When my friend first showed me this Web site I didn’t think itwould be much of a challenge. The entire siteis devoted to testing whether one can distinguish between people whoare Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Having gone to a Chinese privateschool for 13 years of my life, I thought this test would be a breezeand even made a bet with him that I would get all of them right.
The test consisted of 18 pictures, all of which featured a personwho was either Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Going off my firstinstincts I rushed through each screen, confidently clicking onwhatever ethnicity I thought was appropriate. Eighteen screens andfour bad bleach dyes later, the words “VERY BAD” popped up on thescreen followed by the phrase: “You obviously can’t tell thedifference.” I got a five out of 18. Convinced that there must havebeen some sort of mistake, I took the exact same test again and got aseven out of 18. Confidence shot down, I dragged myself away from thescreen to go listen to some of my fobby Mandarin music.
The site, which was originally created by Web designer DyskeSuematsu, first started a couple of years ago as a way of determininghow many people can actually tell the difference between the varioustypes of Asians. Suematsu first came up with the idea foralllooksame.com after having a long discussion about facialrecognition with his girlfriend at a Japanese restaurant. Suematsu’sgirlfriend (who is Caucasian) says that unlike many others out theretoday, she has an easier time distinguishing people who are Asian.This caused Suematsu to wonder whether this was true for otherpeople, or whether Asians did indeed, look the same. Thus,alllooksame.com was born.
After receiving much criticism for containing what many consideredto be racist content, Suematsu says the test on his Web site wasnever meant to be offensive, nor was it created to make a statement.Instead, he claims the test is simply a way to demystify the issue ofwhether all Asians really do look alike.
– Dee Dee Chew
Think you can do better? Take the test at www.alllooksame.com andemail your name, ethnicity and score to datempo@hotmail.com.Results will be posted in an upcoming issue.
