This director is vindictive.

Chapter 523 Shocking! So many amazing tricks hidden in the clothes of ancient people
Although this "Hanfu Millennium Show" may seem like a spur-of-the-moment event, the preparations were actually quite thorough long ago.

The reason is simple—Huayun is a top player specializing in traditional Chinese style clothing.

Huayun's design team is no pushover; they have a thorough understanding of clothing from various dynasties in ancient China. From the coarse cloth clothes of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties to the gorgeous skirts of the Tang dynasty, and then to the cheongsam of the Republic of China, they are very familiar with the characteristics of clothing in each period.

Moreover, observant people will notice that Huayun's new clothes each season actually subtly incorporate design elements from ancient clothing. For example, this spring's traditional Chinese style dress uses the knotted buttons from Ming Dynasty clothing at the neckline; last winter's coat borrowed the tailoring style of Song Dynasty clothing at the hem. These design details show that Huayun has been preparing for this "millennial fashion show" for a long time.

After the trailer for "Hanfu Millennium Show" was released, its popularity soared.

As the popularity of #HanfuMillenniumShow# continues to soar, major media platforms have quickly followed up, launching special reports and documentaries related to Hanfu culture, further igniting the public's enthusiasm for traditional clothing.

CCTV's documentary channel has pulled out all the stops this time, creating the "Millennial Showcase of Chinese Costumes" series, "The Attire of China." The first episode, "The Past and Present of the Cheongsam," immediately sparked heated discussions upon its release; this documentary is truly meticulously crafted!
The program team thoroughly investigated the origins and history of the cheongsam:
The film begins with old photos from the Qing Dynasty, showing how the Manchu attire of that time was completely covered up, with wide robes and sleeves, a far cry from what we see today.

During the Republican era, the style changed drastically. Shanghai's socialites modified the cheongsam to be incredibly alluring—slits went up to the thigh, and the waistline was cinched like a vase.
What's particularly interesting is that the production team unearthed advertisements from calendar posters from back then, and those cheongsam styles are still fashionable today.

They even invited big names in the fashion industry to comment. One designer said, "Look at these frog buttons on the neckline. Our ancestors had already mastered the art of feigned allure!"

What's most amazing is that the production team obtained precious historical footage:

Socialites in 1920s Shanghai danced the tango while wearing cheongsams;
A custom-made cheongsam worn by Soong Mei-ling during her visit to the United States in the 1940s;
There are even old videos of Bruce Lee's mother playing mahjong while wearing a cheongsam;
The most popular segment was "Qipao Transformation," where the show invited popular actresses to try on classic styles from different eras.

Yang Mi was also among those invited. As the audience watched Yang Mi transform from being wrapped up like a rice dumpling in Qing Dynasty attire to wearing a sexy cheongsam like Maggie Cheung in "In the Mood for Love," the comments section was filled with: "The history of the cheongsam's evolution is entirely a history of women's liberation!"

What's most impressive about this film is that it clearly explains how the cheongsam went from the boudoir to the international catwalk.

From being criticized as "immoral" back then to becoming an object of imitation by international brands, the program ended with a set of comparison pictures: a luxury brand's latest model and an old cheongsam from the Republic of China era were placed side by side, and the similarity was as high as 80%. Netizens burst out laughing: "So it turns out that foreigners are just copying our homework!"

Local TV stations were not to be outdone. Shaanxi TV produced a special program, "The Mystery of Black in Qin Dynasty," which deeply revealed the Qin Dynasty's tradition of "respecting black," sparking heated discussions across the internet.

Many people know that the Qin Dynasty revered black, but they don't know the specific reasons why.

The mystery of the Qin Dynasty, as revealed in Shaanxi TV's "The Mystery of the Dark Qin," has finally been solved.

The program team used 3D animation to recreate the entire production process of the Qin Dynasty Quju Shenyi: from retting hemp to extracting fibers to extracting mineral dyes, and finally presenting the classic style of "cross-collar right-fastening and continuous lapel with hooked edges".

Historians were also invited to demonstrate Qin Mo's unique formula for black dye, which uses oak fruit as the main ingredient and is mixed with iron slag. This formula ensures both colorfastness and reduces costs.

