page_title: Chinese culture
section_title: Pre-Qing
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese culture / Fashion and clothing / Pre-Qing
caption_attribution_description: 中文（香港）‎: 章懷太子墓壁畫禮賓圖
context_page_description: Chinese culture is one of the world's oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The area over which the culture prevails covers a large geographical region in East Asia and is extremely diverse and varying, with customs and traditions varying greatly between provinces, cities, and even towns as well.
  Chinese civilization is historically considered the dominant culture of East Asia. With China being one of the earliest ancient civilizations, Chinese culture exerts profound influence on the philosophy, virtue, etiquette, and traditions of Asia to date.Chinese language, ceramics, architecture, music, dance, literature, martial arts, cuisine, visual arts, philosophy, business etiquette, religion, politics, and history have global influence, while its traditions and festivals are also celebrated, instilled, and practiced by people around the world.
context_section_description: From the beginning of its history, Han clothing (especially in elite circles) was inseparable from silk, supposedly discovered by the Yellow Emperor's consort, Leizu. The dynasty to follow the Shang, the Western Zhou Dynasty, established a strict hierarchical society that used clothing as a status meridian, and inevitably, the height of one's rank influenced the ornateness of a costume. Such markers included the length of a skirt, the wideness of a sleeve and the degree of ornamentation. In addition to these class-oriented developments, Han Chinese clothing became looser, with the introduction of wide sleeves and jade decorations hung from the sash which served to keep the yi closed. The yi was essentially wrapped over, in a style known as jiaoling youren, or wrapping the right side over before the left, because of the initially greater challenge to the right-handed wearer (people of Zhongyuan discouraged left-handedness like many other historical cultures, considering it unnatural, barbarian, uncivilized, and unfortunate). The Shang dynasty (c. 1600 BC – 1046 BC), developed the rudiments of Chinese clothing; it consisted of a yi, a narrow-cuffed, knee-length tunic tied with a sash, and a narrow, ankle-length skirt, called chang, worn with a bixi, a length of fabric that reached the knees.  Vivid primary colors and green were used, due to the degree of technology at the time.
caption: Tang dynasty mural from Li Xian's tomb in Qianling showing Han nobility clothing of the era.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2013:11:04 16:09:19", "Image ExifOffset": "2234", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4444", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "17980", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "483", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "696", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "51DDA01988094E1B941418AE35ED1181", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}