Heh. My first thought when I saw the OP was of Margaret Cho: “I get nervous when people say to me, ‘I just can’t tell any of you Asians apart!’ Um, why do you have to tell us apart? Are we gonna be separated for some reason?”
This quiz is a joke. They found the least Chinese looking person from China and put them in the quiz. Same for all the other Asians in the quiz. I spent over seven years travelling and living in Asia and I think I’m pretty good at telling the differences between the various groups, but like I said the quiz is a joke and is only meant to show people that “you can’t really tell Asian people apart”, when in reality often times you can.
In Bowling Green, Ohio, there is a very good restaurant serving Chinese cuisine. I ate there often. I knew someone, very American WASP background, who was a server there for a while. She said that the owners of the place were often quite upset that the patrons, vendors, etc. couldn’t tell that they were NOT Chinese, but Korean. I always found that somewhat amusing.
Now, here in the suburbs of Charlotte, I go to a dry cleaners that is operated by people who are clearly from Southeast Asia. The only way I can tell that they are likely Korean is that they have Korean writing on the calendar on the wall, some of the signs, etc. Their daughter was also briefly assigned to one of my classes (she moved before actually coming to the class) and her name was Korean. Visually, I would never be able to tell that ethnicity.
Korea’s not normally considered to be part of Southeast Asia. ASEAN membership is
Brunei
Burma (Myanmar)
Cambodia
Indonesia
Laos
Malaysia
Philippines
Singapore
Thailand
Vietnam
Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste are candidates for inclusion. China is so big that it spans from north to south.
Not necessarily an all inclusive list, but Japan and the Koreas are more Northeast.
I agree. They took several people who are just clearly exceptions to the rules that most of us asians have ingrained in our minds. The fact that they were able to do so, in my opinion, shows that these rules exist and the creators of the test used them to throw us curveballs.
Yes. In casual encounters (such as walking down the street or in the market) it’s not really necessary to know someone’s exact ethnicity, even though you observe that the person is probably from East Asia. Even then, a person of Chinese ethnicity could be from Thailand or some other Southeast Asian country.
In a social context (a party, etc.) I might be curious just to know “where s/he’s coming from.” OP doesn’t make clear, though, whether this is includes Asian-Americans, something more important if you want to strike up a conversation with someone. Usually it’s pretty clear before someone speaks if they were born in the States or abroad. If someone is from East Asia, I usually can tell which country it is, but I can’t really say how I know specifically. Of course, once you hear someone speak, or see their first and last names, it’s pretty obvious.
And in my work it’s of technical interest because I deal with English language instruction, and different native languages cause different kinds of “interference.”
I agree with Ishaw that “fashion trends, carriage, [and] manners” can help give one an idea about a person’s origin. On the street I can usually tell if a person is a European student or tourist, but it also has to do with context. In Havana, most Cubans think I’m Italian, simply because few people from the States (of non-Cuban origin) go to Cuba.
It isn’t odd. There’s no reason East Asian people ought to be visibly different any more than French or German people ought to be different. Anyone who says they can distinguish Chinese, Korean, or Japanese based purely on physical appearance* is suffering from availability bias (the van is always by the corner) or just some dented version of nationalist pride. It is possible to tell northeast asian from southeast asian, but there again, good luck telling Vietnamese/Thai/Malay from one another.
- Not counting things like - group of girls all walking pigeon-toed and carrying Louis Vuitton bags, someone currently in the process of eating kimchee… cultural signals can improve the odds, but still aren’t foolproof.
I saw this on All In The Family a few days ago
[Mike is arguing with Archie as usual]
Archie) You mean to tell me, if I put a “Chink” and a “Jap” side by side you could tell them apart
Mike) Yes, because I wouldn’t judge them based on looks, I’d talk to them and get to know them as individuals
Archie) Yeah, you’d say 'Which one of you is the “Chink” and which one of you is the “Jap”?
One of my favorite cartoon jokes:
Jon: I wouldn’t say you’re fat, Garfield, but you have more chins than the Hong Kong phonebook.
Because it’s interesting. I’m interested in knowing what anybody and everybody’s ethnic and/or regional background it. I’ll always take the opportunity to find out if I can. It’s yet another way of learning about world cultures and geography.
I’m surprised that anyone has any trouble telling Southeast Asians from the rest of the East Asians. I think they have an unmistakable look. There will be exceptions, of course, but I’d never have any trouble telling Joe Kim from Joe Nguyen.
If you’re getting to know people as people first, and then come to find more about their background and heritage, that’s one thing and that’s fine. If, as some people do, you first slot them into a category of Chinese, Filipino, Korean, etc., then that’s just weird. No white person goes up to every other white person that they meet and insists to know “what they are”? Even if you’re curious and interested it’s still at least vaguely offensive. Especially if that person is just as American (or English or Australian) as you and just happens to have different facial features. That girl working at the Starbucks is not your geography lesson and you’re not going to learn anything about Sri Lankan culture just because she’s making your coffee.
Now if these are your friends and colleagues whom you’ve known for a while and taken some time to get to know them, that’s an entirely different issue. But I’ve seen strangers ask these kind of questions, and it’s just wrong and helps to point out to the person being asked that they are somehow different enough to be asked questions about their heritage that others don’t have to field.
Don’t mean to single you out, Green Bean, because I really don’t know your situation. I just want to point out that until you know someone fairly well that this can be a really insensitive question, even when it’s not intended as such.
