IN Hong Kong, 90-year-old Wong and her friends decided to dress up in traditional Chinese hanfu, don elegant makeup, and get their photos taken for a birthday party.

Li Na, vice chairwoman of the Chinese Culture and Hong Kong Hanfu Association, one of the event’s organizers, said that hanfu is gaining an increasing following in Hong Kong among people of different ages, and that her association is growing by the day.

“At first, we only had a few hanfu outfits. Now, we have over 100 pieces and need to rent a warehouse for storage,” she said.

“The promotion of hanfu has become easier than before. With exposure growing on social media platforms, more and more people are interested and willing to learn about it,” Li said.

The association constantly receives inquiries about events and invitations to collaborate from different sectors, she said. Interest has been increasing through a variety of different interactive events such as trying on hanfu and making hanfu accessories, which are held in Hong Kong as many as three times a month.

Lin Zhihui, a fellow from the Department of Chinese History and Culture at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, teaches ancient clothing-themed courses and once served as a judge in a hanfu modeling competition. She agreed that there is a trend that young people are more willing to take part in hanfu activities or wear hanfu to attend special occasions.

“When the hanfu modeling competition was held at Lok Fu Place in 2023, every floor was filled with people looking on,” Lin said.

She said people are more willing to express themselves and even incorporate it with modern dress such as by wearing a blouse on top. These changes allow people to wear hanfu on more occasions in their daily lives.

As for the influence these changes may have on hanfu’s characteristics, Lin said the tradition itself is changeable, flexible and inclusive. As hanfu can be made more practical in modern society, it may encourage more people to try and learn more about it, thus helping promote the traditional attire in the mainstream, she said.

Han Yike, 23, who works in education, fell in love with hanfu six years ago, and said she always wears hanfu at traditional festivals or major events. “The beauty of hanfu goes beyond its gorgeous appearance; it’s unique and elegant,” she said.

Hanfu joins another form of traditional dress in Hong Kong that has long been preserved in the city — cheongsam. The sewing techniques used in Hong Kong-style cheongsam were included among 20 items inscribed into the city’s first-ever representative list of intangible cultural heritage in 2017. It was later included on the national list in 2021.

Haze Ng Kwok-hei, a committee member of the Hong Kong Cheongsam Association, said that in the 1950s, a large group of skilled tailors from Shanghai moved to Hong Kong, fueling the development of the city’s tailoring industry.

Although exquisite cheongsam cannot be mass-produced, Ng said that Hong Kong’s mature garment technology can still help promote and popularize it. In the production of modern cheongsam, some new garment techniques include 3D printing, laser engraving and digital jacquard.

There are also more innovative fabric choices for making cheongsam available such as gambiered Guangdong gauze, corduroy and suit fabric.

Ng said computer-aided pattern generation and digital jacquard weaving technology have been applied to reinvent men’s cheongsam.

The acceptance of hanfu hit another level when Hong Kong’s culture, sports and tourism chief Kevin Yeung Yun-hung, dressed in it to promote the city’s flower fair last year.

In Lin’s opinion, Hong Kong has an inherent advantage in promoting traditional Chinese clothing, as it attracts people from all over the world.

Echoing Lin, Li believes that people’s recognition of traditional Chinese attire will continue to grow. “When we wear hanfu on the street now, many people compliment us,” said Li.

(China Daily)