3

I'll do a quick history talk regarding to the lost clothing I am doing, and why most people today pecieve traditional Chinese clothing the way it is. Ming dynasty is the last ethnic Han Chinese dynasty in history, in 1644, the Manchu or formally called Jurchens in the North successfully taken over Beijing.

What happened was, in 1644, they imposed the queue order upon the Han Chinese. Basically, the Chinese must shave off all of their hair (which culturally the Chinese take strong value in) and leave a tiny coin size spot in the back of their head and grow a pig tail out from that spot. The three heads on the right shows the evolutionary change throughout time. The bottom pretty much resembles what we see in the Chinese railway workers in North America in the beginning of the last century.

Before 1644, this has always been the clothing that the Han Chinese wear. It's true that different dynasties throughout China established it's own unique style of clothing, but the basic format stayed the same throughout the past 3000 years, and it was a natural development throughout the way.

This is the Manchu clothing, it was later forced upon the Han Chinese (men originally). Today, what's commonly perceived as traditional Chinese clothing are modified based on these clothes.

Just to show some photos to prove that I am not lying ;p
So basically, the queue resembles a submission to the Tartar Rule. In reality, it's not just about submission, it's more of a symbol of slavery.

This is a painting of Matteo Ricci, an Italian Missionary who came to China in the late 16th century. This painting done that time clearly revealed the clothing of the original Hans.

2

The Design Proposal and Brief I did from the handouts (from Sharon Romero before Summer 2010) during the summer, this gives a clearer idea of what I had originally before taking feedback at school.

1

Ok, so let's start from here. This is the first page of my special calendar notebook I will be using for the core project. I wrote these things down during the summer. As you can see, some of them are in Chinese, simply because I found it much simpler express what I want to say for certain things, then I would translate them into English.

Alright, no more nonsense, basically what I wrote down here in Chinese on the top would be some reasons why there is a need to design. I made a few main points (there are actually way more than that), number 1, the ethnic Han clothing is too vague, not many people know what the heck it is. Secondly, I found that most people around the world have a first impression about traditional Han Chinese clothing that is completely misrepresented by media, books, newspaper and whatever utilities there are outthere. Lastly, due to the diversity of Han ethnicity, there are some generalizations upon the Hans that we are not an ethnicity bounded with real culture at all, there is nothing really that defines us as an ethnicity (other than language and writing today). Therefore, the above issues provoked me to make something special to define this old ethnicty.

Who is the audience? According to my research, the main backbone supporter of Hanfu movement is people born in the late 70s and the 80s, so these guys are definitly my target. I will post the Design brief and proposal I did during the summer that further explains the audience and everything else.

The last Chinese line says "any sort of cultural inheritance need a certain degree of ceremonial rites"