Fuck the hanfu movement

[cashew]

I got sent this article by a friend, as I've left Tumblr precisely for the spread of misinformation on that toxic platform. After reading it, I realized I must say something or risk exploding from sheer anger at the political spinning that went on in this bullshit subculture.

So, here's me ranting again:

[...] as an element of material culture, the hanfu of course hearkens back directly to a time when Henan was China’s centre and had not been left behind by the post-Deng rush to riches

Hanfu (汉服) as it is currently used is about promoting pre-QING (清) clothes. It is not about hearkening back to when Henan was China's center. It is about erasing Non-Han minorities and their contributions to China's history. It is about establishing a Han-ethno state. Even as far back as the ZHOU (周) dynasty, there have been records of cultural mixing with non-Zhongyuang (中原) ethnic minorities. At this point, the "Han" ethnicity hasn't even been established, as the name came from the HAN (汉) dynasty, which came after QIN (秦) united the Warring States (战国). However, the Chinese national identity considers their history to start from the SHANG-ZHOU(商周) dynasties, which is a pre-Han identity.

What I'm pointing out here is this quoted text IS A LIE. It is trying to using the coincidence to deny the validity of non-Han minorities. This denies XIA(夏), SHANG(商), ZHOU(周), Spring-Autumn (春秋), Warring States (战国), and QIN(秦) dynasty as Chinese. This erases nearly 2000 years of Chinese history.

‘In the end beautiful things will meet with people’s approval,’ he says. ‘Not to mention, the hanfu has always been our thing… in the great family of China’s 56 ethnic groups, only the Han do not have their traditional dress. Following [our] tragic history, only the Han traditional clothing style died out; we need to revive [this tradition].’

Again, LIES. Hanfu did not die from the tragic history. Hanfu, as in "clothes that the Han ethnicity wore" EVOLVED over time to include designs from all of their surrounding neighbors. The so-called Han culture, by which they really just mean the Zhongyuan (中原) culture, is one that had always incorporated design elements of anyone and everyone as long as there is utilitarian advantages.

The movement Hufuqishe (胡服骑射) is precisely one such example in Chinese history. During the Warring States (战国) era, King Zhao Wu (赵武灵王) copied the clothing style of the northern nomadic tribes because he realized that their fashion designs are better adapted for horseback and gave them a military advantage when cavalries clashed. Ever since for fucking ever, the Zhongyuan (中原) culture has been learning and absorbing/appropriating everything around them.

Here is a diagram of how Chinese fashion has evolved over 4000 years:

When you get down to it, Hanfu (汉服) literally breaks down to mean "clothes that Han-people wear". To make it about "ethnic clothing" is bullshit spin that obfuscates the ethno-centric motivation driving the subculture.

The first criticism [...] is that the hanfu is ‘awkward’. [...] The second, related criticism is that the adoption of the hanfu is essentially a form of misplaced nostalgia which has no place in modern Chinese society.

The first and second criticisms are particularly interesting for their assumption[...]. In modern China the Western business suit is associated with ‘success’[...] western brands are practically always preferred to domestics [...] for this reason, it [Hanfu] is dismissed as either a mere piece of nostalgia, as something that comes out of a period drama, or as something ‘impractical’ in the terms laid down by capitalist modernity.

It's interesting that this article tries to blame modernization for the dismissal of the traditional and pretends that it is the "modern" people who are too close minded to see that there's nothing backwards about...you know, TRYING TO REVIVE CONSERVATIVE FASHION. This is the equivalent of bemoaning the loss of the corset, because don't you see that it's actually just as effective as the brassier? To dismiss the objective impracticality of traditional fashion on modern internalized Western bias is such a pretzel logic that I'm left gaping.

The third criticism is somewhat more well-intentioned, but the idea is that the hanfu movement doesn’t go far enough [...] Classical Chinese thought saw nothing ‘superficial’ about material culture calendars, weights and measures, music or clothing[...]. To limit this quest for the Chinese soul to more abstract pursuits is to reduce the Chinese soul itself to a modernist Cartesian abstraction, in a way that can only be self-defeating!

