Young people in China are reviving old clothing Hanfu, and maybe nationalism too

[Beijingwalker]

 

[Beijingwalker]

 

[Nan Yang]

Just came back from Xian, the capital city of 13 dynasty!

People wearing han fu everywhere. They are not models nor are tourists. Just everyday citizens.




How many can you spot?

Even in the backstreets.

 

[Beijingwalker]

Some people call it National pride rebuilding.

 

[Feroze]

Young people in China are reviving old clothing Hanfu, and maybe nationalism too

Across China, some young people are switching from jeans and T-shirts to long dresses, silky robes and black hats.

They’re not cosplayers or period drama actors, but rather members of a booming movement to turn Hanfu, or ethnic Han clothing, into everyday wear.

The so-called Hanfu movement has gained a large following among the ethnic Han Chinese group, which makes up more than 92% of the Chinese population.

View attachment 1684View attachment 1685

Great to see traditional Asian values: modesty, decency, respectability.

 

[神威98]

There's a pretty Chinese girl in pretty onsite rental hanfu costume passing by you every 5 secs at all major tourist attractions in China where you have to buy a ticket to get in.

Makes me think I wasted all my time watching hanfu costume TV dramas all along. They all feature less than average looking but often very famous actresses in hanfu outfits. Why don't they just pick some random girls from these attractions to star in the TV dramas?

For me, just one hour at these events worth more than watching 10000's of hours of ancient costume Chinese TV dramas that never feature any naturally good looking people at all!

I'm left wondering how can most Chinese actresses be so overpaid when after dressing up they don't even hold a candle in looks to the average Chinese girls at these (mostly domestic) tourist destinations?

(BTW, take the latest ancient costume drama Zhan Zhao Adventures that just finished airing. Meh, if you think the female lead is good looking, you should get out to China more often...)

 

[Beijingwalker]

Really

 

[Beijingwalker]

What heaven looks like in the mind of the Chinese people

 

[Beijingwalker]

Hanfu VS Chinese traditional architecture

 

[Beijingwalker]

Hanfu VS Chinese traditional architecture

 

[Beijingwalker]

The Japanese have done well to preserve their customs and traditions, while still being a massively modern state - kind of suprised that China did not. I guess - it was repressed under the guise of communism and the need to have "conformity"

Japanese almost replaced Japanese with English as their official language, they borrowed a lot from everywhere, don't have much as their own in their culture.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Japanese almost replaced Japanese with English as their official language, they borrowed a lot from everywhere, don't have much as their own in their culture.

@Ali_Baba
Please don't listen to him. This is just another example of some Chinese Government propaganda pushed on impressionable young Chinese students to show Japan is a weak culture.

 

[Panda_Hi]

Nice.

The Japanese have done well to preserve their customs and traditions, while still being a massively modern state - kind of suprised that China did not. I guess - it was repressed under the guise of communism and the need to have "conformity"

Let me offer a brief explanation.

First, I'm not quite sure which aspects you mean by "conformity," so I'll focus my comments on the Japan part.

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Japan has indeed done well in preserving its customs and traditions. But a country first has to be able to feed its people, and its economy has to reach a certain level of development, before it has the means to preserve its culture so comprehensively.

Japan was defeated in 1945, and the US began providing aid to Japan around 1946.

After the Korean War broke out in 1950, large-scale US military procurement and the shift in the Cold War situation led the US to gradually relax its restrictions on Japanese industry. This helped Japan's economy recover, and after the mid-1950s it entered a period of high economic growth.

By 1964, Japan was already hosting the Olympics, while China hosted its first Olympics in 2008.

In the 1980s, Japan had become the United States' main economic competitor, while China only began to challenge it in recent years.

China is on the road to rejuvenation, so perhaps give China a bit more time...

 

[Panda_Hi]

Japanese almost replaced Japanese with English as their official language, they borrowed a lot from everywhere, don't have much as their own in their culture.

