Originally, clothes are made for the usage of covering body. Nowadays, all kinds of clothes are made for the purpose of beautifying. People may spend hundreds of and thousands of even millions of money to customize clothes. If you learn at a Chinese school in China, you may be told that some people even spend a large amount of money in collecting some certain types of clothes and more money is spent in maintaining and promoting them.
We can see the different cultural levels among them. At the same time, this value is also increasingly being recognized. China’s high-speed running economy will continue to advance, developing and promoting the costume culture. Foreign learners who study in China all know that cheongsam is a famous and important costume in China.
There are many people regard collecting cheongsam as a hobby in China. Some foreigners know a friend who loves to collect cheongsam while they study Chinese in the city of Kunming. The collector called Jin Mei has collected more than 320 pieces of cheongsam in the past ten years. Her collections have various styles, some long, some short, some beautiful, some elegant. Foreigners may wonder why they are so interested in this collection.
For Jin Mei, she is a Man minority people. She recalls that she saw all kinds of cheongsam in the closets of her mother and grandmother when she was a child. When she grow up, the scene in the past often rise in her mind as soon as she sees the old pictures of elder women who dressed in cheongsam. In this sense, foreigners who learn Mandarin in China know the reason is related to the collector’s experience.
However, this is not the only reason. A piece of news from the foreigners who learn Mandarin in the city of Kunming that Jin Mei feels like collecting cheongsam because it has something to do with her major. Her major related to the museum. In the middle of 1990s, she often went for a walk around the antique shops in Kunming city. The first cheongsam she bought was too big for her, so she changed the size by herself.
More than ten years have passed, that cheongsam looks just like the new one. In this way, she was infatuated with the cheongsam collection. That’s why she collected so many pieces of cheongsam in ten years’ time. Foreigners in qualified Mandarin program in Yunnan may learn from Jin Mei that all clothes have their special attributes. One of her cheongsams has a feeling of oil painting. Oil painting came to China early and reached its heyday in the Republican period. So, that one must be valuable.
According to him, the best cheongsam is made of silk. The cheongsams made in nowadays are not so pure in textile and delicate and exquisite in handicraft as that of made in past times. The feeling of wearing a cheongsam varies from different people. If the westerners who learn Chinese in China are interested in the cheongsam, they can try different styles of cheongsams to find the suitable one.
When girls go to her collection room, she would invite them to try her cheongsams on, hoping them can promote the cheongsam culture. She will warmly welcome foreigners who come to Kunming to learn to speak Chinese when they get there. What’s more, she sometimes lends cheongsam to some tailors for the purpose of making the real cheongsam, nut not fashionable dress.
Most collectors choose to collect cheongsam not just because of interest, more importantly, it contains Chinese culture. Strictly speaking, the cheongsam before the Republican period was not the real cheongsam. After that period, it reached the heyday of cheongsam. Therefore, most collectors like to collect those of that period. But collections in the museums are not so many.
During the process of collecting the cheongsam, Jin Mei has spent a lot of money. In recent years, the price of cheongsam is more expensive than before. But collectors should be rational. After all, cheongsam collection is not so popular at present. If interested, foreigners can pay more attention to the cheongsam collection during the process of learning Mandarin Chinese.
Even though many modern cheongsam preserve some of the traditional charm as well as embody the beauty of being fashionable, thus gaining collection value, most collectors show less interest in modern cheongsam. They think the old-style cheongsam is more valuable to collect.