1.13 Soft as Silk

Clothing is a facet of Chinese tradition very much alive in the contemporary world. The milling streets and sidewalks of Beijing are peppered with people wearing classically cut Chinese jackets, infants dressed as little emperors, and elders who feel younger in the fashions of their youth. Those inspired to dress this way are, upon entering the clothing section of any department store, immediately engulfed in a sea of Chinese garments in updated styles and thousands of colors. The common feature of Chinese traditional wear is its fabric – all garments are made from silk.

According to Chinese legend, it was Leizu, wife of the legendary Yellow Emperor that first unraveled a silk cocoon. It dropped into her cup of tea on a summer day in 2640 BC as she rested under a mulberry tree. In the following 3,000 years, silk worms were one of the Middle Kingdom’s most heavily guarded secrets.

In AD 300, a Chinese princess smuggled a silkworm out of the country. It was this treasured dowry item that brought the secrets of silk industry to the rest of the world, at least as legend would have it.

In any event, silk has always been valuable in China. In the Han (206 BC–AD 220) and Tang (618–907) dynasties, it was used as currency. Peasants paid their taxes in grain and silk, and officials and members of society’s upper echelons were awarded length of silk as a mark of their station.

Silk was the fabric of emperors, their wives, concubines and eunuchs; their everyday as well as ceremonial dress was fashioned from it. But emperor’s silk garments had exclusive features. Their robes were made from exquisite Yun brocade, a work art in itself. This gorgeous fabric was woven silk, gold and silver thread intertwined with plumage of as many as 100 birds. It could only be hand woven, so just one length took years to complete. It took 13 years to weave the fabric for just one of Ming dynasty (1368–1644) Emperor Wanli’s ceremonial robes.

During the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) all Yun brocade was sent to the Forbidden City. Some was used to make robes for the emperor and empress, and the rest was for clothes presented by the Son of Heaven to his favorite concubines and higher courtiers. A gift of Yun brocade was the ultimate honor and a family treasure that passed from generation to generation.

The honor of wearing Yun brocade having being confined to bygone Sons of Heaven and their intimates, it is not part of the universal image of Chinese clothing.

So what is? When thinking about Japan in this context, it is the kimono that springs to mind, while the mention of India conjures up the quintessentially feminine sari. And China? In all probability the image of a gracefully slender woman in a qipao (or cheongsam as it is called in the South) of richly embroidered lustrous silk or satin. The qipao is a relatively recent fashion. Its literal meaning “banner dress” refers to the gowns worn by Manchu women of the Banner clans – army regiments of the prospective Qing Dynasty. Upon establishment of the Qing in 1644 the dress also became fashionable among Han women.

The qipao’s heyday came in the 1920s-1930-s. By this time it had changed dramatically in style, from wide and knee length to long and figure-hugging, with daringly high side slits. During the “cultural revolution” (1966–1976) qipao was, along with fur coats and high heels, considered “bourgeois”; women were well advised to exchange their sinuous silks for the blue cotton trousers and jacket known in the West as the “Mao suit”, and in China, as the “Sun Yat-sen suit”.

Qipao is in vogue once more in China and elsewhere as more and more European women are charmed by the way it flatters every figure. Cinema has also played its role in the resurgence of qipao popularity. In Cannes Film Festival award-winning movie In the Mood for Love actress Maggie Cheung wears 20 different qipao and looks stunning in all of them.

Apart from the “cultural revolution” decade, women of China have never stopped wearing traditional clothes. Chinese men, on the other hand, were generally less that enthusiastic about traditional fashions until October 21, 2001.  On that night, 20 APEC state leaders including USA’s George W. Bush and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, appeared in Shanghai wearing traditional Chinese silk jackets. This caused an immediate sensation and sparked off not just a wave but a regular tsunami of male interest in traditional wear.

Just in case you didn’t know, these traditional jackets are known as tangzhuang because their origins can be traced to the Tang Dynasty – China’s golden age. This is why anything in anyway connected to that era has for many centuries been considered “very Chinese”.

Fashion styles aside, all these clothes are made of the same material – silk. The Chinese have achieved almost impossible perfection in silk manufacture. Contemporary technique gives the fabric different looks and textures, making it appear and feel like linen, wool or cotton depending on the fabric’s composition.

Well, I appear to be getting carried away by this topic, which is not surprising as the delightful sensation of fine silk on my skin reaffirms my pleasure in wearing it. In my view diamonds are not a girl’s only best friends, as silks from Hangzhou and Suzhou are of equal worth.   

Book “Chinese Customs and Wisdoms” (translated into English by the author) was published in Beijing in 2007 by the Foreign Language Press