Coffee, Tea, or Just Make Your Own!

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My Teashake brings all the Boys to the yard,

And they’re like, it’s better than yours

Damn right, it’s better than yours

I can teach you, but I’ll have to charge.
-Some Song dynasty (10th-13th century) literati/ courtesan who adapted Kelis’ Milkshake lyrics

You know, this is actually a believable line in ancient Song dynasty (10th to 13th century) when it comes to tea, shaken (not stirred). And there is a 50-50 chance of it being sung by a Song courtesan, or narrated by a Song literati.

You’re probably thinking, why would anyone want to shake a cuppa tea? And why would it be sung or talked about by a Courtesan or Literati? Isn’t it just, tea?

So I would have to bring you to about a thousand years ago.. and introduce you to the wonderful world of Tea Battles where one’s brilliance is not measured by how big your muscles were, but swiftly they can help you move. In particular, your wrist. I will talk about that more soon.

THE TEASHAKE THAT BRINGS ALL THE BOYS TO THE YARD

But first, here’s the entire process of tea preparation from breaking it down to smaller tea leave bits, to whisking it (that’s where the wrist part comes in, and is also one of the highlights):

You see, people of that period were drinking powdered tea, pretty much like the Japanese matcha that you are familiar with. The Japanese matcha was a continuation of that Chinese tradition, in fact, while the Chinese have long lost it although efforts have been made in recent decades to revive it with reasonable success.

An iconic Intangible Cultural Heritage tea practitioner of China who has been reviving this art for over 40 years said they looked to Japanese whisked tea practice and cross referenced with historical Chinese texts to understand and deduce how it might have been done in the past. How the Japanese have retained so much of ancient/medieval Chinese cultural practices is fascinating, and almost like how Chinese diasporas so faithfully tried to preserve their heritage after they have left China. Of course that being said, the Japanese definitely injected their own life and philosophies into whatever they brought over from China, and it became part of their very own, unique identity.

A good cup of tea, to the Chinese of Song dynasty, would be leaves from Fujian Jian’an region, plucked in the earliest part of Spring sometime in March (today, we generally thought of tea leaves from the middle of Spring in April as the best). Of course, there were specificities by the Song Imperial family on how exactly the tea leaf should look like—an eagle’s claw (lol, good luck figuring that out!)—and with a tiny bit of pale green (not green yet).

And this is the part where the tea gets shaken…really badly until it froths up like that hard peak when you beat your egg white for baking really fluffy cakes. Except that you use machine, and the Song people used their bare hands and a bamboo brush, sometimes with just a silver spoon (this is torture I tell you…).

And this is also the part where the flexibility and tenacity of your wrist muscle comes in…

If you can whisk some bubbles up, you have failed.

If you can whisk some foam up, you have barely passed.

If you can whisk thick foam up but it has some large bubbles, you probably can get a C grade.

If you can whisk thick foam with extremely smooth texture (like no visible bubbles), you can probably get a B grade.

The ideal state would be like the consistency of wax… so the most modern connection I can make would be whipping the egg whites till it has a hard peak for baking. Yes, those of us who bake knows how long it takes for a machine to do that, try doing with your hands….

If you can whisk thick foam that’s like the texture of wax and can last like 20 minutes without dissipating into the bowl of tea and can retain its thickness and texture when poured out well enough that you can even paint stuff on it with water or powder (phew that’s a super long sentence), then you can get an A.

Bowl, China, Song dynasty (960–1279) Pottery (Jian ware); H. 2 5/8 in. (6.7 cm); W. 4 3/4 in. (12.1 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1919 (19.55.1) http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/52602

But wait, as Asians, an A is hardly enough. You need Full Marks. So that means you need to ensure that your water temperature is right, and that in the entire process, you add 7 times water (no more, no less, you can’t shortcut this) with a specific type of water pitcher into a specific type of black glazed Chinese ceramic teabowl (click on link to see the Met Museum collection). This is observed and theorised in a book by the Song emperor Hui Zong, one of the most artistically acclaimed emperors in Chinese history with an exquisite taste and eye for great details.

THE DIFFERENT BOYS WHO ARE BROUGHT TO THE YARD

The middle class commoners

Song Dynasty was a period of great commercialisation and capitalism and the general middle class population were relatively more educated with a great appreciation for the finer quality of life. They were generally quite wealthy, and definitely enjoyed good shopping and parties. They started the first Night Market in Chinese history which operated till about 1am, and they take a break for 2 hours and reopens at around 3am. Even our nightclubs today doesn’t have that kind of vitality! So yes, the boys (and girls) were often out in their yard partying and getting high on tea (amongst other things, like booze but that’s a different topic for a different day).

Based on paintings from that period, it was also a period that greatly celebrated the middle class commoners and their lifestyles. Whereas periods before were much more of aristocratic-focused society.

Market competition in a Tea Garden by top Song dynasty painter Liu Song Nian 刘松年《茗园赌市图》

The Literati, the Emperor and all his men

Song emperor Hui Zong was one of the most highly acclaimed artist-emperor of all times. He was a tea aficionado and as mentioned earlier, wrote his own theory about tea with great detail in a book called Treatise on Tea.

During the Song dynasty, literati and poets were often at the core of its political realm, philosophising and discussing state politics with the emperor thus further blurring the lines between arts and politics.

Detail of a painting by the famously tasteful Song emperor Song Hui Zong on a social gathering with tea served 宋徽宗《文会图》

Monks

Definitely Zen Buddhist monks were one of the pioneers in pure tea drinking culture as it helped them with focus and meditation. It started earlier than Song in the Tang monasteries and there was a famous monk who could whisk tea so beautifully that for each bowl of tea he whisked, he could write a stanza of poem on the froths and together they formed a poem.

Full marks might be the gold standard for Asian moms, but this is like an A+ student who also got top achievement in the arts. Bragging rights for sure.

Drinking Ground Tea by Liu Song Nian of Song dynasty 刘松年《撵茶图》

Later on, the Japanese buddhist monks who went to China to study Zen Buddhism arrived at Mount Tian Mu in Zhejiang and also tea. They brought back the black Jian Ware ceramic teabowl to Japan thinking that it came from the Tian Mu mountains in Zhejiang, and gave it the name Tenmoku. This type of tea bowl became so highly regarded and ceremonial that you required to take courses on it and become certified before you can serve people in this teabowl. But that is another way that the Japanese government and system protects its traditional craftsmanship and ensure continuous patronage and a healthy ecosystem of funding for its arts, cos in Chinese, even I can own one and serve you tea though I know next to nothing about preparing them.

Coffee, Tea and Art

I mentioned earlier the monk who could write poems on tea froths. You probably are thinking about the similarity of that and Latte Art that was in vogue a while back?

So this is similar except with tea, and done 1,000 years before.

I asked Kenny and he said there were two ways of doing it, either with clear water like this:

So the water would dilute the coloured froths and lightening it. So you either pour, drip or paint with plain water to reveal the artwork you’ve painted.

so now you ask, I thought the best froths were supposed to be white and thick like wax, so how does white show on white? Can it get any whiter? I’m sorry this sounds racist but I assure you this is just about tea art and froth.

So there is apparently another method that Kenny shared—it was using tea powder, and sometimes you mix with some water to form a paste-like ‘tea paint’ to be painted over the white froth.

Some said that the Green Matcha is more Japanese and the White one is more Chinese. But Kenny clarified that both types existed in the Song dynasty and they gave them very poetic names—Jade Froth for the white one, and Emerald/Kingfisher Froth for the green one. Yes, Jade were often associated with white nephrite jade for the ancient Chinese (though there were red, green and other coloured jade as well but white was deemed desirable for gentlemen). The Green Jadeite that we often associate with ‘traditional Chinese jade’ is actually relatively much modern, in the last 100-200 years or so, and it is not Chinese but Burmese in origin.

So… Here’s the part that is the whole point of my article..

I Can Teach You, But I’ll Have To Charge

So if you don’t already know, we’re running a Yaji event which historically would be a social gathering of literati friends who engage in a range of artforms and with knowledge exchanges and discussions. The inaugural edition, we’re basing it on the Song dynasty and the Autumn theme.

One of the highlight workshop is a Song dynasty reconstruction tea workshop by Kenny Leong, a private tea practitioner who mainly hosted corporate guests like banks and luxury brands (you can read more in his bio). So I’ve known Kenny for a while now, and I’m always rather wary of extremely commercialised practitioners of traditional craft because I feel that if most of the times, traditions were just a fancy costume party while money making is the real deal for them. So I was relieved to know that Kenny is not one of those unscrupulous jade sellers or fengshui masters in Chinatown (you know that type..), and like me, we have a full time job so that our passion can be as pure and not tainted by commercial interests.

As part of this workshop, you can also opt to get your own Song dynasty tea kit set as in the photo below (completed with grounded tea powder) and whisk in your own leisure time at home:

The tea towel is based on an actual painting of auspicious cranes by the Song emperor Hui Zong whom I’ve mentioned several times in this article on his love for tea.

Because I themed it to be Autumn/Fall, I’ve also added some finer touches to the Song tea set to include a touch of season—A polished shell cut and engraved into the shape of a gingko leaf.

The whisk in the set is a Japanese chanoyu style of tea whisk, while the original one from Song would most likely be closer to an Okinawaian Bukubuku Tea

You probably would associate the gingko leaf with the Japanese culture more, but the gingko is actually native to China although the Chinese term we use today were based on Japanese and Korean words for it when Gingko was introduced to these two places from China.

There are still Gingko trees of 1500 years old in China, believed to be planted by Buddhist monks in their monasteries as it was believed to be a holy tree.

The most viral one has to be this 1,400 year old one in Zhongnan Mountain in a Buddhist temple. Like the article said, it is definitely a perfect celebration of Autumn:

In case you would like to celebrate Autumn in Song style with us, we have a whole afternoon of activities lined up for you on 24 September, Saturday at the Stamford Arts Centre.

Traditionally, the elegant gathering would’ve been by invitation only amongst a close group of friends who shared similar taste in the arts or worldview. We are adapting the idea of it into a more public affair to open up to those whom we might not know personally, but would like to be part of this interpretive experience on ancient culture and arts.

This is our invitation to you, and you can get your tickets HERE or click on the image to access the ticketing site:

We are selling early bird tickets now until 24 August, and it is definitely a very worthy deal to purchase your tickets now!