Several years ago I worked in a company that had a fair number of Asian employees, from various countries. One day I asked one of the Asian men to take something to the boss’s secretary, Colleen. “Which one is she?” he asked. “The Irish gal,” I responded. (She was a stereotypical Irish person - very fair skin, red hair, etc.) He found this to be completely unhelpful. I described her more completely, and told him which desk was hers. “You have to remember,” he responded, a bit abashed, “You all look alike to us.” Further discussion ensued. He found the Irish redhead to be essentially the same as the brunette Italian; that is, not Asian. On the other had, it was patently obvious to him which of his co-workers were Vietnamese, Chinese, or Korean.
I would tend to ask, “where are you from?” rather than “what are you?”. However, I won’t usually ask until I’ve gotten to know the person to some degree. For example, if I’m a regular enough customer of the person’s store that we call each other by name. (And if they’re using their “native” name rather than an adopted Americanized name, I don’t need to ask, since I know enough to distinguish between a Chinese, Japanese, or Korean name.)
But don’t think we white folks don’t do this with other white folks. We just don’t tend to do it based on appearance; rather, as soon as we hear an accent we want to know “where are you from?” And if they’re American, well, white Americans are so mixed anyway that you’re going to get an answer like mine: English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, and French, in order of proportion.
An interesting aside about the brain functions involved:
In short this is not a conscious rules-based executive decision process going on. No one actually says to themselves that this face is rounder so the person is of this ethnicity or that one. We literally perceive, in a very real sense see, faces of familiar racial groups differently than we see those that are out of our in-group based on experience - in way very similar to how some Asians can really not hear the difference between “r” and “l” as it is out of their experience to be salient.
So how do you learn to tell them apart? Get a critical mass of dealing with a variety of members of each group as individuals, preferably as early in life in possible.
A lot of people in this thread believe that they can tell East Asians apart, by their facial features, with some degree of reliability. When faced with an online test that seems to show otherwise, they conclude that the test must be flawed.
It may be true that you can actually do this. But it’s also true that it’s really easy to kid yourself into thinking that you’re good at making such distinctions, by a process of unverified self-confirmation (“I can always tell if someone is wearing a wig. Look: that guy over there, he’s wearing a wig. You see, I can always tell.”) In Northern Ireland a lot of people sincerely believe that they can tell the difference between Catholics and Protestants by facial features alone. Without good evidence (such as a test that unambiguously measures your ability) how can you be sure?
It’s funny you mention this, because this happens to me all the time. And usually, the people who do it to me are Asian. They always ask me “What are you”? My first response would be to say that I am human. Then, they’ll say, “No, where are you from?” To which, I’d reply that I’m from America. This would be followed by a “No, I meant where are your ancestors from”. A lot of non-Asians, especially those from not very diverse areas, just assume that I’m “from China”. I once flew to Texas with my sister, and two minutes after getting off the plane, we encountered a white guy who spoke slow, enunciated English to us (as if we couldn’t understand) and asked if we were from China. A few moments after this (I kid you not), we passed a white couple who muttered that they thought they were in America and not China. Wow.
To be fair, I still scored something like 60-65% the few times I tried it way back when, which is admittedly less than I thought I would do, but still probably better than pure chance. Of course we can’t ever be totally sure, but I’m convinced the ability is not completely fabricated. Like I said, I feel that they purposely threw in some faces that they knew would look very much like a particular ethnicity but were actually not that ethnicity. That the makers of the test were able to do this, to me, indicates that they were using the same ability we all believe we have.
In short, if the faces were randomly picked, I think the results would be different. But hey, I’ve never really read hard facts on the subject except for what’s been posted in this thread, so I could be wrong.
My wife isn’t. There aren’t many orientals around here (Asians I define as being from the Indian sub continent) but I can usually define Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai from their appearance. Don’t ask me how though.
I have had a few of Chinese friends and acquaintances. My second daughter’s best friend is Chinese. There are a few Japanese live near me that are attached to the local Nissan plant, there is a Chinese community about ten miles away, around the University, and I’m often in that area, otherwise I have practically zero contact with them. There are very few Koreans or Thai in this locality.
I do however have an interest in Oriental culture and particularly music. Whether this has any influence or not I cannot say. If it is it is entirely subliminal.
Not to nitpick (okay, I am nitpicking, and my only excuse is my love of Indonesia and the distress I feel when foreigners oversimplify its complexities or dismiss the nation as a bunch of Moslem extremists, or think that everyone who follows Islam is named “Mohammed”) but in 8 years of living in Indonesia I have yet to meet an “Ahmet,” although there is an occasional “Ahmad” so that’s not completely wrong.
But here are the first (or only, since not all Indonesians have two names) names of every Indonesian I currently know in a work-related capacity:
Yanto
Udin
Mulyono
Iis
Eti
Harun
Widodo
Edward (I work with 2 people named Edward)
Sutrisno
Aris (I work with 2 people named Aris)
Farid
Wawan
Januar
Satia
Endah (2 of those, too)
Parno
Wakidi
Deborah
Ari
The three front-running teams in the just-held Indonesian elections had these first/only names:
Susilo
Budiono
Megawati
Prabowo
Yusuf
Wiranto
Now, you will note that some of these names - like Farid and Yusuf - are indeed Arabic in origin. But Indonesians with Arabic names are at least as likely to be named Aburizal or Walid as they are worn-out American stereotypes like Mohammad and Ahmad.
Sorry, ShibbOleth. I don’t mean to pick on you, just on the tendency of Americans to reduce everything Islamic to names like Mohammed. I’m sure you personally are not guilty of that.
Missed the edit window: on rereading, I’m guilty of stereotyping too: I should have said “worn-out stereotypes” rather than worn-out American stereotypes" and referred to the tendency of some Americans. Mea culpa.