#green hanfu

[cnladies]

GAI YUEXI 盖玥希 in hanfu | Chinese New Year 2025

Gai Yuexi: more photos here Chinese New Year 2025: more photos here

[newhanfu]

Women's Green Hanfu - Summer Costume

via Hanfu Photographer Nan Ge

[hanfugallery]

chinese hanfu by 云间山泽

[raintemper]

Moon design that’s been rattling in my head for a while…I just think she’s pretty 🥹

[heartnosekid]

a stimboard based on lychees for anon!

❤️-🤍-❤️ / 🤍-❤️-🤍 / ❤️-🤍-❤️

[redsugarx]

青白之魅 2: Background & Influences

1 Introduction & Presentation // 2 Background & Influences // 3 Hair & Makeup // 4 Set Design // 5 Clothes & Accessories // 6 Conclusion

You want the nerd stuff? This is the Nerd Stuff post. Here are the main pieces of media that inspired the shoot, which I will be referencing in subsequent posts.

I'm not gonna be re-detailing the events of the legend itself in this post, because there are like a billion versions out there that you can easily find, but if you're not familiar with it here is the Wikipedia page. I'd give the plot a quick glance-through!

白蛇傳/白蛇传/bai2 she2 zhuan4/Legend of the White Snake

Mural depicting Bai Suzhen at the Beijing Summer Palace. Src: Wikimedia Commons, 颐和园长廊绘画，白蛇传, December 2005

It’s hard to say when exactly the Legend of the White Snake originated. When it first started out, it was likely just another standard married-a-pretty-girl-but-actually-it-was-a-demon fable. It didn’t stay that way—the Ming and Qing dynasties favored romance and feeling (google the Cult of Qing, it’s too complicated for me to go into and frankly my grasp on it is hazy at best), sort of like the way Europe had a Romantic period, which impacted literature in a variety of ways.

One of the most well-known early versions is a Ming Dynasty story called 白娘子永鎭雷峰塔/白娘子永镇雷塔/bai2 niang2 zi0 yong3 zhen4 lei2 feng1 ta3/'Madam White is Imprisoned Forever Under the Leifeng Pagoda,' from Feng Menglong's famous 警世通言/jing4 shi4 tong1 yan2/'Cautionary Tales.' It portrays Bai Suzhen, then called 白娘子/白娘子/bai2 niang2 zi0/Madam White, in a more sympathetic light (although she takes on somewhat of a crazy ex-girlfriend role). Later depictions focused on Bai Suzhen as the main character.

Src: Wikimedia Commons, 杭州西湖边，许仙、白娘子、小青塑像, May 2009

I like to consider this folktale as an example of how people and culture can change drastically through time, and how the boundaries between ideas become more blurry the closer you look. I also like to look at it as an example of people's views on something changing for the better as a result of familiarization: while the original snake-wife horror story likely stemmed from a fear of venomous snakes and supernatural threats, the propagation of the story throughout literature, opera, and other media encouraged understanding and sympathy over terror and rejection.

Most versions of the Legend of the White Snake end after Bai Suzhen gives birth to her son, only to be imprisoned under the Leifeng Pagoda by the monk Fahai, who Xiaoqing is not yet strong enough to defeat alone. Fortunately, a commonly-accepted sequel story involves either Xiaoqing coming back to fight Fahai and free her sister after cultivating her abilities to be strong enough, or Bai Suzhen's son growing up to show so much filial piety that the heavens were moved to release her.

Today, some people worship the snake sisters as deities, especially Bai Suzhen (there are a couple temples dedicated to her!), as symbols of health and medicine. In this way you can see that the sisters achieved immortality in the end :)

青蛇/青蛇/ QING1 SHE2/GREEN SNAKE (1993)

src: TMDB, liml715, 青蛇 (1993)

In my first semester at college I took a spectacular class called Sex and Gender in Premodern Chinese Culture. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least, though extremely challenging. At the end of the semester, we watched Green Snake, a 1993 Hong Kong movie directed by Tsui Hark 徐克 based on the novel by the famous author Lillian Lee, 李碧華.

A majority of white + green snake photoshoots these days base their model styling on this movie. It’s a beautiful story that touches on sensuality and suffering, simultaneously exploring and questioning Buddhist and traditional Chinese philosophies. The film is wrought with natural imagery and symbolism, containing allegories for 'othering' and perceived righteousness that I think are very relevant to today’s society. I especially appreciated its portrayal of the raw, animalistic nature of 'coming into womanhood,' and the question of whether form dictates identity or vice versa.

I watched the original Cantonese version, but I found this dubbed mandarin version on Youtube with simplified and English subtitles for your viewing pleasure.

A lot of design choices I made were impacted by this movie, especially the set design. The film focuses more on the two snake sisters as the main characters, rather than Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian's romance being the focus of the plot, so it expounded more on Xiaoqing's character than the opera or the original folktale. The overall aesthetic was very mystical and alluring and I used that as inspiration for my set design.