I don't know if you realize this, but this is basically all assertion and no actual argument. It doesn't actually offer any kind of rebuttal to the criticism. It's a superficial assertion with no logic or data to support the assertion, and it fails to comment on the criticism at all.

The big question for the movement is: to what extent does it seek to normalise the use of traditional dress? [...] [H]opefully it can become and remain a form of healthy cultural expression in its own right.

And this here is the crux of the matter. What does normalization of an ethnic majority's fashion from 300+ years ago mean politically? If a blond-haired, blue-eyed White person tries to revive traditional "Aryan" fashion, how would you respond? Because that's the equivalent of a Chinese person trying to revive traditional "Han" fashion. It's dangerous, toxic ethno-centric xenophobia using fashion as a cover.

I say this as an ethnic Han. I see the xenophobia for what it is. Do you?

Edit to add:
Also wanted to say, I'm really fucking tired of this bitching about how "only traditional Chinese is real Chinese". You want to talk traditional? Here is the writing from the actual HAN (汉) dynasty:

Here is the writing from modern "traditional" Chinese:

Do you see how different the characters look? I don't want to hear about this "Oh, simplified characters are an abomination of Chinese". No, fuck you. Simplified Chinese is merely one of the styles of writing. The Qin Emperor changed how the characters looked and the Han Emperor did it again, and later dynasties continued to change the characters, so when another regime changed it, that's just following in a grand old tradition of new standardization of Chinese. Fuck off with your traditional, conservative BS.

Comments

[tanithryudo]

So, like, is the actual movement in China about making a political statement? I was reading the baidu article and it sounded like this was more about a fashion revival. Kinda like the renfaire, except not restricted to a single event.

BTW, do you have a higher res version of that flowchart? I can hardly make out the words.

[cashew]

Unfortunately, no, I do not have a higher res of the chart. 😑

The thing about the movement is that there are, of course, plenty of people who are in it just because they like the period costumes. However, there are actors who want the movement to revitalize the fashion and bring it into every day use. A common argument the movement uses is to point out that in Japan the kimono is considered a festival garb, so why not do the same with Hanfu? To which I argue: the kimono is a far more standardized fashion aesthetic than Hanfu, which includes clothing designs from Han dynasty all the way to Ming dynasty. Also, modern Han people had settled on a "traditional Chinese formal wear" design, and that's the Qipao. What Hanfu movement refuse to admit is that it started as a call to abolish Qipao because the design comes from an ethnic minority and doesn't represent Han culture.

TL;DR - while there are unsuspecting people who joined for fashion reasons, the movement's push is focused heavily on Manchu-erasure from Han culture.

[tanithryudo]

Ah, ok, yeah, I have seen a lot of anti-Manchurian sentiment when I've been reading chinese novels. It's pretty much gotten to be a staple cliche for pre-modern setting stories just as much as anti-western/anti-foreign nationalist jingoism gets to be in modernish settings.

I've always felt like it grew out of people using the Qing dynasty as a scapegoat for "causing" or "being responsible for" all the bad stuff that happened from the late 19th through most of the 20th century.

[cashew]

The anti-Manchurian sentiment is pretty shitty, given that the Qing dynasty has done plenty in the early parts and they've sinonized to the point of completely losing their own language and switched over to Mandarin. There's no reason at all to continue acting like they're not also Chinese.

And while yes, the Emperor was Manchurian, the court was mostly packed with Han officers, so I don't think the Han people had any room to be blaming the minorities for the country's decline other than their own crappy policies.

It'd be one thing if the movement is to bring awareness to Westerners about pre-Qing/pre-Ming history, since the West's entire conception of Chinese culture is limited to Qipao and Ming vases. But given that most of the Hanfu movement is directed inward...yeah, there's a problem. Chinese people are perfectly aware of our 5000 year history.

And to be perfectly fair, there are plenty of innocent actual historians who are just trying to figure out the historical fashion of the older dynasties and have gotten swept up into this whole mess and are used as a shield for the unsavory political messaging.

