Pardon Me, You Look Familiar

First an interesting story concerning my friend, Monica. We were working together in the school library, as we were wont to do a few days a week, and she commented that she had a terrible time telling two of the little boys in Nursery, Sascha and Jacques, apart: While Monica is quite a bit wiser than I and I often feel as though she is about 100 time sharper on the tack scale, I had her this time. "Monica," I said, "What do you mean you can't tell Sascha and Jacques apart?? Sascha has blond hair and blue eyes, Jacques has brown hair and eyes. Please." and I rolled my eyes.

She rolled hers right back at me, "Look, I am Chinese! I don't notice at hair color!"

She had me there. I thought about that conversation quite a bit as I biked around Our Fair City in the next few weeks, looking at faces. I mean, really looking at them. When first in China, it was easy to get lost in the sea of black hair. Does everyone walking along the street look alike? Of course not, not even at first blush. And yet, I would have to agree that during my first months in China, there was a monochromatic sameness to crowds. I spent the first 40-odd years of my life in a place where hair color is one of the first signals to identity who is who. Not so where Monica comes from.

I surreptitiously studied the faces of Sacha and Jacques for a week or so, and I came to the conclusion that the two kids do look an awful lot alike. The shape of their faces and features are startlingly similar, once you get past the shock of blond hair on one and the dark, brooding uni-brow on the other. On the flip side, Jeff actually thinks Monica was pulling my chain and will tell the story about the naive laowai who fell for the "I'm Chinese! I don't see hair color"-story for years to come.

Anyway, that shaggy dog tale doesn't lead much of anywhere. Except that now that we are back in the US, all of humanity suddenly looks, for want of a better word, familiar to me. How to explain this? I wander around a small corner of China everyday and I am surrounded on all sides, all the time, by people who look very different from me and who look very different from the people who have surrounded me most of my life. This fact is so much a part of life, it does not permeate my consciousness.

But now we are in the US and surrounded by blond haired, red haired, brown haired, black haired people with western features. And I am caught in this weird place where my brain seems to be trying to place everyone: it's like my brain is convinced that every western person I see is someone I should know.  And there are a lot of western people wandering around here. I see a woman walking across a parking lot with blond hair and I think, "Hey, did I work with her at Nabisco??" or a see a tall greying gentleman in the bank and I think, "Wait, I know I know that guy, who in the heck is he??" 

It's weird. I wish I could find better words to explain this, but I am hoping it goes away soon. Going to Wal-mart can be a very trying experience.

Hope and her cousin Kate. There is a striking family resemblance.

I will also add in the spirit of absolute randomness that seems to be driving this post that yesterday we did actually run into someone we know on the street. The children and I were killing time in Flemington before heading to their annual physicals when I heard a voice on the street, "Hey, I've seen those kids on your blog!" And it was someone we knew! Not only did I recognize Laura, but I knew immediately who she was. Which is good, since she is the person taking care of my horse while I am out and about in the world (*waves hi!*).

Comments

[Debbie Hanson]

I gotta go with Jeff on this one....I think Monica was pulling your leg!!

[Ingrid]

I don't think that she was necessarily pulling your leg - after 6 years of living in Asia, I see faces completely differently. Like you, I also think that I should recognise people just because they are non-Asian.