Aesthetic Attribution and Nationalism

When I saw someone commenting on Japanese ceramics, they compared it with China. After thinking about it, I actually saw the first porcelain that fascinated me when I was a child. It was brought back by my uncle who was studying in Japan, and it was not Chinese. I still don't know what those kilns are, but I just remember the glaze color is so charming, it was one of the most beautiful things I could get my hands on in my childhood when I didn't have any museums to visit, although it was expensive enough to just look at them On the bookshelf of my grandfather's house, I want to touch it but I'm afraid of being scolded, a kind of distant and fragile beauty.

Now I don't know where those jars have gone. If it wasn't for the reminder of "patriots", I would hardly realize that a large part (almost all) of my exquisite aesthetic enlightenment actually came from Japan. Even if I don't like Japanese aesthetics now, I must admit that all the beautiful or technological things I saw throughout the 90s were Japanese. It was like a reminder that at that time they made me intuitively feel that there is something better or more magical beyond daily use, and appreciating that beauty is the beginning of my spiritual pursuit.

Acknowledging this is not a "foreign semblance", let alone "colonial sequelae". Because before there is awareness of "inside" and "outside", the feeling of appreciation is already there, and even those so-called "inside" only appear after "outside". If you go to "contempt for foreigners and respect others" because you realize your nationality and ethnicity after growing up, you are essentially as stupid as the former, because you have no aesthetic ability and take irrelevant things as the standard of beauty.

Now I do think "Chinese culture" appeals to me (perhaps the most appealing), even knowing that this country has many problems and a lot of realities that disgust me, there are still parts of its culture that make me extremely fascinated. This is not because I realize that I am from this country, or Han nationality, but because being here just gave me more opportunities to get acquainted with it later. If there is still a chance to be in touch with the culture of another place as frequently, the liking for that place is likely to surpass that of China, right? After all, this shift has already happened once.

As a Northeasterner whose identity has not been so smooth since childhood, "Chinese culture" is not the original aesthetic attribution at all, and it cannot be said that it is "my culture" without hesitation. I have never been "loyal" to the cultures of all places, nor can I be loyal, all I can do is to admit what attracts me the most at the moment, which can bring more spiritual satisfaction, but it does not mean which is more "higher" , just happens to be more willing to put emotion and attention into it.

Of course you can also say, "Culture is nothing but a constructed imagination". But I am a person who likes this kind of imagination, and I believe there are many others. It would be even better if there was a little bit of construction involved. And the "I" we think is not a constructed imagination? In the process of understanding all these foreign objects, we pieced together a little bit of who we wanted to be.