Ancient(Traditional) Chinese hat has great varieties including guan (冠), mao(帽), jin(巾), ze(帻), mian(冕). Each of them represented a certain type of hat in different Chinese history periods.

Guan(冠) literally translated as crown in English. While crown can only be wore by monarchs, Guan can be wore by emperors and their servants, princes, nobles, government officials(retired officials included) and even civilians. In ancient China, there was a ceremony called Guan Li. It's the coming of age ceremony for ancient Chinese men who reaches 20 years old. At the ceremony, a respected elder will place a Guan on their head.

Mian(冕) is actually more like crown than guan. It can only be wore by emperors, princes, dukes, ministers, viscounts and barons. It has different styles according to the number of tassels on it. The emperors can wear the mian with the most 12 tassels, and the others wear the mian with less tassels according to their status.

Mao(帽) is the Chinese character for "hat" in modern times. Compared to guan, mao is more casual in ancient China. Wusha mao should be the most famous mao, it was the government officials' headwear in Ming Dynasty. In modern China, Wushamao became a popular slang represent government jobs.

Compared to guan and mao, jin(巾) was more like a headband or kerchief than hat. It could be a piece of cloth with or without a mesh style. Jin also had hat style, but with a more simple structure and would be more cool to wear.

Ze(帻) is more like the working cap, usually wore by military personnel(e.g. pingshang ze) and civil servants(e.g. jie ze). Commoners also wore it.

For now, we have futou (putou), ru jin , dongpo jin, xifangpingding jin.