The aim of this paper is to exploit intercultural dialogue to analyze two cases of task design (or, better, re-design) for word problems in different cultural traditions (the Eastern one, within the Confucian Heritage Culture, CHC, represented here by China and the Western one, represented here by Italy). By means of two paradigmatic examples, one developed in Italy and one in China, we aim at showing, on the one hand, the effects and advantages of intercultural dialogue and, on the other hand, the need to take into account and to respect culturally rooted pedagogies, avoiding uncritical transfer from one culture to another.