I had a Vietnamese roommate in college. One time someone mentioned apples and my roommate said he could rip them in half. We all called bullshit and so he did it to shut us up. It was pretty cool. But then he claimed that "All Vietnamese people can do it." That didn't sound right.

So now whenever I meet a new Vietnamese person, I ask (in as polite and not creepy and not racist a way as I can) if they can rip an apple in half, and I'll be damned if every person I've ever asked goes "Yeah, sure!" Also, most of them follow up with "...all Vietnamese people can rip apples in half."

Then I always ask if that's just how people in Vietnam eat apples, and they always say "No, we just eat them the normal way, but all Vietnamese people can rip them in half if they want to."

I truly don't know if I'm being trolled or not. If I ask the question and have an apple, I'll always give it to the person who claims they can do this, and they always can, so there's some truth to it... but I cannot figure out why, in my experience, almost all Vietnamese people claim that all Vietnamese people can rip apples in half. That's a weird thing to claim. How are they so sure about what every other Vietnamese person can do? Are they implying that Laotians and Thai people can't do this? Is it a special trick they teach only in Vietnam? I would never claim that "All Americans can juggle" or that "All white people can juggle"... See, I don't even know if they're suggesting it's a racial trait, or a cultural skill.

Or is it that Vietnamese people are just really proud of their culture, so they like to fib about the skills everyone else has? And then when tested with an apple, all Vietnamese people are just so confident that they're awesome enough to do it that they just brute-force the apple in half?