He’s half-Japanese half-Chinese (of the Taiwanese variety). But Andy’s been my hero since I was a kid, so I’m going to have to call you out for not mentioning him
I don’t know why, but I didn’t do that well on the site. I think I got like 10 or something. In any case, I’m not often wrong in real life. I’d say I can get it right 80% of the time. And that’s even differentiating among Asian-Americans and the ones of the same ethnicity from their homeland. There’s no single thing certain Asians all have in common, ofcourse. If anything,it’s like 55% style and body language, and 45% physical features. My mom gets it right like 95% of the time, in real life and on the screen.
And yep, having never really met White people until high school, I can say that White people all look pretty much look alike to me
Some thirty years ago, when I was in college, my older (and much brighter) brother came to visit me and met some of my friends, including Johnny, an Asian-American who had been born in the US but clearly was of East-Asian extraction. At one point I made some joking reference to Johnny’s being Chinese, and as soon as possible, my brother got me aside and hissed at me in a horrified way for referring to Johnny as Chinese when he was *clearly * of Japanese extraction!
“Jim,” I said. “His name is Johnny Chan.”
My brother, being very bright and generally well-informed (and very unused to being wrong), spent a fair amount of time convincing himself that my buddy had Japanese in his recent woodpile. I hope he’s loosened up somewhat, as he lives in Hawai’i now!
Did anybody else notice that each person in that group looked amazingly different than every other person. Was that done on purpose, I wonder. I’m glad I don’t guess that badly in tests otherwise I would never have passed any of them.
Incidentally, all races look alike to me, or rather all people of a particular race seem to resemble each other. Even Indians (and I am Indian), though India has a few races of its own, so you can tell which one a person likely belongs to. As for all the rest, it’s pretty much a coin toss.
Since living in England, I can tell a bit better between different European origins, but that’s usually down to clothing and hairstyle as much as facial features or hair colour. What’s surprising is I can tell different regions in England apart much more easily, and not just through accent.
As for telling people of different Oriental / Asian origins apart, Koreans sometimes have flattish faces, as in pretty flat wide noses (to be blunt) and Chinese usually have rounder faces and heads in comparison to Japanese, but other than that I am pretty lost. If it’s a subtle racial trait, I often can’t see it. And I lived in South Korea for almost a year, and have made many visits to other Asian countries (especially Japan and Taiwan and Thailand).
If I go Middle-Eastern or Arabic, I am helpless; same for Africans. I can tell if someone is African or Middle Eastern or Arabic (of course), but can’t differentiate between say Palestinians and Iraqis and Iranians.
I don’t have a problem differentiating individuals, I just have difficulty telling the correct races at a glance. I take this personally to be the proof that there’s not a hell of a lot of biological difference between the races and we’re all the same under the skin, but that’s getting more serious than I intend to here
Funny story - just got back from Bangkok, and had found this fantastic DJ bar. Trying to get my travelling companions there, I said I finally found a cool DJ-style bar that catered to my crowd’s interest quite well.
Finally got them all there, and several of of them complained that I had found an authentic Japanese expat DJ bar in the middle of Bangkok. All whinged about not being ‘authentic’. I told them to shut up and enjoy the music.
But to be honest, I had no idea the bar was Japanese as were most of the patrons and staff until my mates mentioned it
