Sizing People Up

They say that you can’t judge a book by the cover. The problem is that we do it all the time. Years ago a Chinese friend that I met in Rochester NY told me that I need to memorize a clever sounding introduction for myself to recite every time I met a new Chinese person. At the time, I thought his idea was a little over the top. Why go to that much trouble to make a good impression. Well, as a blond hair blue eye white guy, I meet lots of Chinese people who just assume I can’t speak Chinese. They size me up. My friend’s idea was simply to stop these people in their tracks before they started relating to me as one who couldn’t speak Chinese. Now more than 10 years later, I see the wisdom in his sharing. First impressions are important. It can take a long time to recover from a bad first impression.

Washing Machine Breaks

Last week our washing machine stopped working. I went online and found a suitable replacement for it. The seller replied to me in English. I couldn’t tell whether he was a Chinese person or a Westerner. When we met I asked him if he had ever traveled outside of Hong Kong he said no. I said that his English was good. He acknowledged that he had worked with a number of westerners over the years. Then I proceeded to talk with him in Cantonese. He said that my Cantonese was good, but then for some reason I started speaking mandarin. He immediately withdrew a bit and changed the channel back to English. I’m sure whatever level of Cantonese he might have thought I deserve just got knocked down a level.

2 Americans and a German

Interestingly about a week before this, I was meeting with a German and an American. We were talking about life in Hong Kong and I asked them if they spoke Cantonese. Scott said that he did but he only spoke a sentence or 2 before he accidentally switched channels to Mandarin. Like, the guy selling the washing machine, I figured that the American guy’s Cantonese wasn’t very good. I later learned that my initial guess was wrong. Scott came to Hong Kong when he was 6 years old and he speaks pretty well. So again you can’t judge a book by its cover.

People are going to judge us and the flip side of it is we are going to judge them. This is life. Let’s make the best of it. By having the right thing to say at the right time, we train ourselves and others how we want to be treated. I’m not saying that we should all memorize what we are going to say in advanced. There probably are some situations where there this would help, but there are plenty where it wouldn’t. Put your best forward and be honest with yourself.