INTERNATIONAL CHINESE COSTUME FESTIVAL PROMOTES THE BEAUTY OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE CULTURE

5 April, 2019

International Chinese Costume Festival is a local festival organized by FUZI Chamber, the event aims at promoting and spreading the beauty of Chinese traditional costume in the modern society. On 6th April and 7th April this year, participants gathered at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Plaza in Tsim Sha Tsui, joining this exotic carnival.

Participants can experience the beauty of Chinese clothing in Victoria Harbour, they could enjoy all the performances freely in the public area and they could even try on the Chinese traditional costumes and make-up freely. Chinese costume parade, booth games, specialty snacks, as well as cultural performances are also things tourists and participants can enjoy. Over a hundred performances on Chinese tradition arts and dances were shown on stage. There is really a great feast of Chinese elements.

With a world reputation of exquisite silk producing nation, Chinese clothing enjoys a time-honored culture. China was the first country in the world to cultivate silkworms and develop silk weaving. According to archaeologists, Chinese has acknowledged weaving since Neolithic ages 5000 to 6000 years ago. Till 3,000 years ago, sericulture and silk weaving were already significantly developed in ancient China.

Chinese clothing has many types and suits according to various occasions. We have traditional Zhongzheng suit, Cheongsam and many other suits created by ethnic groups scattered on this vast ancient civilization land. Each type of clothe has their unique way of making and sewing methods and lucky pattern exquisites. They were not only evolving over time but also transforming dramatically following dynastic changes or the imperial decree of a new ruler.

On the day we arrived at the international Chinese costume festival, we saw how passionate people are, despite the hot weather and bright sun, people go back and forth to walk through every booth, only to know more about the beauty of traditional Chinese. Makeup was almost an obligation for woman in the past dynasty in China, a pale skin, an eye look drawn by eyeliner and well defined lips with a blood red lipstick are the iconic makeup look on many traditional Chinese women, girls can try that on in the booth, there are professional makeup artist to help them out with the classy, beautiful look.

Not only female can have a taste on being an ancient, there are many male fans too. They put on a changshan, literally means 'long shirt', is a traditional Chinese dress (or robe, long jacket or tunic) worn by men. In function, it is considered the male equivalent of the women's cheongsam (qipao). It was often worn by men with a magua or "riding jacket". These types of dress were widely adopted beginning under the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty, who required that men in certain positions wear this style. It took more time for the majority of women to adopt the new style of qipao rather than hanfu.

Denmark, a mainland student studying in Hong Kong, is also a fan of the Chinese traditional clothing. He admires the design and the cultural connotations behind each and every clothing, it is interesting to see each dynasty has different characteristics, it shows diversification of the Chinese cultures.

Tom is one of the organizers, he said he started to get in touched with traditional Chinese costumes for eight years ago. The reason he started was because of his mainland friends he met during his university time. He started to question why Hong Kong people thinks it’s weird to wear traditional Chinese clothing in public, as it is very normal to wear traditional clothing in other countries such as Japan and Korea. “It is not a weird thing to wear it in the public, it shows our own unique culture.” He said. “The most attracting things about Chinese wearing traditional costumes is the Streamlined beauty of Chinese girls, for example, when girls are dancing, the long sleeves will move along with the body and create a unique and beautiful lines.” He mentioned that he would like to further promote the Chinese costume so that more people would like to wear them in important events like weddings or school graduation. He would like to cooperate with more local clothing designers as well.

The international Chinese costume festival is such a great event to promote the beauty of traditional Chinese clothing cultures. It is also worth to look forward to how dressmakers can keep alive the qipao, or cheongsam, in Hong Kong by adding modern twists to the traditional Chinese dress.​