"China: Through the Looking Glass," the high-profile Chinese culture infused fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art received such an enthusiastic reception from the audience that the museum has decided to extend it to September 7, three weeks longer than originally planned.

Focusing on the impact of Chinese aesthetics on Western fashion for centuries, the exhibition presents more than 140 examples of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear. The display ranged from an Yves Saint Laurent gown inspired by the dragon robe of the last Chinese emperor to Vivienne Tam's dress with a pattern of Mao portraits. With movie director Wong Kar-wai the artistic director and Nathan Crowley the production designer, the exhibition has been one of the hottest cultural events for those from the East or West throughout the summer. 

But it's not like it didn't raise a few eyebrows. The China-themed dress code of the Met's annual gala, which was held on May 4 to herald the exhibition, attracted a horde of comically dressed celebrities, leading to cruel jabs on social media platforms in China. For example, the long and round train of Rihanna's yellow dress was compared to Chinese omelettes, and the flaming crown worn by Sarah Jessica Parker was said to have been stolen from the costume of Fuwa, the mascot of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

But a more serious question was raised in early August in a letter sent to the Met by Bob Lee, the executive director of the Asian American Arts Center, a Chinatown-based organization that has been promoting Asian art and artists since the 1970s. Lee blamed the Met's exhibition for its "exotification of Asia and Asians," and said its claim of re-evaluating Edward Said's ideas of Orientalism "is clearly an excuse to affirm the acceptability and dominance of the Western market and its reliance on Orientalist notions."

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Lee compared the exhibition with the recent controversial Kimono Wednesdays at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that invited visitors to try on the kimonos displayed next to Claude Monet's "La Japonaise," and the "Geisha: Beyond the Painted Smile" at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in 2004. Both exhibitions were criticized by some Asian and non-Asian rights advocates for promoting Orientalism and being racist.

Lee admitted he has allowed the audience to try on a kimono and Samurai costume brought by a Japanese dancer at an outdoor Asian American Heritage Festival his organization was involved in. But he said the Met's power to "determine value and manipulate the cultural signifiers of others" makes the difference. "The people are learning to take ownership of their own culture, not leaving it to those who claim to mean well," he said in the letter.

The Met has kept silent and Lee's letter didn't gain much attention. But the question he raised about cultural ownership is worth discussing. Cultures supported by stronger economies and more powerful people always try to dominate other cultures.

As a human rights activist who attended protests from the 1960s anti-war movement to the recent Occupy Wall Street, Lee's suspicion of the power of the Met may be shared by a whole generation of Asian Americans who remember the Fu Manchu era. In that era, the claim of cultural ownership had been an important tool of self protection for the dominated culture.

But as China gets stronger itself and the world's power more balanced, the war of anti-cultural dominance is no longer an urgent matter for the new generation of Chinese, which is why the Met's gala triggered more jokes than complaints in China.

The ownership issues still exist, reflected in a slew of contemporary events from the international auction battles by Chinese buyers to bring Chinese antiques back home, to the quarrel between China and South Korea over the origin of the dragon boat festival.

But whether cultural ownership means an exclusive right to control the evolution, deviation and interpretation of a certain culture is another story. When a culture travels long distances to a foreign land, it's destined to an existence that, despite its roots in the motherboard, is independent. The Chinese culture we see in the Met's exhibition may be different from the Chinese culture we see in China, but the same goes for the Chinese culture we see in Chinatown. The fashion designers who willfully borrowed Chinese elements may be no less guilty than the restaurant owners in Chinatown who pour sweet and sour sauce on so many dishes.

Given the massive geographical and cultural differences, there will always be fantasies, no matter whether the audience tries to learn about China from Pearl Buck's books, Zhang Yimou's films or Tan Dun's music. If the fantasies can cultivate a long-time interest in the culture and a desire for more learning, they may deserve more of a thumbs up than anything else.

The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com