Hi! What is gufeng? I noticed you caption some of your photosets as "gufeng style" or artists who create pictures in "gufeng" style but I'm not quite sure what it is exactly! >o<
Hi, thanks for the question!
Gufeng/古风 literally means “ancient style” - "Gu/古” = “ancient”, “Feng/风” = “style”. As an adjective, it can be used to describe just about anything - art, comics, music, clothing, games, shows, photosets, etc.
Gufeng refers to a modern interpretation of ancient styles - it does not aim for strict traditionalism or historical accuracy. For example, “gufeng music” refers to a genre of music gaining popularity among Chinese youth in which amateurs, individual composers, and online singers create original traditional-style songs that are published to the web. For examples of gufeng music, you can check out my music tag, as well as the gufengmusic blog.
Similarly, gufeng-style art refers to modern art that’s drawn in a more “traditional” style resembling Chinese paintings. My art tag contains mostly gufeng art (see also examples below):
In the same vein, a “gufeng style” photoset is one that deliberately invokes a traditional aesthetic without needing to be historically accurate. For example, many cosplay photosets of Chinese media/games with pseudo-ancient settings are often labelled as “gufeng”. Below - cosplayers depicting characters from the Chinese online wuxia game “Moonlight Blade” (which itself can be described as “gufeng”):
This is my understanding of gufeng - if anyone has more to add, please do ^^ Hope this helps!
