#things like comparing and contrasting styles and techniques from an equal standpoint is super neat too!

[stardust-falling]

Anyway as much as I do appreciate westerners taking an interest in Chinese culture it sometimes feels like my culture is just viewed as an art piece. Chinese people and culture are not artworks on display for western viewers’ pleasure. We are very real people, with very real culture, and as someone who has been overseas and removed from my culture for a good portion of my life it sometimes hurts when CN culture is just viewed as surface level “pretty” or heaven forbid “aesthetic,” when it’s so much more than that.

#like!!! hanfu & calligraphy and Chinese architecture are undeniably very pretty!!! #it’s just… we get treated with so much exoticism and orientalists #I spent so many years being called ‘exotic’ as like. a compliment. #that when I see that same kind of sentiment it makes me very uncomfy #I get that Chinese culture is foreign to westerners but it’s not always about you #there can be appreciation without orientalism #so treat Chinese fashion on the same level as western fashion #and other arts too! #hanfu is to me like corsetry and petticoats are to my fully western-raised partner #things like comparing and contrasting styles and techniques from an equal standpoint is super neat too! #and like. treating art as art is one thing but when the entire culture and even the people themselves get wrapped up into that ‘art’ #it’s a little bit messed up tbh