China's thriving Hanfu industry spreads traditional culture globally

From the streets of London, UK, to the heart of Caoxian County in Shandong Province, eastern China, the traditional Chinese garment known as Hanfu has gained immense popularity, with Caoxian County emerging as the capital of China's thriving Hanfu industry.

In recent years, a growing number of young Chinese individuals, both in China and globally, have been reconnecting with their cultural heritage, with many adopting the traditional Chinese attire known as Hanfu, a trend that has gained significant momentum over the past decade.

A Hanfu studio in London offers people the opportunity to try on Hanfu from different eras and have authentic hair and makeup done for photo shoots. Hanfu fans demonstrated a range of greeting gestures, each originating from a distinct Chinese dynasty.

"I think we shouldn't forget what we are. We need to be proud of our own culture," said Zhang Lijun, a Hanfu enthusiast and makeup artist.

The Hanfu revival has generated great interest from Chinese young people online, both inside and outside the country.

Caoxian County, over 600 kilometers from Beijing, makes up 50 percent of all Hanfu garments sold nationwide. And one of the main hubs is Daiji town, it's also known as a Taobao town, because of the volume of online orders shipped from there.

There are over 14,000 online stores selling Hanfu there as well as 2,000 businesses at every link in the supply chain. A total of 12 billion yuan worth of Hanfu was sold in this region in the last year alone, and the numbers are growing.

"It led to a 'Caoxian Model' where one store inspired a household, a household inspired a street, a street inspired a village, a village inspired a township, and a township inspired the entire county. It grew from a small spark to a prairie fire. The earliest is e-commerce, later we had a single division of labor, and then grew to cluster development. Through e-commerce, we formed four e-commerce industrial clusters," said Liu Xia, deputy director of Caoxian's e-commerce service center.

Yao Chixing runs a large e-commerce business called Luo Ruyan, and is passionate about promoting traditional Chinese culture. Her e-commerce showroom includes dozens of live-streaming rooms, where people can purchase thousands of designs 24 hours a day.

The most popular item for sale is the horse-face skirt, which was first seen in the Song Dynasty.

"It is made in the workshop behind us. Our designers first draw the patterns on the computer, and then the fabric is woven with these patterns. After the fabric is woven, it is then processed and pleated. The skirt can be machine-washed. The finished product looks like a pleated skirt," said Yao.

Yao said that incorporating these beautiful clothes into daily fashion is one of the aims of promoting the horse-face skirt.

China's thriving Hanfu industry spreads traditional culture globally

Israel's influence on the Trump administration outsizes the already significant sway it held over previous presidencies, contributing to miscalculations that ultimately led to strikes on Iran and putting the temporary ceasefire at risk, said a U.S. expert.

After about 40 days of deadly clashes, the United States and Iran reached a two-week ceasefire on Wednesday, with Israel supporting the truce. However, the truce remains deeply fragile, especially as Israel continues to attack Lebanon, which Iran has called a violation of the ceasefire and threatened a strong response if it continues.

However, the power of the Israel lobby in the United States, especially over the Trump Administration, may weaken its ability to rein in Israeli military action, said Anton Fedyashin, an associate professor at American University.

"The Trump administration has no one but itself to blame. Although it is acting in a very important context, which is the general, enormous influence of the Israeli government over all American administrations, except that under Trump, this influence of course is greater than ever before. Israel has a very powerful lobby in the United States. This is absolutely no secret; not only articles, but very good books have been written about this," he said in an interview with China Global Television Network.

Fedyashin said this influence, combined with poor intelligence, contributed to what he described as a misjudgment that Iran's government would easily fall.

"The problem is that while previous presidents have managed to somehow resist that lobby, Donald Trump seems to have completely fallen for Benjamin Netanyahu's case to convince him that the attack on Iran will be lightning fast, will achieve results very quickly. And this becomes a very important question about the quality of Mossad information, because along with Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House meeting, which happened on February 11, at least according to New York Times, was the head of the Israeli Mossad, and both Netanyahu and the head of Mossad were convincing Trump that Iran's government is on its last legs, that all it needs is a slight push, and that was a catastrophic misjudgment," he said.

US influence over Israel limited as attacks on Lebanon threaten to shatter ceasefire: expert