Autora: Quynh Nguyen

13 mar 2026 - 08:52 CET

A metro encounter: When curiosity trips over assumption

Public transportation has a strange way of turning ordinary minutes into tiny, memorable stories. Most of the time, we sit in silence, absorbed in our own worlds, surrounded by strangers who remain strangers. But every now and then, someone breaks the invisible bubble and a brief interaction lingers long after the train doors close.

That was my experience on the train the other day; a brief exchange that began innocently enough yet revealed something quietly telling about how we see one another. I was minding my own business when a guy sat down beside me. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned in and asked “Are you from China?”. It wasn’t hostile, just an abrupt question. I replied, “No, I’m not”. He regrouped.

“Korean?” “No, I’m not.”

Another pause. Another guess. “Japanese?”

“No, I’m not.”

By this point, I felt less like a fellow passenger and more like a contestant on a game show I hadn’t signed up for. Three guesses in, and he still hadn’t landed anywhere close. I wasn’t offended, more bemused than anything, but I could feel the familiar pattern unfolding: the assumption that all East or Southeast Asian faces can be neatly categorised into a handful of nationalities.

Eventually, he realised the guessing game wasn’t going well. He straightened up and, at last, asked “May I ask where you come from?”. It was the first moment he actually asked rather than presumed. So I answered, “Yes, you may ask.” He blinked, probably surprised by the formality of my reply, then finally asked the question properly.

“Where do you come from?”

“I come from Vietnam.” He nodded once. “Oh.”

And that was that. No follow-up. No conversation. Just “Oh,” as if the revelation had short-circuited whatever narrative he’d constructed in his mind. When my stop arrived, I stepped off the train and left him to his thoughts, and took with me a small, awkward moment that I kept turning over in mine.

The quiet weight of assumptions

According to Fiske (2000: 303-4), “everyone must categorise, in order to function.” Human beings are unconsciously sorting the world into manageable boxes because, as the social psychologist puts it, “the complexity of social content overwhelms the limited human mind, which then employs a number of simplifying strategies.” Stereotypes, in this sense, are cognitive shortcuts; automatic, often unconscious attempts to make sense of others. Fiske (2011) further distinguishes the layers of this process: stereotypes as the cognitive component, prejudice as the emotional component of stereotyping, and discrimination as the behavioural component of prejudicial reactions. 

Seen through this lens, what struck me on the train wasn’t only the question itself, as people are naturally curious. It was the order of operations. He didn’t begin with curiosity; he began with certainty. He didn’t ask who I was; he tried to decide for me. And that’s precisely where these cognitive shortcuts reveal their quiet weight. This wasn’t overt hostility, nor anything resembling malice. It was the subtle face of racial assumption: the belief, however unexamined, that someone’s appearance tells you everything you need to know. A mental shortcut that reduces a person to a category before they’ve even spoken. 

While such moments may seem harmless, they carry a certain gravity. Because behind every guess is an assumption about who belongs where, and who looks like what. And behind that assumption is the machinery Fiske describes: the mind reaching for the quickest label, even when it doesn’t fit.

Curiosity isn’t the problem: it’s the approach

As Machin and Mayr (2023) point out, “In fact, all language use is filled with presupposition. [...] It’s productive to look at texts or spoken language for the meanings that are presented as given, yet which are actually contestable.” In other words, presuppositions are the background assumptions embedded in language, the things a speaker takes for granted as true before the conversation has even begun. Each question (“Are you from China? Korea? Japan?”) presupposed that I must be from one of those countries. My repeated “No, I’m not.” functioned as a rejection not only of the specific guesses but also of the underlying assumption that my identity could be deduced from appearance alone. 

Of course, curiosity is a beautiful thing when paired with humility, and the desire to know where someone is from is not in itself objectionable. What matters is the linguistic framing of that curiosity, and here the difference between two forms of questioning becomes significant:

“Are you from ...?” and

“Where do you come from?”

One is a projection.

The other is an invitation.

One narrows the conversation.

The other opens a space.

Little moment, visible pattern

These tiny encounters, the ones that seem trivial, are often the ones that reveal the quiet habits we carry around without noticing. Habits shaped by stereotypes, by limited exposure, by the stories we’ve absorbed without ever questioning them. It isn’t personal, but it does reflect how narrow our worldviews can become when we don’t make an effort to expand them. And perhaps that’s why the moment stayed with me. It was an ordinary exchange that offered a glimpse of how we see one another, how we speak to one another, and how even the smallest interactions can illuminate something about the world we live in.

References

Fiske, S. T. (2000). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination at the seam between the centuries: Evolution, culture, mind, and brain. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 299-322.

Fiske, S. T. (2011). The continuum model and the stereotype content. In P. A. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology, 267-288. SAGE. Machin, D., & Mayr, A. (2023). Concealing and taking for granted: Nominalisation and presupposition. In How to do critical discourse analysis: A multimodal introduction, 146-184. SAGE.