So, Chinese Math is Different...

Having worked for a company run by a taiwanese family, I saw first hand the cultural differences in how simple arithmetic was handled, and how it often ran counter to the mathematical principles I was taught all the way through my higher math classes for the physical sciences. In college, I also noticed the reluctance on the part of the few foreign-born asian physics students to take first crack at practice midterm word problems. Now I have some background on these anecdotal references. Here's the money quote:

Both groups engaged a portion of the brain called the inferior parietal cortex, which is involved in quantity representation and reading. But native English speakers also showed activity in a language processing area of the brain, while native Chinese speakers used a brain region involved in the processing of visual information.

Of course, this study could be used to reinforce all kinds of stereotypes, but I would never do that.