They are young, range from good universities, and are professionally dynamic. They could perfectly symbolize modern China but, they spend their weekends living in a former imperial fashion. A small meeting with these fervent defenders of the "Han" culture.

It's 9:30 on a Sunday morning at the Qianmen bus station, close to Mao's mausoleum. The Great Helmsman would have no doubt been surprised to, in the 21^st Century, bump into these young Chinese dressed in the "imperial Han" style, the standard style before the takeover by the Qing dynasty, the last ruling dynasty before the Revolution.

But for the twenty or so forum members of http://www.hanminzu.com/ it's a major event, they will be testing out their new place in a distant suburb for their weekly get-together.

After more than one hour in the company of a young law student describing his interest for ancient Chinese history, the bus drops the group off somewhere near Beijing's 5^th ring road.

The surroundings don't come close to anything imperial. The vacant lots, housing estates and semi industrial areas stretch out one after the other. The whole thing is topped off by a highway full of people going home for their Sunday. The venue, a totally empty apartment on the 6^th floor, is also far removed from the splendors of ancient dynasties, but this does not bother the young group as they carefully prepare themselves.

Real empress

Young girls, who were still wearing jeans just five minutes ago, don their finest traditional dresses and disguises, some of them don't hesitate to use horsehair extensions to make beautiful chignons traditionally seen at the Han imperial court .

The men have also put some time into their costumes and wear headdresses from another time, while eating balls of glutinous rice (tangyuan) and waiting for the ladies to start the day's activities.

The head of the house, in the garbs of a real empress, brings everyone together to do the presentations because most participants are seeing each other for the first time and only know one another by their forum nicknames. "I'm Luna, I'm 23, and from south of the country. I work in Beijing in the mobile phones games industry. I took me 4 days to make my own costume," says a young girl, applauded for her talents as a seamstress.

Following the presentations, a professional musician gives a little concert on a kind of Chinese zither before a declamation competition of ancient poems and riddles begins.

Carried away, the sponsor of the gathering, a pensioner from the Beijing, exclaims: "All Hans should dress like you!", while the organizers promise to setup a sewing workshop for the next meeting.

Back in the street, in the middle of traffic and surrounded by "modern" Chinese, you realize that the "hanminzu" time machine works in fact pretty well. See you at the time shuttle's next departure!

Text: Nicolas Sridi
Photos: Wang Zhuo
March 2008