Anthropometry, the Game
Speaking of anthropometry, this is a fun game: you are presented with pictures of Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans and asked to identify which is which. I got two thirds of them correct, which is much better than the average of one third. It would be much tougher, I’m sure, if the game had not included hair styles, makeup, and clothing as part of the pictures. If you’ve lived in Asia for a while, those give you a lot of clues.
P. Kerim Friedman is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University, in Taiwan, where he teaches linguistic and visual anthropology. He is co-director of the film Please Don't Beat Me, Sir!, winner of the 2011 Jean Rouch Award from the Society of Visual Anthropology. Follow Kerim on Twitter.
Kerim, you did 2/3rds. Well, I got 4 of 18 right (about 13% binomial score, average is 19.6%). I probably wouldn’t do any better if it was a facial recognition test of Europeans. So much for my visual acuity.
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It would have helped a lot if you could distinguish between mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, Singapore Chinese, etc. etc. There’s just so much variety.
We had this down to a fine art at the East-West Center (Honolulu, HI). EWC had a fellowship program when I was there in which grantees, 2/3rds of whom were from Asia and the Pacific, lived together in a giant dorm and had shared kitchens. It thus became a parlor game in our common kitchen to figure out what everyone else was. And guess what, lots of Asians couldn’t predict well either! Our best bets were going by (1) shoes (and socks or lack thereof); (2) walk; (3) style of eating.
My was 6 of 18, so clearly I’ve lost whatever skills I ever had in distinguishing cultural groups on the basis of facial features!
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