The Dragon Lady is actually a Snake

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While most of us associate the Chinese dragon with men, the idea of a Dragon Lady was very popular in the West in the 30s. To the West, Asian women were dangerous, domineering, mysterious but sexually alluring at the same time, and countless films and pop culture references played on that stereotypical idea of an Asian woman. To be fair, the women of the West weren’t spared of the femme fatale stereotype either so I think it is fundamentally a female objectification issue, and in the context of America at the turn of the last century, it was complicated by racism.

The Original Chinese Dragon Lady

But the Western men were not alone in their vile objectification of women, or Chinese women. The Chinese men, too, had lots of tales of female spirits who “tempted” men and filled them with lusts. The most poignant one, personally, was the case of the Investiture of the Gods, a 16th century Chinese novel.

Image of Anna May Wong, a famous Chinese American actress in Hollywood in the 30s who was seen as the archetype of Dragon Lady on screen. Also, her biopic is in the making starred by Gemma Chan from Crazy Rich Asians.

In it, the creator of mankind, a goddess called Nüwa, was the main culprit of the downfall of the Shang dynasty (an ancient empire some 3,000 years ago). The story goes that the last king of Shang dynasty saw her sculpture at the temple, and was sexually attracted to her. He wrote poems expressing his lust and spoke of marrying the goddess. Upset by his blasphemy, the goddess brought down 3 nymphs (spirits disguised as beautiful women) to seduce him, causing him to neglect his nation and became cruel to his people and eventually the downfall of his empire.

Sounds about right for the idea of a “Dragon Lady” huh?

Except that this was a very problematic portrayal by the then extremely patriarchal Chinese society, of the goddess of creation who was an important female figure when Chinese society was still matriarchal.

The Chinese society (like many others) started as a matriarchal one which meant that kids would only know who their mothers were, and not their fathers. Thus Nüwa exemplified that far ancient part of Chinese when women ruled together as a community. It was only when the Chinese society slowly transited into a patriarchal one that a male creator Fuxi came into existence and they both came to be known as the creators of mankind.

In fact, Nüwa had a different name back then, it was Nüxi or Xihe (Xihe was also known as the Guardian of Sun and Moon way back, and she eventually was split into The Mother of 10 Suns and Chang-E The Goddess of Moon. I did a reinterpretation of her in my Sailormoon Series). She was said to have created mankind from the soil due to her extreme boredom of being alone on earth, which is a further evidence that there was no male figure at the very start. Also, it was believed that primitive societies did not associate sex with birth-giving, so they did not think that men were necessary in the birth of a child, while women could give birth to both genders.

Image from the Sailormoon x Chinese mythology series, depicting Xi He, the goddess of Time (Sun and Moon)

The Lady is a Snake

Interestingly, like the story of Adam and Eve, snakes were involved in this creation myth. And like many civilisations such as the pre-Classical Greek, snakes were often associated with the female goddess/creators. Fun fact: China formed a matriarchal society some 40,000-50,000 years ago and Greek slightly later, and China transited into patriarchal some 3,000 years earlier than the Greeks. During my research I came across this book in which the author said there is no culture where paternity was ignored in prehistoric times, I think she didn’t study Chinese texts because there were many mentions when paternity was ignored including the birth of the ancient ruler of Shang dynasty being a result of his mom swallowing the egg of a black bird.

Painting from Western Han (3rd century BCE) with Fuxi the male god holding the Sun and Nüwa the female goddess holding the Moon.

After transiting into patriarchal society, subsequent Chinese artworks/records depicted the male and female creators as having the body of a snake. Now snake has been an important and highly regarded creature in ancient societies, and was present as a totem across civilisations. A far cry from its villain identity today.

The dragon, seen as the ultimate symbol of the Chinese ruler, was based primarily on the body of a snake (with many accessorising features from other animals such as the deer’s antlers, bull’s nose, Eagle’s claws, Tiger’s palms etc.). While some ancient Chinese tribes saw themselves as descendants of a bird, others saw their ancestors as snakes, and it is for this reason, the creator of mankind were depicted as snakes.

The modern Dragon with her snake body, eagle claws, beatle shell eyebrows, gill-like ears, and antler-inspired hair and accessories.

This styling was designed in collaboration with Aaron Han (@aharw) assisted by gabby @ga.bae.be
Makeup assisted by Danny @chenlingx0 with Jamie as model
Photo by Aaron and I

Symbolism of an Emerald Dragon

Yes, I call it Emerald, although prevalent sources translated it as Azure because of the context of its name.

Languages and words take on the meaning of the context, and in this case, the Emerald Dragon represented the regeneration of life in Spring. While the word Qing 青 could refer to blue and green (as in the case of the same character ‘aoi’ 青い in Japanese) in Chinese culture and at times even Black, it would make sense that the Qing Long would be green like the colours of Spring leaves. The ancient people saw colours quite differently from us today, which probably explains why humanity didn’t have separate words for green and blue way back.

The emerald dragon’s boots is a reference to its green/blue scales of the snake. A Tang period hairstyle to exaggerate the shape of the head to look like a dragon. An a vintage Gucci green jacket to signify the luxury and royalty of the dragon as an auspicious animal.

The Emerald Dragon represents Spring, when flowers bloom and butterflies flock from one bush to another. This costume from the Legend of Miyue is obviously a copy of the Japanese dress, which I will go into detail another time.

Japan and China

The East, where the Sun rises, is also associated with the Emerald Dragon. And of course, the land of the rising sun in our modern memory, also refers to Japan. So I’m going to share w a few funny stories about Sino-Japanese historical relations, and muse over how the Chinese inverse-appropriates the Japanese culture these days.

One of the most hilarious accounts I’ve read about Japan and China relations was one that happened in 607CE. The Japanese diplomat of Asuka period Japan Ono no Imoko presented a letter from the Japanese female emperor (Yes, it was a female emperor!) to the Sui dynasty emperor with the following line:

日出处天子，致书日没处天子，无恙

Greetings, from Son of Heaven where the Sun rose, to Son of Heaven where the Sun set.

Clearly I was bored and wanted to try a few different renditions with different mood for this portrait. Which is your favourite?

Now, I don’t know how you understand it, but I thought that is HILARIOUSLY APPALLING! Because as romantic as it sounds with the mention of sun set and sun rise, of heaven and all, I can totally imagine how offended the Sui dynasty emperor must’ve felt upon hearing it. The general consensus today was not that he was offended by the “sun set” part, but by the fact that Japan saw itself as an equal with China (Chinese emperor had always thought of themselves as the superior one to its neighbouring countries). And true enough, he told his liaison officer that he did not wish to hear from the “Barbarians” if they continued sending such rude letters.

I have styled the Dragon Lady in a Japanese-Chinese fashion also because Chinese pop culture depiction of ancient Chinese women over 1,000 years ago have always been extremely influenced by the Japanese aesthetics. And the Chinese liked to claim that it was because the Japanese were influenced by Chinese aesthetics at that point in time. I find this inverse-appropriation by the Chinese extremely interesting because instead of looking at their own artefacts to uncover the original Chinese look of the period, they decided to turn to the Japanese’s interpretation and evolved adaptation of the Chinese culture.

The long flowing hair was indeed valued by the ancient Chinese, but in nowhere could we find women draping it down like the Japanese during the Heian period although women did drape a little of their hair down with a knot at the neck area.

Have a look at the Han Chinese style vs the Heian Japanese styling of hair:

Even though the TV produces and stylists of China refuse to acknowledge it, they have been extremely influenced by the HK period drama creators of the 80s and 90s, who were in turn influenced by the Japanese aesthetics greatly. And fast forward a few decades, the Chinese period drama stylists and consumers have naturalised this Japanese aesthetics, blending what seems Chinese but essentially very Japanese aesthetics into their mix, creating a new fusion aesthetics today.

This topic is fascinating and a fun exploration to go into for a future post.

Yes, I should probably also talk about the recent/age-old debate about Korean vs Chinese dressing in modern Chinese period shows too, some day.

Emerald Dragon, Symbol of Spring, and the East where the Sun rises. It was a creature full of vitality.

Mulan’s phoenix is actually the Vermillion Bird

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While the biggest event in Fashion x History has just concluded, judging from the turnout at the Met Gala, one can conclude that dressing to the theme isn’t quite a forte of A-listers. In the name of greater good, this series will demonstrate how one can be fashionably historically-inspired, while still adhering to certain themes.

AUSPICIOUS BIRDS AND US

Birds have had a long history of being seen as auspicious creatures and totems in Chinese culture. The Sun, for example, was represented by a three-legged bird. And of course, we are all very familiar with the phoenix, which at some point became synonymous with the bird in question I’m discussing today.

It has been known by many names in the Eastern part of the world, Zhu Que by the Chinese, Suzaku by the Japanese, Jujak by the Korean and Chu Tước by the Vietnamese. It symbolised the southern constellations of the night sky, and the element Fire.

Because of its association with fire, the vermillion bird is often thought to be the phoenixes by the West. And yes, plural because the Chinese Phoenixes fenghuang had gender (Feng was the male, and Huang was the female, and they combined into a singular identity somewhere down the road later on), while the Vermillion Bird did not.

The phoenix was believed to have the colours of the rainbow while the Vermillion Bird took its colour from the fire. Was that a phoenix or a vermillion bird that we spotted in Mulan? hmmm…..

Mulan (2020) live action movie featured a ‘phoenix’ which actually looks more like the Vermillion Bird of the South. Disney probably got confused between the Chinese and the Western phoenix.

Although some sources said that the ancient Chinese thought the stars in the southern night sky resembled the vermillion bird, thus the assignment of this symbol, it is unlikely so as the Vermillion Bird of the South as well as the Black Warrior of the North did not come into existence in the constellation assignment until much later (about 2,000 years ago) while the ancient Chinese were already very familiar with the constellations for far longer and had assigned the Dragon and Tiger to them first.

THE STYLING

Since Tang and Qing dynasty has the most fun and daring make-up trends ands styles, our styles were mainly based on these two periods, jazzed it up for modern taste.

The vermillion bird wears vintage Thierry Mugler jacket, with big exaggerated shoulders but sleek silhouette to emphasize it being an animal of the skies. A single red feather nose piece is the only thing to hint at it being a bird.

