On Cathay

From the "Imagined Journeys to Distant Cathay: Constructing China with Ceramics, 1780-1920" by John R. Haddad (2006)

It was further quoted in the article by Carter Harrison, the former mayor of Chicago in 1887, 

"Men's opinions [are] moulded, or at least colored, by the veriest trifles - colored into prejudices which require time and care to eradicate. He whose mother's treasured porcelain service was of the blue willow pattern, has, more or less, his impressions of the Celestial Empire fashioned upon the model he studied upon the plates from which he ate."

And that, Harrison was referring to quotidian exposures that shape worldviews. As benign as orientalization through art, more than one century on, the bombardment of influences have taken a more serious turn that is capable of deciding the fates of millions. That would come in the form of our beloved popular media, mostly run by the dominant classes of the world's population. Of which, certain names inevitably arise, but no, I will not name them, simply because I have myself been an avid subscriber to their views in my two decades of existence. Sometimes, in contact with news that ostensibly do not matter, we subconsciously take the sides of these information agents. That is why.