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The qipao, the Western dress and the Taiwanese shan: images from 100 yearsof Taiwanese clothingCheng Hong-sheng; Jiang Yajoo

Online Publication Date: 01 June 2008

To cite this Article Hong-sheng, Cheng and Yajoo, Jiang(2008)'The qipao, the Western dress and the Taiwanese shan: images from100 years of Taiwanese clothing',Inter-Asia Cultural Studies,9:2,300 323To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14649370801965752URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649370801965752

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Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, 2008

ISSN 14649373 Print/ISSN 14698447 Online/08/02030024 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14649370801965752

The qipao, the Western dress and the Taiwanese shan: images from 100 years of Taiwanese clothing

CHENG Hong-sheng (Translated by JIANG Yajoo)

Taylor and FrancisRIAC_A_296741.sgm10.1080/14649370801965752Inter-Asia Cultural Studies1464-9373 (print)/1469-8447 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis92000000June 2008YajooJiangjasmarkia@msn.com

Most people might firstly guess that this old picture (fig. 1) of four young ladies wearingqipaos is from 1930s Shanghai. This date is correct but the place is Tainan, Taiwan, whichhad been under Japanese colonial rule for forty years at that time. Guessing it to be Shang-hai is not too far-fetched, however, for Shanghai style was indeed a trend in Tainan.

My mother and her three friends, all of whom worked together in a Western dress

2

store, took this picture in a photo studio called Song-Zhu. The picture was probably taken in1937, and for it they all wore the calico qipao that meant vogue at that time. Mother recalledthat it was considered bold to take a photo like this. It was bold not because wearing theqipao was regarded as violating the traditional rules of their parents generation butbecause they had to hide from the Japanese police. Mother recalled that she once went outwith a friend wearing the qipao on the street, and they were loudly denounced by theJapanese police as Qing slaves

3

. 1937 was the year that the

Lugouqiao Incident

broke out. TheJapanese launched a massive attack on China that year, and meanwhile they were alsoexecuting the Kominka Movement in Taiwan, which was designed to assimilate theTaiwanese into Japanese national identity; for example, they instigated a movement,National Language (Japanese) Families, and collected and burned Taiwanese altars forworshipping ancestors etc. This makes it clear that the logic behind the Japanese policeforbidding Taiwanese women from wearing the qipao was based on an intention to cut offthe relationship between Taiwan and China.

The qipao was seen to represent China then, but it was actually a new symbol. The qipaothat my mother and her colleagues wore in the photo had been reformed into somethingvery different from the one that was worn by the Manchu people of the late Qing dynasty.This kind of new style was permeated with the graceful bearing of the Chinese women of therepublic, and it in fact clearly signified New China, representing an awakening modernChina to rival the empire of Japan. On the other hand, the Japanese police tolerated the oldtang zhuang

4

or traditional Taiwanese shan, which the generation of my grandmother nevergave up wearing, seeing that the old tang zhuang could only represent the defeated, laggardold China, which was not threatening at all. With the Kominka movement already under-way at the end of the 1930s, the Japanese police in Taiwan, of course, could not ignore thenew qipao, brimming as it was with the significance of new China. And in remembranceof their rebellion, this photo has been kept for all these years by several girls from Tainan.

The Taiwanese young ladies that year, however boldly wearing such reformed qipaosin the new Chinese style, were not exactly showing their political position or nationality.Mother recalled that wearing a qipao while taking photos was purely for the sake ofaesthetics, and the qipao was borrowed from the photo studio. She then went on to saythat what was trendy in Shanghai would also be well received in Taiwan, not only clothesbut also the ballads sung by Shirley Yamaguchi (Yamaguchi Yoshiko) and Zhou Xuan.Mother recalled that during the years in her youth when Taiwan was economicallydepressed, many people lost their jobs, and some of them went to Shanghai to bring back

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fashionable things. Shanghai thus became the fashion pioneer for Taiwan. The new qipaomight have come to Taiwan through this channel. Even earlier, the Feng Xian, one versionof the reformed Tang Zhuang, had been very popular for a while.

Mother and her friends wearing qipaos all worked in a Western- style dress storeowned by the Japanese. This dress store was called Kiyoshiya (Ri Ji Wu), and it waslocated on Suehirochos (Mo Guang Ting) most fashionable and exclusive boulevard. Thiswas the modern boulevard forcefully constructed by the Tainan Prefecture government bytearing down the old stores and streets. All of the new stores on the street were owned bythe Japanese, including the tallest building at that time which was known as Hayashi (LinBai Huo). Mother applied to be a dressmaking apprentice at Kiyoshiya when she waseighteen years old in 1936.

The surging new wave of fashionable Western dresses

This photo, of the staff of Kiyoshiya (fig. 8), was taken in the New Year of 1937. The shopsign at the top right clearly says Kiyoshiya Western Dress Store, and the employees inthe photo, both the men and the women, are in fact all in Western clothes. This attire, theso-called Western clothing of the Japanese, had already become common among the newgeneration in Taiwan. In the photo, an impeccably dressed Japanese couple sits in themiddle holding their baby. Except for the two high-level Japanese employees wearing tradi-tional Kimonos, most of the people pictured are Taiwanese and all are wearing Westernclothing. The clothing worn by these people is not that much different from what peoplewear today, seventy years later.

