In an American classroom, a Chinese girl was asked to answer a question. She stood up and smiled, without making any sound. The American teacher looked at himself and didn't see anything funny. So he asked her the question again. The girl just smiled but said nothing. The teacher was angry. He didn't know that the girl smiled to cover her embarrassment because she wasn't able to answer the question. In a dining room in Beijing, an Englishman was careless and dropped a plate. The Chinese who had seen this began to laugh. The Englishman felt uncomfortable and even got angry. "They are laughing at me," he thought. In fact the Chinese laughed not at the Englishman or his bad luck--whether he is a foreigner or a Chinese. The smile or laughter has several feelings: don't take it so seriously; laugh it off, it's nothing; such things can happen to any of us. Which feeling is NOT included in the laughter when the Englishman dropped a plate?
Don't take it seriously. Bad luck! It's nothing. It can happen to any of us.