@fouryearsofshades / fouryearsofshades.tumblr.com
Pinned
This blog mainly focuses on Hanfu, though sometimes I might post other things related to Chinese language and culture.
Still technically on hiatus. Asks closed.
I blocked accounts if I think it looked like a spam bot. Sorry if I mistakenly blocked yours. Message me if you still care to be let out.
Also I will block accounts who tag non-hanfu things (e.g. qinghannv, qipao, aodai, kimono, hanbok etc,) in the “hanfu” tag.
[Historical 2D Animation | Wu Shang & Wu Yuan] The bow on the wall, the river at one's back — "Crossing the River"
No dialogue. Chinese and English subtitles.
Context: In 522 BC, King Ping of Chu was convinced that the crown prince and the Crown Prince's Grand Tutor Wu She would start a rebellion and decided to execute his son and Wu She. To avoid Wu She's sons revenge, he decided to lure them into the capital to execute them with their father. Wu She's son were both wise men and realized that it was a trap immediately, but the oldest son Wu Shang decided to go to the capital to die with his father to fulfill the act of xiao (filial piety) and to expose King Ping's scheme, while Wu Yuan, promising revenge, fled to the state of Wu (a different character than the surname of Wu brother's here). Wu Yuan, more famously known as Wu Zixu, spent his life serving Wu. It's wasn't a happy ending either but that's another story.
Watercolor Painting of Song Dynasty Hanfu
C-drama: Swords Into Plowshares 《太平年》 — 2026
This Hanfu is inspired by the Song dynasty (960-1279) empress dowager's ceremonial attire, which included a phoenix crown (Fengguan 鳳冠) and a phoenix-patterned cape called Xiapei (霞帔) trimmed with small pearls.
The crown itself also appears to be inspired by Song dynasty phoenix crowns.
To repay his debt, Xu Fu worked as head chef of a Chinese restaurant in Middle East. Then the country was invaded by the USA.
The characters in the film speaks Chinese, English, and Arabic. The film comes in with both Chinese and English subtitles so if you're in China in the meantime, it's worth a watch.
To repay his debt, Xu Fu worked as head chef of a Chinese restaurant in Middle East. Then the country was invaded by the USA.
The characters in the film speaks Chinese, English, and Arabic. The film comes in with both Chinese and English subtitles so if you're in China in the meantime, it's worth a watch.
【Historical Reference Artifacts】:
▶ Tang Dynasty Painting《八十七神仙卷》 (Attributed to Wu Daozi / 傳為吳道子所作)
The Eighty-Seven Immortals Scroll is traditionally attributed to Wu Daozi (吳道子), the most celebrated painter of China’s Tang Dynasty. The clothing and hairstyles depicted in the painting preserve many characteristics inherited from the Wei, Jin, and Northern & Southern Dynasties, reflecting the continuity of early Chinese dress traditions.
The painting depicts a grand Taoist procession, led by Donghua Dijun (東華帝君), Nanji Dijun (南極帝君), and Fusang Dadi (扶桑大帝), followed by eighty-seven immortals in an orderly ceremonial procession.
Renowned for its exceptionally fluid and powerful brushwork, the scroll employs traditional techniques such as Gaogu Yousi Miao (高古遊絲描) and Tiexian Miao (鐵線描), creating rhythmic flowing lines that vividly convey the movement of garments in the wind. This masterpiece perfectly embodies the famous artistic characteristic known as “Wu Dai Dang Feng (吳帶當風)”, and is regarded as one of the greatest achievements of Tang Dynasty ink line drawing (Baimiao).
The composition is arranged with a parallel bridge-like structure, where lotus flowers and auspicious clouds beneath the bridge contrast with the ceremonial procession above, creating remarkable spatial depth.
Among the figures, more than fifty female immortals are depicted with unique hairstyles, with virtually no two coiffures being exactly alike. Intricate patterns on the robes are rendered entirely through variations in line density, producing a rich visual impression of colour despite the absence of pigments.