That day, mother (the first one on the right in the first row) wore a dress she madeherself to join the staff members in expressing their greetings to each other on the ChineseNew Years Day. This was her first job: she had come here for only half a year, but her skilledcraftmanship soon made her a formal employee. The man with a tie standing behind her,also a Tainan native, was one of the stores dressmakers, as was his brother. Western-styledressmaking tailoring for (Western clothes)was a newly rising profession, one thatattracted many young men and young women. The young generation that had receivedmodern education had not been willing to wear the traditional Tang Zhuang like theirparents, but started to wear Western clothing. Putting different patterns on dresses becamein vogue. Afterward, the new Japanese term, (Western-style) dressmaking, replaced theoriginal usage in Taiwanese (

minnan hua

) as the only word for any kind of tailor.The first Taiwanese generation to receive Japanese colonial modern education started to

wear Western uniforms; this became their common attire, and their hairstyles changed asthe clothes did. This generation, especially young girls, no longer grew their hair long towear in different kinds of buns; rather, they started to have electrified hair (permed hair),and wore different kinds of hairstyles. As the image of Shanghai fashion, the new Chinesereformed qipao followed the trend of the Western dress to Taiwan.

In this photo from the 1940s (fig. 10), mother and her colleagues are on an outing wear-ing new dresses that they designed themselves with fancy hats and fashionable hairdos.From head to toe, this generation was totally different from the previous one in clothing andappearance. At this time, after mother had been studying in Suehirocho for four years, shefinished her apprenticeship, and then she left Suehirocho to run her own dress studio. Aftermy grandfather passed away, mother borrowed some money from relatives, and went to adressmaking college in Tokyo to get a formal education in dressmaking. That turned out tobe a short-term professional education: mother went to classes all day and finished thedegree in six months because of the tight budget. Only having a public school education,mother relied on this certificate from Japan to operate a dressmaking cram school andtaught Taiwanese girls how to make all kinds of dresses.

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The last gasp of the old Tang Zhuang

That people of my mothers generation utterly accepted the Western dress reveals the extentof their discontinuity with their parents generation in terms of appearance. In the onlyfamily picture of the year 1923 when mother was still little (fig. 5), all of her female eldersare wearing the Tang Zhuang with their hair in traditional buns, many still had their feetbound, and even my then five or six-year-old mother is also wearing the Tang Zhuangwhile sitting on the ground. This shows that the Japanese government was open to theTaiwanese traditional attire because this traditional attire did not cause the Japanesegovernment to feel any suspicion or fear. For it was after all a remnant of the decline of theold China, unlike the new qipao of republican China, which represented a kind of newpower. Besides, what women wore had nothing to do with power.

After the Western dress became a mainstream fashion for the young generation, a newterm, the Taiwanese shan, appeared in order to distinguish traditional clothing fromWestern dress. The elder generation prior to mothers generation did not receive Japaneseeducation, and so wore the Taiwanese shan throughout their lives. This generation thusbecame the concrete image of the old adherents of the late Qing Dynasty. My grandmotherwas like this until she passed away in the year 1972. In this photo (fig. 2) of my grandmotherin the 1960s, her two-piece traditional Taiwanese shan was quite plain and simple. I hadalways considered the clothes of their generation to be unremarkable, until recently, when Isaw several family photos that had long been forgotten.

In this old, faded picture (fig. 26), we can still discern how gorgeous my grandmothersTang Zhuang wasa delicately embroidered turtleneck worn with a necklace and brooch,and a pleated skirt. Though the colors cannot be seen in the black-and-white photo, we canstill imagine how splendidly grandmother was dressed. That year was about 1918, and it wasalready over twenty years after Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895. Grandmother in her earlytwenties had already given birth to two sons, and the younger one is my father. These twoboys peculiar outfits, according to what my eldest aunt said, were the popular childrensfashion at that time. These two boys started to wear the new fashions, and their brothers andsisters would be receiving Japanese modern education: they would have a different appear-ance and spiritual world from that of their parents. Another earlier picture (fig. 27) fromapproximately the time, 1914, shows my grandfather holding his eldest son. My grandfatherand uncle are both in Tang Zhuang. I have never seen any seniors wear this kind of mensTang Zhuang in my lifetime, as mens traditional clothes have disappeared without a trace.

A collage o

f

Tang Zhuang, kimonos and dresses

The Japanese occupation of Taiwan not only made the Western style dress mainstream forthe new generation, but also made the traditional Japanese kimono into another kind offormal dress symbolizing high culture. By the time they grew up, people of my parentsgeneration no longer wore the Taiwanese shan, but occasionally would wear kimonos totake pictures. For example, in photo (fig. 28) my fathers kimono from around 1940 is stillcharacterized by a sense of traditional Japanese modernity, and had become the mainsymbol of modernity in the mind of my fathers generation. However, the formal kimonocoming from Japan was quite expensive, and most Taiwanese could not afford it, and theycould only rent one to take pictures for remembrance in the photo studio.

