About the Lecturer:

Li Renfei, associate professor at the School of Humanities, Southwest Jiaotong University, and specially-appointed researcher at the Research Center for Cultural Soft Power of Peking University.

Associate Prof. Li is mainly engaged in the research on the history of the ancient State of Qi and traditional Chinese clothing. From June 13 to 19, 2014, he gave a series of lectures entitled “The Famous Minister Yan Ying” at the “Lecture Room” of CCTV; from February 20 to March 6, 2017, he offered another series named “Chinese Clothing” at CCTV; from December 2017 to August 2018, he presented at CCTV a new 18-episode program about Guan Zhong, who was a famous chief minister of the ancient State of Qi. In the autumn of 2015, Li’s online course “Management Idea from Qi’s Famous Minister Guan Zhong” landed on MOOC platform and was selected as the 2017 National-level Prime MOOC. Listed in the first batch of the most beautiful MOOCs in Chinese universities, his online course “Culture of Traditional Chinese Clothing” made its debut on the MOOC platform of the Ministry of Education in the spring of 2017 and was singled out as the 2018 National-level Prime MOOC.

About the Lecture:

Since ancient times, clothing is customarily ranked as the first among the four daily essentials in China, i.e. Yi Shi Zhu Xing (clothing, food, housing and transport).The evolution of Chinese culture is always inextricably correlated with clothing, as being indicated in many idioms, for example, Yi Shi Fu Mu (parents like people we get clothing and food from), Dian Dao Yi Chang ( wearing the wrong clothes in a hurry, which is used to describe a person in panic), Tian Di Xuan Huang (the sky is dark blue and the earth is yellow), Wen Zhi Bin Bin (a polite and elegant person), Guan Mian Tang Huang (dignified in form with beautiful clothes but insincere inside), Yi Jin Huan Xiang (someone return home in brocade dresses after getting fame or money), Jing Wei Tian Di (longitudinal and horizontal threads formulate the heaven and earth, describe a person who has the ability to govern the country), Meng Mu Duan Zhu (Mencius’ mother persuades Mencius to concentrate on his studies by cutting the gauze), etc.

So how is Chinese clothing originated? What is the profound cultural connotation of the clothing designed for the Chinese descendants by Yellow Emperor, the first ancestor of humanities? What philosophical implications did Lao Tzu and Confucius, the two sages of Chinese civilization, infuse into the Chinese culture of dressing? Join us in “Chinese Clothing” to admire the wisdom of the ancients and experience the beauty of Chinese traditional culture.