(no subject)

[jinian]

Wow, I completely suck at this. http://www.alllooksame.com/ tests your ability to distinguish Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people on sight. Average is 7 right; I got four. Ouch. Hey, I can tell their writing apart. I read more than I talk, so surely that's the important part...

Should I be ashamed, though, is what I'm wondering. I don't actually care, so is it important that I be able to tell? I don't think all Asian people look the same. I can distinguish individuals perfectly well. I just don't know what the racial commonalities are. Interesting to learn that I'm bad at it, I suppose.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

1) I wonder how many of them might have had a grandparent or two that were "something else," even someone from one of the other groups, so that there isn't a distinct type.

2) China is a huge country. Chinese people with years of ancestry from, say, Beijing don't look the same at those with years of ancestry from near the Burmese border or the extreme northwest.

3) Someone I know from elsewhere says that a bunch of her officemates took the test recently and that they scored as badly as she had—and that the officemates are all Asian.

4) I think the quiz-makers might be trying to make the point that Anglos can't tell the difference between Asians from different areas, and perhaps that we (for those of us who are Anglo) should. This is strengthened by comments I've heard from a wide variety of people suggesting that Asians can always tell the difference. But the experience of my friend mentioned in #3 suggests to me that this might not always be the case.

I took it...

[(Anonymous)]

And I found it interesting. The ones I knew I was right on, I was right on. The ones where I waffled, and tried to out-think the quiz, I blew. Not surprising. They did a good job of choosing some people who were in that category I've always called "C/J, J/K, K/C", where I'll think the look like either one of two, because it's a continuum or 3 dimensional space or something, rather than neat categories. Maybe it's a Venn diagram. Dunno.

One of the annoying things to me was that I had no way of knowing where the picture was taken, geographically. I think it would have made a difference, but maybe not. (Then again, that's more of a cultural/social differentiation rather than a facial features one.)

--Trinker