Hanfu Review | 汉服观察

Another example of wearing hanfu the wrong way. And this time, the influence is not minor.

Mcdull, a popular cartoon series from Hong Kong, just made its fourth movie <McDull, Kungfu Kindergarden> this summer, targeting the teenagers and young adults, aiming to compete with new Harry Potter series.

This time, McDull and his mother left Hong Kong to Wudang Mountain (Hubei Province) to learn Taichi Kungfu. The movie maker emphasized traditional Chinese culture a lot in this movie, trying to promote traditional Chinese culture.

Of course, hanfu is also part of it. Most plot happened in Taichi School on the Wudang Mountain was filmed with every character in hanfu.

Unfortunately, most hanfu in this movie were worn the wrong way – 左衽 (right piece on top of left piece) as the poster above shown, while only a few (inconsistency in the movie) occasions were worn the right way – 右衽 (left piece on top of right piece).

Obviously, the creator Alice Mak had little understanding about hanfu and drew them randomly. And  none of the whole movie production crew   noticed this huge mistake.

The head of Baidu McDull Tieba (forum) apologized to angry hanfu advocates; I also noticed he/she was trying to reach the film maker in order to inform them the mistake to prevent further mistake in commercial peripheral products.

Hope this kind of error won’t happen again.

This 20 minutes TV programme is made by Guangdong TV in March 2008. It starts with an interview with Guangzhou hanfu pioneer Bai Sang-Er and Tangtang.

Bai Sang-er shared her personal experience about hanfu: her childhood puzzle about the lack of Han Chinese traditional clothing; how she got to know about hanfu; how she started to make her own hanfu and wore it as the first in Guangzhou; how she organized local hanfu activities and experienced the highs and lows in public acceptance; how she started her own hanfu business, which is now one of the most famous hanfu workshops in China.

As her story goes on in the video, the programme introduces lots of basic information about hanfu: its history, its basic designing knowledge, how it disappeared in China.

On the other hand, most importantly, the programme also explaines the purpose of contemporary hanfu movement. Why we want to bring our traditional clothing back to life. What are the challenge. What we have achieved so far.

Overall, this programme is a very good introductory material for newbies in the hanfu world: it covers the history of hanfu, hanfu movement, and true experiences of common people.

Aug. 19th, the day of Qixi Festival in 2009, was a busy week for hanfu activists. People are trying to revive Qixi Festival as a counterpart against the cultural “invasion” of western Valentine’s Day.

And very intersting this year, lots of journalists compared the commercial/business promotion with that of Valentine’s Day. They concluded that Qixi is far less hot than Valentine’s Day in China and only traditional Chinese Old brand names did well in catching business during Qixi Festival.

Of course, LOTS of hanfu events were reported all around China. This is really a big day for hanfu activists.

Notably, as shown above, some hanfu activities successfully made into China Central TeleVision (CCTV) programs. Considering the tight censorship in China media, this is really a great achievement for hanfu activists. It indicates that the tight control and sensitivity on hanfu related topics start to loosen. And the “top” guys start to pay attention to hanfu.

The activity was filmed by local Wuhu News, then broadcast on provincial Anhui TV. On Aug. 26, CCTV International Channel broadcast the footage to the world; On Aug. 28, CCTV News Channel broadcast the clip again in Morning News section and titled it as “Hanfu: The Beauty Beyond Time”.

Better will come.

Original Link: http://tieba.baidu.com/f?z=626386163&ct=335544320&lm=0&sc=0&rn=30&tn=baiduPostBrowser&word=%BA%BA%B7%FE&pn=0

Since the Winter break in late 2008, members of the Southwest University Huaxia Culture Society have been seeking help online for the filming of a short clip on Hanfu restoration. On August 12, 2009, the video has debuted on Youku and Tudou, the largest online video streaming sites in China.

Review

Titled Hanjia Yishang “Clothes of the Han”, the story is about a young university student becoming anxious over the lack of an ethnic image while her ethnic minority peers happily showed off their cultural glamour. Like some others, they thought of wearing the “ancient silk robes” of the (Han) Chinese, but thought it’d be implausible in the modern context, when a young man walks past wearing exactly the kind of robe she imagined, and was even more inspired when he explained to others that this is the traditional image of the Han people.

Right after this initial encounter, the focus turns to this young man and his parents. The film condenses and displays the challenge of the Hanfu restorationists – in the jeering and mockery of passersby, to the harsh rejection and resistance from these young people’s parents. We also see the instances of infighting among the group on the issue of “modernizing” and creating new styles of Hanfu with our fashion sense today, and the question of how far should we go into  integrating the traditional Han aesthetic into our daily lives. Together, the group goes in search of corporate sponsors to help them with promoting Han traditional culture via a coming-of-age ceremony on campus, and learn hands-on the difficulties of organizing such large events.

The determination of these restorationists that no matter the hardships, their passion are continually fueled by their faith in a glorious past and see themselves as the rightful inheritors to this rich cultural history. Strictly from a film critique perspective, the younger actors’ inexperience are visible, and the presentation of the topic is somewhat artificial and pragmatic. However, the post-production techniques and general organization have obviously shown improvement over previous Hanfu short films.

Since July, an “exceptional” cultural tour group start to recruit travelers. As reported, this tour group will all wear hanfu, set off for various majors attractions abroad in Thailand, on the Chinese Valentine’s Day (well, one of, maybe, 7.7. of Chinese Calendar). People will enjoy the “fascinating interactions between traditional Chinese culture and Buddhism culture in Thailand”.

Most importantly, the organizer invited GuangDong Provincial TV Station to broadcast the whole trip.

The report says there are already 11 people that reserved the trip. “Most of them are white collar from private or international company. Some are single and the others are couples. They not only like traditional Chinese culture, but also follow the trends of modern petite bourgeoisie life style.”

Editor: This is a very unique news for industrial commercialization of hanfu culture. It combined several things together: 1. hanfu 2. tourism 3. traditional culture 4. culture exchange abroad. 5. Provincial TV coverage.

I sincerely wish they have a great success and a good trip.

A Thailand City View

7月开始,一场标新立异的“文化旅游”开始招募团员,据了解,这个旅游团将穿着中国传统服装汉服,在传统民俗七夕佳节,远赴境外,感受中国传统文化与异国佛教文化的璀璨碰撞之美。广东电视台将全程跟踪报道此次“汉服之旅”的精彩过程。 …
7/13/09 新民网 read more