This styling was designed in collaboration with Aaron Han (@aharw) assisted by gabby @ga.bae.be
Makeup assisted by Danny @chenlingx0 and Silas @operatang
Photo by Aaron and I

The styling was done in a manner to represent the animals but also not in a literal sense. The traits that are used are symbolic, just like the animal themselves are symbolic.

The Vermillion Bird obscures half of its face with a Bian Mian fan which is a half-oval type of fan with a history of over 2,000 years. Originally made of bamboo, it evolved to other materials overtime and the one in the shoot was made with an emerald green silk gauze with weaved patterns. Very understated, and quintessentially Chinese. Its subtletly is juxtaposed with the red feather nose piece of The House of Malakai styled by Aaron (@aharw) to suggest its avian nature. Of course, the collar design and the Tang style (circa 8th century) wing-like eyebrows are also suggestive of that.

Section of the reference brow from Tang. This is a painting on silk screen uncovered from the Astana tombs.

Underneath the nose piece, were rouge blushers across the cheeks which some might recall seeing on famous 90s Chinese singer Faye Wong, or more recently, singer Rainie Yang. Except that it’s a lot more intense, as it would’ve been how the Tang people of the 10th century were copying the Tibetans during that time in this style of make-up.

Who wore it better? Left Faye Wong, Middle a Tibetan lady, Right Rainie Yang.

Obviously celebrities typically don’t do much research when they try on different make-up styles, pretty sure the socialites of Tang didn’t either, it was probably just cool or fun for them to experiment with a different styles because this style of blusher was deemed barbaric by the early Tang rulers, and had requested for the Tibetans to stop this practice. Who’d knew that a few hundred years later, it would become vogue at the end of Tang!

And just in case you thought the hair looks non-Chinese (like the typical long hair at the back in Chinese period dramas), I’d like to point you towards the Dunhuang murals from the Tang dynasty (same period), and look at the blushers and the hairstyle and accessories, it’s really quite Over The Top:

Section of Dunhuang Mural in Mogao Cave no. 61 with a noble lady of late Tang accessoried with many large and elaborate hair pins, haircombs, and the Tibetan style brick-red rouge on her cheeks.

The lip was also historically based on the last dynasty of China—Qing dynasty. Similar to the Tang rulers, the Qing were not of the Han ethnic group although they have adopted a great deal of the Han practices after ruling over this Han-majority land for centuries. The Qing lip would typically be just a red dot on the bottom lip, but there were instances where the top lip was also painted fully.

Picture of Imperial Consort Pearl (Zhen Fei), who was rumoured to have been drowned in a well in the Forbidden City by the Empress Dowager Cixi. She has the Qing style lip with a dot an her bottom lipi in this picture.

The Modern Vermillion Bird wears vintage Thierry Mugler jacket, with big exaggerated shoulders but sleek silhouette to emphasize it being an animal of the skies.

The fringe skirt by Raf Simon for Calvin Klein is a reference to its long tail feathers.

Unlike the Phoenix, the Red Bird is just red, while phoenixes were said to be of rainbow colours.

The broad shoulder look was never really a Chinese thing, as sloping shoulder would look better in the traditional Chinese garment that has no shoulder seams. But that changed in the 40s with women adding shoulder-pads to their Cheongsams to accentuate the shoulder. This look is exemplified by the Japanese Singer in China Yoshiko Yamaguchi, most famously known by her Chinese stage name Li Xiang Lan 李香兰:

Left: Famous American-Chinese writer Eileen Chang
Right: Yshiko Yamaguchi/Li Xiang Lan in broad shoulder Cheongsam

QUINTESSENTIALLY CHINESE CRAFT, ACCESSORIES AND AESTHETICS

The Western fashion is very big on silhouettes of the dress, while the Chinese has always been about the hair, the craftsmanship, and the understated luxury where one needs to be close enough and in the ‘right circle of knowledge’ to appreciate the weave, the texture, the material, the motif etc. There’s a lot of secrecy behind many of the crafts, and that made them exclusive, therefore a sign of prestige for those who recognise them. Yet, in Chinese culture (quite unlike the Japanese), the craftsmen are anonymous, and undervalued in the grander scheme of things because the Chinese aesthetics has always been literati-led and the craftsmen were more of the ‘technicians’ to the literati’s ‘artistic vision’. Not unlike the many craftsmen working anonymously behind designer brands that bore the mark of the big name designers who most likely did not make those items themselves.

Another style with hair full of Chineseness. Velvet silk flower of bird motif, Chinese-Hakka style wound silk flowers, and purple jade flower.
Bodysuit by Richard Quinn, Nose piece by Ricardo Tisci for Givenchy, styled by Aaron han (@aharw)
Hair and accessories by me, make-up by Silas and I.

And just to transition into the more purely Chinese look, we did another look with more Chinese accessories, and also a Tang style hair and make-up with Qing lips. You probably think that it is a copycat of Frida Kahlo, honestly we didn’t realise it until it’s been done, and I immediately recalled a stranger getting in touch to borrow from me my silk flowers for her dressed-up costume party (she stopped responding the moment I told her the price of the flowers. I know, the value of these things aren’t very apparent to those who are not familiar with them).

I use a lot of lacquer and silk flowers because they are so, so, archetypically Chinese but most people just think of Chinese = gold. When in actuality, Chinese didn’t really use much gold in the ancient past. Or Green Jade (Jadeite) for that matter.

I love the emerald green silk scarve that has the auspicious clouds motif done in silver and gold couching technique.

Notice the green bangle? That is a vintage carved lacquer bangle (very rare to come by as typically it would be in red/cinnabar). Carved lacquer came about sometime during the Tang dynasty as well (circa 8th century or so) and became quite a thing later on so even though lacquer was used in many Asian cultures, carve lacquer can be said to be quintessentially Chinese. It is an extremely tedious process, as you would require hundreds of layers of paint, painted and dried, and painted and dried, before you can reach just a few centimetres of thickness for carving.

The Met (HAH!) had an exhibition on lacquer/cinnabar in 2009, you can read the synopsis HERE.

For the Traditional Chinese Vermillion Bird, I’ve decided to go with a wedding look because we often think of phoenixes for Chinese weddings, yet the colour that brides often wear for that occasion would be Red which is actually the colour of the Vermilion Bird. And since the Vermillion bird is often confused with the Phoenix, and more often than not used interchangeably with it, might as well throw the two into the same mix. If you can’t beat them, join them!

And you don’t say, Silas certainly looks a bit like Gemma Chan here don’t you think?

For this time round, she’s wearing cinnabar carved lacquer bangles. One is red-on-red, one is red-on-black. Both are vintage pieces.

Now, I shall introduce you to the real Chinese filigree and cloisonné craft for hair accessories. Not the fashion jewelry type worn on the red carpet at the Met by Chef Melissa King for her nail protector. Apparently it was supposed to be inspired by Empress Dowager Cixi (who is, by the way, NOT the last empress of China, contrary to what the Chef wrote on her insta).

The thing about traditional craftsmanship that came from a lineage of thousands of years, is that they get finer and finer, and they are often consumed by the imperial family so the demand for finesse is extremely high. Also, they are all about understated luxury. If it’s that big a bling, it’s probably too crass for them.

Filigree nailguard with ruby, pearl and kingfisher feather inlay. Collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing.

The Palace Museum collection has quite a number of nail guards made from the Imperial Chinese filigree craft, completed with gems, pearls and kingfisher feathers on many occasions. You can zoom in to see the fine details of these nailguards, and they are extremely intricate —as fine as the kingfisher feathers.

In order to give you a bit more context on the scale of these intricacies, I shall zoom in a little bit on the filigree and cloisonné of the phoenix hairpiece in my photo which has similar craftsmanship as the palace museum nail guard above.

It is made with tiny grains of freshwater pearls and ruby (I think, I can’t remember the stones cos I have too many of these accessories.. lol). Her earrings are also filigree and cloisonné phoenix. SUPER AUSPICIOUS I KNOW!

I did an apprenticeship a couple of years back on filigree, cloisonné and kingfisher feather craft in Beijing, and it was through this process that I came to fully appreciate just how intricate this craft is. It’s not the type that you can see on photos or videos, that’s why celebrities wouldn’t really wear them because they don’t show up on screen that well cos they’re too tiny.

Extremely close up view of the phoenix filigree and cloisonné hairpin.

If you zoom in close enough, you can see that the edges of the wings is made up of tiny dots of gold. It’s actually very very fine silver threads gilded in gold, twisted into like a braid-like structure and welded onto the base. When I did my apprenticeship, the first thing to do was to learn how to pull the thick silver threads into fine strands, finger than human hair. And how to twist them in shape without breaking them. Sorry about the resolution, it’s just too fine for my camera. I will do better next time.

Our vermillion bird bride with a hair full of intangible cultural heritage craft—silk flowers based on Palace Museum collection, and a fan of another type of intangible cultural heritage craft—Kesi, also based on Palace Museum collection.

Since this set is all about intangible cultural heritage and fine Chinese crafts, I threw in the Kesi (literally translated to carved silk) fan. This is a replica of the Qing dynasty fan in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing.

The side profile you can see butterfly hair pieces made of dyed silk using the wound silk flowers craft, and also dyed goose feather accessories to replace the kingfisher craft. This hairpiece is based on the Qing dynasty item in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

The topic on Kingfisher feather is contentious, and there are many modern attempts to replicate the effect of kingfisher feather without the cruelty of it. Even the Qing dynasty rulers implemented a ban on using kingfisher feathers for accessories (with limited success obviously).

The cloisonné was one of the historical ways during the Qing period which middle class women could get a pseudo kingfisher feather colour accessory while the aristocrats continued with theirs.

These days, wound silk accessories, dyed goose feather, or peacock feathers are all reasonable substitutes. If you’re wondering (as I did), goose and peacock shed feathers quite readily and their feathers are abundant so it’s not like the case of the kingfisher where you need to kill many to get a tiny bit (disclaimer: goose and peacocks are not harmed since you just gather their shed feathers).

I’m actually making a series of accessories with these type of feathers and vintage lacquer pieces, and will be sharing them later half of the year! So stay tuned!

Meanwhile, if you’re planning to have a Chinese wedding shoot, please don’t go red + gold. It’s so cliché and nouveau riche. At least try to add some finesse like turquoise, blue, green, cyan, pearl, aquamarine, lapis lazuli, lacquer… They are going to add a lot more texture and colours to your otherwise crass look. We do, after all, have at least 5000 years of material culture and history to tap on, don’t behave like we only have 50.

