Eileen Chang's Chinese Life & Fashions
In this article, Chang first indicated that “Almost throughout the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the classical ensemble was a jacket-and trousers combination,” meaning the fact that Chinese women’s clothing styles were limited at this time. They had to be “pleasantly unobtrusive” by not showing off their identities. There were also too many decorative patterns for the clothing, and this excessive attention to detail marked the attitude towards life of the leisurely class of China.
The first real change was before the ending of the Qing dynasty and China’s imperial period. The size of clothes dwindled for quick movement because of the revolution. The “top-heavy, un-balanced Sycee Collar” was also produced, which signified the characteristics of the time period. Then with the Qing Dynasty overthrown, “there followed a period of superficial enlightenment”. “Clothes were never before light and gay,” and western styles were introduced to China. The quick alterations of clothing indicated people’s powerlessness to the political disorder. The only thing they could do is to change their clothing styles.
In 1921, women started to wear long gowns as their rising awareness of gender equality. The long gowns are also known as changpao/changshan (長袍,長衫), which is the Qing-dynasty style long robe for men-wearers. Back in the 1920s, Changsan was in vogue among Shanghai middle and upper class women. The consciousness of male-imitation or male-equation has since entered the social psyche in China. The choice of dressing reflects Chinese women's desire to liberate their body from traditional male gaze.
While analysing "Chinese Lifes and Fashions," Chow indicated in the book Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading Between West and East that the detail represents "the elaborate correspondences between women's status, what they wore, and how they wore them". The earliest form of qipao, in Eileen Chang's description, was “all cold and square”: long sleeves, flat surface and loose fitting, much resembling the male "changshan". However, the following two decades witness its bold stylistic evolution, accentuating the feminity and sexuality of Chinese women. The latest innovation is all about subtraction, to remove all the ornaments and be functional. Qipao dress became more tightly-packed, and more tailored to the body curve of women with Western dimensional cuts; the length was also shortened. Some qipao features daring designs like slide slits, short capped sleeves and fur-lined cuffs.
Being in love with fashion and qipao her whole life, Eileen Chang was often depicted and captured as the woman in long gown. She once described her rosy-hued cheongsam as having "the fragrance of a color that can be smelled". The qipao itself also serves as a visual metaphor that perpetuates her oeuvre. The female protagnists in her novels wear qipao (or changshan/cheongsam 長衫) of all kinds. For instance, the main character in Love in the Fallen City, Bai Liusu wears a "luna-white diaphanous tulle qipao (月白蝉翼纱旗袍)". In Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier, the protagnist Ge Weilong first appeared in a simple shirt with knit vest, which stands as a contrast to her enchanting image in ceramic cyan thin silk qipao (磁青薄绸旗袍) later in the novel.
Among those fashionable urban Chinese women, Eileen Chang is the most stunning one. In "The Biography of Eileen Chang", columnist Pan Liu-dai wrote: "Eileen Chang’s dressing was always unexpected, and she seem to enjoy it. She would be dressing in a cheongsam, and then cover with a short sleeved jacket, that were one of her surprising innovations." Chang's fondness for qipao cultivates her sense for visual pattern, which flavors her literary works with exquisite color palatte and affective tactility. Looking through her photos in qipao could easily remind us of the female characters in her stories, as well as how these women are unabashedly appreciated and admired.
Although Eileen Chang is known for her novels and essays, she is also a gifted illustrator. Influenced by her mother, she began drawing when she was about three years old. In her essay “From the Mouths of Babes (“童言无忌”),” she indicated that “The first time I ever made money was in high school when I drew a cartoon and submitted it to the English Evening Post, and they gave me five dollars, then I immediately bought a small size of Danky lipstick.” As this experience demonstrated her advanced drawing ability, it also showed her love of fashion since she did not save the money as her mother suggested, but used it to buy the lipstick.
Chang continued to draw in her life, and she especially loved to portray women. The female figures in Chang’s illustrations are mainly in the form of traditional ink drawings with simple lines and plain colors, in which she reflected the characters’ traits by depicting their clothes and actions in just a few strokes. For example, she made twelve illustrations of Chinese women’s clothing and hairstyles from different time periods for “Chinese Life and Fashions” to supplement her words. She also designed the front covers with her friend Ying Yan for her books Romances (传奇) and Written on Water (流言). The combination of her artworks and texts helped her to form her own style, giving the readers a different kind of reading experience.
Bibliography:
Chang, Eileen. “Chinese Life and Fashions.” XXth Century 4, no. 1 (January 1943): 54-61. http://hdl.handle.net/10524/ 32478.
Chow, Rey. "Modernity and Narration — in Feminine Detail." In Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading Between West and East, 84-120. University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Accessed October 26, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttv1v9.7.