Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site cvl.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!cvl!liang From: liang@cvl.UUCP (Eli Liang) Newsgroups: net.flame,net.music Subject: Re: Re: Re: Which racial groups takes over the world. Message-ID: <84@cvl.UUCP> Date: Sun, 24-Feb-85 22:54:48 EST Article-I.D.: cvl.84 Posted: Sun Feb 24 22:54:48 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 28-Feb-85 01:15:17 EST References: <927@reed.UUCP> <930@reed.UUCP> <375@vax2.fluke.UUCP> <1242@ihuxm.UUCP>, <64@cvl.UUCP> <79@mit-athena.UUCP> Organization: Computer Vision Lab, U. of Maryland, College Park Lines: 62 Xref: watmath net.flame:8573 net.music:6248 > I believe more people speak Chinese than any other language but Chinese > is written top to bottom right to left. How is this discrimination > against lefties? Anyway Stephen Mosher claims in Broken Earth that all > Chinese are right-handed (at least in the PRC -- which seems odd for a > communist country). > > Yehoyaqim Martillo Its not at all odd. First of all, let me explain something about the Chinese. Being of Chinese extraction :-) myself, I think I can speak with some knowledge and insight. As much as I hate to label any racial group, especially my own, I have to say that though the Chinese people have many traits to their credit, tolerance of individual differences/idiosyncrasies is not one of these. Whether this is due to societal conditioning and reinforcement, I can not say. People who are different are viewed with disdain and so are forced into the proper molds. This gives the Chinese culture a uniformity not found in western civilizations. In fact, this is one of the contributing factors that shape the Chinese people's ethnocentric view of the world. The Chinese word for China means "the central country." Even in the US, Chinese-Americans typically refer to EVERYONE else as "foreigners" despite the fact that it is we who are foreign if anyone. Of this "uniformity" and ethnocentricity come many things. Looking for stability, Chinese people tend to be more conservative. There is also the push towards high standards of academic excellence. This though, is at the expense of human dignity and respect for the individual. But I digress from the issue here which is lefthandedness and how it relates to being Chinese. For a miscellany of reasons, the Chinese consider lefthandedness to be an undesirable abberation. The reasons are all minor and not insuperable and I won't go into them here. Actually, the unspoken reason is that to be lefthanded is to be different; and those who are different should be forced to conform to the ways of the majority... Perhaps of some genetic abberation :-), somewhere along the line, starting from at least my great-grandfather, a "tendency" towards lefthandedness developed in one of my mother's lines of the family though for some inexplicable reason, its more pronounced in the male members of our family. Note that I said a tendency since every one of these left-tending people was "cured" of his lefthanded ways. In fact, my great-grandfather suffered from a disability of his left hand all his life since his father tied a string around his left wrist one time when he was just a boy so that it would numb his left hand and he wouldn't be able to use it. Unfortunately it had the effect of killing off circulation and causing great amounts of tissue damage. (What can I say? Peasants don't know any better...) Even though it was worst in less enlightened times, My own parents spent a great deal of effort attempting to "correct" my siblings and myself of our lefthandedness. They were successful with my sister who is now righthanded (nominally) but failed with me thanks to a the efforts of my first grade teacher who managed to convince them that being lefthanded is not like being born microencephalic or something. Both my brother and I are lefthanded now. Happily lefthanded... -eli Ouch! I can feel the flames already....... -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eli Liang --- University of Maryland Computer Vision Lab, (301) 454-4526 ARPA: liang@cvl, eli@mit-mc, eli@mit-prep CSNET: liang@cvl UUCP: {seismo,rlgvax,allegra,brl-bmd,nrl-css}!umcp-cs!cvl!liang