Oh no, I was totally not referring to the billionaire daughter’s wedding (which one? so many huh.. :P).

POP CULTURE REFERENCE

The four guardians were first brought to my attention when I was a young latchkey child watching Japanese anime on my couch after school with my sister. Fushigi Yuugi was the name of the anime, and it started with the chapter of the Vermillion Bird of the South—Suzaku (in Japanese). It had all the characters with special abilities, each representing one of the 7 constellations of the southern nightsky under the charge of the Vermilion Bird.

So it is fitting that we start off this series with the Vermillion Bird.

DRAG IN CHINESE CONTEXT & AFTERTHOUGHTS

In the anime, the king of the southern kingdom Hotohori was a man who was as beautiful as a woman, probably very ahead of its time in the 90s.

And in this series, I have worked with Silas (@operatang) to portray this beautiful feminine side of a man. Drag is not new to Chinese traditional culture, except that it was not politicised like the West. The archetypical Chinese Opera look was a result of men trying to hide their masculine facial features in order to look more feminine. And beautiful men were a thing and even recorded in historical texts for thousands of years.

When I approached Silas for this project, I also intended to try to re-interpret drag as we know it today in a traditional Chinese manner—from the perspective of someone who wants to look as much like a woman in representation according to a male perspective. This is historically related to the oppression of women in public for about 500 years where images and representation of women were manifested through male bodies in public performances, through their ideas of what a woman is like, how we walk, how we talk, or by male painters.

So as a result, as it is today, men could be more ‘feminine’ than we are (small sample size, but the 2 women involved this shoot can attest to that!). Maybe femininity has often been depicted through the male gaze, so what we see is often a man’s ideal woman image (not how we actually behave, but how they fantasize us to be). So a man could possibly represent very well this ‘ideal femininity’ if they are in touch with their feminine side. Silas showed me some Asian drag queens who are absolutely gorgeous and live up to the ideal female archetype upheld by society (we’re all fellow subjects of the male gaze in this instance!).

I also wondered about the concept of ‘womanface‘ in western drag practices, where features of what it meant to be a woman were used as content for jokes, as part of the overall ‘ridiculous’ look. I’m not sure if I prefer that, or the over-romanticisation of female body during our oppression (as in the Chinese context). Two extremes of the male take on femininity.

Food for thought I guess!

AND because you lasted till the end of this article, you are rewarded with a Vermillion Bird Instagram/facebook selfie make-up filter! Click on the hyperlinked text to claim them:

INSTAGRAM
Vermillion Bird (without frame)
Vermillion Bird (with 5 choices of Chinese motif frames)

FACEBOOK

Vermillion Bird (without frame)
Vermillion Bird (with 5 choices of Chinese motif frames)

The Fantastic Beasts of Ancient China

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It’s with great amusement that I realised that there’s an ancient Chinese creature in the latest Fantastic Beasts series—The Qilin 麒麟 (pronounced Chillin, Spoilers on Qilin in the show available HERE). In recent years we have seen how ancient Chinese/East Asian mythical creatures are being represented in many of the Western shows such as Shang Chi (Morris’ my favourite, naturally), and now Harry Potter.

There are many extremely interesting records of fantastic beasts in ancient Chinese texts from thousands of years ago, of creatures far beyond our imaginations. If I have time, I will get to some of them but let me just state the most familiar strangers in the lot — the kind that you probably have heard of (if you’re into Chinese shows, or Fengshui) but not really quite sure what they really are.

These creatures were not only used by China, but the entire Sinosphere which extends to the rest of East Asia and some Southeast Asian countries with strong Chinese influences.

PRESENTING:

The Four Guardians 四象— Vermillion Bird, Emerald Dragon (this name is contentious and I will explaining due course why), Black Warrior and White Tiger.

Motif design on the eaves of roof tiles in China over 2,000 years ago were of the 4 guardians

CHINESE ARCHITECTURAL FEATURE—FANCY AND FUNCTIONAL ROOF

The Chinese roof is made up of quite a few different types of tiles, each serving a different function. The part where it has large surface for motifs, were mainly for the purpose of preventing rainwater from seeping into the wooden roof structures, and to prevent the water droplets from corroding the building base originally.

Then, they got fancier.

In case you are wondering, why are the roof tiles round, and how does it work? Here’s a quick view of the traditional Chinese roof:

There’s the circular shape tile cap that covers the end of the entire line/row of barrel tiles (bamboo or pipe-like shape), and there is the crescent shaped drip tiles between the circular caps (as in water droplet, which was literally meant for water to follow the tip and fall down in a line when raining).

This feature is not exclusive to the Chinese and we can see similar examples in Greek and Roman roof of similar period. They are called the antefix, and they served similar function as the Chinese eave-end tiles.

FANCIFUL HISTORY

The Eave-end Tile (cap at the end of the tile) has a history of over 3,000 years in China, from semi circular shapes to round shape by the Han dynasty (2,000 years ago).

The motifs too, evolved from the more stylised totem-looking designs of the Warring State to more naturalistic ones of animals, plants, insects around the Qin dynasty (slightly over 2,000 years ago). And by then, circular eaves tiles became increasingly common.

Left: Tao Tie beast with dragon motif from Warring State (circa 2,500 years ago). The Tao Tie beast is just mega foodie, something many of us can relate to.

The Four Guardians series of rounded Eaves Tiles were particularly popular and iconic of the Han dynasty, which was the peak of the Eaves Tile’s development. Later on in the 1,000 years that followed, with the popularisation of Buddhism from post-Han through Tang and Song Dynasty, lotus motifs also became key motifs on these tiles. NOTE: This is not to say that lotus motif did not exist prior to the introduction of Buddhism to China, just that the form and significance of the lotus, and the popularity of use were markedly different pre and post Buddhism.

In the last 500 years during the Qing dynasty, the focus was mainly on the imperial roof tiles, which were generally of dragon motifs. The roof tile design evolution also kind of stagnated as more focus went into the development of wall tiles used by the commoners.

This is my favourite Eaves Tile design so far, the deer one on top comes next in line.

ANCIENT CHINESE OLYMPIC RINGS?

From top, clockwise: Black Warrior, Emerald Dragon, Vermillion Bird, White Tiger

Like how the Olympic Ring symbolised all the colours of the world’s flags (hah, yes it’s not the 5 continents!), the Chinese used these four symbols and colours to give representative meanings and characteristics to the world and the natural order of things.

Deep. I know.

Everything in the Chinese culture is so connected and inter-referencing each other. And they sprung off to another system of symbolism and more self-referencing so you had to peel away a lot of those layers to get to the very core origin: I-Ching and Astrology.

While you’re reading your horoscope for the day, rest assured that the ancient Chinese thought that the stars and their alignment told them a lot about their world as well.

INDIGENOUS CHINESE ASTROLOGY

Of course, the Four Guardians (literally translated as the “Four Symbols” actually) held important, symbolic meanings, and was related to the Tai-Chi logo you are familiar with. The Tai-Chi logo further extended into the octagonal trigram that people always associate Taoists with:

I know, how is this remotely relevant to the animals?!?

Well, the animals came about when the ancient Chinese started mapping the stars they saw in the night sky, mapping them out, and dividing them into quarters. And there had to be a system of reference, so they referenced the I-Ching which a very profoundly complex book that supposedly summarises the world’s natural order. This book was henceforth referenced by the Chinese in every single thing they do, from fortune telling to medicine, and by extension, the Chinese sought to categorise and make sense of the world through the rules laid out in this book (different period, different interpretation, different manifestations).

And so… the night sky was sorted into 4 groups (yes, like harry potter’s sorting hat, they were given different characteristics, and animals were assigned to it). And that is how the 4 creatures got allocated a spot to represent a lot of the other symbolic meanings which I will go into in the respective articles.

Before the introduction and popularisation of horoscopy astrology as we know today in the 8th century China (brought to China from the ‘West’ i.e. Central Asia/Iran and India), Chinese had their own astrological practices and charts but it was off limit to the commoners. Due to trade and cultural exchanges on the silk road over 2,000 years ago, the Chinese gradually adopted Western astrological ideas (we had Indian astrologers in the Chinese imperial court around the 8th century.

Top left: Greek Terracotta gorgoneion antefix 580-570 BCE
Top right: Taotie motif from similar period
Bottom left: Capricorn motif of Emperor Augustus period some 2,000 years ago in Rome
Bottom right: Four beasts representing the 28 constellations in Chinese astrology

You can see the similarities between the Greek and Roman antefix motifs (left) and the Chinese ones (right) of similar period. The top row were over, 2500 years ago, and featured a gorgoneion, while the bottom row was about 2,000 years ago featuring animals which were representative of the constellations.

Due to the passing of thousands of years, many things have been so intertwined that it takes some time to thoroughly explain the gist of them (oxymoron, I know). And I will do so in the coming posts!

PROCESS & CONCEPT

For this series, I have worked with someone in the Fashion industry to reinterpret these creatures with a modern twist AND Since I love juxtapositions, I also did a parallel series with more traditional aesthetics. I will be sharing each of them in single, detailed entries coming up as well.

Here’s a sneak peek of the traditional ones:

I think this is enough information for the long weekend.

Happy Labour Day! Have fun trying to make sense of this piece!

From Hanfu to Cheongsam: The Missing Link

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While Hanfu is the ‘woke/vogue’ Chinese idea of a traditional dress, Cheongsam is the conventional idea of one. Somewhere between these two, lies the missing link of the late Qing dynasty/early Republican Han women fashion like the invisible middle child.

So I’ve introduced the Manchurian Qing dressing with all its hair, accessories and hierarchies, which is what 90% of us are familiar with through TV series and of course the latest craze Yanxi Palace and Legend of Ruyi. Since most TV shows are more obsessed with the royalties and imperial family, naturally not much is shown on the Han Chinese dressing even though they form the majority.

For men, there’s no difference between the Manchurian and Han Chinese because it was the law for all to convert their way of dressing to the Manchurian style. This was supposed to be for the women and children as well, but rumour had it that during the implementation process, the Han Chinese felt very strongly about their traditional way of dressing as part of their cultural identity (and rightfully so), that they had several bloodshed protests! Eventually, there was an unspoken agreement that the men had to adopt (the Manchurians probably felt that once you emasculate the Han Chinese men with their cultural identity, you controlled the women and children naturally anyway), but left the women and children (and a few other exceptions) alone.

