"Because English uses phrases like "looking forward to" event or "putting the past behind us" English speakers tend to think about time as a horizontal timeline. Mandarin however uses words like sháng (up) ans xiá (down) to refer to time, so events accumulate in a stack. Could this difference in language structure explain why Chinese speakers pay more attention to history when thinking about events? Do Chinese think more about events "piling up" on top of one another (making them more relevant), whereas North Americans think about events moving away in time so that what is in the past is over and done?"

/Robbins - Judge: Organizational behavior/