#huafu

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"汉服人像" by zhang kaiyv.

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青白之魅 2: Background & Influences

1 Introduction & Presentation // 2 Background & Influences // 3 Hair & Makeup // 4 Set Design // 5 Clothes & Accessories // 6 Conclusion

You want the nerd stuff? This is the Nerd Stuff post. Here are the main pieces of media that inspired the shoot, which I will be referencing in subsequent posts.

I'm not gonna be re-detailing the events of the legend itself in this post, because there are like a billion versions out there that you can easily find, but if you're not familiar with it here is the Wikipedia page. I'd give the plot a quick glance-through!

白蛇傳/白蛇传/bai2 she2 zhuan4/Legend of the White Snake

Mural depicting Bai Suzhen at the Beijing Summer Palace. Src: Wikimedia Commons, 颐和园长廊绘画，白蛇传, December 2005

It’s hard to say when exactly the Legend of the White Snake originated. When it first started out, it was likely just another standard married-a-pretty-girl-but-actually-it-was-a-demon fable. It didn’t stay that way—the Ming and Qing dynasties favored romance and feeling (google the Cult of Qing, it’s too complicated for me to go into and frankly my grasp on it is hazy at best), sort of like the way Europe had a Romantic period, which impacted literature in a variety of ways.

One of the most well-known early versions is a Ming Dynasty story called 白娘子永鎭雷峰塔/白娘子永镇雷塔/bai2 niang2 zi0 yong3 zhen4 lei2 feng1 ta3/'Madam White is Imprisoned Forever Under the Leifeng Pagoda,' from Feng Menglong's famous 警世通言/jing4 shi4 tong1 yan2/'Cautionary Tales.' It portrays Bai Suzhen, then called 白娘子/白娘子/bai2 niang2 zi0/Madam White, in a more sympathetic light (although she takes on somewhat of a crazy ex-girlfriend role). Later depictions focused on Bai Suzhen as the main character.

Src: Wikimedia Commons, 杭州西湖边，许仙、白娘子、小青塑像, May 2009

I like to consider this folktale as an example of how people and culture can change drastically through time, and how the boundaries between ideas become more blurry the closer you look. I also like to look at it as an example of people's views on something changing for the better as a result of familiarization: while the original snake-wife horror story likely stemmed from a fear of venomous snakes and supernatural threats, the propagation of the story throughout literature, opera, and other media encouraged understanding and sympathy over terror and rejection.

Most versions of the Legend of the White Snake end after Bai Suzhen gives birth to her son, only to be imprisoned under the Leifeng Pagoda by the monk Fahai, who Xiaoqing is not yet strong enough to defeat alone. Fortunately, a commonly-accepted sequel story involves either Xiaoqing coming back to fight Fahai and free her sister after cultivating her abilities to be strong enough, or Bai Suzhen's son growing up to show so much filial piety that the heavens were moved to release her.

Today, some people worship the snake sisters as deities, especially Bai Suzhen (there are a couple temples dedicated to her!), as symbols of health and medicine. In this way you can see that the sisters achieved immortality in the end :)

青蛇/青蛇/ QING1 SHE2/GREEN SNAKE (1993)

src: TMDB, liml715, 青蛇 (1993)

In my first semester at college I took a spectacular class called Sex and Gender in Premodern Chinese Culture. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least, though extremely challenging. At the end of the semester, we watched Green Snake, a 1993 Hong Kong movie directed by Tsui Hark 徐克 based on the novel by the famous author Lillian Lee, 李碧華.

A majority of white + green snake photoshoots these days base their model styling on this movie. It’s a beautiful story that touches on sensuality and suffering, simultaneously exploring and questioning Buddhist and traditional Chinese philosophies. The film is wrought with natural imagery and symbolism, containing allegories for 'othering' and perceived righteousness that I think are very relevant to today’s society. I especially appreciated its portrayal of the raw, animalistic nature of 'coming into womanhood,' and the question of whether form dictates identity or vice versa.