People of my grandparents generation had very different feelings towards the changesof fashion (fig. 3). This is a photomontage of fathers eldest uncle in 1930. In the first picture,he is wearing a long gown with a mandarin jacket, a Manchurian hat, and he is holding awalking stick. In the second picture, he has changed into a traditional Japanese kimono, andsits on a chair with a cigarette in his hand. Then these two pictures were composed into a

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photomontage by the studio. As a child, he had only studied in traditional Chinese schoolfor several years, and did not receive a public school education during the Japanese colonialperiod. On the other hand, he was a pharmacists assistant, which was a modern profession,and his working environment was filled with the accoutrements of Western modern medi-cine. His generation was in transition from traditional to modern society; whether hebecame an old adherent of the past regime or a son of the modern world depended on hiseducation and the profession he took up. He was neither entirely an old adherent nor achild of the modern world, and it is no wonder he would take such a picture. My fourthgranduncle was different even though he belonged to the same generation.

Because the fourth granduncle was born later, he received a public school education,and also was the right age to benefit from the recruitment of the newly-established medicalschool founded by the Governor-General of Taiwanthis resembles the cases of ChiangWei-shui

5

and Tu Tsungming

6

, both of whom were able to take the medical school entranceexamination right after they graduated. Therefore, in the same generation, there was a sonof the modern and a doctor practicing Western medicine at modern standards among theother brothers and sisters who were still adherents of the late Qing dynasty. And my grand-mother, with her late Qing appearance, was only several years older than him, and yetbelonged to another world. In the photograph of the whole family (fig. 6), shot in 1950,fathers fourth uncle has the appearance of a modern doctor, and his wife standing at hisback also looks like the wife of the modern doctor. His three sisters sit with him in thefront rowand my grandmother and my grandaunts still have their hair in traditional bunsand wear the old Tang Zhuang. These kinds of differences among brothers and sisters, ofcourse, did not occur in the next generation. People of my parents generation were allchildren of the modern world: they received a thoroughly modern Japanese education,wore Western clothes, and adopted a modern appearance.

Changing regimes, changing fashions

There is an old Chinese saying to describe past dynasty changes: Men surrendered butwomen did not": it means that mens clothes and appearance were always forcibly changedinto the style of the new dynasty, and yet womens clothes remained as they had beenbefore. When the Manchus attacked central China in the seventeenth century, for example,the men of the Han nationality were forced to wear a queue and give up the clothes of theMing dynasty, but the women retained their traditional clothes and hairstyles. The situationwas quite similar when the Japanese empire occupied Taiwan. Taiwanese men changedtheir appearance in the generation of my grandfather, but my grandmother kept the tradi-tional Qing appearance throughout her lifetime. Recently, Academia Sinica has hired manyresearchers from India, and thus there are many young Indian couples appearing in the oldvillage of Nangang. These young Indian women usually wear colorful Indian saris, but theIndian men uniformly wear Western shirts and pants. In India, this change in mens dressfirst happened when the British Empire occupied India in the nineteenth century, whileuntil now their womens traditional clothes have stubbornly refused to disappear.

Therefore, we can see that mens traditional clothes in China, no matter whether it isthe Taiwanese shan, the Tang Zhuang or the long mandarin jacket, were not formed untilthe Manchu dynasty was established. The traditional clothes and looks of the Chinese menbecame what had to be abandoned during the republican period of China. Not only did thequeue become old-fashioned and funny, and considered a humiliation, but also all of themen trimmed their hair into the style of Western men. And anyone who still wore the longmandarin jacket would be regarded as bizarre and outlandish. Thus for the Taiwanesemens clothes of our fathers generation the tang zhuang and Taiwanese shan have disap-peared without a trace, except for mourning apparel, which consists of white clothes and

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white robes from the former dynasty (fig. 30). This situation in which the dead and thepeople in the funeral procession still wear the clothes of the former dynasty may be calledthe living surrender, but the dead do not.

Womens fashion, however, has been able to use the reformed qipao to preserve the tradi-tion. On formal occasions, Chinese men all wear Western suits, and not the traditional lapelsuit, the Mao suit, or the Zhongshan suit; but for women, varieties of qipao can still be worn.

As to the different changes of fashion for men and women under the circumstances of aregime change, the usual idea is that the surrendered men use their womens clothes topreserve their tradition in order to show their incomplete submission. Compared to women,men indeed are subjected to a more serious impact during a regime change: they are thebearers of political power and cultural authority, and their clothes are a concrete symbol ofpower relationships. After a new regime is established, the clothes worn by the men of theformer regime naturally become the eyesores that need to be exterminated. Thus, the men ofthe former regime, whether old or young, must change their appearance to show theirsubmission to the new regime. Because women do not bear this kind of power, their clotheson the contrary can be spared. And perhaps, the possibility that women do not (surren-der) results from their conventional role, which has nothing to do with political power.

The liberation and submission of the body

Women of my grandmothers generation who confronted the overwhelming Japanesemodern reformation still preserved their traditional clothes and looks, and they did notchange even after the Retrocession (the restoration of Taiwan to Chinese rule after the defeatof the Japanese in the Pacific War). Like Indian womens, their fashion stubbornly resistedbeing affected by the regime change, or perhaps women then were essentially not concernedwith this power relationship. However, on the other hand, why did the women of mymothers generation easily submit to the fashion of this new regime? Further, they did notmerely submit, but actually changed their clothes and looks with great delight. My mothersphotos repeatedly reveal the delighted spirit of the emancipation of the body brought by thenew dress when mother and her colleagues and friends went for an outing. The settings ofthe photos are important: the young ladies wearing Western dresses in the photo (fig. 10) arein a Spring countryside, and their faces sparkle with unrestrained laughter.

