how well do East Asians identify ethnic groups by facial features?

Factual Questions
1

I guess this is two questions:

  1. how well do Chinese, Japanese and Koreans manage to recognize faces as belonging to one of these three categories

  2. how well do Chinese recognize faces as characteristic of different major regions in China (if that is even possible in the first place within the scope of the self-described Han people, not the self-described minorities)

Has this stuff been examined either rigorously empirically or at least on the level of “conventional wisdom” i.e. what they informally believe about their ability to recognize groups by facial features?

2

I’m pretty sure we’ve done this at least once in the last year or so. Maybe a little searching will turn up the thread.

3

In my experience, not very well in China.

I have a Filipino-American friend who is obviously and unmistakably Filipino. She’s got a short round body with huge breasts, darkish skin, and exactly the sorts of features you’d find on a Filipino. She looks nothing at all like a Chinese person- the eyes, lips, skin, body, etc are completely different. Not to mention her body language is utterly and completely American. We simply move in a different way than Chinese people. And yet she can’t convince anyone in China that she’s not some sort of Chinese minority. She’s actually gotten into pretty heated arguments with people who are convinced she’s faking not speaking Chinese. Of course I can understand them not having much familiarity with Filipinos, but it would seem obvious to me she is a foreigner, doubly so when she opens her mouth.

My just-plain-white friends regularly pass themselves off as Uighurs. People will believe just about anyone is a Uighur.

As part of a lesson, a friend of mine presented images of some of China’s famous 56 minorities in their traditional dress. It was really obvious stereotypical stuff- Tibetanshanging out on mountains with yaks, Blue-eyed Uighurswalking to a mosque, Dai in shimmery sarongs splashing water, Miao in crazy headdresses, etc. Anyone with even a small knowledge of China really should have no problems recognizing these things. To her surprise, the students didn’t recognize most of them!

I think they could most likely recognize someone who is not Han, but apparently even with obvious clues such as well-known traditional dress, Chinese young people have trouble pinpointing exactly where people are from.

Probably the best explanation is that outside of big cities people have limited contact with foreigners and national minorities from outside of their region. Additionally, living in such a homogeneous society means that people simply don’t give as much concern to the outside world. In my experience (and understanding of history) Chinese culture tends to look inward rather than outward.

4

It’s odd, really… if someone said they could tell the difference between a French person and a Polish person on just facial features alone, we’d consider that completely absurd, because it is. But some people swear up and down that they have developed some mysterious sense that enables them to distinguish Japanese from Korean from Han Chinese on facial features alone. It’s all anecdotes, cultural cues, and confirmation bias.

5

Even in Europe there are ethnic-related traits. Slavs often have “robust” physiognomy compared with the more “gracile” Mediterranean look. But you can certainly find “gracile” Slavs and “robust” Italians. It would seem straightforward with computer assistance to form and compare “average” face shapes. I’m not good at Googling and, anyway, that would be a research area fraught with political overtone.

(Actually I did find a site that even lets you make your own such averages but saw no mention of ethnic comparison at the site, suggesting I was right about “politics” since no one doubts existence of gross racial facial differences.)

Where I live, despite much ethnic mixing over the centuries, there is a “Burmese look”, a “Northern Thai look”, a “Laotian look” and so forth. You’d have to take my anecdotal word for it, but I’m very confident I’d get a better-than-random score on a birth-region guessing game just within S.E. Asia.

6

Sheesh, I can recognize the difference between a “significant” percentage of Han Chinese, non- Han Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. Now to qualify that, I don’t know if it’s 20% or 50% or how much it’s based on non-facial markers like dress, posture, etc. I’ve lived 20+ years in Greater China and 2.5 years in Japan. And I will admit it’s a lot tougher to do this with 3rd generation American East Asians dressed up like trendy gangsta wannabes.

