Happy Lunar New Year, and welcome to 2023, the Year of the Cat.
Ahh.... you're thinking about China, Japan and Korea. In Vietnam, this is the Year of the Cat.
As I explained in this Interesting Random Fact post: The Chinese Zodiac and the Cat
Saturday, January 21, 2023
Happy Year of the Cat
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I have wondered for several years about my own countrymen's love to hate China (even though my countrymen seem to share a lot of the nasty similarities of the people they hate - know one guy on the same hobbyist community who has some distant Chinese roots and he seems to be the last person who wouldn't love to be snarky about the Chinese). I thought: if you don't like them how about just stop thinking of them? Yet you consume a lot and love to be elitist about Chinese stuff.
Up until now at least. It just hit my mind perhaps the question actually answered itself. They hate Chinese culture because their lives revolve around it, and vice versa. Nobody hates a country's culture when they voluntarily reach out for it. People do hate a culture when they can't help but having to absorb it. Every culture has assholes who think they are special, few however have assholes who love making everything about them wherever they go, and act innocent or like a victim when others hate them (as they believe their own culture is great and they're doing nothing wrong and others might as well just adopt it anyway).
A culture is not something you can just stop thinking nor be selective about, especially when your own livelihood depends on its ecosystem. What you hate doing would become a habit, an integral part of you at some point. All the Chinese high culture like calligraphy or whatnot will no longer seem cute or fancy to people who have to practice them to be accepted or mingle or to seem educated. People (like me) who love aweing at those that have deep or sophisticated knowledge about Chinese culture may not even realize for the knowledge-havers themselves, such things could very well be stuff they got so tired of seeing again and again.
Maybe this is why China-hating is more incomprehensible to Vietnamese these days (most are only taught to hate them), but made absolute sense in the ancient old days when China was the dominant power (and there were still many other contextual you-have-to-see-to-understand-why-people-hated-it things).
This also makes Japan a truly unique country. No other I know of has many or a portion of its people who hate it when their own culture is exposed to foreigners. When this happens they only attract those who love them.
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