My wife is Korean, and we live in an area with a large Asian population. Mostly Korean, but certainly a good number of Japanese, Chinese, SE Asian. We like to play the “guess the nationality” game when we are out and about. We both are pretty good at it. I might actually be a little better. We were taking a walk around the neighborhood a couple of months ago and saw a Asian family had moved into one of the new houses in the development. The default guess would be Korean, but I had my doubts. I guessed Chinese; my wife was not so sure. I won this round!
I happen to think wife wife “looks” Korean. Not sure how to describe it other then, I don’t know, an “open” face with rounded features. To me, she doesn’t look the least bit Chinese or Japanese. Even aside from the familiarity bias, Koreans just stand out to me as very distinctive, especially when compared to Chinese. Japanese can be a bit more dicey.
Just purely visual identification is not reliable, probably only about 70% accurate in most cases. It is fairly easy to distinguish between Northern Asians (Northern Chinese, Koreans and Japanese) vs Southern Asians (Southern Chinese, Thai, Malaysian, Vietnamese). The Northern Asians often have some Mongolian ancestry and tend to be a few inches taller, paler in complexion and with a rounder face. The Southern Asians are more darker complexioned, smaller in stature and muscle mass. The face is sharper and the mouth is often wider.
Trying to distinguish between someone from Northern China, Korea or Japan just from physical appearance is completely unreliable. You have to look at what clothes they are wearing, what brands of clothes they use and what accent or language they are speaking.
Non-Asian here who worked in East Asia for about a year in a job where I regularly encountered groups of Asians from other countries. At first I had the damnedest time telling them apart, but gradually - after 6 months or so? - I got pretty reliably good at telling Koreans from Japanese from Chinese from Thais, and so on.
It was never a perfect science and even then I couldn’t tell you if I was reading facial characteristics, mannerisms, fashion or what. But somehow you could usually just tell. Alas, the ability faded after I moved back to the US.
Similarly, I used to worked night shift at a youth hostel and would amuse myself by guessing what passport would be put in front of me based on a snapshot impression when people walked in the door. There, too, I got to a point where I had significantly better results than random chance.
Also: count me among those who don’t find anything horribly racist about the OP!
No problem with the question as phrased. I find it more racist to lump us together and not care about the differences.
I’m Japanese-American, born and raised in an Asian-dominant state. I’d say I can guess right about 75 percent of the time. What tips me off is a combination of factors: context, clothing, how they carry themselves, build, skin color, and features. The Asians you see on TV or movies tend to be really easy to me, and I can pick out ones that are part Asian.
There’s a bunch of us that have generic looks or downright deceptive looks, who could make decent money playing Guess What I Am. I know a Thai girl who looks like she’s from the Caribbean and a few Japanese and Chinese guys who look Middle-Eastern.
I work in a very multicultural, multilingual office, and it’s not easy to distinguish any ethnicity by appearance alone. It makes for some interesting surprises when they open their mouths and Serbian or Lithuanian flows out – “Whoa, I thought you were Italian!”
I can semi-accurately tell when someone is Japanese, and often Chinese. I can also tell say, a Chinese immigrant from a Chinese-American. Different facial expressions maybe?
This website has tests (click on the Exam Room). I don’t do too well here because I haven’t known too many Korean people growing up. The next Asian group was either Vietnamese or Filipino. General stereotype I have heard: Korean faces are rounder.
Other race effect. Summary: you get better at distinguishing faces with experience, like if you move to Asia. Otherwise “they all look the same.” It goes both ways, too.
Navajo (Dine) and Hopi can usually tell each other apart, pretty much instantly. Anglos have more trouble, but, with practice, can get fairly good. But, of course, there will be exceptions: some people have trouble with faces…and some people don’t look like the rest of their family.
I know a white person with very pronounced epicanthic folds. How did it happen? Recessive genes, improbable mutation, the jape of an antic god? Nobody knows.
A person is a racist if they believe at least one race is inherently and irredeemably inferior to another. A statement or question is racist if it tends to show that the speaker/asker is a racist. Just talking about people of a different race than you is not racist.
I’m a straight-up honkey-ass white guy, and I can tell the difference fairly readily between different Asian folks. I don’t really understand when some people say they all look alike–a typical Korean person and a typical Vietnamese person look as different to me as a typical white person and a typical Middle Easterner.
This is one of those threads where I should just save my standard answer and cut and paste because it comes up that frequently.
Defining East Asian as Japanese, Korean and Chinese, with the later including Han Chinese throughout South East China, etc., I have found that many, many people claim there is a physical difference, yet universally that claim almost always fails. Let’s look at the point above, that Korean faces are “round.” Like this, I guess. Certainly, we wouldn’t expect a Japanese person to have a round face.
I can often tell the difference by looking at hair styles, clothes, etc., but not by the shapes of faces.
And, anyone I’ve talked to who has claimed to do otherwise has failed to correctly separate Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, and Korean Americans, which isn’t surprising.
Oh look, you found some examples of people who don’t have the typical look of other people in their country. I guess that means that no one has that typical look.
From what I can tell with image identification: a Russian-German actress? Most people process faces in a holistic manner; we don’t look at individual features and say “yep, that’s a South Ossetian’s nose,” we just “know.” If we have this algorithm, it is bound to be wrong some of the time, in fact that’s expected due to diversity in countries. But it can also be right “most of the time,” e.g. over 50%, then that’s sometimes good enough.
People who were raised in the USA look different from their Old World cousins, and it isn’t just in the face, true. And more homogenous/harder to distinguish to us.
I don’t ALWAYS get it right at a distance or on TV, but usually. I don’t know if it was because I was exposed to so many Chinese people growing up (from ages 7-current) but yeah, I’ve never looked at a Japanese person and said, “Oh, they’re Chinese.”
I think it’s different when you’re in person. I’m sorry, but when interacting with a Chinese person, even very American Chinese, it’s very clear to me.
Maybe it’s just some kind of confirmation bias. Maybe I see or hear a name first and then make the connection. I don’t know. But I’ve never thought of all Asian or East Asian peoples looking the same.