Han women and children continued wearing the traditional Han way without the need to adopt the Manchurian style of dressing.

As such, the Han Chinese women had different sartorial choices from the Manchurian women, and they continued binding their feet according to their own/parents’ aesthetic beliefs while Manchurian women were forbidden to do so by law even though they were drawn to such aesthetics at some point.

Women’s body were and are never our own it seems, and how we wish to treat our body has all along been politicised and moralised by society and the ruling class.

Eurocentric scholars and writers at the turn of last century liked to dismiss the Chinese as devoid of fashion, as if Chinese women were so oppressed by their rulers and system that they were accorded with little means nor awareness of beauty and dressing up.

[The] variations in Chinese dress from dynasty to dynasty… [occur] at the speed of a rather hesitant glacier.
Quentin Bell, 1910–1996, English art historian and author

A visual summary of Chinese fashion in the last 2,000 years. It’s definitely not comprehensive because it depends on how much items from those periods were uncovered through archeological digs, and it did not cover all the different regions in China with their individual practices and habits of dressing. Also, it did not cover the different hierarchies, seasons, and occasions.

[The mandarin’s robes] Scarcely changed in the course of centuries, but then Chinese society itself scarcely moved at all.
Fernand Braudel, 1902-1985, French historian

Left one and two are probably what is considered Classical period dress, and Right is the 19th Century one. I find them very different! Could it just be me?! How can they be seen as looking very much alike!??!

[T]he Chinese family of the last [i.e. 19th] century looked very much like a Chinese family of the Classical age.
Quentin Bell, 1910–1996, English art historian and author

In reality, all these quotes were really fashion historian’s equivalent of saying “All Asians look the same”–All Chinese dresses look the same.

But they’re not alone in that view. The Eurocentric Chinese novelist Eileen Chang also lamented in 1943 that “Generation after generation of women wore the same sorts of clothes without feeling in the least perturbed.” Yikes.

While the general form of top blouse and bottom skirt is maintained from the Ming (left) to the Qing (right) dynasty, the weaving, decorative techniques, colours, embroideries, cutting, and collars have completely changed. In fact, the Ming dynasty (14th-17th Century) alone was known at its time for over 100 styles of dresses, and that is taking into consideration the slow pace of production and consumption compared to the later periods.

Because a Chinese literati said so, it must be right? Were there just the same old Hanfu vs the new Cheongsam, these 2 types of existence and form?

I’m not comfortable with that assumption. Would you assume that quantitative change is more important than qualitative change? Or that the type of change that is more visually apparent is more valuable/legit than the subtle, fine and nuanced change?

To me, it is really the difference in culture. Just the other day, I was reading our friend Eustacia’s post on the different types of Kimono and what to wear for various occasions. And it struck me the Western eyes or the Modern eyes were so overstimulated by their own visual differences that they were unable to appreciate or identify the subtlties in the Chinese or Japanese culture. And which also explains the success of designers like Guo Pei in capturing their attention with the loud and archetypically Chinese designs.

While the most common style was the Mamian skirts (horse face skirts), there were tonnes of variations either within that category, or different styles altogether. They go by the names of “Hundred Pleats Skirt”, “Lunar Corona Skirt” (rainbow pleated skirts, like the rainbow around the moon), “Railing Skirt” (then solid colour stripes at each pleat look like railings), “Phoenix tail skirt” etc.

Fashion, to the ancient Chinese, was more of an exercise of artistic creativity within the appropriate boundaries that ensure that they adhere to the changing seasons, occasions, and hierarchies. Constraints are necessary to create meaningful and artful end products. And that, was what the ancient Chinese women were really capable of as they innovated on the types of weaving, motif, embroidery, dyeing techniques, decorative methods of the dresses.

A large part of this could be due to Chinese women’s training in embroidery. As Professor Marsha Weidner, a modern-day Chinese art historian noted, that through embroidery “women trained their hands and eyes, became attentive the smallest details, refined their colour sense, and mastered a large repertoire of motifs and compositional formulas.”

Qing Han fashion was definitely not the invisible middle child you’d imagine. It was bold, dramatic, yet intricate and sophisticated. It’s hard to pull off those complementary colour matchings but they did. Effortlessly.

If you look unclose at any of the apparels, you would realise that instead of just clothes, they were really works of art. Just like kimono. And while the form remained similar, the embroidery work, colour matching, even the direction of the thread made a lot of difference. Images really don’t do them justice–I just went to the Sun Yat-Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall to see actual pieces and you could really see how intricate the needleworks were, and how each of those dots in black in the images below were made up of hundreds of strands of silk, and which went through hundreds if not thousands of manhours to be extracted, spung, dyed, designed, and finally emboidered in accordance to considerations like occasion, hierarchy, season, aspirations and symbolic meanings.

I know I’m very Asian in my consumption of fashion when I buy all the different colours of the same design if I really liked it, because even just a change in colour, meant a big change for me, especially if it’s the design I like. Whereas I wouldn’t look twice at an ‘ugly’ design even if there were 1,000,000 dramatic variations of that design.

Quality over Quantity, anytime.

If you’d just zoom in to one small part of their dresses–the edges of their sleeves, you would notice a small band of embroidered motif, which usually would’ve be just about 5cm by 30cm or so, and the amount of details in embroidery they put into that is just incredible:

I went to the Modern Women of The Republic: Fashion and Change in China and Singapore exhibition today, at the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall in Singapore (not Taiwan!). And came across this intricately embroidered pink Cheongsam in early 20th century (should be circa 1910s-1920s), and photos really do not do these embroidery justice:

If you ever get to see them in person, do take note of the size of the forbidden knot/stitch, the uniformity of them all, and also the uniformity of the spacing between the knots, and the gradient of colours in the flowers and leaves. All so effortlessly elegant.

My companion asked me why was it called the Forbidden Knot/Stitch. This romanticised name is given by western marketeers/sellers of Chinese goods to link it to the Orient/Forbidden city (sounds exotic right?) and, to make this craft sound really exclusive for the luxury market— claiming that because it would make embroiders blind with the tiny knots and details (sounds like they could command a super high price with this), it was forbidden in China by orders of the imperial court. But it’s nonsense. You can still go blind from doing many of the other embroidery works if done in poor lighting and the emperor wouldn’t care less!

At the turn of the 20th century, men were cutting their cues and adopting western fashion while the more traditional/good wives would continue their Qing era Han style dressing while the more progressive ones would adopt the western dresses as well.

Because there has been so little attention paid to the Qing dynasty Han women fashion until recent years, this part of Chinese female fashion history has been an extremely underrated invisible middle child despite it being the bridge between the Hanfu of Ming period and the Cheongsam of the 20th century.

Next up, I will look at the early eras of Cheongsam, before it became the Cheongsam we are familiar with today.

Till then, have a think about what is your definition of Fashion, and let me know your thoughts!

5 artefacts that inspired Mulan’s designer

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There are always 2 sides to a coin. Even for Mulan. While the production team’s taste is questionnable, they didn’t squander their 3 week study trip to China entirely either. There are several easter eggs in the show where I could tell exactly which artefact they might have been inspired by, and it’s quite fun to spot them! So let’s have a look and learn a bit more about these otherwise neglected gems!

1. The Army & their Armour

Personally, when it comes to Tang dynasty costumes for a show, you have to watch the Longest Day in Chang’An (2019 Chinese Drama). That, is probably the gold standard. They had plenty of armours made for the show, just like Mulan, and I thought it’s fun to also compare the 2 shows as well as the artefacts that they are based on.

The one in “Longest Day in Chang’an” featured armours that used around 6,000 individuals pieces to make so as to be as functionally similar to the original as possible. The one in Mulan, I guess due to time constraint (even though they have a huge budget), could not be done that way, so they opted for a more decorative/flat kind of texture, look and feel. And I suppose borrowing from the Longest Day in Chang’an wasn’t an option cos they were filming around the same time (also another reason why the Chinese drama had to build its own set, which worked out pretty well for them actually).

That being said, a lot of effort has definitely gone into replicating the look of a Tang army in Mulan and you can read about the details of the armours HERE. A few visual comparisons below:

(left) The recruitment officer in Mulan; (right) An artefact of a figurine of early Tang official

Note the tassel on the helmet in Mulan vs the feathers in Longest Day in Chang’an, and the artefact. Attention to detail is important. Not everything Chinese has to have tassels.

Since I’m not an military fashion expert, I’ll say it gets an overall score of 8/10 from me.

2. Emperor’s not-so-new clothes

Since ancient dynasties in China, what the emperors wore for the various occasions have been codified to 6 different types and most of the periods thereafter followed what was dictated in the Rites of Zhou (circa 8th century BCE). In Tang dynasty, such categories further expanded to 12 different types of dressing for variousi functions and occasions.

I am kind of impressed that they got his formal wear almost right, especially the hat:

There are 12 beads each column of the crown, just as what it should have been since over 3000 years ago, except that during Tang dynasty, all beads were supposed to be white just like in the Rites of Zhou.

Almost, because the devil’s in the detail. The formal wear is supposed to be like what’s depicted in the painting on the right, but I can understand that the stereotype of Chinese emperors would be someone who looks like the Chinese Jade Emperor, and that yellow is the ultimate colour for emperor:

stereotypical look for the Jade Emperor, a mythological figure, because, nobody wears that IRL since the formal *mian* hat is never paired with a yellow robe.

I believe it was a genuine mistake by the production team, because Tang dynasty was the beginning of the practice where yellow (note: but only a the orange/reddish yellow not all shades of yellow) was reserved for the emperor. It’s a myth that yellow has always been reserved for the imperial family, because before that anyone could wear it and even in Tang dynasty, many could still continue to do so, in fact yellow was stated alongside with white as colours for civilians. The ceremonial dresses however, were not subject to this yellow criteria, since they followed the Rites of Zhou and during that period, Black and Red were far more superior colours.

They might have taken inspiration from this portrait of the Tang emperor except that this painting wasn’t done in Tang dynasty but much later (I would say Ming/Qing dynasty) and you can just look at the evolution of the dragon motif to tell:

This painting of a Tang emperor (Tang Taizong) is not from the Tang dynasty but painted hundreds of years later in memory of him. You can tell from the way his dresses and motifs are painted. Definitely by someone from much later period.

