I’m not known for being politically correct, but I certainly don’t want this to sound ignorant. There are obviously differences between various Asian groups’ appearances, Japanese and Chinese always seeming to be the stereotypical one for us Westerners. I know I see differences between them but how would they be described? And approximately how many different ones are there? Are they fairly well defined by country? IOW is there also a Korean, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Filipino etc. ‘look’ ?
I’m not so much talking about culture (i.e. clothing, hairstyles etc.) as I am about physical facial appearance. But while we’re at it you could include cultural factors too (as I don’t know much about the specifics of those either!)
I think of northern Asians as being bigger and stockier and southeast Asians as being more slight. Northern Asians also seem to me to have more obvious epicanthic folds for eyelids. One complicating factor is that almost every country has an ethnic Chinese minority, members of which (IME) are more worldly and open to talking to outsiders.
Some indicators are obvious, like skin tone. For example, in most cases a dark complexion instantly narrows it down to either Cambodian, Filipino, or Thai.
One thing to add about the eyelid thing: My wife, who’s from Taiwan, didn’t much care for Disney’s Mulan, as she thought the way they drew all the characters’ eyes made them all look like Koreans.
To start off, it should be noted that China encompasses dozens of different ethnicities besides the majority one, known as Han, from Mongolians to Uigurs to Miao, each of which has different characteristics.
I’ve met a woman of Vietnamese extraction who was surprisingly dark.
There’s a lot of individual variation in any case, but there are things you notice if you look at a lot of people from different ethnicities. Given facial features don’t map clearly onto language groups, but there is a certain eyelid shape that’s stereotypically “Mongol”, a sort of nose that’s stereotypically Korean or Japanese (though most people in those countries don’t have it), a sort of facial bone structure that appears in Chinese faces a lot (but also westward all the way to Europe)–it’s pretty subtle all told.
I don’t think the question is going to break along national lines.
It’s like talking about Europeans. Do Spanish folk really look that different from people from Portugal? Do Germans look that different from the Dutch? Do the Irish look that different from Norwegians? You can talk about a “Mediterranean” appearance or a Scandanavian “look”, and maybe if you’re sensitive you’ll be able to distinguish a Eastern European from a Central European. But there aren’t any hard and fast rules to decide who is who. Every trait that you can pin on one group is shared by another. At least, that has been my experience.
monstro is correct. Borders are fairly arbitrary. Despite some Asians thinking “we know our own” (yes, I’ve heard this), tests will often prove them wrong. Distance is a bigger differentiator than nationality.
I have a copy of “Drawing People” by Joumana Medlej, and it has a complete guide to human types in the back. Hair colour and texture, facial and body proportions, skin and eye colour, the works.
A lot of Asians think they can tell the difference, but you’re right, they really can’t.
It used to be a game my cousins and I played as kids, and the vast majority of the time we were right (when we asked them), but we weren’t going on appearance alone. We were primarily around Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, with a peppering of Japanese or Thai, so having to guess from mostly just 3 choices wasn’t that difficult; we also had geographic location/neighborhood to consider, and we often had or asked their last name which was a dead giveaway (unless it was “Lee”).
While nationalities don’t necessarily determine appearance, it does shape behavior to a great degree. If I’m trying to guess the homeland of a stranger from Asia it’s often his or her behavior that informs me more than physical traits.
All Look Same is a website run by a Japanese man living in America, and is all about the misconceptions about the physical and cultural similarities between East Asians, mainly Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans. There’s a fun little exam room where visitors can take picture quizzes to see if they can distinguish between the three countries when looking at people, food, and artwork.
Here are average female faces from 40 countries. The images are already labeled with nationality, so it won’t be easy to “test” yourself.
(Had the Asian female images been presented with the nationalities stated but unassigned I think I’d have done much better-than-random for assignment. Clicking “closeups” on the linked page gives, I think, a different collection, but “zoomed” versions of the images are available at another Googleable page.)
These are not images of people chosen to be typical. Instead photos of several different people were chosen for each case and a composite face developed algorithmically.
When I was living in Japan I heard Koreans described as typically having a round “frying pan” face. That doesn’t sound very nice and I apologize if it’s the equivalent of saying “hook-nosed Jew” or something, but I heard that exact phrase more than once.
I’ve never been to Korea, so I’m not sure if Koreans make “Why the long face?” jokes about the Japanese.
