People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. In early years of new China, the so-called "bourgeois life style" was criticized which involved clothes and dressing styles. In those seaside cities that had been semi-colonized, some town folks who were influenced by western dress custom tended to wear western suits, bather shoes, cheong-sam and high-heel shoes. In most other cities, people still wore traditional long robes and mandarin jackets. Because political propaganda was so deeply rooted among people, though not stipulated by written order, western suits, cheong-sams, long robes and mandarin jackets were all considered to be the scum of the old society and abandoned by farmers and Workers. The social etiquette also changed from bow to handshake or salute. The dresses of farmers and Workers became the new fashion - overalls with gallus, working caps with a round top and front brim, cotton cloth rubber sole shoes, white head wrapping towels, felt hats or straw hats, Chinese style short coats and loose trousers and square opening black cloth cover shoes etc. became signs of this new fashion. Even though sometimes there might be some improvements on the dress, they were hardly more than a turn-down collar and some outer pockets for the working dress. City women, however, wore printing cloth cotton coat of all different colors inside the blue or grey jackets. In festive days, the typical costume for Shan Bei Yangge (a popular rural folk dance) was to tie fresh red and green color ribbons around waist with two hands holding the two ends of the ribbon. The image of ribbons floating while dancing became the fad all over the country overnight
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