Author: Zhao Yantao Editor: Lu Cong
The Chinese Traditional Costume Movement Planning Team seeks to propose an approach different from the traditional ways of political confrontation.
We are a group of young people. We are familiar with the internet, social media, and modern means of communication, and we are also familiar with traditional Chinese culture. We hope to combine these two forces and, through traditional costume, visual symbols, and online communication, explore a new form of peaceful political expression.
Our core idea is simple:
Not force against force, but culture against the monopoly of power, and peaceful action to awaken civic consciousness.
More than a century ago, the era in which Dr. Sun Yat-sen lived was entirely different from today. The political environment, social structure, and military technology of that era cannot be mentioned in the same breath as today's. China today possesses a highly modernized military and social control system; if ordinary people were to take up armed confrontation, they would very likely be the first to become victims of the conflict.
We do not want the Chinese people to become cannon fodder in political conflicts.
Therefore, the Chinese Traditional Costume Movement seeks to explore another path:
Let political expression enter everyday life; let traditional culture become a public political symbol; and let more ordinary people express their political aspirations in a peaceful, open, and nonviolent way.
We propose:
"Hanfu, Tang-style dress, Song-style dress, and Ming-style dress are not stage costumes — they are mirrors."
Here, traditional costume is not merely a garment; it is also a visual language.
When people wear traditional costume in the streets, take part in public activities, and appear in online spaces, it can become a form of peaceful political expression; and as more and more young people join in through short videos, livestreams, photography, artistic creation, and social media, traditional culture can also gain new public meaning.
We do not advocate violence.
We do not encourage armed conflict.
We do not want ordinary people to pay with their lives for political goals.
Rather, we hope that through culture, communication, public participation, and nonviolent action, we can gradually awaken the civic consciousness of more people, so that Chinese society can discuss questions such as power, constitutionalism, democracy, the rule of law, and political reform.
Our goal is not to create new hatred, but to prompt society to reflect:
To whom does the country ultimately belong?
How should political power be generated?
Should power be bound by the constitution and the law?
Should the people have the right to genuinely participate in public affairs?
What the Chinese Traditional Costume Movement hopes to explore is precisely such a new form of political expression:
No guns, no cannons, and never let the people become cannon fodder;
Express our stand through culture, spread ideas through the internet, and drive change through peaceful action.
We believe that political change does not have to come only through war.
A society's change can also begin with a garment, a photograph, a video, an act of public expression, and the awakening of an ordinary person.
This is the path the Chinese Traditional Costume Movement hopes to explore —
with traditional culture as its symbol, the internet as its tool of communication, nonviolent action as its method, and the awakening of civic consciousness as its goal, to move China toward a more open, free, rule-of-law-governed, and democratic future.