In another photo (fig. 9) taken in about 1939, my youngest aunt, still a little girl, is play-ing on the seaside of Anping in Tainan, and nervously pulling my mothers white dress. Mymother and the other young ladies wearing Western dresses warily walk barefoot out to thewaves. Though they had not put on swimming suits, taking off their shoes and socks towalk to the sea, and feeling the waves lapping at their bare feet, must have made them feelthe excitement of emancipation. The woman in another picture (fig. 29) is my aunt, twoyears younger than my mother. She had brought her brothers and sisters on an outing withher colleagues and friends, and in the picture we see her burst out in a splendid smile.

The women of that new generation wore new Western clothing, explored and went onoutings everywhere, and this was a kind of a real emancipation of body. In comparison,although they wore new Western clothes as well, the men of the same generation were stilldepressed. The new clothes that the men wore were not called Western clothes but rathersuits, and when they put on the suits, what they got in exchange was a kind of submission.

7

Sanguine smiles can hardly be seen in the old photos of their generation. The most typicalone is the picture taken in 1930 (fig. 7), in which father and his friends wearing well-pressedsuits severely look at the camera.

The men of this generation, however, as the backbone of the society, were only able tomaintain a posture of dignity after all, and could not cover up the depression that the depri-vation of power caused them. This was exactly the predicament their generation fell into.

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This photo was taken during my fathers second year in senior high school (fig. 15), and theadolescents look quite depressed in the picture. The boys who studied in Tainan SecondSenior High School were outstanding in the Tainan area. The new uniform of the highschool students, on one hand, was the symbol of excellence; on the other hand, they wereforced to wear the uniform representing the new regime. Although his father and olderbrothers generation had already cut off their queues, the people of his generation evenshaved their heads when they were students. The bare heads and student uniformsdeprived their generation of the male dignity enjoyed in the traditional society, and indeedthey would not laugh under this forced submission.

The charm of the white bridal veil

In this way, after the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, the Chinese men were forced to cut offtheir queues and change their style of dress. Although in doing so they put on suits, whichalso signified as foreign for the Japanese, the suit was still a symbol of the new regime aswell. The picture from1923 (fig. 5) shows the whole family in the main room of Shi ShunXing. By this time the men had started to wear Western or even Japanese style clothes; theywere the generation in transition. In comparison, all the women of the three generations,including my mothers three cousins in the front row, still wore the Tang Zhuang. Sometimelater, the sisters of my mothers generation, who wore the traditional Tang Zhuang in theirchildhood, began wearing Western dresses all the time, with great delight.

In the family picture, my third uncle is standing at the back (the first from the left in theback row) -this is my mothers cousin who had just graduated from Taihoku College ofCommerce and who worked in the monopoly bureau, where his colleagues were mostlyJapanese. Eight years later, he asked his bride not to wear the phoenix coronet (feng guan)and the traditional red wedding dress but to wear a Western-style white bridal veil in thewedding ceremony. In the photo of my third uncles wedding ceremony (fig. 11), not onlythe bride and the groom are wearing Western style wedding clothes, but also the best man,the bridesmaid, the flower girls and the ring bearers are all dressed up in Western styleclothing, together creating a complete Western-style wedding ceremony. In traditionalTaiwanese funerals, white had always represented mourning, sadness and solemnity, butnow it began to represent purity and happiness in the new type of wedding ceremony, andit was worn by the bride and the bridesmaid. What a huge transformation in clothing!

My third uncle recalled in his seventy-fifth year: Our wedding the clothes the bridewore that day were the most modern in the traditional society. The white wedding dresswas a symbol of modernity then, and this wedding ceremony, reportedly, caused a greatsensation. Afterwards in the wedding ceremonies of family members, all of the brides worethe white bridal veil. Take one of my aunts for an example (fig. 23). She was still a little girlwearing the Tang Zhuang in the family picture from 1923 (fig. 5).

In the year 1944 after World War II, during a shortage of goods and materials, motherhad just finished her apprenticeship, and she made an elegant white wedding dress byherself when she got married to father (fig. 24). This wedding dress with a white bridal veilwas handed down to my aunts and was used when they were married. The wedding dressand white bridal veil hereafter became an important article of clothing in the lives ofTaiwanese women. Subsequently, making wedding dresses became a large-scale industry,which, along with professional wedding photography, even began exporting its products toother countries. Therefore, despite the saying that men surrender but women do not, themodern dress not only meant the clothes of the new regime but also meant modern, fash-ionable, and liberal. This probably was a key factor for the women of the new generationwho received modern Japanese education when they gave up the Tang Zhuang and choseto wear Western dress. Maybe because of this, they, compared with the men of the samegeneration, had more freedom and independence when it came to clothing.

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The Western dress: a new field of creativity

The women of my mothers generation not only threw off the shackles of tradition, but alsodeveloped variety in their choice of clothing. The dressmaking school business started bymother after the Retrocession did not wane until there was a great quantity of ready-madeclothes for women, and until more and more jobs became available for women around 1980.Especially after the rapid economic growth in Taiwan in the 1960s, every four months a largegroup of young girls from the south would come to enroll in mothers school, filling therecruitment quota each time, and my family had to solve their problems of board and lodging.

