When I first got here, I like to think that I was not immediately seen as a foreigner. I don’t look as “American” as some of my fellow DukeEngagers. I have a Chinese last name. The little Chinese I do speak is accented, but not incomprehensibly so. And therefore, I thought I could blend in for a little while. However, all hopes of this were dashed as soon as my students saw me pick up a pen.
They pointed at my hand, obviously distressed, and said a bunch of things in Chinese that I couldn't understand, until one of the students translated for me:
“They want to know why you’re writing that way.”
Here was the problem: I’m left-handed, and China is essentially a country without left-handedness. That’s not to say that fewer left-handed people are born here; experts estimate it’s probably around 10 percent just like everywhere else. It’s just that in China, if you happen to be born left-handed, you are going to be taught to function right-handedly.
I already knew that in many parts of the world, there are strong negative stigmas attached to left-handedness. China is actually not one of these places, because here, it’s not about stigma, it’s about practicality.
The more time I’ve spent here, the more this phenomenon actually makes sense to me. In a population of 1.3 billion people, a successful society has to function in favor of the majority. As I watch the way my students recite vocabulary words in unison, march in perfectly-straight lines, and keep their desks in precise order, I realize it would actually be more strange to see a less-disciplined approach to something so important to everyday life: your dominant hand.
Think about it: eliminating left-handedness solves a lot of simple problems for a society. Ink doesn’t smudge as you write complicated characters across a page. You don’t bump elbows with people at tables or desks—an especially useful thing in a place as crowded as China. Teachers can more easily instruct large classes when everyone is doing the same thing, the same way, with the same hand. It's a quick-fix to so many problems to just teach kids to do things right-handedly.
Even though I explained to my kids what being left-handed is, and how it's relatively normal in the States, I continue to run into minor obstacles because of my condition. Recently, I’ve been attending a calligraphy class where the teacher insists that I use my right-hand, because otherwise, the characters simply won’t be “correct”. I didn’t believe him at first, so I tried it both ways and showed him.
He can tell the difference.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that being left-handed is just one more thing here that labels me as a “外国人” or a foreigner, and that maybe, I should stop trying so hard to “blend”, and just enjoy my foreign, left-handed self while I’m here.
They pointed at my hand, obviously distressed, and said a bunch of things in Chinese that I couldn't understand, until one of the students translated for me:
“They want to know why you’re writing that way.”
Here was the problem: I’m left-handed, and China is essentially a country without left-handedness. That’s not to say that fewer left-handed people are born here; experts estimate it’s probably around 10 percent just like everywhere else. It’s just that in China, if you happen to be born left-handed, you are going to be taught to function right-handedly.
I already knew that in many parts of the world, there are strong negative stigmas attached to left-handedness. China is actually not one of these places, because here, it’s not about stigma, it’s about practicality.
The more time I’ve spent here, the more this phenomenon actually makes sense to me. In a population of 1.3 billion people, a successful society has to function in favor of the majority. As I watch the way my students recite vocabulary words in unison, march in perfectly-straight lines, and keep their desks in precise order, I realize it would actually be more strange to see a less-disciplined approach to something so important to everyday life: your dominant hand.
Think about it: eliminating left-handedness solves a lot of simple problems for a society. Ink doesn’t smudge as you write complicated characters across a page. You don’t bump elbows with people at tables or desks—an especially useful thing in a place as crowded as China. Teachers can more easily instruct large classes when everyone is doing the same thing, the same way, with the same hand. It's a quick-fix to so many problems to just teach kids to do things right-handedly.
Even though I explained to my kids what being left-handed is, and how it's relatively normal in the States, I continue to run into minor obstacles because of my condition. Recently, I’ve been attending a calligraphy class where the teacher insists that I use my right-hand, because otherwise, the characters simply won’t be “correct”. I didn’t believe him at first, so I tried it both ways and showed him.
He can tell the difference.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that being left-handed is just one more thing here that labels me as a “外国人” or a foreigner, and that maybe, I should stop trying so hard to “blend”, and just enjoy my foreign, left-handed self while I’m here.