Chinese faces

 

I've noticed something again, which I'd forgotten about from earlier trips. It's the way that when you are in a country, you start to see, not the difference from your own face, but the distinctions between all the range of different faces you see all over China. You might think while you are in your home country that all Chinese look the same, but its completely a matter of perspective and of what you pay attention to. Whether you intend to or not, one of your first unconscious assessments of a new stranger is how much they do or don't look like you, or more specifically, look like the people you normally see each day. Then the most salient feature might be the difference from your 'normal'.

But in every trip I've made to China, or that Cro and I made together, what happened was that your brain soon switches over to spot the difference and similarities between the Chinese themselves.

What always happened in the past, because I travelled there for work, was that I would think "Oh wow, he looks just like Sam from the Beijing office!" or "She's got exactly the same symmetrically almond-shape face as Sal who works for X publishers!" (NB, all names have of course been changed). So you picked up similarities rather than differences.

There is in fact probably more variety of facial types in China than in England, if that's something you could measure, because China is much bigger and has brought in groups of people from all the neighbouring regions too. 

And as you start to read the differences you start to work out where various faces come from. There is a quite strong-jawed type, usually of above average height, who put me in mind of terracotta warriors. There is also a strong Sichuan look, in women in particular, that produces a very balanced set of features. And further south, there is a strong similarity with the faces you see over the southern borders in Vietnam and Thailand.

The effect on your perceptions is so strong that you can end up being shocked by seeing a Western face. In one particular year Cro and I went right off the beaten track in China and didn't see another Westerner for two weeks. So when we got back to Hong Kong and all its many Western residents, it was all we could do to not point and stare.