Accessories and traditional dress

Accessories are 配饰 pèishì, literally “the ornaments you match”: 配, to go with, and 饰, to adorn. It is a magazine word; in conversation, you simply name the thing. The previous page (Clothes and shoes) dressed the body from head to toe; this one deals with what you add on top, then with the clothes of the past. First trap, already mentioned: you 穿 a garment, but you 戴 a hat, 戴帽子 dài màozi. And a scarf? You wind it round, 围围巾 wéi wéijīn. A tie, for its part, is knotted: 打领带 dǎ lǐngdài (you can also say 系领带, but this 系 is read jì and catches every student out).

The hat, 帽子 màozi, has a history you can read. The old character was 冒: a head covering, 冃, sitting above the eye, 目. But 冒 took on the meaning “to charge headlong”, then “to risk”; so the 巾 of cloth was added to the hat to tell it apart. That is the usual explanation, and it seems sound to me. A hat is counted with 顶, “the top”: 一顶帽子 yì dǐng màozi.

In ancient China, your hat said who you were. At twenty, a young man received the cap of manhood, the 冠, and entered adulthood. Hence 张冠李戴 zhāng guān lǐ dài, “Zhang’s cap on Li’s head”: to get the wrong person (this is sentence 19). Under the Ming, officials wore a black gauze hat, and the 乌纱帽 wūshāmào still means the post you are afraid of losing. 戴高帽 dài gāomào, “to crown with a tall hat”, is what you do to the person you flatter; 扣帽子 kòu màozi, “to jam a hat on”, is what you do to the head of the person you accuse. In 2020, the last poor districts “took off their hats”, 摘帽. Giving someone a green hat, on the other hand, is still a very bad idea.

A bag is 包 bāo, and the Shuowen sees in the character a belly wrapped round a child not yet formed. Everything that wraps is therefore 包: the 包子, the parcel, and the 包袱 bāofu, the bundle that became a burden. Careful with the backpack: 背包 bēibāo is read with bēi, “to carry on the back”, not bèi, “the back”. Old clothes had no pockets; you kept your money in a purse hanging from your belt, hence 掏腰包 tāo yāobāo, “to rummage in your belt purse” ⟶ to pay out of your own pocket.

The other hiding place was the sleeve, wide and closed at the wrist. You slipped a book into it, a letter, a few coins. The minister 于谦 Yú Qiān, under the Ming, is said to have gone up to the capital with nothing in his sleeves but “pure breeze”: 两袖清风 liǎng xiù qīng fēng has since described an incorruptible official (the poem attributed to him is not certain). When you leave in anger, you shake your sleeves, 拂袖而去 fú xiù ér qù. And the opera has kept the 水袖 shuǐxiù, those “water sleeves” of white silk that extend the actor’s arm and express his anger or his grief.

The umbrella, 伞 sǎn, is a drawing: in the traditional form 傘, you can still see the stretched canopy and four little 人 sheltering underneath. Legend credits its invention to the wife of 鲁班 Lǔ Bān, the genius carpenter; nothing proves it. It is counted with 把, like everything with a handle: 一把伞 yì bǎ sǎn. But you don’t give one as a present. 伞 sǎn sounds like 散 sàn, “to part”, and it is the same trap as the clock or the pear.

The fan, 扇子 shànzi, comes from a door: the Shuowen defines 扇 as a door leaf, and the character indeed combines 户, the door, with 羽, feathers. People still say 一扇门, “a door leaf”. The round fan, 团扇 tuánshàn, is the oldest; the folding fan, 折扇 zhéshàn, is said to have come from Japan by way of Korea, under the Song, according to most historians. As for 羽扇纶巾 yǔshàn guānjīn, “the feather fan and the silk kerchief”, everyone sees Zhuge Liang in it. In Su Shi, however, it is Zhou Yu (this is sentence 23). Careful: in 纶巾, 纶 is read guān.

On to clothes. The 汉服 hànfú, “the dress of the Han”, can be recognised by its crossed collar closed to the right, 交领右衽 jiāolǐng yòurèn. This detail mattered enormously. Confucius says of Guan Zhong, the minister who drove back the barbarians: “Without Guan Zhong, we would have our hair hanging loose and the edge of our tunic fastened on the left side” (see Chapter 14 of the Analects of Confucius; this is sentence 25). Closing on the left meant dressing as a barbarian. Or as a corpse: the Liji prescribes closing the garments of the dead on the left.

The 旗袍 qípáo owes its name to the 旗人, “the Banner people”, in other words the Manchus (see The Qing dynasty). But the Manchu robe was loose and straight; the figure-hugging qipao we know was born in Shanghai in the 1920s (see The city of Shanghai), cut the Western way. What it really keeps from the Manchus is debatable. From the Qing also come the 马褂 mǎguà, the horsemen’s short jacket, and the 马蹄袖 mǎtíxiù, the horse-hoof sleeve that covered the hand. The 长衫 chángshān, for its part, was the scholars’ gown: in Lu Xun, Kong Yiji is “the only one who drinks standing up while wearing the changshan”, a fallen scholar who won’t admit it.

The 中山装 zhōngshānzhuāng jacket bears the name of Sun Yat-sen. Its four pockets are readily explained by four virtues, its five buttons by five powers, its three cuff buttons by the Three Principles of the People. I believe this symbolism was built after the fact, and there is even debate about who designed the jacket (this is sentence 17). The 唐装 tángzhuāng, despite its name, owes nothing to the Tang: 唐人 refers to the overseas Chinese. It came back into fashion in 2001, when the heads of state at the APEC summit in Shanghai all wore it for the photo.

Old-style dress has its details: the knotted button, 盘扣 pánkòu, the bride’s phoenix headdress, 凤冠霞帔 fèngguān xiápèi, the tiger-head shoes, 虎头鞋 hǔtóuxié, which protected babies. On the mandarins’ robes, an embroidered square, the 补子 bǔzi, showed a bird for civil officials, a wild beast for military ones. The story goes that 衣冠禽兽 yīguān qínshòu, “beast in mandarin’s robes”, was first an honourable title, which became an insult at the end of the Ming. It is a pretty story; I have found no proof of it.

The 汉服 is back in fashion, to the point that people talk of 汉服热 hànfú rè. Its fans call each other 同袍 tóngpáo, “same cloak”, after the Shijing song quoted on the previous page. The 马面裙 mǎmiànqún, the “horse-face” skirt, brought Chinese students out in 2022 in front of a Dior boutique in Paris, which was accused of selling a copy of it without saying so. Designers talk of 国潮 guócháo, trendy Chinese fashion, and of 新中式 xīn zhōngshì, the neo-Chinese style.

Han Feizi, for his part, was wary of accessories. A merchant from Chu sold a pearl in a casket of precious wood, perfumed and inlaid with jade; his customer from Zheng kept the casket and gave back the pearl (买椟还珠 mǎi dú huán zhū). The comment is curt: “One can say that he knew how to sell caskets; one cannot say that he knew how to sell pearls” (this is sentence 24). Keep the pearl.

Click on any character on the page: its stroke order is shown stroke by stroke, with the arrow that gives the direction of the movement.