The hat, I suppose was based on a Ming dynasty artefact belonging to the son of the emperor, and the only surviving artefact of this type of crown:

Because the owner of this Mian crown wasn’t the emperor, the artefact only has 9 beads per strand. The emperor would have 12. But it was in Ming dynasty that they had 5 coloured beads whereas in Tang and before, it was all white beads according to the Rites of Zhou.

So it’s actually somewhat impressive that they got the number of beads in the crown right and its varying colours! I mean, many Chinese shows would’ve just have random number of beads in white or whatever colour that look nice. I’d give this a 8/10 for its attention to such an obscure but impressive detail.

3. Phoenix emblem

Left: Mulan’s family heirloom phoenix emblem;
Right: Western Han dynasty Zhuque (Red bird/fire bird; Note: NOT phoenix)

I know I know, could phoenix be a variation of the zhu que red bird? It certainly seemed so except that in ancient Chinese texts they were two markedly different species. The Phoenix is supposed to have 5 colours, while the red bird is, as its name suggests, red. The Zhu que/Red bird is one of the 4 guardians in Chinese culture, but it was usually used on the roof tiles instead of as what the movie suggested, at the two sides of the front entrance.

The round surface with a motif is the roof tile that imperial families in ancient China over 2,000 years ago would use to symbolise their power and to seek protection from the heavenly forces.

The ancient Chinese divided the world into 4 quarters of the world and assigned a guardian creature to each of them to balance and control the evil forces of the world. One of my favourite childhood Japanese anime was based on this concept–Fushigi Yuugi. And yes, the 4 gods were made up of a total of 28 constellations thus the anime had different constellations assigned to the respective guardian gods.

The most iconic motifs of the 4 guardians/gods are none other than the Western Han dynasty roof tiles:

1. Blue dragon of the East (The leader of the 4 gods)
2. Red bird of the South
3. White tiger of the West
4. Black Turtle-Snake of the North

The element that is associated with the Red Bird is fire, but overtime people confused the phoenix and the red bird, and today most people thought of them as the same creature.

Maybe one day I should do a series on the 4 guardian gods and their respective constellations.

Whether or not intentional, it reveals an effort by the Mulan team to base their design on an iconic Chinese motif and artefact, and for this, they get 9/10 from me!

4. Madame Matchmaker’s hair woes

I know, I know, the matchmaker looks like a clown in Mulan, but upon close scrutiny, it was just an unfortunate combination of many artefacts into one. In a way it is not unlike the ancient Chinese mythological beings which were made up by combining several creatures into one. Taste, is a different matter altogether.

Her hairpins really stick out like a sore thumb

There are many ways to skin a cat, and somehow the Chinese show’s way is more aesthetically pleasing to me:

The accessories could be equally inaccurate as in Mulan’s case, but it feels less weird and more balanced (ironically, since it’s not symmetrical).

This design doesn’t get a pass from me due to its poor attention to detail and poor sense of aesthetics. Villains don’t need to look like lunatics.

5. Advisor’s fancy wardrobe

The advisor’s wardrobe has some serious attempt at Tang design like the one on the robe he wore when he was possessed. It was actually a very quintessentially Tang dynasty flower medallion.

The top is a Tang dynasty rug made of wool, currently in the Textile collection of Shosoin in Nara, Japan.
The bottom is a piece of Tang dynasty fabric in the Met Museum collection.

The advisor has another top that has a pseudo Tang-inspired motif, the roundel design. Although, I have to say that it is quite poorly painted/designed, looking like a child’s scribble than the more stylised and less convoluted style which it is probably based on:

Bottom 2 designs are small roundels (about 3cm in diameter) found on Tang dynasty textiles. Those roundel designs that are around the size of what the advisor wore were a lot more intricately designed with animals.

Such roundel designs and the flower medallion designs were quite unique to the Tang dynasty textiles. Although it was a continuation from the Northern dynasty hundreds of years prior, it was very popular during the Tang dynasty thus making it very iconic of the period.

There are so many fine examples of such roundel motifs:

And the flower medallion designs from the Tang dynasty (super gorgeous I know):

Because they bothered to dig up some of the really iconic motifs of Tang, and even though it is poorly executed, it was not as awful as the matchmaker’s hair, so this is probably a 5/10.

One of the most iconic aspect of Tang dynasty is, as the designer/filmmaker mentioned, its use of colours. As you can see from the artefacts, they have such complex designs made up of very strong and contrasting colours, yet they look really balanced together.

The film, however, lacked that sense of harmony despite its attempt at having really strong colours. It’s something I can’t quite explain, perhaps it’s the synthetic colourings used, or maybe the designer really didn’t have a good understanding of the ancient Chinese aesthetics, or maybe it was just different taste from mine.

It is also a lost opportunity for the Mulan PR team to talk about the artefacts they were based on, and make it educational and meaningful instead of just a brief mention of the Tang aesthetics being colourful and nice.

Ruffling up some feathers the Chinese way

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The Chinese has an almost pathological obsession with beautiful feathers.

The Tang dynasty emperor from the 8th Century fell in love with a piece of Indian music called the Brahmin Tune and decided to adapt it into his Chinese court to be played and danced to. He renamed the dance and music Raiment of rainbows and feathers. Instead of kingfisher feather as what most sources said, I think the dancer (Lady Yang) probably wore an outer coat made of different coloured feathers such as peacock, pheasant, and perhaps even parrot (I will talk about parrots in the 8th century in detail the next time)!Nevertheless, the craft of kingfisher feather accessories remains a highly mysterious and valued craft unique to China.

Tang dynasty China was one of the earliest periods with documented proof that feathers were used widely for decorations. It was such a ‘fashion statement’ that even the Japanese adopted this technique in their art from the same period.

I thought of doing one entry related to feathers in particular. And the wonderful brilliance of colours adored by the ancient Chinese (men and women alike, mind you~!).

unknown — Example of an antique Kingfisher accessory and you could see the slight change in colour because of the different angle of light that is reflected from the feather. It varies a little when you tilt it.

The oldest use of feathers in Chinese textiles (and accessories) was said to date to as far back as 2,000 years ago during the Han dynasty where the use of the word 翡翠(feicui) which refers to Jadeite today, was originally used to refer to the Kingfisher feathers. Jadeite, actually has a very short history in Chinese culture, as it was from Myanmar and was not very valued by the Chinese until mid to late Qing dynasty (last 300 yrs or so). Nephrite was the kind of jade highly valued by the ancient Chinese.

Anyway, while there were brief mentions of such in poems from about 2,000 years ago, and an excavation discovery from the period belonging to the Xiongnu nomadic tribes revealed textiles made of silk and kingfisher feather–definitely a Chinese influence:

Although it’s not a physical dress made of kingfisher feather that we could get hold of from China itself, or any accessory during that period, but we could definitely see hints of it on paintings or from certain use of feathers in artefacts. Nobody ever confirmed it, but it definitely looks probable that the blue tinge on the crown of the courtesans from Tang was from the kingfisher feathers.

There is no surviving physical kingfisher feather from that period in China, but we could still find remnants of feather decoration on the screens of Shosoin (Collection of the Japanese emperor in the 8th century) below:

It’s interesting to note that the women depicted on the screens look very much like Tang dynasty women, but it was an item made in Japan in a Tang style. How do we know? The feathers of course! Scientists have managed to examine whatever feather was left from the 8th century on the screen, and concluded that they were taken from a bird native to Japan! So it is likely that the Japanese got inspired by the crafts and practices in Tang dynasty China (since they were really quite big on Chinese culture then), that they decided to do a local interpretation of it!

Back to the Chinese imperial use of kingfisher feathers, the Song dynasty emperor was known to award his court officials with robes made from a wide range of materials including one which was made of kingfisher feathers. The practice of making fabric from kingfisher feather dates to about Tang dynasty (some 1,300 yrs ago) as mentioned in famous poet Wang Wei’s poem from that period.

During the Qing dynasty, we could find emperor’s robes made from peacock feather threads. Yes, that’s the peacock feather threads mentioned in the Yanxi Palace drama show as well, except that the one they used in the show looked nothing like the actual one:

One thing about beautiful things such as the shine and colours of silk threads and feathers, is that cameras have problem capturing them in their full glory. The texture is just really hard to captured in a 2D image since the colours of feathers tend to change with the varying angles of light. So the actual imperial robe with the peacock feather looks rather underwhelming in an image:

But if you look unclose, you could probably imagine how exquisite it would’ve been if you see it in person up close and personal:

Just now I mentioned the Chinese opera-like kingfisher feather crown in the Tang dynasty painting. Perhaps it is pure coincidence, but traditional Chinese Opera singers would break their back to get their hands on an entire full hair decoration made of kingfisher feathers.

It was said that the most famous opera singer in the early 20th century, Mei Lan Fang, owned a kingfisher feather full set of headdress made from ‘soft’ kingfisher feathers. Kingfisher feather accessories are divided into ‘hard’ feathers which are coarser and ‘soft’ feathers which are finer. There are altogether 4 types of kingfisher feathers often used in Chinese traditional accessories (mainly for the imperial family or aristocrats in the distant past, and whoever could afford it in the recent hundred of years).

As you can see above, the hard feathers are a lot larger than the soft ones, but even that is not too large at only about 7cm long. The small one’s about 2-3 cm long. Out of which, 60% of them can’t be used due to the existence of black or grey parts or other ‘less pure’ colours.

That is why it was highly controversial lately for Chinese opera singers to admit to owning real kingfisher feather crowns.

In case you think only the Chinese is capable of thinking up such a way of decorating themselves, hold my baijiu while I whip out the dark history of the West’s use of birds as accessories (includes kingfisher too). It went as far as using an entire bird (completely indiscreet I know, hurts my Asian aesthetics *hairtoss moment*).

Towards late Qing dynasty (the last 200 years), there was a switch to use cloisonne in place of kingfisher feather accessories–cheaper and less fragile. But the kingfisher feathers still has its fan. The last kingfisher factory in China closed in 1933 due to poor economic performance (not so much of the ban).

Like the West, there are laws against capturing kingfishers as they are considered endangered species or protected species. But it was not enforced by the government.

Dyed goose feather (dyed is not dead, no goose is harmed in the process)

Silk or synthetic coloured threads

Well, at the end of the day, it’s really a personal choice. If you wish to YOLO or you wish to do your part in preserving this endangered species of bird.