@Ali_Baba
Please don't listen to him. This is just another example of some Chinese Government propaganda pushed on impressionable young Chinese students to show Japan is a weak culture.

View attachment 217899

Japanese has indeed absorbed a large number of foreign words, which are transliterated into Japanese using katakana and then used in the language. Have you heard of 「Katakana Hell (カタカナ地獄)」?

In their work and daily lives, Japanese people often complain about the large number of foreign words transliterated into katakana, to the point that even Japanese people themselves have difficulty understanding them.

▼▼▼ The following are all complaints by Japanese people themselves about 「Katakana Hell (カタカナ地獄)」:

◉ カタカナ地獄【ＮＬＰ】
◉ Katakana Hell【ＮＬＰ】
https://ameblo.jp/kokoronlp/entry-12415358760.html

◉ 「副業用語で溺れる──カタカナ地獄の住人たちを紹介しよう」
◉ 「Drowning in Side-Business Terminology — Let Me Introduce the Residents of Katakana Hell」
https://note.com/0309_satou/n/n3b17b6128c96

◉ 「カタカナ地獄からの脱出！」
◉ 「Escape from Katakana Hell！」
https://note.com/ovcreer_yukiko/n/na74afcec51ea

◉ ネットバンキング・クレカ明細の「カタカナ地獄」を、AIで読める摘要に整える
◉ Turning the 「Katakana Hell」 of Online Banking and Credit Card Statements into Descriptions That Can Be Read with AI
https://note.com/keiri_hack_/n/ne535eded6f05
















And there are indeed many elements of Japanese culture that originated in China or were heavily influenced by China, including various institutions and systems, writing, clothing, architecture, food, and so on.
The influence of China is particularly profound in Japanese writing, since Chinese characters were formally introduced into Japan as early as the 4th–5th centuries AD.

Today, the Japanese writing system contains a huge number of 「kanji」, and kanji are the absolute core of the Japanese writing system.
Only about 92 basic hiragana and katakana are writing forms developed in Japan, but they were also simplified from Chinese characters, so they cannot really be considered creations of the Japanese themselves.

The current 《Table of Commonly Used Kanji (常用漢字表)》, promulgated by the Japanese government, contains a total of 2,136 kanji. It is said that approximately 1,400 of these kanji are identical to Chinese characters.
The remaining kanji are also extremely similar to Chinese characters. We Chinese people can tell at a glance that they are Chinese characters with their strokes slightly modified.

Therefore, Japanese kanji can basically be said to be Chinese characters. If kanji were removed from Japanese, the Japanese writing system would collapse.........

---------------------------------

▼▼▼ The image below is a screenshot from a Japanese video on YouTube:
The Japanese characters (kanji) marked in red are 100% identical to Chinese characters (Traditional or Simplified).
The Japanese characters (kanji) marked in green have only undergone slight changes to their strokes, but a Chinese person can immediately tell which Chinese character they originated from.

【商社マンは世界をこう読む】５つの潮流と日本の生存戦略／アメリカファーストはトランプ後も続く／中国の対米依存脱却戦略／日本と欧州の停滞は不可避／インフレは構造的問題／日本はこの潮流をどう逆手とるか​

 

[Panda_Hi]

Japanese almost replaced Japanese with English as their official language, they borrowed a lot from everywhere, don't have much as their own in their culture.

@Ali_Baba
Please don't listen to him. This is just another example of some Chinese Government propaganda pushed on impressionable young Chinese students to show Japan is a weak culture.

View attachment 217899

BTW, Japanese culture is really quite strange. At the coming-of-age ceremony for Prince Hisahito in September 2025, Prince Hisahito wore traditional Japanese clothing, yet traveled in a traditional European-style horse-drawn carriage. Couldn't they have just used an ordinary black car?

Can you imagine the British King traveling to Westminster Abbey for his own coronation in a Japanese rickshaw?........

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Prince Hisahito of Japan’s Coming-of-Age Ceremony
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1129070742179619