Fine Porcelian

Orientalism has nothing to do with any specific culture, it is all about the European viewpoint of the world and the ideology of a colonist. The entire notion of the eastern world is constructed from the idea that European countries are at the center of the world, and all other countries/continents revolve around and exist.

Western culture is parasitic, drawing on and relying on other nations for influence. It sees value only in the possessions of its colonies and absorbs what it wants to strengthen itself. The most obvious example of this could be the fine porcelain that Europeans called China since the only thing the explorers and traders who went to China cared about was the material goods they obtained. In 2018, Americans and Europeans still value fine porcelain and call it China, without any regard to how idiotic that name is (We call a dish China just because we took it from Chinese). Another example of this is England's national dish, Chicken Tikka Masala. A nation whose national dish is a dish from another nation says something about their culture. While it is possible to argue that these cultures are embracing others, it is hard to look past how Europe always seems to seize these things by force, when they go to these places and take things from them. This trading and colonialism has never been a mutualistic relationship as these nations have never been treated as truly equal to Europeans.

Furthermore, I believe the true threat of Orientalism is how we can often fail to accept or even acknowledge that other people's ways of life are more similar to our own than it may actually seem. The notion that developing nations are a land of mystery comes from the idea that the western world that we live in is the only form of "normal" modern living, and that all other nations must live in a state of constant misery or poverty. This distorted image comes from our filtered view of the third world, which is often a failure of our news and education systems.