戲曲/戏曲/Chinese Opera

Chinese opera played a big role in popularizing the Legend of the White Snake, especially the romantic version popular today. There are lots of different kinds of Chinese opera (jingxi, gezaixi, kunqu, yue, wu, etc etc etc), and many of them have their own structures and versions of the Legend of the White Snake. The version I watched in full was Peking opera (because it was free and on Youtube lol, highly recommend).

Chinese opera has specific 行當/行当/hang2 dang1/‘role types’ for its characters. You might call these 'tropes' or 'archetypes'—it’s similar to how you’d call someone the female lead or male lead, or maybe 'sidekick bestie' or 'comic relief,' except more specific. Each role type has its own set of rules for costuming, the skillset the actor has to have, and the role of the character in the overall story. Sometimes there are subtypes of roles. In the Legend of the White Snake, both sisters are 旦角/dan4 jiao3/‘female leads.’ 

src: Wikimedia Commons, Legend of the White Snake in Beijing Opera, Feb 2008

Bai Suzhen is a 正旦/正旦/zheng4 dan4/‘righteous woman,’ also called the 青衣/青衣/qing1 yi1/‘teal-dressed.’ Most operas have this role as the female lead. A zhengdan is a dignified woman with steadfast virtues and an elegant demeanor, often already married or middle-aged. She is strong-willed, sophisticated, and fights for what’s right. Usually, her actions and decisions drive the plot of the story.

Xiaoqing's martial uniform. Src: 典藏臺灣, 青蛇戰裙襖-衣、褲（典藏號fir_09_0106_169）, March 2008

Xiaoqing can count as either a 花旦/花旦/hua1 dan4/‘flower maiden’ or 武旦/武旦/wu3 dan4/‘martial woman.’ The huadan is a younger girl with a lively and more naive personality, often accompanying an older and more mature zhengdan or guimendan (I don’t think this opera has a guimendan so I won’t go over it). As Bai Suzhen’s sworn sister, she playfully fulfills the duties of a maid, acting as her confidant and assistant, even helping to set up the meet-cute between her and Xu Xian.

借傘/借伞/jie4 san3/'Borrowing the Umbrella,' the scene in which Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian meet.

Both sisters carry swords, have extensive fight scenes and can be considered wudan in the scenes they fight in. You’ll see that during these scenes, there's a costume change into the wudan’s soldier uniform, 戰襖/战袄/zhan4 ao3/battle costume. They each perform a variety of acrobatic tricks with swords and spears that the actors have to train for years to master, especially Xiaoqing.

金山寺/jin1 shan1 si4/Jinshan Temple plainclothes rehearsal, one of the two extended fight scenes in the opera.

The opera is significant for a couple of reasons—one being that it helped me get a sense of the snake sisters' characterizations, and two being that it helped to see where hundreds of years of the story's evolution finally landed. I didn't use the opera costumes for inspiration in the clothing design, since opera costumes tend to be more similar to Ming/Qing clothing and my design was based off of Northern/Southern Dynasty silhouettes, but opera elements made their appearance in several ways in the hair design, which I'll expand on in the next post.

Popular Adaptations I Did Not Watch

白蛇：緣起 and 白蛇2：青蛇劫起 (2019-2020 Donghua)

新白娘子传奇 (2019 Cdrama)

Why? These are more modern adaptations of the legend. I've seen clips from them both and they are breathtakingly beautiful in their own right! But because I was creating my own adaptation of the legend, I wanted to primarily reference older media (at least pre-2000's), rather than using other peoples' ideas from the past few years. Again though they look absolutely amazing, so for anyone who wants more engagement with the legend, I highly recommend trying them!

If you made it to the end, congrats :) I'll try to get the next few parts out relatively quickly before my memory fades so I can continue writing more informational stuff in the future. The subsequent parts will focus more on the shoot itself and the design work I did for it. Happy Year of the Snake!

1 Introduction & Presentation // 2 Background & Influences // 3 Hair & Makeup // 4 Set Design // 5 Clothes & Accessories // 6 Conclusion

[ka-go-me]

. ❄ 𝚂𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝙳𝚛𝚊𝚐𝚘𝚗𝚜 ❄

[fouryearsofshades]

children's hanfu by

[demonicfarmer69]

pearl of gusu lan

[cnladies]

WANG CHURAN 王楚然 in hanfu | CCTV Special Program for Spring Festival 2025

Wang Churan: more photos here Spring Festival Gala 2025: more photos here

[shuuenka]

/OC - Lian Bai Wei

[hanfugallery]

chinese hanfu by 青鸟集

[urlocalhumannn]

keqing the love of my life my wife gf and partner forever

[fashionhanfu]

Shop modern hanfu on fashoinhanfu.com

[redsugarx]

青白之魅 1: Introduction & Presentation

1 Introduction & Presentation // 2 Background & Influences // 3 Hair & Makeup // 4 Set Design // 5 Clothes & Accessories // 6 Conclusion

tw snakes i think? yeah if you don't like snakes you might wanna just skip this one

Taking a break from the informational stuff—I would like to present a project that my sister and I (Cloud9 Hanfu) just released on Lunar New Year: 青白之魅！This is a photo project that we've been working on since last summer, with the intention of celebrating the year of the snake, as well as to show the hanfu community that has supported us for so long what they've done for us and what they've made possible :>

I've got a blog now aka a poorly disguised excuse to yap for several hours straight, so I'm going to be documenting the design background and symbolism behind my work on this project through a series of long posts.

