Tifayifu

Tifayifu (simplified Chinese: 剃发易服; traditional Chinese: 剃髮易服; lit. 'shaving hair and changing clothing') was a forced assimilation policy of the early Qing dynasty enacted in 1645 as Qing conquered China from the preceding Ming dynasty. The edict forced Han Chinese, under the threat of massacres, to adopt the Manchu hairstyle (queue) and clothing (qizhuang), abolishing Han Chinese clothing. 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 ,...