Walk Like an Australian

Six months ago I ran a series of items under the "Walk Like an American" rubric, on how and whether you could tell apart people of similar racial background but of different nationalities. That is: what (apart from BMI) would distinguish a white American within a crowd in Berlin or Manchester, or an Asian American walking down the street in Seoul or Beijing. The answers involved clothing, hair styles, heft, even head shapes -- but most of all body language and the way people carry and present themselves.

Monica Tan is a writer from Sydney now working in Beijing, who may or may not be pictured at right.

I put it that way because Tan has produced a wonderful slide show challenging readers to apply their "judging nationality by appearance" skills. She includes a photo of herself, a Chinese Australian, among photos of eight Chinese-Chinese women of similar age. Thumbnails of all nine pictures are below. I encourage you to go to her site and page through the nine-picture slide show to see if you can tell which one of these women grew up in a rich Western country, versus the rest who were born and raised in China. Then, you can go down to the very bottom of her post, where she reveals who is who.

I will say that on one pass through the slide show, I immediately picked out the real Monica Tan. In a later post I'll explain why. But I also realize that this challenge -- you're told that one person is foreign and just have to pick her out -- is different from the real-time exercise of assessing passersby on the street. Despite my prideful success in solving the slideshow pop quiz, I'm sure that if saw Ms. Tan on a Beijing metro I wouldn't dare assume that I could talk with her in English. Thanks to her for this very nice exercise. Here is your thumbnail preview: