Collection: Belt

Traditional Chinese belt is a kind of accessory for ancient Chinese people when they dress up with Hanfu. The belt is essential in hanfu clothing, because the long belt can bind the loose hanfu and make it look more decent.

Precisely because of the necessity of the belts, lots of belts with unique styles emerge along with the ancient Chinese history. They are either leather-made or cloth-made, and either functional or decorative.

There're some representative types of traditional Chinese belts.

• Diexie
  Diexie(“蹀躞”) is a type of functional leather belt. Ancient Chinese people use it to hang swords, pendants, and other things. As the pendants make noise, so the wearer has to take small steps while walking to keep silence. And the word "Diexie" in ancient Chinese originally means taking small steps, therefore, Diexie belt got its name.

• Yisan Belt
  Yisan is the name of a type of traditional Chinese clothing which came from the Mongolian nationality. The belt of it, therefore, called Yisan belt. It consists of two separate leather belts and they are connected end to end with two buckles.

• Kuadai
  Kuadai is the belt which has Kua on it. Kua is the tiny ornamentation on the belts, which indicates the status of the wearer. The more Kua on the belt, the higher the wearer's status. This rule caused an interesting phenomenon, the officials had to hold their belts all the time because too many Kua resulted in too long belts that couldn't be fixed on their waists.

• Dadai
  Dadai is also called Shen("绅") which means gentle in Chinese. It's a decorative cloth belt for the ceremony robes of emperor and officials. It is large and long, and looks quite gorgeous.

As a whole, from the perspective of Chinese costume culture, the traditional Chinese belt was not only an accessory, but also the symbol of the good manner and proper etiquette in ancient China.