"Quintessentially Chinese"?: Costume/Clothing?

Is there any such thing as quintessentially Chinese clothes?

I don't mean, like, special occasion costumes, just like, clothes, dailywear sort of thing. Think about it along these lines: Costumes are worn when we want to be something other than what we are. Clothing are just day-to-day wear. Both have elements of how we express ourselves. Both have their times and places. But one is clearly Other-izing, and the other not necessarily so.

So, the samfu, the cheongsam, the, uh, strawhat with pointy top... these are not clothes. Are they?

I was thinking about this because I recently bought a pretty yellow blouse with a definite Chinese air to it - the way the line goes above the chest, the design. It's definitely not a costume, though. It's just a blouse. Not something I would wear for everyday use (and I was considering steampunking it up, but then, back in those days, yellow was a royal colour, and I have no desire to create some royal persona to match), but wearing it wouldn't make me feel like I was playing dress-up.

But is it quintessentially Chinese? Who wears stuff like this? When I was in China, this design wasn't exactly the It Thing. If anything, anybody would wear a blouse like this, provided they were upper-middle-class and presumably had a party/event to go to that warranted a dainty blouse.

So, if I wear a cheongsam, is it a costume?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Race in Cartoons

So I was moseying on to work this morning when I started hearing the theme song to 6teen in my head, and I was reminiscing on the time I used to have cable TV and I watched cartoons and the SciFi channel just about incessantly (okay, I also watched TLC). 6teen was an interesting show to me. The basic premise is that of six teens who hang out at a fancy lemonade stall one of them works at, and it follows their trials and travails as they figure out how to get by on their own, holding their jobs (or not) and how they work through their problems. It also happens to follow a very smart comedy formula, with multiple storyarcs within a single episode. The creators did a good job realizing that yes, a younger audience could indeed appreciate smart shows. The characters, being cartoon characters in themselves, are not exactly what one might call nuanced, but the creators certainly did try to explore different aspects of their characters. Jen, for example, works in the sporting goods store. She
Read more

My Pidgin Does Not Signify Lack Of Intellect

I recently received in my inbox an email from my father, who likes to forward me a lot of things that he thinks will interest me. Except of course, he never really realizes just how easily antsy I can get, and how willing I am to pick apart an article. (I used to hit Reply to All whenever he'd send me an email to let all and sundry know what I thought and all the problems with whatever he sent me, so now he wisely BCCs people instead.) This article was about Miss Singapore, and I can't find the original article, but hree's another one about the same issue . While at the Miss World pageant in South Africa, she inadvertently slipped into speaking Singlish, the Singaporean creole that mixes English, Malay, Chinese and god knows what else. And this was a huge fucking deal because apparently, all beauty queens must be able to speak perfect English, the standard of which is probably set by the English-speaking world that is the UK and North America, I guess. And because Miss S
Read more

May 13 Blogswarm Links Post

This is where all Malaysians and residents of Malaysia are welcome to leave links to their participation in the May 13 Blogswarm. For more information, check out LiveJournal and Facebook . Comments Policy:  Please note that moderation is turned on for comments older than 7 days. I try to check in regularly, but this may be hard as I will be traveling. Do not use this place to debate what others have said. If you do and you crash my site in due process, I'll get very irritated at you. That shit is rude. Don't do it. 
Read more