Surely, even the most chavanistic Europeans of centuries past could see the incredible culture of one of the world's oldest civilizations. Is this person somehow even more ignorant than them? Incredible

I think you can be so chauvinistic as to do that but I think the answer for lindyman specifically isn't even that, he's just a dunce. Walked through china, saw chinese culture and he can recognize it as such but crucially it's mired and has its groundworks in very different cultural axioms and preferences, which makes the end result feel like 20% off. Then you just have to be chauvinistic enough to go "well this doesn't speak to me, default type person" and voila