Chinese Clothing Determining the Dynasty

If you are watching a Chinese drama, you can determine in which dynasty the story has happened by looking at the characteristic of their clothing. Here, I only describe some obvious characteristic of clothing at several dynasty:

Qin Dynasty 秦朝 (B.C. 221-206)

• Clothing was characterized by dark colour

Tang Dynasty 唐朝 (A.D. 618-907)

>The more fat the more sexy for ladies

>Ladies clothing - widened opened chest

>Lady's forehead painting; It's said that the princess had a little accident which left a small scratch on her forehead. Then she started to paint her forehead to cover the scratch. Apparently, it made her looked more beautiful. Painting forehead was then followed by other ladies.

Wudai Dynasty 五代 (A.D. 907-960)

• Tiny shoes for ladies, called sāncùnjīnlián (三寸金莲) (translated: a 3-inch canary flower), as the smaller the feet the prettier

Song Dynasty 宋朝 (A.D. 960-1279)

• Characteristic: long and wide sleeves

Yuan Dynasty 元朝 (A.D. 1271-1368)

• The Mongolian tribe. The use of unique cap both on males and females

Ming Dynasty 明朝 (A.D. 1368-1644)

• Characteristic: a squared/box form of male cap
• Embroidery pattern on the front and the back of the cloth are the same, mostly characterized by preferred animals in this era, egret and phoenix.

Qing Dynasty 清朝 (A.D. 1636-1911)

• Male unique cap, tied with some bird feather
• Embroidery pattern on the front and the back of the male cloth are different, characterized by preferred animal in this era which are also different from Ming Dynasty
• Big floral ornament on ladies head, hence slow elegant head movement
• Lady's 'high shoes' as shown below