Tuesday 15 January 2008

No Left-Handed Chinese?

Every once in a while you read a post that knocks you for six.

One game that some colleagues and I play when undertaking 3 hour exam invigilations in the UK is to count the number of left handed students. When there are 100 students you usually end up with around 10%. This has been fairly consistent over the years.

Imagine my surprise therefore to hear that there are no left handed people in China.

It is frankly very difficult to believe and must make like hard for natural left handers. I assume that spotting one would be easy as surely they still kick a football with their left foot and throw a ball with their left-hand.

Ben's article is worth a quick read. Surely, left-handedness is now non discouraged to the same extent in China.

No Lefties in China? [Ben's Blog]

This past December, I was invited to a Chinese Christmas party in Chinatown. During the party, I was conversing with a middle-aged gentleman who had lived in the US for ten years. When the conversation turned to culture shock I asked him what he thought was the strangest thing he saw when he first came to the US.

“Left handed people,” he replied without any hesitation.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is just like "there are no gay people in China", "There are prostitutes in China, they are all in Taiway", "No one died in the square". All truth with Chinese characteristics.

Anonymous said...

its not that its saying that there are "no gay people in China..."

in a lot of eastern cultures such as Chinese it is viewed as either unclean or even as a mark of evil.