The program analyzes the origins of "dark-skinned" culture from three perspectives:
The Five Elements Theory: Zou Yan, a Yin-Yang scholar, proposed the "Theory of the Five Virtues and Their Cycles." Qin claimed to be associated with the virtue of water (corresponding to the color black). The Records of the Grand Historian states that "their clothes, banners, and flags were all black!"

There are also military considerations. Archaeological discoveries show that the Qin army's leather armor had the most black residue, and experiments have proven that black had the best concealment on the Loess Plateau battlefield.

Furthermore, in contrast, the State of Chu at the same time needed to import 20 kinds of dyes to produce a magnificent crimson color, while Qin only needed 3 kinds of local materials to mass-produce it.

Black is dirt-resistant and doesn't fade easily. Experts jokingly say that "the people of the Qin Dynasty were already into minimalism."

The most impressive thing is that the production team even found someone to recreate the Quju Shenyi worn by people in the Qin Dynasty.

The audience was astonished after watching: "So the clothes worn by the Terracotta Warriors weren't just randomly designed!"

"The workmanship of this garment is exquisite; the aesthetic sense of our ancestors was truly remarkable!"

After the program aired, there was a lot of discussion online.

Some people say, "Now we know that Qin Dynasty soldiers wore black not only for looks, but also for tactical reasons!"

"So, all the later night-clothes were Qin's fault?"

"Isn't this the earliest form of camouflage? The Qin Dynasty people were so ingenious!"

"No wonder the original color reconstruction of the Terracotta Warriors looks so cool!"

"Our ancestors mastered the art of minimalism long ago!"

Other regions were not to be outdone, with Jinling TV launching a documentary titled "The Spirit of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Hiding the Universe in a Sleeve"!

The camera pans across the misty Kuaiji Mountain, where clear, melodious zither music drifts through the swaying bamboo shadows. A calm, distant voice-over says: "This was an era of galloping horses and singing wildly, and also an era of hidden integrity—when power shifts like a game of chess, scholars use their robes as the chessboard, making their moves with unwavering resolve amidst their wide sleeves and flowing robes."

The scene shifts to the first setting: a chess game in a pine forest. Two scholars dressed in "crane-feathered cloaks" play chess in the mountains, their robes billowing in the wind like wings. A close-up shows the frayed edges of their sleeves and the faint ink stains on their wrists as they place the chess pieces on the board.
The subtitle quotes from "A New Account of Tales of the World": "Pei Kai was clear and insightful, and Wang Rong was concise and succinct; both were like wind and clouds hidden in their sleeves."

A whisk lightly swept across the wine jar, soaking the silk robes beneath and revealing the patches on the linings. The camera panned down at the seven drunken figures, their robes overlapping, like a splashed-ink landscape painting.

A voice-over says: "They defied the traditional ethics with their unrestrained behavior, yet they sewed their pride into every fold of their clothes—Ruan Ji's torn white robe when he lost his mother was more poignant than the poem 'Yong Huai Shi'. The wide sleeves and flowing robes concealed not only the elegance of refined scholars, but also the spiritual totem of contemporary youth."

The production team at Jinling TV put a lot of effort into this documentary, and of course, the strong support from Shengshi Pictures was also crucial; otherwise, it would have been impossible to complete it in such a short time.

Unlike typical documentaries, this documentary uses several famous scenes from the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties period to showcase its content.

Soon, the second act began.

In the scene, an old craftsman's calloused fingers are twisting freshly dyed "sky-blue" silk. The fabric sways gently in the wind on a bamboo pole, shimmering with a bluish-white hue like that of a woman after a rain shower. Beside the dye vat sits a young scholar in a round-necked robe, reading the "Zhuangzi".

"The future is terrifying!"

The old craftsman suddenly spoke, his aged voice mingling with the sounds of dyeing cloth in the dye house: "Do you know why the clothes of the Wei and Jin dynasties are all so loose?"

The scholar closed his book and watched as the old man unfurled half of his straight-hemmed robe. Sunlight filtered through the thin gauze, casting butterfly-shaped patches of light on the ground, flickering and shimmering with the fabric's movement.

