Needle in a haystack

Whilst chatting with numerous friends, colleagues and acquaintances since my arrival in China something keeps cropping up in conversation - they note their surprise that people here look different from one another.  Some other teachers find it difficult to recognise and remember their students’ names, especially outside of the classroom.  A colleague was recently amazed by my ability to remember the majority of students by name in a class I had covered once for a 2 hour period.

For many it is their first visit to Asia, and to some degree I can relate to their views.  Last year, my first class in Vietnam saw me facing 18 near identical faces – needless to say, learning names took a while.  But after a week or so you see the differences and indeed appreciate people as individuals.  I now find myself recognising attractive Asian men, as I would if I were looking at western blokes.

So I can now appreciate and recognise the differences between individuals I encounter, and am able to detect Chinese people of Vietnamese/Filipino descent.  Can the same be said for Asian people who stare at us westerners, I wonder?  I have no doubt that locals here frequently think my work colleagues and visiting friends are actually relatives: anyone tall and slim with a mane of long, brown hair must be my sister, right?  Wrong!

A Chinese work colleague recently asked me how Western people get yellow (meaning blonde) hair.  My immediate reaction would normally be to say the majority of foreigners aren’t really ‘blonde blonde’, more of a mousy blonde covered with peroxide, but I knew she genuinely had no idea how people could be born with lighter hair types.  As a young, yet very well educated Chinese lady this phenomenon had until now remained an alien concept, which she hadn’t felt comfortable asking western friends about. Perhaps Asian people think Westerners consciously change the colour of their hair to make themselves appear more individual, after all to them we appear to look the same!

A xx