With its increased popularity, stores renting hanfu rose rapidly. From April to August this year, the number of hanfu rental stores in Beijing increased from three to more than 20, media reported. In addition, online sales of hanfu surged by 146 percent year-on-year and sales of traditional Chinese style creative jewelry increased by 94 percent year-on-year, according to an e-commerce platform.

"Students are the largest group of customers of hanfu across China, but we also target adults as our customers," said Daoding, who runs an online hanfu store which has cooperated with more than 20 brick-and-mortar stores and has 45,000 fans on media video app douyin.

Female customers dominate the hanfu market, said Daoding, adding that the male to female ratio of its customers was 1:5.

Overseas students and ethnic Chinese are also hanfu lovers. "Overseas students have a deep national and cultural identity with the motherland as they live in a foreign country," Daoding explained.