Chinese Academic Dress - History

History

Since Chinese academia was more or less connected with officialdom, the academic dress of ancient China is essentially that of official dress. This basically consists of a red long round-collar robe with long sleeves called a panling lanshan (盤領襴衫) worn with a cap called a putou (幞頭) which was almost always black and had curved wings which was typical of the Tang dynasty. Other dynasties had similar dress with their own take on it, but they basically follow the same pattern and are distinctive from common dress.

Another form of dress was those of the literati and scholars who wore simple everyday dress but wore hats that distinctively indicated their status, such as the si-fang pingding jin (四方平定巾; or simply, fangjin: 方巾), the Chinese equivalent of the "mortarboard".

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