I watched the original Cantonese version, but I found this dubbed mandarin version on Youtube with simplified and English subtitles for your viewing pleasure.

A lot of design choices I made were impacted by this movie, especially the set design. The film focuses more on the two snake sisters as the main characters, rather than Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian's romance being the focus of the plot, so it expounded more on Xiaoqing's character than the opera or the original folktale. The overall aesthetic was very mystical and alluring and I used that as inspiration for my set design.

戲曲/戏曲/Chinese Opera

Chinese opera played a big role in popularizing the Legend of the White Snake, especially the romantic version popular today. There are lots of different kinds of Chinese opera (jingxi, gezaixi, kunqu, yue, wu, etc etc etc), and many of them have their own structures and versions of the Legend of the White Snake. The version I watched in full was Peking opera (because it was free and on Youtube lol, highly recommend).

Chinese opera has specific 行當/行当/hang2 dang1/‘role types’ for its characters. You might call these 'tropes' or 'archetypes'—it’s similar to how you’d call someone the female lead or male lead, or maybe 'sidekick bestie' or 'comic relief,' except more specific. Each role type has its own set of rules for costuming, the skillset the actor has to have, and the role of the character in the overall story. Sometimes there are subtypes of roles. In the Legend of the White Snake, both sisters are 旦角/dan4 jiao3/‘female leads.’ 

src: Wikimedia Commons, Legend of the White Snake in Beijing Opera, Feb 2008

Bai Suzhen is a 正旦/正旦/zheng4 dan4/‘righteous woman,’ also called the 青衣/青衣/qing1 yi1/‘teal-dressed.’ Most operas have this role as the female lead. A zhengdan is a dignified woman with steadfast virtues and an elegant demeanor, often already married or middle-aged. She is strong-willed, sophisticated, and fights for what’s right. Usually, her actions and decisions drive the plot of the story.

Xiaoqing's martial uniform. Src: 典藏臺灣, 青蛇戰裙襖-衣、褲（典藏號fir_09_0106_169）, March 2008

Xiaoqing can count as either a 花旦/花旦/hua1 dan4/‘flower maiden’ or 武旦/武旦/wu3 dan4/‘martial woman.’ The huadan is a younger girl with a lively and more naive personality, often accompanying an older and more mature zhengdan or guimendan (I don’t think this opera has a guimendan so I won’t go over it). As Bai Suzhen’s sworn sister, she playfully fulfills the duties of a maid, acting as her confidant and assistant, even helping to set up the meet-cute between her and Xu Xian.

借傘/借伞/jie4 san3/'Borrowing the Umbrella,' the scene in which Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian meet.

Both sisters carry swords, have extensive fight scenes and can be considered wudan in the scenes they fight in. You’ll see that during these scenes, there's a costume change into the wudan’s soldier uniform, 戰襖/战袄/zhan4 ao3/battle costume. They each perform a variety of acrobatic tricks with swords and spears that the actors have to train for years to master, especially Xiaoqing.

金山寺/jin1 shan1 si4/Jinshan Temple plainclothes rehearsal, one of the two extended fight scenes in the opera.

The opera is significant for a couple of reasons—one being that it helped me get a sense of the snake sisters' characterizations, and two being that it helped to see where hundreds of years of the story's evolution finally landed. I didn't use the opera costumes for inspiration in the clothing design, since opera costumes tend to be more similar to Ming/Qing clothing and my design was based off of Northern/Southern Dynasty silhouettes, but opera elements made their appearance in several ways in the hair design, which I'll expand on in the next post.

Popular Adaptations I Did Not Watch

白蛇：緣起 and 白蛇2：青蛇劫起 (2019-2020 Donghua)

新白娘子传奇 (2019 Cdrama)

Why? These are more modern adaptations of the legend. I've seen clips from them both and they are breathtakingly beautiful in their own right! But because I was creating my own adaptation of the legend, I wanted to primarily reference older media (at least pre-2000's), rather than using other peoples' ideas from the past few years. Again though they look absolutely amazing, so for anyone who wants more engagement with the legend, I highly recommend trying them!

