Reading as Local

The map of warm and cold countries leaves out one factor: the traveler who uses it. Most foreigners have faces that show they are foreign. Locals sort them as guests before a word is spoken, and the reception, warm or cold, follows from that. Some faces show nothing about where the person is from. Almost everywhere in Asia, people take me for a local. That sounds like an advantage, but in daily life it does not work as one.

The signals about where I come from point to places across half the world. I have lived my whole life in a white neighborhood. I consider myself 100% white, whatever my ethnicity says. My ethnicity ties to the Asian continent through my parents, who are from a Southeast Asian country. People from that country often face racism, as people from most Southeast Asian countries do. My mannerisms are White American. My clothes are Japanese-ish. I lived in Taiwan for a while, and I kept the Chinese I learned there. No single category fits everything on that list, and the way people receive a stranger depends on categories.

Looking like an “Everyman” can be a real disadvantage. If you blend in too well, you are not distinct enough to be categorized as coming from any particular country. People take you for a local wherever you are. The wardrobe pages call the style Everyman but distinct, and the “but distinct” part matters more than it appears to. People expect a person with a local face to act like a local. They do not make the allowances they make for foreigners or show the warmth they show guests, and each time they misjudge that person, the actual person has to deal with the result. Every day I work to be seen as someone more than what people in Asia tend to label me as.

So the culture heuristics in these pages are there on purpose. I want to make readings of cultures, and I have earned the right to, as a person who has literally lived his whole life trying his best not to be judged. For decades other people judged me by their heuristics. On these pages I use heuristics to read cultures.

None of the categories applied to me, and I built a life anyway. My mannerisms come from one continent, my clothes from another, and my language from a third. Whether we transcend who we wish depends on our path and our choices in life.