In the photo taken of the students who finished their courses at mothers school in 1969(fig. 14), when the mini skirt that was in vogue in European countries and the U.S also influ-enced conservative Tainan, the skirts of many young women were above the knees. Inanother graduation picture from 1961 (fig. 13) in comparison, the girls still wore long skirtsto below their knees, and it might be said that throughout this period Taiwanese womencontinued to experience a variety of changes in their clothing. These changes naturallyincluded imported and global influences like the mini skirt; even so, without the imposedrestrictions of politics and culture, such as those experienced under Japanese colonialism,there was more room for imagination and innovation.

Another old picture (fig. 12) was taken in 1956 when mothers tailoring class competedin the fashion design exhibition held by the Tainan city government. Mother recalled thatthis activity was held by the section chief of the city government, who was enthusiastic aboutfashion, and the activity was repeated annually for the next several years. At that time therewere no famous brands like Shiatzy Chen and Nadia Lin etc., and no fashion design depart-ments in colleges, so womens fashion design was taught mostly in tailoring cram schools.All of the tailoring schools in Tainan, including the Cultural Tailoring Training School run inthe house of the famous singer, Wen Xia, exhibited their most fashionable and beautifulclothes, with each school trying to outdo the others as the most beautiful and dazzling.

I was only five years old and had not yet reached school age. I can only remember howbusy everyone in my family was, and that even the little girl, A-cai from the farmhouse,dressed up beautifully, and that I was very excited as well. The place was entirely decoratedby father who still worked in the bank. He wrote well and thus took charge of every kind ofposter, nameplate and announcement. Mother also recalled that the exhibition was hastilyput together the first time: mother, unwilling to lose, mobilized the whole class to designand sew, and in a short time was able to display every kind of pattern for every occasionand age. This picture was taken after the tailoring class exhibition; everybody could finallyrelax, and sit together for a photograph.

From the Taiwanese shan to the qipao

It could be said that Taiwans womens clothes had more room for changes and more inde-pendence after the Retrocession. Under such circumstances, the qipao that was in fashion inthe same year also naturally became a kind of formal pattern for womens clothes, andmany variations could be seen in the collar, sleeves, and front; the picture (fig. 14) of thegraduating class in 1969 fully illustrates this.

The women of mothers generation no longer wore the Taiwanese shan of my grand-mothers generation, disregarding the police prohibition of the Japanese colonial period.However, from the perspective of the liberation of body, putting on the reformed Shanghai-style qipao, which had the same origin as the Taiwanese shan, obviously implied a furthersignificance far beyond the question of fashion. The reformed qipao was not only freed fromthe prohibition after the Retrocession, but also was fairly beloved by the women of thatgeneration, and became a kind of formal dress. This actually resonated with the Taiwanese

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shan. Mother thus included the qipao in her dressmaking classes during forties and fifties,and would wear formal qipaos herself on important occasions.

In the photo from May 1950 (fig. 25 left), mother is holding my elder brother, only one yearold, with father and my fourth uncle. The picture was taken in the Taipei Botanical Gardens.They lived in the Taiwan Bank employee housing on Patriotic West Road at that time, not farfrom the Botanical Gardens, and the family often hung out there. The qipao mother is wearingin the picture simply looks like her everyday clothes. In another picture taken in the TaiwanBank employee housing in 1952 when I was one year old (fig. 25 right), mother wore a qipao,like a woman during the Republican period of China. The qipao was in fashion, and theelegance of Shanghai seemed to appear again among the women of Taiwan.

In the picture (fig. 4) of the whole family from the Chinese New Year of 1957, mother iswearing the darker reformed qipao, and grandmother is also wearing a loose qipaoone thatis closer to the Taiwanese shan. At that time, our family had already moved back to Tainan,and mother had also been running her cram school for several years. What the mother andher daughter-in-law are wearing mirror each other: both of them have the same neckline andthe same stand-up collar, but they represent very different generations. For women of thistime, the qipao brought the modernity of the liberation of the body, while it also meant conti-nuity. In the turbulent and divided times that these women traversed, these different mean-ings seemed not to conflict with each other. Even in the 1960s, womens dress patterns stillincluded variations on the traditional elements, like the stand-up collar and the lapel.

The suit and the uniform: between two generations

After 1950, there were many choices and changes in womens clothes; nonetheless, the men,the old and the young alike, continued to be wrapped up in suits. In the family photo (fig. 4)from 1957, we two kids are wearing Western style childrens clothes carefully made bymother. Our generation, after the war, wore all kinds of Western clothes from childhoodand never felt those clothes to be bizarre. On the contrary, we felt the Taiwanese shan wornby our grandmothers generation was antique and old-fashioned like something leftoverfrom the former, never-to-return dynasty. Nevertheless, although my mother would makeher kids look neat and clean, we later on became the generation that did not care about theneatness and cleanness of our clothes at all, and, into the present moment, our parentsgeneration has never stopped nagging us about this.