I am working with a silk-threads craftsperson to recreate certain antique kingfisher pieces, and you can order them from my online shop from November onwards. Yes, will be working on a few items for the shop to raise fund for the performance I’m putting up next year. So stay tuned~!

Meanwhile, here’s a visual feast of the many paintings and artefact of ancient empress and palace women in their beautiful kingfisher feather accessories. Also, beyond accessories, they even made fans, screens and decorated cups with the feathers!

If you’re interested in knowing more about this craft, I have also done up a few “Fact or Fiction” clarification at the end of the article because I do realise that people like to sensationalise things they don’t know much about, or they villainfy things they don’t agree with. Both of which are not useful in understanding this craft.

even the cup is decorated with kingfisher feather

crown made of kingfisher

kingfisher feather fan

Statement: Practitioners pluck the feathers out from birds while they were alive to ensure that the colours of the feather remain brightly coloured.

Verdict: Fiction. People of different agenda tend to sensationalise this trade or craft. The businessmen trying to make it seem like it’s a mysterious colour that has to go through certain “ritual” that’s somewhat mystical to get the colour. Animal rights people trying to make it seem like it is a really cruel trade. The truth is somewhere in the middle especially if you are meat-eater. Since ancient times dead birds have been given as tribute from southern cities or southeast asian region to China and feathers were taken from these corpses.

Statement: The newer kingfisher feather accessories used leftover feathers from the Qing dynasty, leftover feathers from opera troupes or feathers from people who got them before the last kingfisher factory closed in 1933. So it was not killing new birds.

Verdict: Fiction. They are just statements to make you feel better about buying these items. Unlikely to have such abundance of feathers to support so many accessories with such large surface area. Also, it is much more economical to kill new birds than to buy from antique dealers. So if you buy any kingfisher feather accessories that are made in recent years, or antique kingfisher feather accessories that are newly repaired, do know that they’re probably newly killed birds. Although, there are also officially sourced (so not illegal) kingfisher feathers which the Chinese government would get for purposes such as repair of artefacts, or making special items as dignitary gifts etc.

Statement: The vibrant colours on the kingfisher feather does not fade with passing time.

Verdict: Fact. Provided you keep it in pristine condition away from dust and other physical touch etc. Never touch the surfaces with your hands. It is tempting, but resist you must. Dyed goose feather and dyed silk would fade over time (but it’s probably over a long time) especially with constant exposure to sunlight. Cos we all know how fragile silk can be. Feathers, on the other hand, are used to such exposures.

Statement: Kingfisher feather accessories demand is as bad as ivory.

Verdict: Tricky question. Fact if you look at it from the angle of unnecessary killing of a life for one’s vanity. Fiction if you are looking at this being the main cause of bird extinction. Lost of habitat is often the larger concern for the survival of this beautiful bird. The average lifespan of a common kingfisher (there are over 120 species of them) is 5-7 years, although a rare few could live up to 16 years. The reproduction/replacement rate of the bird is also a lot faster than elephants. Plus, the demand for kingfisher feather really isn’t very high as there are many substitutes that are 1/10th the price around. The resale value of kingfisher feather is also not as high as ivory (since actually there are also a lot of kingfisher birds around so there’s no limited supply at this point) so there is not much incentive for people to stock up and sell at higher value.

The Chinese Wonder Woman is not Mulan

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[Hanfugirl Pre-International Women’s Day Special]

Pretty sure 99% would immediately think of Mulan when you think of mapping a Chinese figure to Wonder Woman–Disney did a great job in telling her story but there’s actually no real proof that she really existed in history (not that Wonder Woman does of course). Guess what, Fact is sometimes more amazing than Fiction. There was actually a real person who lived over 3000 years ago in China, who embodied everything that Mulan stood for in terms of female empowerment, and more.

Her name is Fu Hao (妇好). Or Lady Hao. She was an empress, a general, and a high priestess.

Her story was recorded on oracle bones of over 3,000 years ago in Shang dynasty China. Possibly the earliest Chinese female general to be recorded in writing. In fact, she was likely to be the one who wrote on those oracle bones as well since she was the high priestess tasked to conduct oracle bone reading ceremonies.

Similar to Wonder Woman whose identity is that of half mankind half goddess, Fu Hao was also seen as someone who was able to communicate with the other realm, therefore, tasked to lead large rituals and religious ceremonies on behalf of the emperor. If you’ve been following my Sailormoon series, the idea of a matriarchal society or women being seen as a powerful medium between heaven and earth, the spirit and the physical world in ancient China would not come as a surprise to you.

The ancient Chinese worshipped the deer and the earliest jade artefact that has deer totem originated from the same period as Fu Hao–the Shang dynasty. As such, I thought it fitting for the iconic Wonder Woman tiara to be taking the form of a deer totem in the case of Fu Hao. After all, deers were seen as the ancestors of women by the ancient Chinese societies. They were deemed as embodying the spirit and the mystical powers of female/mothers. Wonder woman’s tiara adorned with a red star was a symbol of her status as Princess of Paradise Island, so it is fitting that I swap the deer for her red star in my recreation of Fu Hao as Wonder Woman (or Wonder Woman as Fu Hao).

Deers were also worshipped and admired for their swiftness and for their combat capability using their powerful antlers.

Remember Princess Mononoke? The powerful spirit was in the form of a deer.

Then there’s the Lasso of Truth which Wonder Woman created many powerful moves of great destructive powers with. I have equated that to the jade thumb ring for archery which was unearthed at Fu Hao‘s tomb with very interesting engravings that bear a certain resemblance to the totems from the Amazonian culture. Some credited Fu Hao for the invention of the thumb ring in archery. It was meant for the Asian way of archery which pulls the string of the bow back using the thumb instead of the European way which uses the fingers. The use of a thumb ring can protect the user’s thumb from the large tension that’s built up, and apparently allows greater flexibility while riding a horse–that’s also why it is popularly also known as the Mongolian technique because they continued using it.

The thumb ring is a non-living proof that Fu Hao commanded armies, fought amongst her men, and was an extremely formidable warrior herself. Based on records from the oracle bones, she fought many battles in her lifetime and conquered many lands for her husband-emperor.

Wonderwoman-31edited — There are two holes at the bottom which were meant for strings to go through with the other end secured to her wrist so she could take the ring off and put it back on easily. Replica of the artefact made from a bone.

Like wonder woman who is believed to live eternally, the Shang dynasty emperor also thought of his empress to have continued living after her death. The physical form of Fu Hao sustained injuries and was in a poor state after many battles. She died at the age of about 30 years old. But to the Emperor, her spirit continued to live and he conducted several ghost marriages for her to be married to the past ancient emperors with the hope that her spirit would continue to watch over his land and him through such marriage alliances.

This is all the more important because Fu Hao was the high priestess who not only hosted many important rituals for the state and country but also was seen as a spirit medium who could decipher the wills of heaven and spirits through the reading of oracle bones.

I’d liked to imagine that Wonder Woman might have been one of her reincarnations, or perhaps, she continued to live on in different forms throughout different periods in history, wearing different dresses and with different identities (not unlike Wonder Woman who adopted a new identity as Diana Prince and lived through the world wars until present day with no sign of aging).

Wonder woman’s main colour schemes are the 3 primary colours and black and white, which coincidentally was the corresponding colours of the 5 elements in ancient Chinese beliefs. This colour scheme was exceptionally popular during Ming dynasty (the red and blue combination), and I adapted the Ming dynasty dress for this shoot.

I also particularly liked the latest movie’s Wonder Woman in her blue gown with a gorgeously dangerous weapon tucked behind. Of course, logistical reason first– The Tang dynasty dress is the only one that I can think of that somewhat resembles the gown she wore, and also so happens I have a similarly coloured Tang dynasty dress and top!

But more than that, Tang dynasty is yet another era in (relatively) recent Chinese history that has a slight burst of matriarchy. It was a period where powerful queens were present in many cultures all over the world, not only in China (I’ve written about it with slightly more details here). The style of cleavage showing dresses were believed by academics to be an influence which the Chinese took from India and ancient Greece. Apt isn’t it?

Particularly, I thought that having the arrows tucked behind would be a nice and relevant visual reference to the sword. Also, just in case you are wondering, it is not that hard to tuck something behind your back if you have a strong enough dress… or tying technique. 😉

mde — Quiver and Arrow, Java, Early 1800s. Collection of the British Museum on loan to the Asian Civilisations Museum as part of this exhibition. It was a very advanced and civilised culture even before the British colonisation of this region, thus such fine crafts and materials were able to be crafted. I’ve not seen any quiver this exquisite in Chinese culture (maybe I’m not familiar with the history of archery), although gold quiver was found in around 400BCE in the Greek tomb of Philip II.

I visited the Raffles in Southeast Asia exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum recently and came across this set of arrow and quiver collected by Raffles (ok I didn’t know that this is the term for the arrow holder until today–see! Always learn new things!), but I can definitely imagine that in an alternate universe, the Wonder Woman Fu Hao could be having something like this at her back for her arrows!

I wish there was more information about this quiver but guess we’ll never know.

Of course, we still love Mulan the animation, and I am also anticipating the release of the actual action film when it’s out. But in all honesty, I would think that Fu Hao is a much closer equal to Wonder Woman than Mulan. After all, she didn’t need to pretend to be a man in order to fight for her country. She was glorified as a woman, and her gender was the source of her empowerment instead of a liability as in the case of Mulan.

In all honesty, if Mulan existed and she got found out that she actually deceived the emperor, not only would she be persecuted, her family would be implicated too. I am actually in the midst of another project research and preparation that talks about gender neutrality in ancient China… So stay tuned (still finding my last model!).

Yes, Yes, I’m always experimenting with new mediums and ways of expressions. Fun for me, fun for you!

I’ve been doing the East meets West, Old meets New Hanfu series the past year and was recently given the challenge by Our Grandfather Story to find the Chinese equivalent of Wonder Woman. The video should be out soon (I’ve seen the draft, and am lovin’ it!)

As I mature, I realised the importance of representation in media on one’s cultural pride and identity. And since we can’t possibly wait around for Hollywood and Disney to do that for Asian culture, especially since they don’t always get it (not their fault, it’s not easy), I figured that I could have fun adapting it on my own. Bearing in mind that superficial looks is just one part, the knowledge and history is what can last for much longer.

