Monday, October 10, 2005

Do I Not Look Like Chinese?

I walked back home after work as usual, and boarded the lift together with a resident of the same block. He spoke to me in Malay, something which I don't understand at all. Out of courtesy, I just smiled at him. Then he started to ask me questions in Malay, and I was dumbfounded. I just smiled at him embaressingly and shook my head. I think he mistook me for a Malay!

I am not sure if I have been exposed to too much sunlight lately and had become much darker, for I have been either mistaken for a Malay, Malaysian Chinese (some people said Malaysian Chinese are much darker than Singapore Chinese, although I think it should be the other way round) or a Thai. Just last week, my boss jokingly told my customer that I looked like a Burmese, and they replied that I really don't look local!

I'm somehow used to be mistaken as a foreigner, but it was only recently that I was mistaken to be someone of southeast asian ethnicity. In the past people always mistook me for a Taiwanese or someone from mainland China as my Chinese accent is rather different from local Chinese. Even when I travel overseas, there're people who would think that I came from Japan or Korea.

Do I not look like Chinese? I studied my facial features in the mirror many times, but I think I looked just as Chinese as anyone else. But anyway, since many people think elsewise, I'll just "play along" and pretend to be a Singapore PR at times!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

haha...non-chinese playing traditional chinese opera..... cool leh....kaka ^^