If you were in Xi'an in Shanxi Province on April 18, you might feel like you were back in ancient China. There were catwalk shows and traditional music concerts held by people wearing traditional Chinese clothing, or huafu. Huafu fans from across the country got together there to take pictures and post them online for a huafu photo competition, which will last for a month. People were doing these to celebrate a new national holiday — the first China Huafu Day. It wants to encourage young Chinese to be proud of traditional clothing, as well as classic Chinese culture.
The government chose the third day of the third month of the Chinese lunar calendar(农历) as China Huafu Day. This day is said to be the birthday of the. Yellow Emperor. This year, the China Huafu Day fell on April 18.
Huafu includes the traditional clothing of all ethnic (民族的) groups in China. Among them, hanfu, the traditional clothing of the Han ethnic group, has the most fans in recent years. Hanfu is the traditional clothing of the Han people who lived in China before the Qing Dynasty. It has been around for about 3,000 years and changed greatly across different dynasties. It is hard to count the number of people who wear hanfu today. But hanfu clubs may be found almost in every university and city. Many young people wear hanfu to look like characters from comics and games. This really brings us back to the ancient fashion.
"China is becoming a leading power in the world, and the Chinese feel more confident about its traditional culture," Chen Chuyu, leader of a Beijing-based hanfu institution (学院), told People's Daily Online. "Wearing traditional clothing might be an interesting way of showing how they feel about this."