Face to face
My Japanese wife thinks she’s pretty good at recognizing different East Asian ethnic groups, and sometimes I have to admit she’s got a point.
Just last week she was telling me how Korean features differ from the Japanese: they (supposedly) have thinner, lighter eyebrows, flatter faces and noses, rounder faces, and the rear parts of their jawbones are more square.
When we were watching a clip of a Vietnamese news broadcast last year, she commented that the Vietnamese really do have broad noses and narrow shoulders that slope sharply down from the neck.
Many years ago in the U.S., I picked up a copy of a magazine for Asian-Americans called Jade. This particular issue had a photo quiz challenging those people who thought they were good at spotting the difference. I did very poorly on the quiz, but that was before I came to Asia.
Around that same time, I met a young Chinese woman in San Francisco who had a face that looked as if it came straight out of an 18th century Japanese ukiyo-e print. I told her that, and she remarked that all her Chinese friends told her the same thing!
Here’s a site where you can try out your own ethnic identification skills. It’s called alllooksame, and the site administrator says that’s a question, not a statement. There’s a short quiz for identifying photos. It gives you the results and lets you know how you stack up against others who took the test. You have to register, but if that bothers you they’ll take a fake name.
I took the test and got just over half right. Then I got my wife to take it. Her score was identical to mine (though we didn’t have identical answers).
I don’t know if that means she’s not as good as she thinks she is, I’m just as good as she thinks she is, or that both our test results are the answer to the question, alllooksame?
I just took that test. I got 10 right. I didn’t really get what the point of it was…. Of course you can’t tell where someone’s from every time. There are a lot of people who look borderline on a couple of different races. Most of those photos weren’t very typical. But if you’re in the street you can easily tell people apart. And usually it takes a lot more than a single mugshot to do it. You have to look at their face, fashion, walk, body structure, accent, hand movements and reactions etc.
It’s weird, but I think I might be better at telling people apart than most of my Japanese friends. They always mistake Japanese for Koreans etc. and try to convince me that someone is Korean, when they’re clearly Japanese. When I go shopping in Chinese stores with Japanese friends, the staff try to speak to them in Chinese. I think they only look at their face or something. Or maybe because where I live there are so many Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese living together it’s hard not to make comparisons. I couldn’t tell you in terms of who has whatever centimetes between their left nostril and their knee, or who has the broader nose etc. but if I see a Chinese, I’ll tell you ‘That guy’s Chinese’.
Of course you’re not going to be correct 100% of the time, but I think most people who’ve been around different people can tell differences quite easily.
I know if I see a girl with really nice hair, big hoop earrings, designer skirt, high heels, a Ralph Lauren polo, one of those back-packs that closes by a cord and a baseball cap, and she rounds off her ‘r’ sounds when she speaks then she’s probably Korean.
If I see a guy with long hair at the back, thick frame black glasses, a stussy or BAPE t-shirt, weird looking pants, and some other over-the-top stuff, Nike Air Force 1’s and maybe some baller id things and a Chinese looking face, then he’s probably Taiwanese.
And if I’m wrong, I guess that’s just because I’m a racist
In short: Test = stupid. Need more than one photo. Those faces weren’t typical. We already know we’re not going to be right all the time. And if we’re wrong? No harm done, right?
December 21st, 2005 at 6:40 amLifestyle and diet play a huge part in this as well. That will influence everything from skin tone to height to body fat. No question that there are significant lifestyle and dietary differences between the Chinese and the Japanese, and of course it shows.
December 21st, 2005 at 6:53 amHey what did happen to Ampontan? I haven’t seen him post in a loong time.
December 21st, 2005 at 9:26 am