Every article that seeks to debunk it bring up that it was a point of national pride, while sucking off sir such and such who honored the crown or whatever. Like they cannot deal with anyone else feeling pride, only the white man can.

Expect to see a HUGE amount of this in the west as the Chinese Lunar missions get underway. You'd better believe that people will insist all sorts of crazy stories rather than admit that Chinese people can want to do cool things.