Tag: beijing

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Art Design Fashion

Hanfu + Beijing

After a Fashion

“Boom boom boom boom, boom boom boom boom, boom boom boom boom, doom doom doom, ok boom boom, toom toom, ok boom boom.” The catchy lyrics of Taiwanese popstar Angela Zhang’s hit (written by Harry Sommerdahl and Yi Wei Wu) go down a storm with the bright youngish things clad in Urban Revivo designer gear in downtown Beijing clubland. So far so 21st century. But away from the midnight smoky dancefloors, daytime streetwear in the Chinese Capital is taking on a different look. Very different.

Strolling down Donganmen Avenue biting on tanglulu, a Beijing street food of skewered fruit dipped in hardened sugar syrup, the bright youngish things could just as easily be sipping jasmine tea centuries ago in the Forbidden City. What’s happening? A millennia old fashion has been popularised by that most contemporary of influences: social media. Historical television dramas like The Story of Minglan set in the Northern Song Dynasty of 960 to 1127 AD are also fuelling the fashion.

Local tour guide Mandy Wong explains, “The Imperial style is super popular with young people coming from remote villages to experience life in Beijing. About 60 percent of immigrants in the city come from the Chinese countryside. Beijingers are also getting in on the act. Hanfu as it’s called is more than just fashion: it’s a way of expressing a form of national pride and cultural heritage that was suppressed last century. They are dressing like the Imperial royal family and their concubines, servants and warriors.”

Han Chinese is the world’s largest ethnic group and the name derives from the Han dynasty of 206 BC to 220 AD which shaped and unified Chinese civilisation. The style though originated in the second millennium BC so today’s generation have plenty of opportunities for breadth of eclecticism and depth of interpretation. Key components are Beizi (a cloak popularised by later dynasties), Ruqun (a short jacket and long coat) and Shenyl (a robe worn by Han and Jin dynasties). As for headdresses, the silhouette rules whether wearing a Mianliu crown with tassels or a Fenghuang crown with jewels. Some of the boys complement their dark outfits with guyliner. The girls’ pale foundation matches their long white fur trimmed capes. Fans double as sun protectors, even in winter.

It’s a case of the Emperor’s old clothes.

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Lavender’s Blue + Beijing

Like You Never Went Away 

You’re everywhere. Empirically attractive, imperially gorgeous. Positively pulsating with pulchritude. And as for this current megalopolis: it’s the acme of urban aspiration and cultural inspiration. Amongst the jade and jardines and jacquard silks; amidst the mist shawled vales and curlicued dragons and parasol clutching mandarins; centrist centring on the premier international consumption hub to the east of the world’s longest central axis, we’re doing our germane best for Sino Anglo Irish relations. Recalling the sinistral Ming and Qing dynasties; admiring the syncretic Xi Jinping era. Our very own white lotus revolutionary revelation has begun. Focusing on the glimmers. Hypnogogic mesmerisation; pedagogic realisation. We’ll always remember you dancing under city lights.

In years to come, looking back over Lavender’s Blue, reflecting on its modest commission to simply brighten the reader’s day, this record of a midwinter’s visit to Beijing – pics and prose capturing the paradigm of a paradisal time – will surely be seen to have delivered that meek mission. Although the ending of Marcel Proust’s 1913 The Way by Swann’s does caution, “The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice of contiguous impressions that formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is only regret for a certain time; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.”

Wherever there’s the high life there’s Lavender’s Blue. Especially on days ending with a Y. Perhaps it really is then an infrangible storehouse of exquisite epiphanies with a strong dose of chimerical aestheticism. A finely hewn form of winsome writing and formidable photography. Savour each missive from our Champagne fuelled truffle laden foam light caviar heavy production line of epigrams and epiphanic imagery. Dithyrambic ramblings are us. Think Felicità. Like very fine wine, Lavender’s Blue is an acquired taste. But – health warning – those who remain intellectually alert enough to sup at this fountain will end up addicted. We’re talking opium level.