Pay Attention To The Newly Rising Trend Of Chinese Culture At Home And Abroad

Five thousand years of Chinese civilization has left us cultural treasures as bright as stars, and has also provided continuous impetus for cultural innovation and creation. In recent years, whether it is the national style costumes, national style dances, national style music, or the "new three kinds" online articles, online dramas, and online games that are popular at home and abroad, all show the ancient and young charm of Chinese culture to the world. Today, the People's Daily plans to launch a series of reports on "There is a style called China", focusing on the newly emerging trend of Chinese culture at home and abroad, and demonstrating the style, customs and style of Chinese culture.

The fifth "Chinese Costume Day", the main venue of Beijing, was held in the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park. Courtesy of Yuanmingyuan Management Office

In recent years, more and more young people regard traditional clothes as "fashionable items". The wearing scenes are no longer limited to travel photos, wedding ceremonies, parties and vacations, but also extend to daily shopping, commuting, etc., which not only drives the consumption of traditional clothes to a blowout, but also promotes the Chinese Costume Day and the Hanfu Festival in various places The prosperity of various clothing cultural activities, such as the traditional clothing exhibition, makes the clothing culture with thousands of years of history glow with new brilliance.

It can be said that "Generation Z" (usually referring to the generation born from 1995 to 2009) contributes a lot to the current wave of traditional clothing. They love tradition, embrace tradition, and endow new traditions, showing the confident, trendy, and open youth of China's young generation.

Wearing Han style clothes shows cultural confidence

Change clothes, apply makeup, and do hair. Zhang Jing is waiting to change from an urban white-collar worker to a "Princess of the Tang Dynasty" in a Hanfu makeup shop near Yannan 1st Road, Yanta District, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province. Later, she will go to the Datang Sleepless City, where she will complete a journey through.

Zhang Jing comes from Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province. As a post-95 student, she likes Hanfu as much as many of her peers. When she was in college, she often participated in Hanfu themed activities with her classmates.

In her opinion, Han costume is not only a symbol of history and culture, but also a synonym of fashion. In the past two years, horse face skirts have been very popular. Zhang Jing bought two black gold woven horse face skirts. In 2021, after watching the program Tang Palace Dinner, she has been planning to wear a full set of Tang costumes in Xi'an to experience the grand scene of the Tang Dynasty.

Zhang Jing felt as if she had gone back to ancient times when she walked into this Han costume makeup shop. The Han costumes in the store are mainly made in the Tang Dynasty, but there are also a few made in the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty. "The weaving technology, cutting, color and makeup matching of Han style clothes are full of cultural content. Wearing them is like wearing traditional culture." The shopkeeper Shuangshuang introduced.

Shuangshuang is also a post-95 teacher who was once a kindergarten teacher. He was deeply attracted by the chance to contact Hanfu. "The more you know about Han clothing, the more you can feel its profound cultural heritage." Illustrate Chinese Traditional Clothing, Color Making: Chinese Color Aesthetics, Chinese Traditional Color Matching Manual... Shuang Shuang bought many related books back to "make up for", and also made a special trip to the China Silk Museum to see the true look of Ruyi coral pleated skirt; He also visited the "Ancient Chinese Costume Culture Exhibition" in the National Museum of China, and had a preliminary understanding of typical clothing, accessories and makeup in different historical periods.

"Throughout the civilization history of the Chinese nation, clothing is not only an important part of material civilization, but also a concentrated embodiment of social culture." Bian Xiangyang, vice chairman of the China Fashion Designers Association, said that after thousands of years of development, it has formed an eclectic The Chinese clothing culture system of each beauty.

Han Dan, an associate professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Northeast Normal University, has been paying attention to the phenomenon of "Hanfu craze" these years. She said that, in a broad sense, Han style clothing is a general term for traditional Chinese clothing. Hanfu enthusiasts generally regard 2003 as the year of the rise of Hanfu. In that year, an ordinary power worker walked on the streets of Zhengzhou, Henan Province in Hanfu. Since then, more and more Hanfu lovers, clothing researchers and businesses have jointly promoted the popularity of Hanfu.

"There are multiple reasons behind the Hanfu craze. On the one hand, the rapid development of China's economy has brought a great wealth of material civilization and spiritual civilization, and on the other hand, the country has vigorously promoted the inheritance and promotion of traditional culture. Generation Z, who grew up in the stage of" getting rich "and" getting strong "in China, has a strong recognition and love of traditional culture." Han Dan said.

It was because of the business opportunities behind the Hanfu craze that Shuangshuang decided to run this store. This National Day holiday, to experience the personality of Hanfu more. She quickly tidied up her dressing table and looked outside. It was nearly 16:00, and "the peak of passenger flow is coming". It usually takes about an hour for the guests to choose clothes from entering the store to leaving. They arrive at 4:00 pm to finish making up. It's almost dusk, just in time for a "night tour in Chang'an".

After making up, Zhang Jing was amazed by the "princess" in the mirror, and worried about whether she was too "dazzling". But soon, that fear dissipated. On the street, she passed several "princesses", "empresses" and "scholars" within a few steps. The exquisite and beautiful costumes complement the surrounding antique buildings, as if they were wandering in China more than 1000 years ago.

Fashion is defined by me, showing individual expression

VOGUE magazine once commented on the popularity of Hanfu: "The current Hanfu craze is set off by a group of young people with fashion awareness."

Cui Wei, a professor at Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, believes that the extensive and profound traditional clothing culture meets the young people's desire to embrace tradition, as well as their pursuit of new aesthetic experience and new fashion style.

