From September 3 to 6, the 2026 China Cultural Tourism Industry Expo filled the Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center in Tianjin, gathering nearly 2,000 exhibitors from 20 countries and regions. Among the stands, one county’s clothing drew a steady stream of visitors: Caoxian Hanfu, presented as one of three signature cultural-tourism calling cards of the Heze exhibition area. The Caoxian Hengliya Garment (恒丽雅) company attended on behalf of the county culture and tourism bureau, and its display of Mamianqun (马面裙) skirts and Quju (曲裾) robes stopped passers-by for photographs, blending traditional guofeng styling with contemporary cuts.
Hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the expo and framed around the tourism industry goals of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, under the theme “Deepening Culture-Tourism Integration, Smart Innovation for a Better Life.” During the fair, Hengliya also took the stage of the “Culture-Tourism New Force” debut session for innovative projects, a platform that assembled resources from the World Tourism Alliance, China Tourism Group, Tencent and expert teams from several universities. For a county-level clothing cluster, the appearance on a national stage marked another step in its push toward branding and higher-end positioning.
The two garment types at the center of the booth carry the cluster’s reputation with good reason. The Mamianqun, a pleated wrap skirt with two flat “horse-face” panels at front and back, descends from Ming dynasty wardrobes and has become the single best-known Chinese skirt style of the current revival, prized for how its knife pleats open and close with movement. The Quju robe, a body-wrapping robe with a spiraling hemline, reaches back to the Warring States and Han eras as one of the oldest continuous silhouettes in Chinese dress. Exhibiting both side by side let the stand tell a longer story than any single viral product could: one silhouette carrying Ming-era tailoring, the other carrying two millennia of draped construction, both cut in the county’s contemporary fabrics and sizing.
Visitors responded the way expo crowds usually reward craft: lingering at the rack, photographing the embroidery up close, and asking where the pieces could be bought. The presentation leaned on what Caoxian’s exhibitors call the combination of traditional guofeng aesthetics and modern wearability — everyday cuts, machine-assisted precision embroidery, and price points that sit well below custom-workshop equivalents.
From design research to production and sales, Caoxian has built China’s largest original-design Hanfu cluster, where every production step can be completed within five kilometers. Its 2025 online and offline Hanfu sales passed 13 billion yuan, about half the national market — a scale the county reported again this summer when first-half online sales reached 4.775 billion yuan. What the expo appearance signals is the cluster’s next phase: design teams are folding intangible-heritage elements into new collections and exploring product lines beyond clothing, including outfits for humanoid robots.
The same fair halls carried other stories of traditional dress and craft moving into contemporary life. The Shanghai stand, built around the creative concept “One Root of Heaven and Earth, the World Tree,” presented living-heritage projects from woodblock watermarks at Duoyunxuan to derivative products built on haipai qipao elements, alongside time-honored brands such as tea seller Wang Yutai. Visitors could also try the “Hu Xiao You” smart-tourism platform from the Shanghai culture and tourism administration on an interactive screen at the stand entrance, testing itinerary planning and travel recommendation functions.