Just a guesstimate, but probably 20% (or 40%???) of Korean, Japanese and Chinese have an obviously racially identifiable look. And there’s probably chunk that just look East Asian of some sort. After all, 8% of Asian men are descended from Genghis Khan in the strictly male line. (Thanks Chronos): Family and descendants of Genghis Khan - Wikipedia

Even among the Han Chinese, there are ethnic looks. It’s definately a lot tougher to distinguish than say between Han and Korean. However, there’s a group of Shanghaiese that look, well, Shanghaiese. Actress Joan Chen has a very stereotypical Shanghaiese face as does my wife. There’s a very stereotypical Taiwanese and/or Fukjian “look” that dunno maybe 10% have. Shandong Provice people tend to be really big and broad. Northerners are tall. Cantonese tend to have a typical non Mongol short and squat look. This is all without looking at how they dress, move, act or speak.

Non ethnic Han like the Tibetans, Mongolians or Manchurians really stand out. Of course the Uighur’s or Kazak’s have a cacausian look.

Now, clean 'em all up, put them in a school uniform, glasses and a standard school haircut, and it gets tougher. :slight_smile:

Just this morning, while waiting for my kids school bus, a woman riding her bicycle stood out as most likely Philippino but definately some sort of SE Asian non-Han. She stood out like a sore thumb.

Even Sven, you have ***one ***valid view of China, but dang those Sichuanese can be ignorant (in an unexposed, unexperienced and unquestioning way). Your Philippino friend wouldn’t get that treatment in Shanghai at least. And a Shanghaiese wouldn’t get faked by a casual Westerner claiming to be Uighur. China’s a big country and there are a lot of valid and contradictory experiences here.

I’m with **Septimus **in that I could get a better than random score distinguishing between Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

7

I’m Taiwanese/Chinese American -

Think of how you can distinguish between a Chinese American born and raised in America, vs. a Chinese. Both are of Chinese ancestry, so it’s obviously nothing to do with the facial feature, but more so a combination of many things - dress, mannerism, carriage, features they choose to emphasize, the way they speak, and little things that are sort of related to physical appearance, but more so influenced by their culture.

One can try to distinguish amongst a Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese the same way. It’s not really based on facial features alone. If you want to make the claim that you can
distinguish between a fifth generation Japanese-American vs. a fifth generation Taiwanese-American, then that’s a different story. I know lots of people say they can, but I am dubious of that. When East Asians come to America and settle here for several generations, becoming “Americanized”, losing their cultural markers, and adopting the mannerisms and dress here, it becomes a LOT more difficult to tell amongst them. That’s when you are really guessing by facial features alone - and I think that would yield a much, much lower success rate.

8

I agree with lshaw. I can identify Korean/Chinese/Japanese people most of the time, but I’ve never had to do it in a vacuum (in other words, without seeing how they’re dressed and how they move). I’m willing to bet that if most people were present with a second or third generation Asian American they would have a harder time telling their ethnicity. Very few people can guess I’m Korean (I was brought up in the US) - when I keep my mouth shut I’ve been approached by both Chinese and Japanese people asking for directions in their native language.

In one of the Asian American classes I took in grad school, we looked at this website that tests you on distinguishing between Korean/Japanese/Chinese people that are culturally American, and most of us failed miserably.

9

It’s so straightforward I kept Googling but gave up after only one hit:
The average Korean woman in her 20’s. She does look slightly Korean to me, but I’m not sure I’d have guessed right. The same sort of computer software, by the way, can exaggerate differences; so with several different ethnic averages it would be easy to produce a “more Korean than average Korean” image!

10

I wish I had something more to add, but I can at least second this.

11

I forgot to preface my post with “I live out in the sticks, YMMV.” An awful lot of China is out in the sticks, though. My friend gets that treatment from Guangxi to Yunnan, a huge swath of the country. My fake Uighur friends hang out in cosmopolitan Chengdu freaking everyone out. I imagine in this case the East Coast urban experience is the atypical one.

