Lesson 3－Part 1
A few years ago, /
I had a talk with a Chinese student. //
He said, /
“We Chinese tend to look at the whole picture. /
We don’t think /
you can understand a part /
without understanding the whole first. /
Westerners, /
however, /
generally look at the main objects or people first.” //
I found it interesting, /
so my friend and I started studying /
how people think differently. //
First, /
we studied American and Chinese children. //
We showed them sets of three pictures. //
Some examples were “monkey―banana―panda” /
and “cow―grass―chicken.” //
From each set, /
we asked them to choose the two pictures /
that go together best. //
The results showed something interesting. //
The American children grouped objects /
according to categories /
such as “animals” and “fruit.” //
On the other hand, /
the Chinese children grouped objects /
according to relationships. //
They said /
the cow and the grass go together /
because “the cow eats the grass.” //
