Hanfu, Hanbok, and online quarrelings

The presence of the Hanfu Movement on the internet is vast, and sometimes this can take unexpected turns. In November 2020， Chinese actor Xu Kai 许凯 posted a picture of himself on the microblogging platform Weibo wearing traditional clothing on set, which resembled Hanbok 한복, traditional Korean clothing. This post alone was interesting, but the producer of the show Yu Zheng 于正 sparked a large-scale discussion when he wrote that this is definitely hanfu of the Ming Dynasty, and it cannot be described as ‘hanbok’ by the illiterate just because it was adopted in ‘Goryeo’, which was a vassal state of the Ming Dynasty.[Ji]

Yu Zheng’s words are bold, to say the least. Throughout history, there has been much contact between China and the nations surrounding it. During the Ming dynasty (1386-1644), there was a lot of contact with its neighbor, the kingdom of Gorgyeo (918-1392), from which the modern word Korea is derived. There was also contact between the preceding Song dynasty (907-1279) and Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and Gorgyeo. Yu Zheng’s aggressive wording touched upon difficulties in Chinese-Korean relations.

On the Chinese side, commenters on Weibo approved of Yu Zheng’s wording, and a hashtag named Hanfu Challenge gained traction as a response. The internet has always been a place for some members of the Hanfu Movement to spread their nationalist ideas.[Leibold 2010, p 547-8] Weibo has become the next step for this. Underneath Yu Zheng’s post, we find comments the likes of:

啦啦爱pp: Handsome Chinese man, Chinese apparel!

此岛常年下雪：The apparel is Chinese and so is the handsome man!

令姜要开心：During the Ming it should’ve been called Joseon! Anyway, I hope you film less Qing dynasty pigtail dramas. Nowadays a lot of foreigner’s stereotypes believe China to be of those shaven heads and magua’s. But with our long history, the Qing dynasty is only one of those occasional downfalls. Much more dynasties are waiting to be explored! Song, Ming, and even the Wei and Jin. I am looking forward to your work. [Weibo]

On the Korean side, there were those who argued that some Chinese were making groundless claims about Korean culture, and some tweets stated that China tried to make unfair claims about Korean culture. The discussions took to impolite levels.