I think in most cases around here, people can tell someone is different, but not how they are different. People who are not from Sichuan certainly do stand out in this town. But people have trouble explaining exactly how. The other day, on of my (Han) students from Xinjiang was talking about her experiences there. Everyone stood their with their jaws dropped until she noticed and she explained that she wasn’t a Uighur. Well, duh, she didn’t look even a little bit like one! It’s not like this town has no Uighurs and so nobody knows what one looks like. There are plenty. Sometimes I just can’t make sense of the stuff I’m experiencing!

Hell, here is a funny story. I was in a cab with some (white) Australian tourists. They didn’t believe that Chinese people have bad feelings towards the Japanese, so we asked the cab driver what he thought about Japanese people. The cab driver looked nervous for minute, and then said “Well, I guess they are okay.” The Australians high fived each other, having proved their point. We were like “Okay, so that guy is a total anomaly.”

Later, when we dropped the Australian guys off, the cab driver turned back and asked us “Were those guys Japanese?!”

12

On the flip side, I’ve known Taiwan-based Chinese (not necessarily “Taiwanese”) who went to the US and had Latinos constantly trying to talk Spanish to them, and occasionally getting a bit ticked off when they claimed not to undersand.

Come to think of it, I’ve known quite a few people from here who could easily pass for Hispanic.

OTOH, I don’t think any Filipina would ever be mistaken from a Chinese here. They’re too physically distinct (leaving aside the fact that when you see them, they’re usually walking their employers’ dogs or wheeling Grandpa around in the park)

13

And so can I. It’s usually not difficult to see the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Koreans in the street.

A Peruvian friend has told me that she was often mistaken for a Chinese when she studied in China.

14

My Filipina friend is almost always mistaken for Chinese here in China.

15

If I look at that photo, I’d say it’s pretty certain she isn’t Japanese. Japanese tend to have bigger rounder eyes. But I’d be lying if I said I knew she was obviously Korean and not Han Chinese (or Miao or Dong or Zhuang or Bai Chinese minorities for that matter).

Even Sven, when I did dozens of trips by boat, bus and train from Hong Kong throughout SW China in the 1980’s. There were obvious differences between a countryside cantonese and sichuanese peasant. They were both dirt poor back then in Maoist blue but the physical size and facial features were obviously not the same.

16

I’ve lived in Korea for more than 3 years now and most of the time, I can tell the difference between the three main countries of Asia-Pacific.

There are always exceptions of course, and some people don’t necessarily fit into the stereotypes set.

17

No, we wouldn’t, because it’s not, statistically speaking. Sure, it may not be able to identify a given person as either French or Polish, but on average I am sure one could perform better than chance. Distinguishing between some East Asian ethnic groups based on facial features would be trivial. I bet I could tell Japanese from Filipinos, for example, at near 100% accuracy.

18

I doubt it.

As I said, everyone agrees that there there is a notable difference between southeast Asians and east Easians. But if you’re trying to consistently differentiate between the east Asian nationalities (Japanese from Han Chinese from Korean), you will not be successful because none of those groups has any statistically relevant facial features from the other.

Here’s a link to a test where you can test your abilities if you’re sure that you can tell the difference.

19

We certainly can. I was in Italy earlier this year, and I’m now in Poland, and it’s obvious that Italians and Poles have different facial features. I couldn’t identify them with certainty either, but I definitely could do better than chance, given a random set of Italian and Polish faces. It’s the same for other ethnic groups, even ones that are quite similar to each other. For example, I’m quite certain that it’s possible to distinguish between English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians, based on facial features alone, with accuracy greater than 50%.

I’m not saying I’d do well on this particular test, because I’m not really all that familiar with East Asian ethnic groups. Though like psychonaut I think Filipinos and Japanese should be easy to differentiate.

20

French males often have very distinctive facial features that are hard to describe, but scream “Frenchman”. I’m pretty sure it’s a combination of the nose and forehead. Similarly, Swedes also have distinctive features, again, I’m pretty sure it’s the eyes and cheekbones that give it away.