⸻ ⸻
📸 Photo：@临溪摄影工作室
🧚♀️Model：@清音音音音
📷Photography : @小何力
💄Makeup: @百丽Makeup
🔗Weibo Link：https://weibo.com/1648616372/5055294571024250
⸻
i was looking over the hanfu conventions post and got confused regarding the english part of the "右衽, youren, 'right over left' rule" title, since youren is usually described as "left over right". could you explain this a bit?
Great question!
There are two factors at play here that make this confusing: (1) the age old “wait, my right or your right?” and (2) whether we are identifying each flap with the side it COMES FROM or the side it TIES ON.
For (1), generally we follow the same rule as anatomy: left and right refer to the wearer’s left and right. Aka imagine you put the garment on—your left and right are now the same as the garment’s left and right. However if you’re looking at someone else wearing the garment, or looking at the garment laid out in front of you/in a picture, you have to reverse directions.
R = right, L = left
Now that that’s established, we come to (2). For this to make sense I should clarify the terminology used in the Chinese saying/title for this rule, which is “交領右衽” / jiao1 ling3 you4 ren4, or just 右衽 for short.
This is sometimes translated as “left over right,” but what does 交領右衽 actually mean? 交領 just means cross collar. 右 means right (the direction.) These two are pretty straightforward.
衽, ren, is sometimes translated as “lapel,” but that’s not really a great translation. To be precise, the ren are these little highlighted pieces here:
Green = rightmost ren (outer), blue = leftmost ren (inner)
It’s the triangular or trapezoidal piece added onto the center front seam in order to bridge the gap between the center and the other side, so that you can cross the body over on each side.
When we say 右衽, we are referring to the “rightmost ren,” aka the side that the ren ends up on after it has been put on. That would be this one in green.
Josh Chen (ig: @/joshraychen) wearing Cloud9's Lagoon
So what 交領右衽 means is that the rightmost ren is the one that ends up visible on the outside (since the leftmost ren gets covered and is this not visible). Some Ming Dynasty garments don't even have a left/inner ren, the collar just goes straight down from the neck since it gets hidden by the outside flap anyway.
Why is this translated as left over right? Two possible ways to make sense of this:
Example from 秋木木's 橘枝, annotated // L: Model pic with the shirt worn open, the ren are hanging open on their opposite sides // R: Flat pic with the collar properly crossed over, the ren is in its final position (leftmost ren hidden)
If I have just made you even more confused, just go with this rule: if you’re looking at somebody else wearing Hanfu (which is like the only time when you’d see the whole chest), you should see a y shape! Not a backwards toddler y shape. That’s all you need to remember :)
Amare Fields (ig: @/amare.fields) at MOSAIC by MAISON at Yale (2025) wearing Cloud9's Marquis
If you're putting it on yourself, just use the tried and true Guess And Check method, because the way the ties are placed will only allow you to tie it one way lol.
Dragon Boat Festival (端午節; duan1wu3jie2) occurs every year on the 5th day of the 5th lunarsolar month, which was June 19 this year (2026). One way that people celebrate is by wrapping and eating zongzi (粽子; sticky rice dumplings).
For Dragon Boat Festival last year (May 31, 2025), I attended a Taiwanese culture club event at National Taiwan University, where they had prepared all the ingredients for the zongzi.
The timing was actually perfect, because finals week was right after Dragon Boat Festival, and "wrapping zongzi" (包粽; bao1zong4) sounds similar to 包中 (bao1zhong4; short for 包考中 or "ensure [you] pass the exam"). Many families will wrap zongzi before a big exam to give their kids a boost of luck.
Since we were making Taiwanese vegan zongzi, they provided glutinous rice stir-fried with peanuts, shitake mushrooms, chestnuts, gluten (in place of pork), kabocha (in place of egg yolk), and more roasted peanuts. (There are no peanuts in the batch in the picture, though, as it was prepared separately from the rest.)
