If It Looks Like A Duck ...

When we were thirteen, lining up in the concourse after recess, the vice head-prefect came up to us because we weren't observing the no-talking rule; he'd came over to tell us to keep quiet.

After he had gone through his shut-up-or-get-detention shtick, he studied the two of us. Then he'd asked me, "He's your brother, right?"

My face contorted into a look you'd normally reserve for somebody who offers you a plate of tiny pulsating rat hearts when I turned to look at Pumpkin - a look that was mirrored in his face.

"Him?" I sputtered in almost heartfelt horror and repulsion. "Gawd no. He's not my brother."

"Really?" came Vice Head-Prefect's rejoinder, "You two look like each other, you know."

I'd grimaced. "Because we are fair and have round faces, right?"

Vice Head-prefect thought for a moment.

"Yah," he finally said.

:::

Last night, as Mom was going through the photos Dad took at cousin Jasmine's wedding, I poked my nose over Mom's shoulder to sneak a view.

When I was looking at one of Jasmine and Roland (her husband - now my cousin-in-law?) together, it suddenly struck me how very much alike they look.

"They look alike" was what I'd remarked to Mom and her reply had been (in Mandarin), "That is what they call having the fu¹ qi¹ xiang³."

And she went on to explain that when a man and a woman look alike, it means they have a "fu¹ qi¹ xiang³".

I'm finding it really difficult to translate "fu¹ qi¹ xiang³" into English because I'm not sure which 'xiang³' it is. I'm assuming "fu¹ qi¹ xiang³" means (literally) a "husband-wife look". So when a man and woman are said to have a "fu¹ qi¹ xiang³" - like Jasmine and Roland - they look like man and wife, a couple.

I find the concept of "fu¹ qi¹ xiang³" quite disturbing actually - because my instinctive reaction when I think two people looking alike is: they must be siblings.

You must be related, in one way or another, however distantly, to actually resemble someone ... Right? And to marry someone who is even very distantly genetically related to you just reeks of ... incest.

(I know I shouldn't have a problem with incest, but on a very fundamental level, I can't but.)

My pressing question is this: why is it that at age thirteen you look like siblings, but at age twenty-seven you have a "fu¹ qi¹ xiang³"? Can somebody explain the discrepancy?

Does this mean that, should Vice Head-Prefect run into Pumpkin and me two years from now, he'd be saying the two of us have a "fu¹ qi¹ xiang³" even though once upon a time, he'd thought we were siblings?

(Am I the only one who's finding this entirely too revolting to stomach?)