In wuxia I see that they have half their hair up and the other half down. Is there a certain period where this hairstyle directs from?
Hi, thanks for the question, and sorry for taking ages to reply!
The half-up, half-down hairstyle that you often see on both male & female characters in Chinese guzhuang (period costume) dramas is not based on historical hairstyles. Rather, it is a fairly recent styling convention, most likely originating from late 20th century wuxia TV shows from Hong Kong (x). Over time the hairstyle has become normalized and commonplace in Chinese costume dramas, especially in the wuxia and xianxia genres (because these genres are not necessarily aiming for historical accuracy in the first place).
Below, from left to right: Wang Hedi in Love Between Fairy and Devil, Deng Wei in Miss the Dragon, Xiao Zhan in The Untamed, Gong Jun in Word of Honor:
As @niteshade925 explains in this post, for male characters, the main idea of the hairstyle is to make the character look attractive, and also in some shows/context, to hint at the character’s personality, as in maybe they do not adhere to traditional customs and are free-spirited/spontaneous. For female characters, it is usually just a regular hairstyle without deeper meaning :P
For more information on this half-up half-down hairstyle, and historical hairstyles in general, please see the following posts:
The historical accuracy of half-up half-down hairstyles
The historical accuracy of ponytails
Historical hairstyles for men
Hope this helps!
