The last "handmade tailor" in Shanghai insisted on making only cheongsam for 86 years. Why are skills being lost now?

There is a saying on the Internet: "A woman without a cheongsam in her closet is incomplete." It is true that a woman's identity or behavior does not need to be defined by a dress, but from this sentence, we can see that cheongsam really has an extraordinary position for women in China.

In the usual thinking, we all think that cheongsam originated from Manchu women's flag clothes and was brought to Chinese mainland after the Qing army entered the customs. But in fact, cheongsam can be traced back to the deep clothes in the Qin and Han Dynasties, and "robe" has always been one of the traditional costumes in China. Although the Qing emperor abdicated in 19 12, all the feudal dynasties of thousands of years disappeared, but the dynasty can decline once, leaving endless customs and culture.

The Republic of China is a turbulent era, the impact of old and new ideas. Western ideology and culture are challenging our traditional customs. For a time, everyone was proud of western "imported goods". In this case, cheongsam, as a traditional dress, can share autumn with elegant dresses and crisp suits from the west and become the favorite dress of women at that time, which shows its unique charm.

If we want to say where the cheongsam is the most orthodox, it must be Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, especially Shanghai. Everyone must have seen flowers of war. The beautiful picture is full of enmity between home and country. In the concession at that time, modern women were mostly wearing cheongsam. For example, Zhang Ailing, a famous female writer in China, always wears cheongsam in public, which has become a unique walking landscape.

Cheongsam is recognized as the most difficult clothing to define. Different women wear it, as if they were injected with different souls. Because cheongsam pays attention to close fitting, the best cheongsam must be tailor-made. Because cheongsam is popular in Shanghai, it can be said that the best cheongsam tailors are concentrated here.

As we all know, pure manual labor is laborious and time-consuming, especially expensive. A good cheongsam often takes several months to customize, and the price remains high. So everyone began to buy ready-made clothes, and the original handmade cheongsam gradually fell to the point where no one cared. But if you really know cheongsam, you will find that such a dress should be carefully crafted, and the work should be done slowly.

Chu Hongsheng is such a tailor who specializes in making cheongsam, and is even called the last handmade tailor in Shanghai. How difficult is it to make a really beautiful cheongsam? There are three kinds of stitches alone: forward grab, reverse grab and overlapping grab. It takes a skilled worker three hours to make a beautiful belt buckle. Women of different ages, cheongsam made of different materials and fabrics of different colors use different styles and accessories, which leads to the uniqueness of each handmade tailor.

Chu Hongsheng has been a manual tailor for 86 years. In the 1970s, zippers began to appear, and belt buckles began to become decorations. After that, everyone began to use sewing machines, even big machines, and the speed of making cheongsam was much faster. The simplest traditional handmade cheongsam takes a week. Now I don't know if the machine can make hundreds or more pieces a week.

Someone asked Chu Hongsheng why he insisted on making handmade cheongsam when the machine was so convenient. Chu Hongsheng said: "The clothes stepped out by the machine are hard and can't reflect femininity, so the hands can sew a round feeling." Some people call Chu Hongsheng a master of cheongsam. He himself does not accept this title. Although he has finished more than 5000 pieces of handmade cheongsam, he feels like a man who makes clothes. There is no saying that a master is not a master.

For a long time in modern times, due to the influence of western culture, we gradually forgot the classic culture handed down by our ancestors. Although the cheongsam is not only an intangible cultural heritage of China, but also a ceremonial dress formulated in many international projects, the handmade cheongsam still faces the dilemma of being lost. How can this situation not make people sad?