But beware of deceiving outward appearances! My visit to the Shaanxi History Museum took me by total surprise. Blessed with the verdant Qinling Mountains to the north and the meandering Weihe River to the south, Chang'an was a land of milk and honey boasting fertile soil, mild climate, and adequate rainfall.

As the capital of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), which marked a high point along the axis of the Chinese civilization, Chang'an was once the dreamland of fashion aficionados. It was where out-and-out beauty was one thousand years ago: the Tang beauty.

  Close Up

Much like the fashion world today, the trendsetters in the Tang Dynasty were court ladies, the wealthy women, celebrities, singers, and dancers. And the nomadic Xian Bei origin of the Tang rulers, to a certain degree, also decided their taste of beauty.

The Tang society was open, liberal and even a little bit "wild." Women would smarten themselves up in men's clothes and play polo on galloping horses. They were the earliest cross-dressers in Chinese history. The Tang fashion for women was not about lineal figure, but rather the search for novelty and love of beauty.

Women in Tang society enjoyed experimenting with ways to enhance their charms. Starting from the late Sui Dynasty (581-618) till the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, great changes initiated by the court had taken place on the criterion of beauty. Its influence reached as far as Japan, Korea, and Central Asia featuring a more liberal style, decorative dressing, lavish costumes, and a rotund figure.

Popular apparel for women in the Tang Dynasty included jackets, skirts, and hufu.

Hufu is a kind of garment of the Tartars or those who lived in the Western Regions. Yet after the High Tang, the influences of hufu were gradually weakened and women's garments became broader and looser day by day. As to ordinary women's garments, the width of each sleeve was always more than 1.3 meters.

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