Chinese academic dress
Encyclopedia
Academic dress
Academic dress or academical dress is a traditional form of clothing for academic settings, primarily tertiary education, worn mainly by those that have been admitted to a university degree or hold a status that entitles them to assume them...
of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
has a long history. The ancient dress is based on the robes of officialdom and the 'degrees' were earned through the imperial civil service examinations, whilst the modern dress is partially influenced by the Western
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
(more so United States
Academic regalia in the United States
Academic regalia in the United States has a history going back to the colonial colleges era. It has been most influenced by the academic dress traditions of Europe...
) academic dress.
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 lanshanPanling Lanshan
Lanshan is the traditional Chinese attire for men. It is a formal attire worn by scholars and students taking the imperial examination in Ming Dynasty. It is wide sleeved, has black edges, and has a round collar secured with a button. A crossed-collar undergarment must be worn. It may or may not...
(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
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
. 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
Scholar-bureaucrats
Scholar-officials or Scholar-bureaucrats were civil servants appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Sui Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China's last imperial dynasty. These officials mostly came from the well-educated men known as the...
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".
Modern Chinese academic dress
Officers' robes are typically all red (including the mortarboard) with three gold bands on the sleeves, similar to Thai
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
academic dress.