I've read about how immensely influential China was to countries like Japan and Korea, and it makes me wonder if China had any outside influences. I know Buddhism from India was huge, but aside from that, it would seem that China remained unchanged and uninterested in other cultures. What are some examples in history, ancient or modern, where China was influenced by another nation, be it language or otherwise?
Actually a lot if you define China as Han ethnic group only.
For example, before Tang dynasty, people use to sitting on heels rather than a chair. Talk about Tang Dynasty, I should mention the northern and southern period, when non-Han peoples rule the north for more than 200 years. Even though those peoples were sinicized, but they bring a lot of new things, lime, the chairs
And then, there were Mogolian Yuan dynasty and Manchurian Qing dynasty. They bring more change to china especially Qing.
(Even though Manchurian are almost indistinguishable from Han Chinese today, and half of the Mongolian land (inner mogolia) and most of the mogolian people are chinese today, they could still been seen as foreign if we only talk about Han ethnic)
Some other notable influenses are: Cheongsam, provinces (started by Mogolian Yuan, still being used today), and Baijiu, the famous Chinese liquor, invented after getting the distill method from Arabics.
In general, China’s change over time is bigger than most people would think, but two things make thins misunderstanding:
1, a lot of those “foerigners” became Chinese
2, a lot of those places who influence china, became part of China today. (If the outter mongolian did not become independent during the1910s, India would be the only none chinese place which influences China significantly )