"Chinese traditional clothing has a long history, orderly inheritance, and self-contained system, which contains profound cultural connotation, aesthetic spirit, and national characteristics, such as the unity of heaven and man, the balance of yin and yang, etiquette norms, good luck, symmetry and balance. When people wearing traditional clothing show cultural confidence, they also show their unique cultural temperament and strong Chinese characteristics," Cui Wei said.

For example, the horse face skirt, which has become popular in the past two years, is a unique style in Chinese traditional clothing. It has beautiful shape, exquisite workmanship, and reasonable functions, which reflects the integration of beauty and use of Chinese traditional clothing culture. According to the 2024 Data Report on Women's Consumption Trends of Dithering E-commerce, the number of women's orders to buy poncho skirts will increase by 841% year on year in 2023.

In fact, the horse face skirt appeared in the Chinese clothing market many years ago. Why has it been popular in the past two years? Dai Yuqing, a teacher of the "Inheritance and Innovation of Traditional Costumes" project team of the Continuing Education College of Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, believes that Chinese traditional costumes represented by horse face skirts are loved by young people. On the one hand, it is inseparable from the media's vigorous publicity of traditional culture in recent years, and on the other hand, thanks to its successful daily and fashion improvement, the traditional clothing industry is becoming more mature, The technology is more perfect, and the price becomes more user-friendly.

"In addition to the horse face skirt, the clothing style improved from the" stick "in the Song style clothing is also very popular in the market at present, and the standing collar in the Ming style clothing is widely used in the new Chinese style clothing." Dai Yuqing said that today's Han style clothing has dual attributes of traditional culture and fashion.

Han Dan also observed that young people who love traditional clothes usually have a clear idea of what shape, type, style, etc. to choose. Some people will also make and match their own clothes according to their own preferences to express their understanding of clothing culture, traditional culture and fashion culture, which is very consistent with the characteristics of "Generation Z" such as multi interest integration and personalized expression.

In this sense, "Generation Z" is not only the "main force" of inheriting traditional costumes, but also the "fresh force" of endowing new traditional costumes. They constantly promote Han costume designers and producers to obtain inspiration from traditional costumes, and to improve and innovate.

Previously, a horse dress exhibited in the "Ancient Chinese Costume Culture Exhibition" of the National Museum became popular on the Internet, and later was copied by many businesses. Wearing a horse dress to go to the National Expo to punch in, which has become a popular activity for young people.

Since 2018, the China Silk Museum has held the "National Silk Hanfu Festival" every year, attracting many Hanfu enthusiasts and merchants. They not only appreciate the costumes and cultural relics spanning thousands of years, but also get inspiration and inspiration from them.

The "National Silk Hanfu Festival" held in April this year is mainly divided into two parts: "ancient charm" and "new style". Among them, the Hanfu Night and Yinhan Taoist School focus on the performance and discussion of the modernization of Hanfu, and the Hanfu performance team brings the theme of "ancient charm and modern style" to show the endless possibilities of traditional clothing culture by combining traditional Hanfu with modern fashion.

National style, national tide and youth power

As an important part of China's excellent traditional culture, traditional dress culture carries the etiquette system, ideology, aesthetic taste and lifestyle of Chinese people, and also widely "radiates" to literature, music, art, dance, opera and other cultural and artistic fields.

Through the bridge of traditional clothing, more and more young people are coming into contact with and falling in love with the national style and ancient charm.

In April this year, the Huazhang Hanfu Service of Beijing Normal University held two sessions of the "transformation of plain people's Hanfu" activity, with one student selected from the school students forwarded on the network to participate in each session. Yang Shiyu, a master of law in 2023, became the lucky one in the first phase. She wore a full breasted skirt of the Tang Dynasty, a large sleeved shirt, and a bikini of the Ming Dynasty, matched the corresponding makeup and hairstyle, and took two sets of photos. After these photos were released through the WeChat official account of Huazhang Hanfu Society, more students inside and outside the school learned about the beauty of traditional clothing.

Founded in 2011, Huazhang Hanfu Club gathers Hanfu enthusiasts among undergraduates, masters and doctoral students of Beijing Normal University, and currently has 94 registered members. Zhang Runyao, the current president, introduced that the club consists of five interest groups, namely, Qingni Group, Zhuohua Group, Wansu Group, Liuyu Group and Hanyan Group, covering the fields of Han costume shape research, classical song and dance, and traditional handcrafting.

"We often hold traditional cultural activities jointly with Shaoxi National Music Club, Song Organ Club and Nanshan Poetry Club on campus, which combine the display of Chinese clothing, knowledge popularization, ancient zither performance, tea art, poetry reading, etc., and are very popular with students, attracting many foreign students to participate." Zhang Runyao said that Chinese clothing enthusiasts generally have a strong interest in traditional Chinese culture.

"Wearing traditional clothes is often accompanied by learning and imitating ancient etiquette and cultural customs, such as tea ceremony and playing the piano, so that young people can better understand and experience the rich connotation of traditional Chinese culture and accept the influence of traditional culture," said Han Dan.

In June this year, Dai Yuqing and his colleagues walked into Heping Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing, explaining the evolution of traditional clothing to community children in an interesting way, and guiding children to experience the aesthetics and wisdom behind the ancient clothing. "Since 2017, under the leadership of Professor Jiang Jinrui, the teaching supervisor of Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, we have been committed to the training of Chinese traditional clothing professionals and social aesthetic education, and introduced Han style clothing into academic lectures. Now, we hope that by holding traditional clothing activities, more seeds of traditional culture will sprout in children's hearts." Dai Yuqing said. (Reporter Yin Jie and Zhang Pengyu)

(Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition)