Tifayifu () was a forced assimilation policy of the early Qing dynasty enacted in 1645 as Qing conquered China following the collapse of the preceding Ming dynasty. The edict forced Han Chinese, under the threat of massacres, to adopt the Manchu hairstyle (queue) and clothing (qizhuang), abolishing the millennia-long traditional Chinese clothing known as hanfu.
In 1644, on the first day when Wu Sangui defected to the Qing, the Manchu army under Dorgon entered the Shanhai Pass and routed Li Zicheng's Shun forces in the Battle of Shanhai Pass. The Qing forces then proceeded to attack the Southern Ming rump regime and the remnant Shun and Xi rebels, with the Eight Banners looting and seizing land from the conquered Han Chinese populace. After the Manchus established the Qing dynasty, the authorities issued decrees requiring Han Chinese men to shave their heads completely, leaving only a patch of about one square inch (roughly 6.5 cm²) of hair at the back of the scalp, and to braid that remaining hair into a queue, in imitation of the Manchu hairstyle. Because the shape resembled a rat's tail, this hairstyle was known at the time as the "money-rat tail" (or "rat-tail queue"). However, this policy was halted just a month later due to intense resistance from the Han Chinese near Beijing, and only after the Manchu captured Nanjing, the capital of the Southern Ming, in 1645 was the Tifayifu policy resumed and enforced strictly. Rumor has it that the full edict was implemented after two officials from Shandong, Sun Zhixie and Li Ruolin, shaved their foreheads as a token of loyalty and demanded that Dorgon impose the queue hairstyle on the entire population. The memorials submitted by Sun Zhixie and others were first recorded in the Qing Bai Lei Chao , compiled by Xu Ke in the early years of the Republic of China, more than two and a half centuries after the events in question. Sun Qixin has pointed out that these memorials were merely a pretext used by the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty to issue the Tifayifu, and that Sun Zhixie himself was nothing more than a scapegoat for the policy of shaving heads and changing clothing. Sun Zhixie was eventually dismembered by anti-Qing forces. These two individuals are generally denounced by the Han people as traitors and stooges. Within one year after conquering China proper, the Qing rulers demanded that all Han men adopt the Manchu hairstyle or face execution.
Tifayifu was strongly opposed by the Han Chinese, especially those who were part of the late-Ming scholar-official class, who saw the policy as part of a culturicide or "civilizational death" (亡天下) as coined by Gu Yanwu. Even ten years after the implementation of the edict, there was still resistance to haircutting and adoption of Manchu-style clothing. During the Kangxi Emperor's reign, a large number of ordinary people still followed the clothing and hairstyle of the Ming dynasty, except for the officials and military generals, who had to wear the Manchu queue and uniforms. Resistance to the policy was a rallying call used by many rebel movements during the early Qing dynasty (such as the Revolt of the Three Feudatories), and the Ming Zheng regime in Taiwan refused to surrender citing Tifayifu specifically as a reason. This forced the Qing government to maintain large numbers of Eight Banners reservists in segregated urban garrisons known as Manchu quarters (滿城) in order to readily mobilize and suppress insurgencies. However, with time, the Qing dynasty consolidated their rule, and eventually during the High Qing era Han Chinese men and women both adopted Manchu-style clothing such as changshan and magua under the threat of massacre. By the mid-Qing, officials, scholars and many commoners all wore Manchu-style clothing, although anti-Qing movements such as the Heaven and Earth Society and Small Swords Society still secretly aspired to revert back to the attires and dressing code of the Ming dynasty. During the Taiping Rebellion, rebel soldiers from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were called "long hairs" due to their practice of not shaving and braiding their hair. During the late Qing period, as the ruling capacity declined, some commoners and officials began to wear Hanfu again as an expression of resistance against the Qing dynasty. Many revolutionaries during the late Qing period, such as the Revive China Society, China Revival Society, Furen Literary Society and Alliance Society, many of whom were Han nationalists from the overseas Chinese, student and New Army communities, also encouraged queue-cutting and used "Expel the Tatar barbarians, restore China" (驅除韃虜，恢復中華) as a political slogan leading up to the Xinhai Revolution. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, some descendants of the former rulers, in order to evade responsibility, fabricated evidence claiming that the changes in customs were voluntary on the part of the Han people, in an attempt to cover up the history of forced assimilation and massacres.
Tifayifu has had a profound impact on the national image of China in the modern era, as many (often derogatory and racist) stereotypes against the Chinese people by the Western world, particularly in the United States during the 19th century and early 20th century, were based on the depiction of Qing dynasty attires. Derogatory terms also emerged in Japan targetting the practice, such as or . Joseon Korea, then a tributary state of Qing, also began to assume the status of "Little China" and pejoratively addressed the Qing as "barbarians" ().馬靖妮. 《熱河日記》中的中國形象研究. 中央民族大學博士學位論文，第35頁徐東日《朝鲜朝使臣眼中的中国形象》，中华书局，2010年 Contemporary Chinese clothings such as qipao and tangzhuang are also modified designs directly derived from qizhuang and magua, respectively. With the rise of China during the early 21st century and growing national pride and cultural confidence among the younger Chinese generations, there is a growing grassroot cultural movement in Mainland China to revive pre-Qing traditional clothings as the cultural orthodoxy, which are seen as more authentic and aesthetically superior representatives of Chinese culture than those modern derivatives of Manchu clothings currently promoted by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism, especially because the history of mid/late Qing dynasty has been strongly associated with the century of humiliation.
Cultural significance Hairstyle Wearing the queue (bianzi) was traditionally a Manchurian hairstyle, which was itself a variant of northern tribes' hairstyle, including the Jurchen. It differed from the way Han Chinese styled their hair; the Han Chinese kept long hair with all their hair grown over their head and was coiled into a topknot, held into place by Chinese headwear. Wearing the queue was unpopular among the Chinese and was met with resistance as shaving the head was against the "system of rites and music" of ancient China and violated the Confucian beliefs of not harming the body which was bestowed by one's parents, as indicated in the Xiaojing: "Our bodies - to every hair and bit of skin - are received by us from our parents, and we must not presume to injure or wound them. This is the beginning of filial piety". Moreover, the traditional hairstyle of the Han Chinese were a fundamental aspect of their cultural identity and shaving their head was one of the greatest insults and was also a form punishment (). The Qing rulers, however, perceived the queue as a visible symbol of submission, refusing to withdraw or modify the regulation. The Manchu, Mongol bannermen and Han bannermen in Later Jin (1616–1636) territories since 1616 were already shaving their foreheads.
The Qing imposed the shaved head hairstyle on men of all ethnicities under its rule even before 1644 like upon the Nanai people in the 1630s who had to shave their foreheads. The men of certain ethnicities who came under Qing rule later like Salar people and Uyghur people already shaved all their heads bald so the shaving order was redundant.
However, the shaving policy was not enforced in the Tusi autonomous chiefdoms in Southwestern China where many minorities lived. There was one Han Chinese Tusi, the Chiefdom of Kokang populated by Han Kokang people.
Clothing
Throughout China's multicultural history, clothing has been shaped through an intermingling of Han clothing styles, the Han Chinese being the dominant ethnicity, and the styles of various ethnic groups. Some examples include the standing collar of the cheongsam, which has been found in relics from the Ming dynasty, ruled by the Han Chinese, and was subsequently adopted in the Qing dynasty as Manchu clothing items. Manchu robes were initially collarless. The Manchu also adopted the right closure from the Han Chinese as they initially closed their robes on the left side.
Differences between Manchu and Han Chinese clothing
Manchu and Han Chinese clothing (Hanfu, including those worn in the Ming dynasty) differed from each other, the broad and general description of such differences in how Ming dynasty clothing is typically associated with sedentary characteristics such as being loose, "ample, flowing robes" with wide and long-sleeves which restricted movement and with "slippers with upturned toes" while the Manchu clothing were "boots, trousers and functional riding coats of coat of nomadic horsemen" allowing physical mobility. Manchu coats were close fitting and had slashed openings on the four sides which allowed greater ease of movements when horse-riding; the sleeves were long and tight ending in horse-hoof shape which were designed to protects the hands from the wind; trousers were worn by both Manchu men and women, and their boots had rigid soles which facilitated mounted archery. For the Han Chinese, however, Manchu-style clothing conflicted with their Confucian prescriptions which govern their attire.
The "y-shaped collar (cross-collar with right lapel over left), wide sleeves, absence of buttons, side-tying sashes, a relatively slim waistband that does not dominate the visual focus, and the sash knot tied at the front" represents the most uncontroversial form of Hanfu and the one that best embodies Hanfu aesthetics. Hanfu also has a small number of forms with metal buttons, stand-up collars, symmetrical front openings, or diagonal front openings, but these have never become mainstream; Hanfu aesthetics favor buttonless or concealed-button designs. A common point of confusion is that frog buttons (Pankou) , although originating from Hanfu, is a very minor element within Hanfu and have long fallen out of use. If a garment features frog buttons or centipede buttons (continuous fabric toggles), it no longer qualifies as Hanfu. In particular, the cheongsam (qipao) and Tang suit are not Hanfu but belong to Manchu clothing. The core difference between Hanfu and Manchu attire is that Hanfu does not use frog buttons, rows of non-metal buttons, or the "changzijin"-shaped collar (a collar opening in the shape of the Chinese character "厂").
Manchu's refusal to adopt Chinese clothing Manchu clothing were associated with martial vigour. When Hong Taiji drew up the dressing code after 1636, he made a direct association between the decline of the Liao, Jin and Yuan dynasties (all non-Han Chinese regimes) with the adoption of Hanfu and the adoption of a sedentary lifestyle. Hong Taiji therefore reminded the Banner princes and Manchu officials (in 1635 and in 1637) that the conquests by the Manchu were through riding and archery, and thus the wide and broad-sleeved clothing of the Ming dynasty were entirely unsuitable to the Manchu lifestyle and worried that his descendant would adopt Han Chinese customs while forgetting the sources of their greatness; therefore, the Manchu strongly rejected the adoption of Ming dynasty court clothing. It is recorded that Hong Taiji said in 1636: