Author: Zhao Yantao · Editor: Lu Cong
I am Zhao Yantao, known in English as Allen Zhao, founder of the Chinese Traditional Costume Movement and president of the Chinese Traditional Costume Movement Planning Team.
Today we stand in front of the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles not to make trouble and not to put on a show. We are here to proclaim openly a right that has always belonged to the Chinese people: the Chinese people have the right to wear their own clothing, and they also have the right, by peaceful means, to refuse to go on being subjects.
Xi Jinping has put lifetime rule back on his own head. He is no longer merely a general secretary; he is making himself an emperor, acting against the course of history and dragging the entire country backwards. Faced with this situation, we do not choose violence, we do not choose conspiracy, and we do not choose to harm anyone. We choose a method that anyone can understand, anyone can learn, and no one can completely ban — putting on the traditional costume of ancient China.
Hanfu, Tang-style dress, Song-style dress, and Ming-style dress are not stage costumes; they are mirrors. What the mirror reflects is this: when supreme power once again drapes itself in the shadow of the dragon robe, ordinary people can take that shadow of the dragon robe and wear it on their own bodies — in daily life, at work, at school, and on the streets — to satirize it, to dissolve it, and to force it to face them. This is peaceful political resistance. Its purpose is very clear: to compel the CCP to compromise, to compel Xi Jinping to step down, and to move the Chinese nation gradually into a democratic system.
Our path is equally clear. We begin with university students, on university campuses; then we enter senior high school and junior high school campuses; then the white-collar stratum and the blue-collar stratum; from the cities to the countryside. Modern networks will turn a garment into a signal, a campus into a node, and a single walk down the street into a public memory that cannot be completely erased. One person wearing it is a personal choice; a group of people wearing it is civic action; wearing it continuously is the quietest — and the most glaring — repudiation of lifetime rule.
The Chinese Traditional Costume Movement Planning Team is still being formed. At present, Zhang Lei serves as Director of Communications and Jiang Junliang as Director of Information. We are also publicly recruiting a Director of Planning, a Director of Materials, and a Director of Finance, as well as professional talent willing to make this cause succeed. We are not looking for people who can only shout slogans, but for people who can do communications, who can do organization, who can do materials, who can do finance — people who can sustain an ongoing movement. Anyone who identifies with this direction can come and talk with us today. An incomplete team is nothing to fear; what is frightening is to hold the ideas yet dare not stand up in public.
Tomorrow we will speak out here again. The Traditional Costume Movement is not a one-day bustle; it is a peaceful action that can be replicated, can be sustained, and can walk from the campuses to the streets, and from overseas back into China. To put on traditional costume is not to return to the past, but to refuse to hand the future back to one man’s lifelong power.
Chinese people can wear traditional costume to work, wear traditional costume to school, and wear traditional costume on the streets. This is not a revival of antiquity; it is a statement. The statement is: we are not imperial subjects; we are people who are determined to become citizens.
Thank you, everyone. You are welcome to join us.
