I apologize for having triggered a pet peeve. However, I really did believe that fluent Chinese required a deep understanding of culture and history. If that'

I apologize for having triggered a pet peeve. However, I really did believe that fluent Chinese required a deep understanding of culture and history. If that's not true, could you explain how the (common, I believe) misperception has arisen? For what it's worth, I haven't heard the same about Japanese...all I really know about Japanese is that it can be complicated to be sufficiently polite/use the correct honorifics/etc.