I'm not surprised. China gets special attention from the world for some reason, so the REAL China is NEVER, ever shown.
You have to go there and SMELL the place. There is NOTHING like the smell of a place to tell your all about it. FILTHY. I've hear all the PR on how it's changed. SOME things don't change about a culture.
My read: the Chinese have produced FABULOUS art work, literature and ALL the good stuff that a culture can produce. They really are something.
Their music SUCKS big time. They don't come CLOSE to the Italians and German for music of all time.
They produce FABULOUS silk and their shops, "sweatshops," earn that name as they are sad places for Westerners to see.
NO DOUBT the Chinese see themselves 100% the opposite as I see them, but I have Western, Christian and American values. I think females are as worthwhile as males. I don't judge cultures on how many MALES they can produce but by the things they produce in the way of art, culture, health standards and such.
My husband and I did get to visit China way back in 1981, when it first opened to the world. I also live in an area where there are TONS of Chinese. The ones here, BOAs (fresh off the Boeing) and CIA's (Chinese in America) do refuse to speak English and to meld into our society. They still feel, by their words and actions, that they really, really are superior to the rest of the planet.
I don't regard ABC's (American Born Chinese) as anything but 100% Americans.
As for the FOBs and CIAs, now I am simply as annoyed by them as they are by me. Only this is MY country and we speak English, are Christian and are clean, clean, clean. I LOVE it and am therefore FAR MORE patient with their superiority complex than if I were living in China or somewhere foreign where they are way-too-many Chinese...and HAD to put up with their superiority complex.
It's NOT "superior" for a country to be known for its FILTH, filth, filth.
Tourists now are conducted by very STRICT guides to be shown ONLY the best and cleanest. Hah, they get to miss the filth that we saw. China was JUST opened to the West and had NOT CLUE ONE as to what we Westerners considered FILTHY. We never did say anything to anyone but my face ALWAYS expresses exactly what I am thinking.
My husband told me LONG AGO never to take up poker. :o)
Lol. I know WAY too much about the Chinese, don't I?
I'm not being harsh, am I?
I suspect that the horribleness of Klingon opera expressed in the Star Trek series is a sly stab at Chinese music.
I am reminded, in graduate school, back when it was discovered that Alaskan Indians shared DNA with the Chinese (which was being used to ascertain ancient migration routes). I starting talking to my meek, mild mannered, Chinese office-mate and mentioned this story. I've never seen him become so angry, in denouncing the story as a pack of lies. There was absolutely no way that those savages shared any DNA with the ennobled Chinese. That was his story and he stuck to it.