Photo: Douyin Li said she wore hanfu for the occasion to “let Europe see the splendour of China”. She also did her own makeup and hairstyle to match her traditional attire.

Chen Ningxi, a hanfu blogger who has 150,000 followers on Douyin, told the Global Times on Sunday that hanfu has become a symbol of Chinese traditional culture and China's cultural confidence.

Since then, Hanfu enthusiasts, scholars, and businesses have collectively fueled the trend's growth. "The Hanfu craze is driven by multiple factors," Han explained.

On Douyin, videos of people wearing hanfu - outfits worn by the Han people - standing near the Colosseum in Rome, the Louvre in Paris and other iconic landmarks, have amassed millions of likes.

The hanfu market in China was estimated at 12.54 billion yuan (about $1.81 billion) in 2022 and will likely rise to 19.11 billion yuan in 2025, according to research firm iMedia Research.

As the hanfu society expanded, their members have married and had children, giving rise to the hanfu second generation. This prompted them to organize hanfu parent-child events.

Li was inspired to buy Hanfu by an account dubbed Nanzhi999, which has 1.1 million followers on the Douyin short video social media platform.

On microblogging platform Weibo, #Hanfu has had over 4.89bn views to date, while on TikTok in China (Douyin), #Hanfu videos have been viewed more than 47.7bn times.

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