Why do foreigners like to study ancient Chinese culture?

First, we have to understand whether foreigners' love for Chinese culture is exaggerated by us.

There are two problems with Japan mentioned in your question: 1) Japan was originally influenced by Chinese culture, and it is not surprising that it studies Chinese culture. 2) Japan not only studies Chinese culture, but also studies other cultures very hard.

So do foreigners love Chinese culture? They still love it. But not many of them have really studied it. In other words, it has not reached the level of "foreigners generally love Chinese culture".

Second, are Chinese people not interested in their own culture? This is a very complicated question, because it involves what is culture in the first place? If we limit culture to ancient texts, then the situation is indeed serious. But culture is also alive. Poetry, as the ancients called it, was a minor path, not a famous mountain endeavor, but there is no doubt that moderns regard it as a type of culture. The same is true of theater. So how do we know that today's Internet and Supergirl won't become culture in a few years?

In short, the times have changed, society has changed, lifestyles have changed, and people's interest in and understanding of culture has had to change along with it.

Thirdly, it is very difficult to make an overall summary of traditional Chinese culture, but it seems to me that we can think of traditional Chinese culture as a culture based mainly on agricultural civilization. While there is certainly a connection between this culture and the modern civilization of modern society, there is also certainly a great deal of maladjustment. It is to be expected that modern people's interest in it has declined.

Fourth, the decline in interest is only one aspect. Since the modernization of Chinese society is a passive process, including the modernization process is not an independent process, especially now, it is under the coercion of globalization. As a result of this passivity and backwardness, a tendency to exaggerate the inherent culture of the nation has developed. One example of this is the over-exaggeration of ancient Chinese culture. There are countless examples of this. For example, the painstaking argument that golf originated in China. I don't know if it's true, but even if it is, so what? Another symptom of this tendency is to draw on external importance to confirm it. That is to say, "foreigners all value our culture," as proof of the sublimity of Chinese culture.

To summarize: 1) foreigners do not like Chinese culture that much (or even lack a basic understanding of it). 2) it is true that Chinese people nowadays do not attach much importance to the ancient Chinese culture, but they are developing a new Chinese culture.