If you made it to the end, congrats :) I'll try to get the next few parts out relatively quickly before my memory fades so I can continue writing more informational stuff in the future. The subsequent parts will focus more on the shoot itself and the design work I did for it. Happy Year of the Snake!

1 Introduction & Presentation // 2 Background & Influences // 3 Hair & Makeup // 4 Set Design // 5 Clothes & Accessories // 6 Conclusion

[ziseviolet]

Hi! I want to say that I appreciate your blog a lot! Thanks for being accessible to the Chinese-illiterate T.T Controversial question... Your side of hanfu movement is positive! But some have the motive of Han-supremacy. I personally see the movement as more a push against Western influences, but I'm still worried. Is there a safe way to really participate in the movement? Also, what do you think about the term "huafu" (which was for the "Huafu Day") including minority ethnic groups' clothing?

Hi, I’m glad you appreciate my blog ^^ Thanks for the question, and sorry for taking ages to reply! (hanfu photo via weibo):

So, I received this ask (and similar asks) many years ago, but put them off because I wanted to focus on positivity & education and avoid negativity & controversy, especially given how limited awareness of hanfu was in English-language online spaces at the time. Now that hanfu awareness has progressed and stabilized up to a point, I'll answer these asks.

As I stated in my post here, "the hanfu movement is not a monolith. Ever since its inception in 2003, the hanfu revival movement has been a grassroots, bottom-up movement with members of various backgrounds, ideologies, and opinions". There is a variety of motivations, which I wrote about in my posts here and here. According to these posts, the main motivations behind the hanfu movement include affinity and interest in hanfu culture and traditional Chinese culture, aesthetics, and self-expression. Included in this is pushback against Western influences, which is explained in my post here. There are some motivated by ideals of Han supremacy, but that is not the main driving force of the current hanfu movement. There is a more in-depth discussion on this topic in this post.

As for safe ways of participating in the movement, I would just say find like-minded people/organizations that share the same motivations and values as yourself.

As for what I think about the term "huafu", I wrote in my post here that I find it "useful as a short catch-all term for Chinese clothing that isn’t limited to the currently accepted definition of hanfu". I think it's helpful and convenient to have an umbrella term for Chinese clothing that covers both hanfu and ethnic minority groups' clothing. Of course, the term "huafu" is not and should not be a replacement for the term "hanfu".

For more references, please check out my hanfu movement and huafu tags.

Hope this helps! ^^

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Xuan Lù 宣璐

Wb update 2024.02.09

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Pink Chinese traditional clothing Hanfu Ming Dynasty V4575

[darkeningclouds]

Hanfu Accessories 👑

Accessories

Miansha/Mianlian (face veil)

Yingluo

Xiangquan

Maoling

Doupeng (cloak)

Qiuyi

Pibo (shawl)

Yaoqun

Panbo (string to tie the sleeves back)

Youzhisan (oil paper umbrella)

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Sleeves

Water Sleeves

Huwan (arm guards)

Bangshoudai (hand wraps)

Yuxiu

Pipaxiu (pipa-shaped sleeves)

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Waist Accessories

Weichang (short outer skirt)

Weifu (shorter outer skirt)

Zaju

Bixi (decorative strip of fabric)

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Yaopei (Waist Ornaments)

Jinbu

Hebao

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Fans

Tuanshan (stiff round fan)

Bianmian (stiff semi-circle fan)

Zheshan (folding fan)

Yaoshan

Pushan

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Hats

Mili (long veiled hat)

Weimao (veiled hat)

Humao

Douli

Tiger Hat

Futou

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Hair Accessories

Guan (crown)

Xiaoguan (topknot crown)

Lianhua Guan (lotus crown for taoist priests)

Furongguan (lotus crown for women)

Mianguan (emperor’s headdress/crown)

Zanhua

Chanhua

Ronghua

Juanhua

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Knocking out MerMar and AAPI month in one drawing!! Efficiency 😎

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referencia + boceto a color poco saturado + final