The people of my parents generation strongly valued decency and dignity, and this ofcourse was influenced by their Japanese education and also by the traditional manners. Themen of their generation had to wear complete suits: the white shirt and tie went with thewell-pressed, fitted pants, and the woolen coat with a large collar was made from materialmatching that of the pants. Though this was later replaced by acrylic and wool blends, thebasic form did not change. The suit specifically referred to mens formal clothing, yetfrom this time on, it no longer so strongly implied Western and imported. The clothesthat people wore everyday were foreign, yet they seemed to be an inherent part of life. Forexample, in the 1965 photo of fathers 30

th

high school class reunion (fig. 17), all the men arewearing well-pressed suits, and their hair is neatly oiled, following the popular hairstyleamong Western men.

Compared with the former generations careful grooming, the men of my generationafter the Retrocession lack any feelings towards our clothes. In the 1992 picture of my 26

th

junior high school class reunion (fig. 18), everyone is exactly the same age that my fatherwas in the former picture, but this picture clearly reveals that our standards for our dressand appearance on such occasions are less rigorous than those of my fathers generationand we did not even care about the background of the picture. For us, clothes are simply thethings that keep us warm. We only need to cover up our embarrassing bodies, feeling that itis best not to attract any attention to our appearance.

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The Taiwanese men of our generation wore school uniforms once we started school, atwhich time our mothers gave up taking care of our clothing for us. The uniform is what wewore most of the time during our twelve years of school life. We wore the white or yellowkhaki shirts and yellow khaki pants when we were at school, and after school we only tookoff the uniform to put on a polo shirt or some other white or grayish shirt, without theembroidered student ID number. In winter, we just added a bland sweater or jacket. Theclothes that the boys usually wore were extremely Spartan, as depicted in the picture of usriding bicycles in Wusanto in 1967 (fig. 16), when we studied in senior high school. Iremember seeing a tall, thin classmate in high school, who, in winter, wore a red turtle-necksweater with a convertible shawl collar under his khaki uniform, and this made me feelextremely jealous. For most students, however, the uniform could relieve them of the anxi-ety of what to wear everyday.

Therefore, the school uniform to us was a common form of clothing for everyday use.This is unlike my fathers generation, for whom it meant the social elite. There is a story myfamily tells: once my father and his older brother were wearing their uniforms (fig. 21, 22)and walking on the streets of Tainan together. The Japanese students of Shiroganecho (anarea of Tainan) were so impressed by how tall and strong they were, that the sight of themstifled their usual arrogant manner. And people even said that because of this, my thirduncle could not enter either the first or second senior high school of Tainan.

By the time of our generation, the high school uniform was in fact no longer such asymbol of social status and became instead something common that we wore every daywithout any special feeling. In the photo of my senior high school graduation in 1969 (fig.19), whether it is the suits and Western hairstyles of the teachers in the front row, or theuniform and crew cut of the students in the back row, both are merely the uniform of thatgeneration a standardized appearance. Nevertheless, though we still wore uniforms, ourclosely cropped hair was a little longer since it had been growing out for several months.This was because there was a new principal, Li Sheng, who came to our school in the secondhalf of the semester after the Chinese New Year. As soon as he became principal, hecanceled Tainan First Senior High Schools regulation for boys to shave their heads, and heallowed everyone to have closely cropped hair. Although we experienced this little libera-tion, however, it was too late for us: we still did not know how to choose the proper clotheswhen we entered college and, later, society. Afterward, whether we wore uniforms or suits,our clothing was merely the wrapping for an occasion, just as it was in the class reunionpicture taken twenty-six years later.

The embarrassing relationship between the body and its clothes

Though our mothers helped us dress up according to their tastes when we were little, we stilldid not know what to wear after throwing off the shackles of the uniform. This does not meanthat we have become ignorant of social standards, but rather that for our generation, thereare no clear standards. On important occasions, we can only sense that we should wear suits.

This so-called suit was developed according to the standard figure, physique and eventhe historical background of Western men: it was designed through and for their size and feel-ings. So the sleeves are too long and the collar too small for us: after tying the necktie our neckdisappears, and the long outer garment exaggerates the girth of the upper body while makingthe lower body look too short and small. Even spending too much money in finding a tailorto make a well-fitted suit brings a vague sense of superficiality. Until today, when there aremany famous brands imported from Western countries, this embarrassing relationship hasnot changed. We have followed the trend from the big lapel to the little lapel; from single-breasted to double-breasted, from double-breasted deep collars to triple-breasted shallowcollars; tails have changed from one, to two, to none, and then returned to the original; mostlythese changes have simply imitated every move of the U.S and European countries.

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Taiwanese men began wearing suits exclusively with my fathers generation, giving upthe old Tang Zhuang in the disconsolate gaze of their fathers and older brothers, and strug-gled to learn how to wear the clothes from the advanced countries. Until old age, theywould wear suits for many occasions. Although they learned to be dignified with mucheffort, they did not take pains to hand down this attitude. Perhaps this clothing was nottheir own, and was only a norm formed under the submission of their spirit; since the normdid not belong to them, neither did they have a way to hand it down. To understand howthis happened, therefore, we need to see that although the suits they wore were well-pressed, they still marked a hidden submission to the external intruding culture. This is akind of distorted dignity; it does not come from the needs of the body.

