| Sucking mouthFrom the Perspectives reader:
"Most people begin learning a culture by observing the behavior of the people and looking for patterns in their behavior. We see two Americans grasp each other's hand and shaking them. In Mexico we see them embrace. In India each puts his hands together and raises them toward his forehead with a slight bow of the head --- a gesture of greeting that is efficient, for it permits a person to greet a great many others in a single motion, and clean, for people need not touch each other. The latter is particularly important in a society where the touch of an untouchable defiles a high caste person and forces him to take a purification bath. Among the Siriano of South America, people spit on each other's chests in greeting.
Probably the strangest form of greeting was observed by Jacob Loewen in Panama. Leaving the jungle on a small plane with the local native chief, he noticed the chief go to all his fellow tribesmen and suck their mouths. When Loewen inquired about this custom, the chief explained that they had learned this custom from the white man. They had seen that every time white people went up in planes, they sucked the mouths of their people as magic to insure a safe journey. Americans, in fact, have two types of greeting, shaking hands and sucking mouths, and we must be careful not to use the wrong form with the wrong people."
Reminder to self: "Xiao, don't suck mouths with fellow tribesmen"
Humorous story, but doesn't this make you wonder how your behaviors and western culture are being interpreted from a non-western lens and how ethnocentrism distorts your own perspective of other cultures?
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