Some Things

First installment of the Hanfu in Components series is up! As a reminder, if you haven’t already, check out the introductory article to best find out how to use this guide, otherwise some things might not make sense to you. If you’ve done that already, charge on forward! To kick off the series, this is a brief article explaining how exactly we’re going to break down hanfu into its basic components. We’re still in the introductory stages here, but bear with me and we’ll get to the fun stuff soon.   WHAT MAKES HANFU, HANFU? What defines /han4 fu2/hanfu? What sets it apart from everyone else? How do we know when something is truly hanfu, as opposed to hanfu-inspired? These questions can be kind of scary when you first look at them, scared of making a mistake—don’t worry, it’s actually pretty simple! the shape of the fabric pieces and how the pieces are sewed together, not the ‘pattern’ printed on the surface of a piece of fabric or color) that we use today to make hanfu. So everything that counts as hanfu, we have a real historical artifact to back up its construction. Sometimes different types of hanfu are even…

The Qingming Festival is coming up soon! Learn more about where this holiday came from and some things that you can do to participate in celebrating it, both in the way of the ancients and the way that people do now. As the weather warms up bit by bit, the next important Chinese holiday, the Qingming Festival (清明節 qing ming jie), is drawing closer as well! Also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day or Clear Brightness Day (direct translation of the words that make up its Chinese name), it’s usually celebrated in the first few days of April of the Gregorian calendar—in 2022, it’ll be on April 5th. But where did this festival come from, and how has its related traditions evolved over time? And what are some different ways that you participate in celebrating it as a hanfu and ancient chinese culture enthusiast? Let’s address these questions one by one.   How did the Qingming Festival begin? Originally, the Qingming Festival wasn’t called 清明節 at all. It was called the Hánshí Jié(寒食節), the Cold Food Festival, and had a very rich backstory to it. During the Spring and Autumn period of the Zhou Dynasty, in the Jin State (晉), a prince…