It’s not a new hairstyle. The terracotta warriors wore it in the 3rd century BCE. Confucius wore it in 6th century BCE. King Wen of Zhou dynasty groomed his hair the same way in 11th century BCE. The top knot was the typical male hairstyle that ended in the 17th century when the Qing dynasty established a law forbidding the Han men to keep it. They must wear their hair as the single long braid that is seen more familiarly in kungfu movies set in Imperial times. When the Qing dynasty ended in the 20th century, Chinese men cut off their braids and have remained predominantly short haired since. The irony of fashion is that after the Chinese has abandoned the man bun for a brief 300 years relative to probably over 3,000 years, it is now fashionable. Chinese and Western ideas and practices have sometimes swapped places like this.
