You can use chopsticks!?!

Chinese are in love with the Chineseness of all things Chinese, historic, current or future. As if only a Chinese could either understand or perfect Chinese skills. Want an example? Okay. Are you hungry?

After a long morning flow charting a business process two Chinese teammates and I were hungry. "Chinese?" they asked. "Of course."

We sit, receive the Chinese-only menus and start negotiating the meal. (You do not 'order' a meal in a Chinese restaurant; you 'discuss' it with the server and/or the manager or chef, substituting this, changing how that is prepared, requesting a dish not on the menu, back and forth until satisfied.)

Minutes later (Chinese restaurants can be fast) the food arrives. I break apart my disposable bamboo chopsticks, rub them together to eliminate any shavings or splinters, and tuck in. It looked good and smelled better. Crunching happily on a stir-fried shrimp, I reach out and grab (pinch? pick up? select?) a piece of celery.

"Oh," one Chinese meal mate exclaimed, with genuine surprise, "you can use chopsticks!"

Huh? I'd just spent the morning with him, using mostly Chinese to understand that damn business process, had read the Chinese menu and participated fully in the meal negotiation, and had spent the time waiting for the food discussing baseball with him and his coworker. And now he is surprised that I CAN USE CHOPSTICKS!?!

Of all the snappy answers that popped into my head I went conservative (they were clients after all) and answered with a simple "yes." I could have told them that I had been using chopsticks since a teen, long before crossing the Pacific. Or that most Westerners, especially those in cosmopolitan cities like Vancouver, New York or San Francisco, can use chopsticks.

You often see this cultural/logical disconnect. A classic is speaking to a Chinese shopkeeper (say) while his back is turned. No problem, the words flow back and forth ... until he turns around and sees you are not Chinese. His mental steps are clear: this person is white (non-Chinese) and only Chinese can speak Chinese, so I can't understand what he is saying. That the conversation flowed perfectly mere seconds before is forgotten, replaced with the Chinese "but you are not Chinese" ideas of cultural uniquness.

I like Chinese culture, like many of the symbols, superstitions and sayings (kill a chicken to warn the monkeys, play piano to the cow), but please, give the "only Chinese can understand" attitude a rest. I promise you that no matter where you go in the West, no matter who you eat with or in what manner, style of size restaurant, no Westerner will look at you, poised to put something in your mouth, and cry out, "Oh, you can use a knife and fork!"

Getting along together across cultures is hard enough without bringing this cultural-uniquness (superiority) baggage with you.