"Look at this light and shadow,"

The scholar reached out to catch the dappled sunlight on the ground. “Narrow sleeves restrict one’s mind and nature, while the world is vast—” He suddenly stood up and spread his arms wide, his wide sleeves unfurling in the wind like the wings of a roc, “—but it is only the width of a robe.”

Outside the dyehouse, the bustling sounds of Tongtuo Street drifted by, as a foreign merchant led his camel past. The old craftsman smiled as he dipped plain silk into a newly mixed indigo dye vat, the water reflecting the figures of two people: one in a tall hat and wide belt, the other in short clothes and with his hair tied up, like a painting of a recluse come to life.

Next comes the famous scene of "Visiting Dai on a Snowy Night".

Snowflakes pattered softly against the purple silk cloak, and the camera slowly panned down from Wang Huizhi's shoulder. The cloak, dyed with wisteria from the Wu region, shimmered faintly in the moonlight. As the hem swept across the fresh snow, the silk satin brushed against the snow, leaving behind intermittent, spiderweb-like traces.

In close-up shots, the ice-crack embroidery on the hem of the cloak is faintly visible—it's a flying white pattern specially embroidered by the craftsman, imitating the brushstrokes of the "Timely Clearing After Snowfall" calligraphy. Whenever the hem of the robe flutters, these cracks embroidered with silver threads overlap with the real drag marks on the snow, as if reflecting the owner's wavering emotions at this moment.

The tracks in the snow are sometimes deep and heavy like the strokes of seal script, and sometimes fleeting like the continuous strokes of cursive script. The most wonderful thing is that they suddenly stop at the turning point, just like the abruptly ended record in "A New Account of the World": "After arriving overnight, he turned back without going in when he reached the door."

As the camera finally zoomed out, the broken lines on the snow formed a wildly cursive "兴" (xing) character—missing the last dot.

A narrator begins: "When people mention the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the idiom 'the southward migration of the elite' immediately comes to mind!"

The scene opens with a 47-second aerial panning shot, following a group of ragged, southward-migrating gentry.

When a close-up shot of the camphor wood trunk carried by the oldest person was taken, a corner of the trunk suddenly cracked, and half of the yellowed copy of the "Preface to the Orchid Pavilion" scroll slipped out, trembling in the river breeze.

When the camera zooms in on the box, three neatly folded old robes are visible: the top layer, a crimson gauze court robe, is riddled with wormholes; the middle layer, a plain linen robe, bears unwashed bloodstains; and the bottom layer, a faded curved-hem robe, has a piece of soil from the hometown wrapped in blue cloth sewn into the collar—in a close-up shot, yellow soil is seen seeping into the river through the seams of the cloth.

The subtitles, written in regular script, appear stroke by stroke:

Xie An sighed and said, "This garment is worn out."
The camera cuts to the old man's trembling fingers stroking the patch on his collar.

"These were the clothes I wore when I first crossed the river!"

A sudden flashback scene inserts: the moment when the right-fastening blouse of this folded-hem robe was torn by an iron nail on the city gate as Luoyang fell.
Next up is the well-known story of Tao Yuanming's reclusion.

In the morning mist, an old man in a coarse cloth shirt bent over to pick chrysanthemums when his belt suddenly broke. He laughed and threw the belt into the stream, the camera freezing on the floating belt and the petals drifting downstream.

The poem "Drinking Wine, No. 5" comes to mind: I built my hut in the midst of human habitation, yet there is no noise of carriages and horses. You ask me how this can be? When the heart is far away, the place naturally becomes secluded. I pick chrysanthemums by the eastern fence, and leisurely gaze at the Southern Mountain. The mountain air is beautiful at sunset, and the birds fly back together. There is true meaning in this, but I have forgotten the words to express it.

The documentary concludes with a scene at the ruins of Luoyang's old city, where a fragmented woven shoe trembles slightly in the hands of an archaeologist. The voiceover fades away.

“When we gaze at these fabrics in the museum, we see not decaying threads, but untamed souls—they use clothing as pens to write in history: the body may perish, but the spirit endures.”

(End of this chapter)