How many layers does a Hanfu has?

How many layers does a whole set of Hanfu has?

You may come up with this question when you first got interested in this Han Chinese clothing, especially when you have seen some ancient Chinese dramas or movies.

A whole set of Hanfu can has 3 or 4 layers: under garments, middle garments, outer garments and some optional garments.

Under Garments of Hanfu

Just like modern people wear underwear, ancient Han Chinese also wear under garment like dudou. Dudou function as a undershirt as in the modern times, but it's actually just a piece of cloth that covers only the chest.

For Chinese women, dudou is like the bra in modern times. Chinese children also wear dudou for warm, while men doesn't wear it.

Does Han Chinese wear underpants? Actually they should do, but there aren't many historical materials about ancient Chinese underpants.

Inner Garments of Hanfu

The inner garment of hanfu is zhongyi, it's like the shirt and long jhons in modern times. Actually it's more accurate to call zhongyi as the "middle" garment. On the one hand, ancient Chinese wear dudou and underpants inside zhongyi. On the other hand, the word "zhong" of  zhongyi means "middle" in Chinese.

Zhongyi for men is usually in white color, while women's zhongyi may have some other colors, but it should be a solid color anyway. Ancient Chinese people wear zhongyi even when they are sleeping, it plays a role of pajamas in modern times.

Outer Garments of Hanfu

There are many styles of Hanfu's outer garments, like ruqun, aoqun, shenyi and shanku.

Ruqun is like an upper garment with an outer skirt, while aoqun is like an upper garment with an under skirt, both of them are for women. Shenyi is a belted floor length robe with wide sleeves, shanku is just a jacket(shan) with a pair of trousers(ku), both men and women can wear them.

Optional garments of Hanfu

Sometimes, ancient Chinese will wear some optional garments like beizi, banbi and bijia, to make the clothing more formal.

Beizi, is basically a large overcoat with long and loose sleeves. Banbi, is a half-sleeved jacket, while bijia is basically a long sleeveless waistcoat.

That is all the layers a whole set of hanfu can has. As you can see, even though it's a little complicated to remember all the names of the specific garments, hanfu is just a kind of traditional clothing that have all the components of garments we wear in modern times.