Since International Women’s Day is around the corner, this is going out to all women–you can be anyone you want, anyone you dream of, if you just believe (such motherhood statement I realise, but hey, that’s a special privilege as a woman I guess!)!

Don’t wait for others to define you!

[Apparently the correct ancient pronunciation of her surname Hao好, is supposed to be Zi 子–taking the right side of the word.]

OK here’s the full video by the Old Grandfather Story folks!

Chinese dance–much more than just ribbons & fans

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“Those who dance are considered insane by those who can’t hear the music”

In ancient times, yue 樂 referred to both dance and music, although the word is only reserved for music now. Back then, there wasn’t the concept of dance without music (but music performances without dance existed). Legends about the origins of dance can be found in ancient Chinese literature such as the Lüshi Chunqiu (Annals of Lü Buwei), Zhongxiaji (Mid-summer Records), and Guyue (Ancient Music).

With the popularisation of opera in the last 1000 years, ancient Chinese dance as an artform had been on a decline. This was further exacerbated by the widespread adoption of bound feet that greatly limited women’s mobility, rendering them unable to dance. In their places, were male dancers who brought a different aesthetics and Chinese dance was thus performed and passed down through the male body.

It is thus extremely apt that for our upcoming performance, we will be focusing on the 4 ancient beauties who lived in periods before the onset of decline in ancient Chinese Dance and the adoption of bound feet. With the exception of Wang Zhaojun who was not officially known for any particular dance (But she’s known for playing the pipa), all 3 beauties were said to have exceptional dance talents which helped them charm million and above all, the rulers of their times.

When Elizabeth and I first started working on this project, we were quite sure that it will not be a total re-enactment of the dances because it’s not possible. We could only reimagine them based on the artefacts and whatever was written about them. Also, the kind of music that went along with those ancient dances were all lost too, and we have limited resources and time. So getting new compositions was out of the question.

So I picked a few songs which I felt was representative of my feeling of the periods, the beauties and the stories of those dances they were famous for and worked with Elizabeth on fine-tuning the selection.

Being a nerd, I thought it’s only fair that I share a bit more background information about the dance choreography that Elizabeth has done such a great job in, so her effort and all those ancient knowledge are not gone to waste! Cos personally I find physical theatre and dance the hardest to understand. If you don’t want any spoilers, you can always skip this article and come back after the show to find out more!

Here we go….

Xishi (about 2500 years ago)

Elizabeth: During the Western Zhou dynasty, the category of Yayue (雅樂), or ‘elegant music’ was established. In it consisted of the Six Major Dances and Six Minor Dances. Yayue was mostly used for official rituals and to reinforce notions of proper decorum. Jiyue (伎樂), or ‘women music’, was more often seen in informal banquets and were often performed by professional dancers of the time. These music and dance pieces took more inspiration from folk music and dance forms and were more entertaining. As such, by the beginning of the Han dynasty, Jiyue gradually became more popular while Yayue declined.

Xishi2 — Notice the foot in this (ok we didnt have the shoes on), it was not pointed downwards unlike in ballet or modern Chinese dance. This is a very traditional Chinese footwork, and you see such upturned feet in dance sculptures of the ancient past too!

Xishi’s dance was inspired by a modern interpretation《楚腰》(the Chu Waist), choreographed by Chinese choreographer Sun Ying (孙颖老师).

Dance forms in the ancient past were performed with women with ‘natural feet’ (unbound feet). For example, in the Dunhuang Mogao grottoes paintings, we can see that many of the dancers had feet that were sickled in or half pointed, rather than the fully pointed feet common in Chinese dance today.

The fully pointed foot became one of the aesthetic ideals in Chinese dance today due to the influence of ballet line and technique during the institutionalisation of Chinese dance as an official discipline in the 1940s and 50s.

Hanfugirl: The story of the Chu waist came from a book by an ancient political-philosopher–Han Fei. As with many things in Chinese literature, a spade is never called a spade. The story talks about how the ruler of the Kingdom of Chu loved to see his court officials with tiny waists. So all of them start starving themselves to strive to have the tiniest waist possible, in order to gain his favour. Over time, they all became really frail and could barely stand up straight, let alone provide sound advice to him. Han Fei used this story to caution leaders against favouring policies or people based on his own private and personal preferences, as this would cause the entire political climate to slant towards currying flavouring instead of doing what’s best for the country.

While it was a story, the mention of the tiny waist is likely to be reflective of the existing aesthetics during the period, otherwise the reference would have been lost on the readers. During that period, the wooden clogs were already invented and worn by people like Confucius as well. I had a special request that Xishi wore clogs to dance because she was known for her clog dance. It was said that the king even built a hollow hallway just for her to dance her bell and clog dance. As such, the moves of the dancer would have to be adapted to work around the constraint of the clogs.

Zhaojun (about 2000 years ago)

Elizabeth: During the Han dynasty, there was a type of performance called “Variety Shows” (百戏) which existed both in the courts and in folk villages. These performances included wrestling performances, acrobatics, wushu, magic shows, comic performances, as well as music and dance performances. There were many different kinds of dances performed, including silk dance, sleeve dance, drum dance, as well as dances of animals and social dances.

For Zhaojun, I used the sleeve dance, sometimes called the 翘袖折腰 style, which includes making curvy or bendy shapes with the body and the extra-long sleeves.

In the Han dynasty, besides sleeve dances, there were also many plate and drum dances, dances with silk and with the duster (拂尘) and the bell dance.

Hanfugirl: Personally, this is my favourite dance because of how close it is to the artefact and my idea of Han dynasty dance*squeal*. hahahahahah IRONICALLY, Zhaojun is the only one who didn’t have a dancer identity. But I do think that since she’s said to be a concubine of the emperor, she must have known some dance to some extent.

What I also love about this is that her dress is made based on the Western Han tomb in Hunan, and the dancer herself is also from there. Zhaojun in history was from Hubei, which is north to Hunan. In ancient China, this entire region (both Hunan and Hubei) were known to be the kingdom of Chu. So in my wildest imagination, she could be playing/dancing like her ancient relative or some sorts!

Zhaojun’s dance is a more sorrowful, departure dance. She was bidding farewell to her home to a kingdom far far away. Yes, in a cartoon sense of the word, she was marrying a Shrek of her time. But the Shrek proved to be quite a good catch eventually. Still, at this point in the story, she was supposed to be sad and sorrowful.

Diaochan (about 1800 years ago)

Elizabeth: The period from the three Kingdoms through Wei, Jins, to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, was a time torn by wars, a time of the changing of the dynasties, and a time of shifting nationalities. The main feature of this period was the migration and intermingling of the different peoples’ dances. The dancing system of the Tang dynasty which followed was rooted in this period.

Well-known dance pieces include 《白纻舞》(Dance of white ramie) and 《春江花月夜》(Moonlit night on spring river)which came from the 清商乐 (Qing Shang Yue, a type of music popular amongst the literati of that period). Diaochan’s dance was inspired by 《白紵舞》which was originally a folk dance from the lower-Yangtze area, and took its name from the costumes which were made from white ramie.

The dance is gentle and light with a stress on dancing with the sleeves. Among the five to six hundred years from the Jin to the Tang dynasty, this dance became a staple repertoire of banquet arts and was one of the dances praised by different poets across dynasties.

Hanfugirl: The music chosen for this piece is more of a risque, femme fatale feel one because of the story of Diaochan. I wanted to show the seductiveness of Diaochan, and at the same time, the danger that comes with such a two-faced woman. I wonder how the men she was seducing was feeling while watching her dance, and if they would be as captivated as I was when I was taking these pictures.

Yang Guifei (about 1300 years ago)

Elizabeth: The Sui dynasty which preceded the Tang was a period of unity, and the rulers amassed the traditional songs and dances of the Han ethnic people, as well as those of minority nationalities and those which had been introduced from abroad.

The well-known court banquet music, the “Seven Books of Music” and later, the “Nine Books of Music” were founded there. For the first time in Chinese history, the music and dances of different nationalities and of different areas were listed in an equal state as part of court rituals.

Thus, there were many styles of dances in the Tang dynasty: “Nine Books of Music”, “Ten Books of Music”, Zuobu Arts”, “Libu Arts”, Jian and Ruan Dancers, the Folk Song and Dance dramas, the Grand Song and Dance Compositions as well as religious dances.

Yang Yu Huan, or Yang Guifei’s dance was inspired by the Hu style, which was a name given to folk dances from Central Asia or Western regions of China. They have sharp rhythms, with rapid changes to the movements and rich expressions. She was also known for being well-versed in the Dervish Dance from Samarkand.

Today, Hu style influences can be seen in the folk dances of Mongolia and Xinjiang.

Hanfugirl: I didn’t have the right lighting and space to capture more images which I’m satisfied with but I’m pretty happy with this image because of that Hu (central asian/nomadic tribe) type of shoulder movement and posture. I have ALWAYS been fascinated with the Tang dynasty for its cultural diversity and cosmopolitan society. The well-known Yang Guifei was also said to be one of the most brilliant dancers of her time. There were two dances in particular that were closely associated with her–the Swirling Hu dance （胡旋舞）, and the Rainbowed-skirt, feathered-dress dance （霓裳羽衣舞）.

The first dance was just a generic type of dance that many Tang dynasty party goers (men and women) would learn and dance (a bit like the clubbing dance of our time).

The second one was a music piece specially recorded and composed by the emperor of that time (also the husband of Guifei). He was inspired by the foreign Hu music composition from India. The music was hailed as one of the gems of Tang dynasty music, and Guifei was said to have danced to it while the emperor played it. After the An Lushan rebellion and death of Guifei, it was never played again.

That particular music doesn’t quite suit the mood and duration of my show, so I found another piece that has a bit more foreign music element for the purpose of performance. And our dancer Serene is an authority in ethnic Chinese dance, so Elizabeth gave her free reign in the parts where ethnic dance influence is to be showcased. So this piece combines both the swirling Hu dance and the Rainbowed-skirt, feathered-dress dance.

This article is jointly written by Hanfugirl and Elizabeth Chan (Dance choreographer).

If you’re interested to watch the performance, which is part of Moonfest 2018, details are as follows:

There’re tonnes of other programmes at Moonfest, you may visit the official Esplanade website HERE.