Cultural norms don’t always translate. Chen Yu tells us about the importance of recognizing the blinders on our own perspectives.
Fifteen years ago, I was hosting a business dinner in China where I was entertaining a prominent, local CEO. In my desire to pay my respects, I ordered a high-end Bordeaux red wine and poured him a glass. At the time, many mainland Chinese did not have a taste for red wine and would add Sprite to make it more palatable. But, this was an expensive bottle and I was aghast as he cracked open a can of soda.
“This is a Chateau Latour!” I shouted. “You don’t want to ruin it with Sprite!” Indignant, he put the can down, slowly turned his head toward me, and said, “Then why do you Americans add milk to your tea?” To him, adding milk to a cup of fine tea was akin to ruining a fancy red wine with Sprite.
A similar episode happened to me years later when I was walking down a street in Vietnam. I spotted a book in a store titled, “The American War” and I mumbled, “I’ve never heard of that war!” Puzzled, I picked up the paperback and quickly realized that it was a book on what Americans call the “Vietnam War.” Even though it seems obvious in retrospect, it had never even crossed my mind that the war could have been named differently by anyone else.
These episodes are reminders that–even when we feel, with absolute certainty, that our point of view is correct, it might not actually be so. Our perspective on the world has blinders we cannot see or feel. As we enter a contentious election cycle, I think back to that CEO in China and remind myself to have humility in my opinion. That even when I am sure the earth is round, the sky is blue, and the Warriors will win the NBA championship, it’s worth considering the possibility that I’m wrong. If we all take a moment to remember our fallibility, perhaps the political discourse in our civil society can become just a bit more civil.