The men of the former generation did not form a close relationship between theirbodies and their clothes. This deficiency was handed down to our generation. However, wehave also gotten rid of the feeling of submission, so that we no longer need any manners. Asa matter of fact, after taking off the old tang zhuang of my grandfathers generation, bothmy fathers generation and my own failed to establish a standard norm. Still more, withoutthe daily, rigid social demands for personal grooming that my father grew up with, suitshave simply become the wrappings that we are required to wear on occasion. Most of thetime, we dont wear them.

The same is true for mens hairstyles. After six years (the time spent in junior and seniorhigh school) of shaved heads and crew cuts, our newly grown in hair brought with it feel-ings of liberation, while also becoming burdensome. It would be a little embarrassing to belike my fathers generation when they were young, and wear our hair neatly cropped andpomaded. With the strict discipline that characterized high school at that time, to grow outones hair would have required a rebellious boldness and the will to resist the scissors of thepolicemen. Most men of my generation, therefore, have their hair trimmed by barbers oncein a while, and prefer a hairstyle that will not catch anyones eye. Basically we have justignored our hairthat is, we ignore it until we notice we are going gray. Our hair is nodifferent from our suits, and both are simply the embarrassing accessories in which wewrap up our bodies.

Rewrapping Taiwanese men

One reason that the men of our generation after the war do not care much about our clothingmight be the Nationalist government education that we received. The Nationalist require-ments towards appearance mainly emphasized the shaved head and the high school boysuniform, which was not a change from the Japanese government. Unlike the Japanese colonialgovernment, the Nationalist government was not anxious to change the clothes and looks ofthe people when the regime changed. It was not subtle about clothing and appearance likethe Japanese regime. After the Chinese revolution earlier in the century, the Nationalistregime itself had actually already changed the appearance of its citizens, by Westernizingcommon clothes, formal dress and uniforms. Although some people still wore mandaringowns for formal events, this was merely a decoration for the occasion. Not to mention thatthe clothing of Taiwanese men had already been changed by the Japanese government.

On the other hand, if the uniforms and the suits in the Japanese colonial period alsorepresented the forced submission of the body of Taiwanese men and the deprivation oftheir subjectivity, for this generation after the war, even our indifferent resistance to suitsand uniforms might actually be a way to pursue more independence for the embarrassingbody. Whatever the case, the lax attitudes towards clothing among the men of our genera-tion might announce the end of that forced submission.

Now we see that the period after the war was quite a delicate and nuanced time. Thepicture of my fourth uncle was taken (fig. 20) when each student actually had their hair longand stylish, as if they had kept such hair for years, and had not just been liberated from the

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shaved head after graduation. This was because there were no school security guardsimmediately after the Retrocession, meaning that the military requirements for studentsappearance had been canceled. There are indeed no school security guards sitting in the firsttwo front rows among the teachers in the picture. The students clothes are simple looking,but unlike uniforms, they are not embroidered with student ID numbers and names, andthe belts are casually tied around their waists. Most teachers sit with their legs crossed in thefront rows, looking carefree and comfortable.

However, this little liberation of students clothing after the Retrocession did not lastlong. After 1949, the political situation drastically changed, and the senior high schoolsthroughout Taiwan went back to a military-style administration similar to that of theJapanese colonial period. Likewise, the students of Tainan First High School returned to thedays of shaven heads and uniforms. Not until after 1969, when I graduated from TainanFirst High School twenty years later, did the rules loosen up.

Taiwanese men of our generation, not knowing how to tidy our appearances,have recently started to wear reformed Taiwanese shan or new Tang Zhuang on certainoccasions. Also, some designers have started adding traditional elements to the clothes theydesign for Taiwanese men. This would have been unimaginable for the people of my fathersgeneration, for whom anything like the Taiwanese shanor even any symbolic patternssuggesting itcould only recall the humiliating memory of the Qings laggard slaves. Forthem, how could this become the new fashion? For the generation after the war, the returnof traditional elements in mens clothing may simply be a trend, but it might also imply ourlate exploration of selfhood, as we experiment to see what clothes can be matched to theembarrassing body. Facing the new generation who grew up after the lifting of martial law,and who started to put a lot of effort into their clothes when they were young, what the menof my generation are doing is to explore anew in compensation for what we have lost.

Take a look at the picture of the Shi family from 1923 (fig. 5). It shows how in thosedays, both the manner and the pace of the changes in fashion were different for men andwomen in Taiwan. In the picture, from mother in her childhood to my old grandmother, allthree generations of women are wearing the traditional Taiwanese shan. The men hadadopted new clothes with the second generation, and had started to wear well-pressed suitsin my grandfathers cousins generation. Almost one hundred years later, nonetheless, thisoutfit is still the same, and their spirit of submission is also still wrapped up in the sameway. On the contrary, when women later had their own opportunities to change theirclothes and looks, they seemed able to cast off the burden of the past immediately, and theycould elaborate as much as they wanted in the new space of freedom. In this free space, theclothes of their elders could be reaccepted in reformed patterns. This perhaps proves thedifference of power between men and women.

Acknowledgement

The translator is deeply grateful to Prof. Amie Parry for her patiently and carefully editingthis translated version. The translator really appreciates that Prof. Parry spent so much timediscussing the article with her in the cafs. Besides, the translator would also like to thankthe author for giving his great advice.

Editors note

The Chinese version of this article was published in

INK Literary Monthly

, August, 2007.

