*Editor's note: Zaruhi Poghosyan is a multimedia editor for CGTN Digital. This article is part of China, Soft Focus – a slow journalism series that offers human-centered glimpses into culture, history and everyday life across China through measured pace and intimate storytelling.

I arrived in China ten months ago eager to see, document and understand, yet somehow, life here didn't demand that I shape it to my own rhythm; instead, it gently tuned me into its own. China taught me that seeing is only the beginning, and that real understanding comes from allowing the world to shape you as much as you seek to understand it. 

Somewhere along the quiet rituals of calming night strolls through the winding hutong, the almost human-like solitude of the "lonely" bikes dotting Beijing's streets, the unhurried joy of sharing a delicious tanghulu with friends, the sound of the piano notes on Qingdao's promenade that took me back to childhood and the slow boat rides beneath the canopy in Tongli, I found myself curiously reorienting to soften, slow down and perceive differently. 

This curiosity led me back to the traditions that have long shaped this place – philosophies that continue to influence how people live, move and make sense of the world.

In the Chinese tradition, noticing is not an act so much as a skill of the mind tuning itself to the world. One does not strain for it. One relaxes into it, as though things reveal themselves the moment we stop insisting on naming or measuring them.

Daoism teaches this first lesson.

Daoism teaches that true perception begins with flow. To notice is not to grasp or control, but to let the world move through you without resistance much like the way water slips through fingers yet wears down stone. Water does not seek to change anything, and yet it has the innate power to bend everything to it.

In this softness lies its power. 

When we notice without judgment, we become like water – receptive enough to sense subtle shifts, flexible enough to change course, steady enough to understand what cannot be rushed.

Confucianism offers another angle.

By contrast, Confucianism brings a sense of reverence to the act of noticing. To observe another person carefully is to honor them; to pay attention to one's surroundings is to respect the order of things.

In this view, nothing is trivial. A cup placed carefully on the table, a respectful pause before speaking, an attentive nod in conversation – each gesture carries moral weight. 

In a sense, noticing becomes a form of care, a reminder that meaning is found in the details we choose not to dismiss or overlook. 

Then comes Buddhism, which speaks of noticing as awakening.

Not from sleep, but from the endless drift into distraction – the way our minds often tend to loop into memory, overthinking, worry and restlessness. To notice here is to pull gently at the thread of the present moment until the mind stops wandering.

Pause. What do you notice? The weight of your own breath. The way sunlight pours through large windows. The muted hum of the ever-awake city.

This, too, is a kind of enlightenment – a steady refusal to abandon the world for the fog of thought. Therefore, to notice is to wake up, again and again, to the simple miracle of being present.

These philosophies seep into Chinese art like ink into paper where beauty often lives in the space left unfilled – in the mist between mountains, the pause in a verse, the blank paper surrounding a single brushstroke. What is not shown is just as meaningful as what is. 

That's why in traditional landscape paintings, Chinese painters often leave entire sections of the scroll unmarked. The unfilled space is an invitation for us to notice what is implied, allowing the imagination to complete the rest. 

To notice, then, is to live with permeability – to let experience seep in like ink spreading across paper rather than rush past you.

However, it isn't passive; it's a disciplined softness, the kind that asks you to arrive with humility and feel without rushing to judge.

If China has taught me anything, it is the art of noticing, and that noticing is not about sharpening the eyes but widening the heart and meeting life as it comes with openness for its smallest moments to matter.