A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to help out a multinational company which was sending a local Shanghai employee to work in head office in the United States for six months. Being the enlightened employer they are, they organized a day-long orientation session of experts for this audience of one, a girl in her mid-20s who will no doubt return to become one of the key players in her particular industry in the early 21st century.

Cross-cultural issues was the topic, and a fascinating topic it is. The young lady and I discussed work habits, sexual signals, how to deal with the boss, whether two women holding hands are lesbians, whether to be assertive or quiet, how to dress, water cooler culture, make-up signals, the importance of watching the key TV shows, not playing office politics, whether to let a male colleague pay for dinner, the dangers of

But before I arrived at the meeting room, I was asked by the consultancy firm who organized the session to fill in a form. Name, date of birth, education, work experience, place of birth and ... ethnicity. I paused. How strange, I thought. What conclusions could anyone possibly draw from whatever I put there?

I wrote in my skin color anyway, feeling a little bit uncomfortable. Then I sent an email to the consultancy firm who had organized the event.

"It's the first time I have ever been asked to disclose my ethnicity in a form of this sort," I said.

"Sorry for placing you in a difficult situation," came the reply. "The detailed bio info is (only) for our internal use, and to match our client's background. Although the question of ethnicity is a bit sensitive, it would help us to find the right presenter who has a similar background with our clients (not only ethnicity, but also age, marital status, gender, nationality...etc)."

Oh.

"No problem," I said in my next email. "I am not offended by the ethnicity question. It is just that I feel it is less and less relevant. A person of Indian ancestry born in Birmingham (England) is basically British. A person of Chinese ancestry born in Toronto is basically Canadian.

Twenty years ago, skin color perhaps still gave some useful clues about a person's background. Now, it is positively misleading. I have seen so many Asian-Americans get into trouble in social situations in China because people are making wrong assumptions based on their ethnicity."

Then there is hair color. Five years ago it was easy. Let's say it's 1994 and two girls are sitting with their backs to you in a restaurant. Both have long hair, one is raven black and the other is brown. You can make some pretty good guesses about what they will look like when they turn round. The black-haired girl is almost certainly Asian, the brown-haired girl is definitely Caucasian.

Then came hair dyeing.

A couple of years later, it was still pretty easy to tell the difference pretty easily -- the hair dyeing techniques were crude and unnatural and the trained eye could spot the difference. But now, it's impossible. I have recently been fooled several times, and I pay attention to these things, believe me.

These trends which are making life so difficult for my poor friend in the consultancy firm with his efforts to pigeonhole people based on race and nationality ... nationality -- that's another one!

How much use is an American or Canadian passport these days in terms of making assumptions about what a person is like? None!!

The whole idea of nationality is just fading away, with people in our part of the world leading the way. A Chinese person lands at Los Angeles airport and five minutes later is already worried about whether the UCLA football team will win or lose the Saturday game. As soon as the green card comes through -- forget the passport!! -- once the green card is in their hands, they are already American. Really, though they become a member of the international community, and transcend nationality altogether. Passports and nationality become a matter of convenience rather than things around which to build lives and identities and wars.

Which is not a bad thing. In fact it's good. Let patriotism wither noisily in soccer matches and athletics meets, that's what I say.

So Jerry Yang stands up in Beijing and declares: "I am Chinese."

Good for you, Jerry.