Erring on the side of American

Hey, nobody's perfect. Case Study A:

I have this one-on-one "History of Chinese Anthropology" class, right? It's just me and good 'ole Mr. Tang, who is a professor at a nearby college and can read some English but doesn't really speak any per se, as if he was allowed to speak English to me anyway. I'm pretty sure he doesn't much like spending four hours a week teaching me anthropology vocab words in the framework of a bare bones survey of Chinese anthropology, but I like it so hey, good enough.

Anyway, today he asked me to make a sentence using "核心," which is Chinese for "nucleus" or "core" or "center." Well, after mulling it over in my head for a bit, I proffered the following:
"哲学古代的核心是欧洲," or "The center of ancient philosophical thought was Europe."

My surprised and visually offended teacher responded with "No. No, what about China?? China was the center of ancient philosophical thought! China!"

Oh riiight...sorry...my bad. I sorta...forgot. No really, sorry. You're right, or at least not at all wrong...Please excuse me and my cultural discrepancies....ok thanks. We both laughed.

Yeah whoops.

Blonde in any language,
China-Cat