappeared.

The clothing that Hanfu enthusiasts reconstruct today draws from multiple dynastic periods. The most popular styles are based on the Han (206 BCE–AD 220), Tang (618–907), Song (960–1279), and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties — each with distinct aesthetic values. Han Dynasty clothing is characterized by cross-collar robes (右衽) with the collar crossing right over left, wide sleeves, and a sash tied at the waist. Tang clothing is more exuberant: broader sleeves, richer colors, more elaborate textile patterns. Song clothing is sleeker and more restrained, reflecting the aesthetic preferences of the scholarly class. Ming clothing is the most elaborate: the mianfu (冕服) ceremonial robes of officials, the jinshi (进士) robes of newly successful examination candidates, and the elegant everyday wear of the merchant and scholar classes.

The Cross-Collar and the Queue

The distinguishing feature of Han clothing — and the detail that most clearly separates it from Manchu-influenced clothing — is the cross-collar. Han clothing crosses the collar from right to left (the wearer's right side crosses over the left), producing a y-shaped collarline on the chest. Manchu and Mongol-influenced clothing — including the qipao — crosses from left to right (left over right). In traditional Chinese mortuary practice, the deceased are dressed in left-over-right collar — the "death position" — and one of the markers of Han ethnic identity was that living Han people always wore right-over-left.

This collar distinction is not merely a tailoring detail. It encodes ethnic identity so precisely that Hanfu revivalists treat it as a declaration. To wear Hanfu with the correct collar is to make a statement about cultural inheritance. To wear it incorrectly is to risk ridicule from the community. The collar is, in this sense, a form of writing — legible to those who know the code, invisible to those who don't.

The Qipao: Shanghai's Gift to Modern China

If Hanfu represents ancient Chinese clothing tradition, the qipao (旗袍, also called cheongsam in Cantonese) represents its twentieth-century reinvention. The qipao originated in the Manchu qipao of the Qing Dynasty — a loose, straight-sided robe worn by Manchu women — and was adapted by Shanghai designers in the 1920s and 1930s into a form that became the iconic dress of modern Chinese femininity.

The transformation happened in Shanghai's dressmaking shops, where tailors began fitting the Manchu robe to the female body, narrowing the silhouette, raising the hem to ankle level, adding side slits for walking convenience, and adjusting the collar and sleeve styles to contemporary tastes. By the 1930s, the Shanghai qipao had become a global fashion item — worn by Chinese women across the political spectrum, in offices and homes, at banquets and on the street. The silk qipao, in solid colors or with subtle patterns, was the uniform of the modern Shanghai woman.

The qipao's political history is complicated. It was adopted by the Nationalist government as a form of modern Chinese dress. It was worn by Communist Party women in the 1950s, often in darker colors and more modest cuts. It was banned during the Cultural Revolution as a symbol of bourgeois excess. It returned in the 1980s as a symbol of Chinese cultural revival. Today, it appears at formal occasions, at weddings, and in the wardrobes of women who appreciate its particular combination of elegance and simplicity. The qipao does not announce itself loudly. It shapes the body it dresses, and it lets the wearer speak.

The Hanfu Industry and Cultural Politics

The Hanfu revival is both a fashion phenomenon and a cultural politics movement. Its participants are predominantly young — overwhelmingly female, overwhelmingly urban, overwhelmingly educated — and they tend to view Hanfu wearing as an act of cultural reclamation rather than mere costume. For them, wearing Hanfu is a statement about what Chinese civilization is, what it has been, and what it might become. The movement has attracted criticism from those who see it as escapist nostalgia, as cultural nationalism, or as aesthetic superficiality. It has also attracted investment: major Chinese e-commerce platforms now host thousands of Hanfu sellers, and dedicated Hanfu brands have developed their own design languages and retail strategies.

The relationship between Hanfu and Chinese government cultural policy is complex. The government has broadly supported "excellent traditional culture" (优秀传统文化) as a value, including traditional clothing as part of that portfolio. Hanfu festivals receive official support in some cities. But the Hanfu movement's emphasis on pre-Qing Han ethnic identity sits uneasily with contemporary multicultural ideology that emphasizes the unity of all 56 Chinese ethnic groups. The cross-collar that is a declaration of Han ethnic identity can be read, in the wrong political context, as an assertion of Han dominance. Most Hanfu wearers navigate this complexity by emphasizing the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of the practice rather than its ethnic-political implications.

Traditional Clothing in Daily Life

For most Chinese people, traditional clothing appears at specific life-cycle moments: the red qipao at weddings, the tang jacket for newborns, the funeral robes for mourning. The formalization of these moments — the occasions on which Chinese dress takes on its most traditionally marked forms — is one of the clearest survivals of the old clothing culture. A Chinese woman in a red qipao on her wedding day is wearing clothing whose symbolic vocabulary is legible across centuries of practice: the red of joy and good fortune, the qipao's fit that flatters the body, the newness that marks a new beginning. She is not wearing a costume. She is wearing her inheritance.

Sources: Wikipedia (Hanfu, Qipao), Hanfu.org.cn (Chinese Hanfu Association), China Daily (Hanfu revival reports 2019-2024), Xinhua (Hanfu industry reports 2023), Harvard Asia Quarterly (Hanfu cultural politics), Chinese Costume Research Institute publications.