This'll be split up into 6 parts, which I'll link as they go up UPDATE they are all up!:

Introduction & Presentation (this post): introducing the project's intentions and the presenting the first set of photos

Background & Influences: going more in-depth about the particular sources and pieces of media that inspired this project

Hair & Makeup: opera references and stylistic choices in the design of the hairstyle for both characters and the makeup of the green snake

Set Design: references to Green Snake (1993), explaining the symbolism in some of the props

Clothes & Accessories: process of designing the clothing, behind-the-scenes sketches, archaeological background

Conclusion: reflection on the whole process + Things I Would've Done If I Had Infinite Money And Time

For those of you who just want to look at pretty pictures and move on with your life—this post is for you! If you want to see all the nerdy guts that went into this thing though, keep an eye out for more ;)))

Even if nobody reads this I'm gonna regard it as an exercise in reflection, or just an act of documentation that I might be able to come back to later on. But if you do read it and like it then yay! :)

青白之魅

青白之魅/qing1 bai2 zhi1 mei4/'Enthralled by Green & White' is a photo project primarily based on 白蛇傳/白蛇传/bai2 she2 zhuan4/the Legend of the White Snake. It's one of China's Four Great Folktales, one of the most well-known stories in Chinese culture.

It tells the story of two snake spirits who have taken the form of human women, the White Snake and her younger sister the Green Snake. The story is set in Hangzhou, China, and depicts a dramatic romance between the White Snake and a human scholar. We set the focus on the two snake sisters instead of the romance.

This project features my older sister Yulan and I as the White & Green Snake, respectively. This was a collaboration between three organizations: Cloud9 Hanfu, our brand; Art of Scales, a professional snake handler & ophiologist from Riverside; and Bloomin Studio, a comprehensive photography studio from Santa Ana, CA. None of this could have happened without them!

This year is the Year of the Snake. Snakes are often demonized, especially (though definitely not only) in Western culture, and seen as inherently evil or malicious creatures, partly because of the very real danger that some species pose. Like all animals, though, they are simply a part of the natural world—we happen to think they are quite beautiful evidenced by the fact that my sister owns a truly egregious number of pet snakes! We wanted to bring the Legend of the White Snake to life through our hanfu photoshoot with real snakes.

Our photo project aims to show that, much like the public interpretation of snakes, and the Legend of the White Snake, Hanfu is a multifaceted concept—full of rich history, self-contradictions, and a reflection of the people that engage with it. We hope that, similar to the rise of sympathy given to these characters with time, we can reduce fear of the unknown and share the beauty of our culture, our clothing, and (Cujo's) snakes with everyone this year.

青白之魅

白蛇之魅

The older White Snake sister is named 白素貞/白素贞/bai2 su4 zhen1/Bai Suzhen. Bai Suzhen, also called 白娘子/bai2 niang2 zi0/Madam White is the main character of the Legend of the White Snake.

Spirit the blue-eyed lucy represented the White Snake in this shoot! He's a blue-eyed leucistic (<- a highly coveted morph of ball python) ball python/royal python. He was truly one of the most beautiful snakes I've ever seen, an absolute sweetheart and posed like a dream. I applaud his core strength!

青蛇之魅

The younger Green Snake sister is named 小青/xiao3 qing1/Xiaoqing. 青 is a color that doesn't translate directly into English—it covers colors ranging across what we might call blue, green, teal, or black (see the grue phenomenon). Green is the translation that most people agree on.

Dragun the emerald tree boa represented the Green Snake in this shoot! He was super calm and chill, even when some of my hair got stuck in his scales (sorry bby :((((), which is saying something for an emerald tree boa (they considered extremely exotic and are usually cranky asf). He has a deviated septum and makes a funny hissing noise when he breathes! It was very calming.

If you actually read this whole post through, congratulations! Feel free to ask if there’s anything you’re curious about that I didn’t cover or doesn’t look like I’m going to cover. (And by ‘feel free’ I mean there’s a little guy in my brain doing his best impression of someone dying from thirst in the desert and only your validation can save him.)

1 Introduction & Presentation // 2 Background & Influences // 3 Hair & Makeup // 4 Set Design // 5 Clothes & Accessories // 6 Conclusion

[ka-go-me]

. 𝒮𝓌𝒾𝒻𝓉𝓎