The dress culture of China （Pre-Qin~Qin）

China has five thousand years of history, the development of Chinese history is the same strain with its dress culture. Clothes and people‘s daily lives, reflected the characteristics and development. Now, let me take you to walk together into the world of Chinese clothing culture, experiencing the unique cultural charm.

Timeline of dynasties:
Xia dynasty：    2070 B.C——1600 B.C

Shang dynasty： 1600 B.C——1046 B.C

Zhou dynasty：  1046 B.C—— 221 B.C

Qin dynasty：    221B.C——206 B.C

1.   Xia dynasty

Xia is the first dynasty in our history .So the dress is full of distinctive religious color. Xia established the institution that people worn clothes on upper--body and skirt(worn in ancient China) on down. Among them the clothes represent the heaven and the skirt represents the earth.

2.   Shang dynasty

The main dress materials of Shang dynasty is fur, leather, silk and hemp. Owing to the progress of textile technology, the silk linen content occupies an important position. People in Shang can weave the extremely thin satin subtly, and the clothing made by this kind of material is dignified.

3.   Zhou dynasty

In the early Western Zhou Dynasty, mulberry planting and silkworm rearing begin to catch on among the people in the central Shaanxi plain. There were lots of poems in the Book of Songs describing farming, silkworm raising and weaving, such as the poems depicting farm women in the central Shaanxi plain cutting branches with an axe for sprout rearing. This jade silkworm is presumably a ritual object of the Zhou Dynasty. 

4.   Qin dynasty

Due to the unification China, dressing styles in the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC) were somewhat consistent. However, as the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty was in power for too short a period, the dress code was just primarily established with only the colors of costume being unified. Black was the worshipful color during the Qin Dynasty and was a fashionable color for costume of the time.      

In China, women had different kinds of clothes in ancient times. Those clothes changed with the revolution of dynasties. Next week, we will introduce another dynasties to you.