All Look Same

by Chad Van Wagner

It always weirds me out a bit to see the Asian Festival here in Cowtown. Not that I don’t enjoy it, I do. But lumping that many wildly different countries under one banner of celebration seems a bit lazy. Can you imagine all the Dutch, French, English, Irish, and Polish immigrants gathering together here in the States having a Caucasian Festival? Golf tournaments don’t count.

All Look Same (no, that’s not a typo) throws this oddity into stark relief. The site, first and foremost, invites you to take a quiz: Can you tell the difference between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese people? A Chinese friend of mine explained the differences to me once, so I was admittedly a little cocky when I took the quiz. Which I then proceeded to bomb spectacularly.

There’s also a good chunk of observations and articles concerning American/Asian interaction, and how the two cultures influence each other, particularly Japan. They gave us Godzilla, we gave them a Western-style Government, which hardly seems fair to them. Then again, we gave them baseball, and they gave us karaoke, so maybe there’s a bit of balance after all.
(www.alllooksame.com)