[tanithryudo]

Well, it's not like people in China can blame the ones who are actually responsible for most of the 20th century, cuz that stuff would get you censored so fast. The next adjacent group to blame is the last dynasty, so it's easy to vent in that direction. I mean, even in the early through mid-latish 20th century, people were blaming the Qing dynasty as synonymous with imperial anachronism and whatnot.

I really wonder if there was freedom of speech/press, how much of that anti-Manchurian sentiment would compare to anti-government/communist stuff.

[cashew]

It's a bit complicated to really say one way or another about how freedom of speech would reduce the jingoistic tendencies, but given the general trend of more free speech = less jingoism, it's probably what needs to happen to really fight back against this B.S.

As for assigning blame...well, there are certain targets that are still correct to blame, such as the dysfunctional ethnically driven bloodbaths, the preference for strong man authoritarian leaders, the inability to tolerate differing political opinions, etc. Also, capitalism and Western imperialism has always been an acceptable and not incorrect target. Even the West is starting to self-examine their not-so-morally-upstanding actions throughout most of the 19th and 20th century. A lot of the current global unrest and climate change can be squarely charged to the Western powers' ignoble actions.

[tanithryudo]

Well, if the kinds of novels that do the anti-foreigner/western jingoism are mostly criticizing imperialism and capitalism, I'd actually give the author some props. But no, alas, that's usually not the case.

Well, imperialism, yeah, if it's a Republic era story, so I'll give them that.

But modern era stories generally now have rich CEO type protagonists, or even family/generations (dare I say it, a 'dynasty') of CEO types, so obviously they wouldn't be condemning the capitalism. (There's a kinda full circle kinda irony here...)

No, for modern era stories, when they get anti-western nationalistic, it's almost always about foreigners who are openly anti-chinese. Like, the kind of caricature where they'll get on TV and say "all yellow-skinned peeps suxxor" or whatnot. It's... even more awkward for me as a reader when those same stories will completely unironically equate ugliness with "looking african", or how the modern slang word for unlucky is "african". So. Yeah.

(And don't even get me started on the anti-Japanese sentiment, often found in stories that originally have nothing to do with anything Japanese, and the author makes a special effort to twist the plot and make it happen.)

[cashew]

The things you mention right now makes me want to cry. I'm sort of glad that I'm not getting into the web novels, because yeah, even reading some of the comments online reveals an ugly underbelly. And a lot of the racist stereotypes can also be traced back to Western media's influence in China. Mainland has completely internalized the racism in the West, only now with a Chinese-spin, because rah-rah jingoism.

I can't really speak of the web novel atmosphere in general. My experience with them usually comes from watching a C-drama and finding out that it's adapted from a web novel, which leaves me going "of course" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. A really popular one in recent memory was adapted from a story where 乾隆 got ethnically-bent into being of Han-descent, so I can't imagine how much worse things have gotten in the stuff they don't adapt.

In short, it's under this atmosphere that the Hanfu movement got spread, so the political bent of the movement is just...kind of sticking there, like a cancerous growth that no one wants to talk about.

[tanithryudo]

I'm...not sure western media can be blamed for a lot of these sentiments. Wrt black people, the western racism issues tend to be more about economic equality and less about standard of beauty. Whereas the darker skin=ugly trope seems to be widespread throughout east asia.

And I think the anti-Japanese sentiment is pretty much something that's historically been there, even before WWII exacerbated things.

[cashew]

Uh...beauty and body image in African-American women is a common topic when discussing white-on-black racism. White standards of beauty is just another vector of racism. For example, hair straightening as practiced by people of African descent is directly the result of racial discrimination. Western racism is not limited to just resource equity.

Yes, traditional Chinese beauty standard is dark skin = more work in the sun = lower class = ugly. But historically, Chinese people haven't had enough contact with people of African descent to deal with the standards of beauty wrt racial traits. So the negative modern stereotypes of Africans and people of African descent (such as lazy, ugly, stupid, etc.) are heavily influenced by American media.

As for anti-Japanese sentiment, no, I don't think that has anything to do with Western media involvement.