Notes

1. The Chinese word shan means traditional I clothes for the upper body, and the Taiwanese shan is akind of two-piece traditional attire (translators note).

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2. The word dress in Chinese has the connotation of Western: it literally reads Western dress (translatorsnote).

3. Qing slaves was a term that Japanese policemen frequently used to insult the Taiwanese during theJapanese colonial period (translators note).

4. I am using tang zhuang to refer to traditional Chinese clothing (translators note).5. Chiang Wei-shui was the founder of the

Taiwanese Cultural Association

and the

Taiwanese Peoples Party

(translators note).6. Tu Tsungming was Taiwans first medical doctor (translators note).7. The word suit in Chinese has the connotation of Western: it literally reads Western suit (translators

note).

Special terms

Chiang Wei-shui Feng Xian Hayashi (Lin Bai Huo) Kiyoshiya(Ri Ji Wu) Kominka movement Li Sheng

Lugouqiao Incident

Mao suit Nadia Lin Qing slaves qipao Shiatzy Chen Shirley Yamaguchi (Yamaguchi Yoshiko) Shiroganecho Suehirochos (Mo Guang Ting) Taiwanese shan Tang zhuang Tu Tsungming Wen Xia Western dress Western suit (Western-style) dressmaking Zhongshan suit Zhou Xuan

Authors biography

Zheng Hong-sheng a freelance writer living in Taipei, has studied philosophy and Computer Science.He is the author of

Ballads of Youth: The Left Wing Students Struggle in the Early 1970s Taiwan

( )(2001),

On the Trail of a Birdwatcher

( ) (2001),

Remembrance of my year on the Prison Island

( ) (2004), and

One Hundred Years of Estrangements: Historical Reflections on the Cross Strait Reconcilia-tion

( ) (2006).

Contact Address

9F, No.24, Lane 30. Guo-Sing Street, Sijhih City, Taipei County, 22143, Taiwan.

Translators biography

Jiang Yajoo graduated from the Department of English at Taiwans National Central University. Now sheworks in Center for Asia-Pacific/Cultural Studies.

Contact Address:

IF, No. 63, San-Ming Street, Jhudong Township, Hsinchu County, Taiwan

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The qipao, the Western dress and the Taiwanese shan: images from 100 years of Taiwanese clothing

1. Four women in qipaos (1937)2. My grandmother in 1960.3. Fathers eldest uncle playing two roles in 1930.4. The whole family in 1957.5. A 1923 family picture taken in the main room of Shi Shun Xing, Tainan.6. Fathers fourth uncle and his three sisters with their families in 1950.7. Three Taiwanese men in 1930.8. The staff of Kiyoshiya in 1937.9. Young girls playing at the beach in Tainan, 1930.10. The girls in western spring dresses in 1940.11. A picture of one of the first western-style weddings in Tainan, 1931.12. A corner of the clothing design exhibition in Tainan, 1956.13. The tailoring class in 1961.14. The tailoring class in 1969.15. The class picture of my fathers sophomore year in high school, 1931.16. The junior high school students outing in 1967.17. Fathers 30-year class reunion on 1965.18. My junior high school class reunion in 1992.19. Tainan First Senior High School graduation picture, 1969.20. Tainan First Senior High School graduation picture, 1949.21. My eldest uncle as a junior high school student.22. Father as a junior high school student.23. Aunt Shis wedding picture, 1930.24. Mothers wedding picture, 1940.25. The qipao of 1950.26. My grandmother dressed immaculately in her youth (about 1918).27. My grandfather dressed immaculately in his youth (about 1914).28. Father in a Kimono in 1940.29. Other girls of Tainan playing at the beach in 1940.30. A traditional Taiwanese funeral.

1. Four women in qipaos (1937).

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2. My grandmother in the 1960s.

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3. Fathers eldest uncle playing two roles in 1930.

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4. The whole family in 1957.

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6. Fathers fourth uncle and his three sisters with their families in 1950.

5. A 1923 family picture taken in the main room of Shi Shun Xing, Tainan.

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8. The staff of Kiyoshiya in 1937.

7. Three Taiwanese men in the 1930s.

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9. Young girls playing at the beach in Tainan, 1930s.

10. The girls in western spring dresses in the 1940s.

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11. A picture of one of the first western-style weddings in Tainan, 1931.

12. A corner of the clothing design exhibition in Tainan, 1956.

13. The tailoring class in 1961.

14. The tailoring class in 1969.

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15. The class picture of my fathers sophomore year in high school, 1931.

16. The junior high school students outing in 1967.

17. Fathers 30-year class reunion on 1965.

18. My junior high school class reunion in 1992.

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19. Tainan First Senior High School graduation picture, 1969.

20. Tainan First Senior High School graduation picture, 1949.

21. My eldest uncle as a junior high school student.

22. Father as a junior high school student.

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25. The qipao of the 1950s.

23. Aunt Shis wedding picture, 1930s.

24. Mothers wedding picture, 1940s.

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26. My grandmother dressed immaculately in her youth (about 1918).

27. My grandfather dressed immaculately in his youth (about 1914).

28. Father in a Kimono in 1940.

29. Other girls of Tainan playing at the beach in 1940.

30. A traditional Taiwanese funeral.

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