Zongzi in Taiwan can be split into northern and southern types, which differ in ingredients and cooking methods. Other types exist, but are not as popular. Since we were in Taipei, we made northern Taiwanese zongzi (北部粽), in which the glutinous rice is stir-fried, and the wrapped zongzi are steamed. Southern Taiwanese zongzi (南部粽) instead use raw or half-stir-fried glutinous rice, and the wrapped zongzi are boiled. Many southerners will say that northern zongzi is just fried sticky rice (油飯; you2fan4) in the shape of zongzi (my southerner roommates agree), and many northerners find southern zongzi to be too gummy. As a result, every year there are arguments over which is better. (Sidenote: 北方/南方 is used to refer to southern/northern Mainland China, 北部/南部 is used to refer to southern/northern Taiwan).
They then had a few alumni teach everyone how to wrap the zongzi. The method we used was the same as in this video, only there was a lot of emphasis on compacting the rice before wrapping. Since this was a culture club for Taiwanese students to mingle with foreign exchange students, half the attendees did not speak Mandarin (or at least, not to a high enough level), so they had me interpret the instructions into English. I think I did okay for my first time interpreting!
Although it was my first time wrapping zongzi, I ended up helping a few others out and wrapped 6 of them! I was a little surprised how few of the Taiwanese attendees had wrapped zongzi before.
We each got to take 2 home to eat. I didn't have soy sauce paste, so I made do with normal soy sauce.
Hello, I really enjoy your Hanfu blog. I'm a Hanfu lover following various Hanfu bloggers on tumblr. I notice there is an article by CNN stigmatizing Hanfu recently. I see young chinese people on weibo are mocking this pretentious article and saying CNN is like a thief crying stop thief because it's this article, not Hanfu, that obviously has conspiracy and political purpose. I agree with them. I'd love to know how you see it.
Hi, I’m glad you enjoy my blog ^^ Thanks for the questions, and sorry for taking ages to reply! (hanfu photo via 玖柯9k):
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I received these asks many years ago, so the CNN article in question is old, but I'm pretty sure I read it (I've read pretty much every article on hanfu in English mainstream media). Although I don't recall the specific details of the article, I'm very much aware of the stigmatizing/disparaging angle and tone that you're referring to, which was commonplace in Western "news" about the hanfu movement at the time. As with a lot of news about China, they used dubious Western "sources" to paint a heavily biased view of the movement, politicizing/weaponizing it and trying to frame it as some kind of dangerous, nefarious plot.
Nowadays, as awareness and visibility of hanfu have grown immensely across real life and social media, this type of "reporting" about the movement has thankfully died down. The news articles that I see now are positive or at least neutral. This shift also occurred for the Wikipedia articles for "hanfu" and "hanfu movement".
Please see my post here for more discussion on this topic.
Hope this helps! ^^
A book introducing clothing of early Han period - mostly based on artifacts from Mawangdui tomb but also with references to other artifacts of the same periods. It also includes figures that show how the clothing are put on and in what sequences.
I like it that it also introduces the many different motives sewed on the clothes. The fonts are also big enough for me.
A chunky, heavy book on the exhibits and artifacts excavated from Mawangdui tombs.
Pros: It gave a clear descriptions and background some information regarding the geography and various perspectives of lives back in Han Dynasty, including food, make up, games etc etc. The figures are big and detailed. Highly recommend reading it before visiting Hunan Museum.
Cons: The red words on some screen pages, due to the texture of the paper, are unclear. But they are rather minor and probably don't content important information.
The biggest downside is that it cost about 300 RMB.
All Wishes Come True!, a heist comedy fantasy inspired The Eight Immortals. They are seeking for a treasure that could save the world,
Also features everyone's favourite Sun Wukong.
Chinese hanfu in Song dynasty-style for spring & summer by 池夏/Chi Xia. See more of their designs here.
