Just wanted to write my own personal reflection of wearing a Hanfu. For some context, cruises have formal nights where as the name implies you dress in formal attire for dinner. As you probably know from my post and comment history, I’m a Chinese American who loves going on cruises for vacations. That was my inspiration for buying a Hanfu. At first I was worried about sticking out and kept on thinking about what other people would think especially considering I’m on a ship with mostly white Americans. Of course I did stand out quite a bit but what struck me by surprise was the many compliments from other passengers including the captain himself. For my first cruise as an adult, I bought a Hanfu to wear for the formal nights. Of course wearing a Hanfu has also been a way to express myself as a non self hating ethnic Chinese especially with growing Sinophobia amongst other Asian countries. Since then, wearing a Hanfu has become a cruise tradition of mine as a way of cultural expression especially as an American Born Chinese who has grown up embracing both Chinese and American culture within large populations of Chinese diaspora here in America. Korean netizens have every right to fight back and defend their culture against Chinese netizens who troll Korean celebrities wearing a Hanbok, but I think we can also agree that it does not give Korean netizens any right to gate-keep actual Chinese culture from Chinese people. At the risk of stirring up controversy and potentially getting spammed by a bunch of trolls from other Asian countries who do not see Hanfu as actual Chinese culture (even though it is), I have only begun to learn about the Hanfu Hanbok cultural feud between Chinese and Korean netizens when I bought my first Hanfu. And what I mean by gate-keeping, go on to r/Korea and you will find many ridiculous claims that Chinese people are not allowed to claim Hanfu as their own because so many in that subreddit are under the false impression that it’s fake history and that it’s fake culture (which as we all know is not true). I as an American citizen have no say in these cultural matters, but learning more about these issues has only increased my incentive to wear Hanfu to make a statement that we should all embrace and respect every country’s uniqueness, that the Hanfu is an important part of Chinese culture just as the Kimono is to Japanese culture and Hanbok for Korean culture, and that many ethnic Chinese including from China and overseas Chinese like myself also have much to offer in terms of culture the same that every country in the world does as well. And to those who believe Chinese people wearing a Hanfu is the equivalent to Americans wearing a cowboy costume from the 1800s, guess what, there are Americans who still dress like that particularly in Texas of course. Chinese people around the world including myself are also not self hating people despite what many Redditors want other people to believe, and that we like many people continue to find ways to love ourselves in spite of the geopolitical situation going on lately. Source: I’m an American who knows about my own country better than you. To end off on a good note, I also did meet a Vietnamese family on my last cruise and me wearing a Hanfu has actually inspired them to wear their Ao Dai for their next cruise. I only hope that my interaction with the Vietnamese family proves that despite the tense political situation from many countries around the world, there is room for people to have healthy cultural exchanges just as we had.
