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.
“You don’t have left-handed people in China?” I inquired making sure I hadn’t mistranslated his words.
“Nope, I had never seen anybody write with their left hand until I came to the U.S.” he said.
“How is that possible?” I asked, “Isn’t that genetic?”
“Maybe so, but in China kids are all taught to write with their right hands. If they pick up a pencil with their left hand, the teacher will put it in their right. It’s really just a matter of practicality. In the US, you have left-handed desks, left handed guitars, and all sorts of other left handed devices, but in China we have none of the sort. It works out better that way I think, no need to manufacture 2 different kinds of something when only one is necessary.”
As he brought this up I vaguely remember my grandmother telling me how when she was a little girl she had picked up objects with her left hand, and her mother would always put it in her right, so much so that she eventually became completely right-handed. This practice however seems to have fallen mostly out of practice in the US. Since I’m no longer in China I can’t really check whether or not this man’s story checks out, but I do not recall ever personally encountering any southpaws in the land of the Middle Kingdom. Can anybody out their either confirm or deny the existence of left-handed Chinese?
