Sock Sign
Those who saw me frightened running away from Chinatown in New York could have never imagined I would speak fair mandarin seven years later.
I visited New York when I was 21 on a stop-over on my way back to Spain after a summer job in Denali National Park (Alaska). As soon as I stepped into Chinatown, I got so absorbed looking at the exotic kinds of fish on the street market, that I did not realizeI was going deeper into a new world. Suddenly I lifted my eyes and found myself surrounded by a crowd of people with unfamiliar facial features, bargaining in a musically strange language. I panicked so much that I literally ran away into Little Italy where I could finally fell protected.
That day in Chinatown I learnt that fear of the unknown is one of the reasons for narrow-mindedness. That day in Chinatown, I was narrow-minded.
This story was constantly on my mind when, years later, I worked in China. In one of my frequent travels across Asia, I visited a vendor in Shanghai to know more about a software application. When I founded myself in a meeting room with a dozen people speaking mandarin I felt a bit troubled, but this time I had learnt the lesson. There was nothing to be afraid of. Those faces were no longer unfamiliar. That language was no longer strange but musically delighting. I put into practice my four years of mandarin lessons and my local colleagues helped to understand the difficult parts of the conversation. The meeting was a success.
Cultural shocks are something that happens to everybody. The important thing is to learn from them.
Image: the shock sign was found on the web page of the North Carolina Industrial Commission.
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