If you have ever wanted to walk a riverside in a Tang robe and call it an assignment, this is the closest thing to a formal invitation. On August 11, the 38th Guangyuan Daughter Festival (广元女儿节) opened recruitment for “Poetry on the Shu Road” (诗行蜀道), a Hanfu parade that will run along 1.6 kilometers of the Jialing riverfront on August 31 — and anyone aged 18 to 45 with a proper-construction Hanfu or a Neo-Chinese qipao can apply, free of charge, until noon on August 19.
Guangyuan, in northern Sichuan, claims a particular title: it is the hometown of Wu Zetian (武则天), China’s only female emperor, and the Daughter Festival is the city’s signature celebration, now in its 38th edition. This year’s festival wraps the parade into a package of “girl-power” tourism — during the festival window, Guangyuan offers women visitors from anywhere in the world nine days of free admission to its attractions, a goodwill gesture the organizers say is the festival’s biggest yet.
The parade itself is a moving timeline of Chinese dress. Recruiters are looking for three categories of walkers — Tang-style, Song-style and Ming-style Hanfu enthusiasts, plus lovers of the Neo-Chinese qipao — who will process from the Zhenxingyuan traffic-light intersection past the Dongsheng Huating junction to the Landscape Gallery Bridge, a 1.6-kilometer stretch on a nine-meter-wide riverside walkway with open views over the water. Three staged performances break the march: ten minutes, ten minutes, then fifteen. Rehearsals run on August 30 and 31, and walkers must follow the organizers’ schedule.
Reading the requirements feels like a casting call with standards attached. Applicants must be 18 to 45, in good health, able to complete the full walk, and must supply their own garments of standard construction — “regular form” is the phrase the organizers use, meaning pieces cut to recognized historical silhouettes rather than loose costume approximations. Teamwork is stated explicitly: no wandering off, no lateness, no missing rehearsal. Participants also get a safety briefing, since the route hugs the water — keep jewelry and phones secured, and stay with the group.
Signing up takes three things: a name, a phone number and one to three photos of the garment you plan to wear. Registration runs through a QR code, with a note field formatted as “name + dynasty style” so the organizers can sort walkers by era before the parade. Two phone numbers field questions — 028-2398586 and 13698333093. The whole thing is a public-welfare activity: no fee, no ticket, no catch, beyond showing up in something you can walk 1.6 kilometers in.
For out-of-town Hanfu travelers, the timing is convenient — the parade lands on a Monday morning, 9:30 to 10:30, which slots neatly before the festival’s broader slate. And for the city itself, the walk is the showcase piece of a festival built around the daughter motif: an avenue of braided hair and billowing sleeves along the Jialing, closing the gap between the Shu Road’s old poetry and the current generation of fabric. The recruitment notice ends on a plain promise: “One set of fine clothes for a grand gathering, a thousand years of elegance gathering at Lizhou” — Lizhou being Guangyuan’s ancient name. The walkers who answer the call will be wearing that promise, quite literally, on the last morning of August.