It doesn't matter whether you're black or white, or Chinese

'Do you feel more white or Chinese?" I asked my son, after returning from my first visit to South Africa - its history of apartheid still fresh in my mind.

At the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, visitors are given a ticket randomly assigning them "white" or "non-white". Visitors must then enter through the designated gates. At the entrance, the walls close in to form an impenetrable steel fence separating the two sides. You can see the others through the cage but physical contact is limited to a few fingers wiggled through the holes.

As we walked inside, dozens of poster-sized ID cards from the 50s to the 80s swung above our heads. They carried the person's name, photo, place and race: "white", "black" and "colored". I found it interesting that a couple of men who could pass for my uncles weren't listed as Chinese but colored - and they had very un-Chinese names such as "Brown" or "Doben".