In the era of globalization, the mother tongue of Chinese is essential for foreign language education while foreign languages, aligned with the “Going Global” strategy, serve as the vehicle for telling China’s story to the world. Through an in-depth exploration of native Chinese cultural cognition and the cultivation of metacultural competence in foreign language education, the study reveals that profound understanding of mother tongue cultural cognition is a prerequisite for foreign language cultural cognition. Only in this way can we truly cultivate high-quality talents capable of engaging in equal dialogues between Chinese and foreign cultures. Furthermore, amid the current increasingly multicultural exchanges, foreign language education urgently needs metacultural competence which comprises three core elements of “conceptual variation awareness”, “conceptual clarity” and “conceptual negotiation”, which supplement traditional intercultural competence, significantly enhancing foreign language learners’ adaptability and flexibility in intercultural communication.