What will all the people in the Chinese cities of Tokyo, Seoul and Hanoi only make of it?!
I found this both enlightening and hilarious:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/07/i-feel-ashamed-of-myself-i-know-that-they-all-look-the-same-to-me-is-a-horrible-form-of-racism"I have to admit I giggled nervously as I read your letter, and I thought of my dear late mother who had real trouble keeping white people’s faces straight in her head. It was especially acute when we were watching movies. She couldn’t tell the good guy from the bad guy and had no idea which white woman was the romantic lead, and which one was the awkward sister. Every time there was a new scene, she’d be asking, “Now which one is that?”
My mother didn’t grow up around a whole lot of white people, so different colour eyes and hair colour weren’t really a point of reference. She had no problem recognising her white friends – people she had worked with and visited and so on. However, like you, she was never very good at out-of-context encounters."And the most embarrassing thing is I've been there myself: Many years ago I stumbled across a colleague from work in a supermarket with his Korean wife. I knew her from law firm related functions years back.
I thought. Turns out, she wasn't #1 Korean wife, but wife-to-be #2. And here I am talking about past meetings and how their children are doing. Inane stuff like: "
No need for an introduction, we know each other from ..., don't we?" (blank stare from her part). I notice how my colleague's facial expression turns from initial disbelief to outright distraughtness - the separation from his first wife and kids was comparatively recent - and kept thinking to myself: "
Why is he acting so weird, I'm just being nice?" They made off rather abrupt.
Only at home did it dawn to me that the much younger-looking Korean female in the supermarket couldn't have really been the wife and mother of 10 years ago. I could have died a death there and then.
And it got worse. Having been the recruitment partner of our Frankfurt office at the time, I realized I had actually interviewed #2 in person about 18 months earlier for a job at our firm (my colleague's/partner's unbridled enthusiasm for hiring her as his associate back then should have perhaps made me think and alert me to possible ulterior motives on his part, but that is another story - people just have no idea how gullible I can be!).
I never dared speak to him about it, but he was good enough to - apparently - forget about it. In any case, they separated years later and I was lucky enough to never be put into the situation of not recognizing #3 Korean significant other with which he had meanwhile hooked up.
