The epicanthic fold makes me wonder if he has some Asian or Pacific Islander forebears – does anyone know?
He’s half-Korean. There have even been episodes where the kids make silly kid-like comments “You aren’t Korean and I am!” type of things. Totally the type of thing my daughter would probably say if she was in a mixed-race family! <G>
He also has a very noticeable South Korean flag tattooed on his shoulder that you can see when he rolls up the sleeves on his Ed Hardy shirts.
Ah. Thanks.
The odd thing to me is that his kids are 1/4 Korean and some fo them look more Korean than he does. Pic.
On one of the older episodes (pre-divorce) Kate talked about how someone in Jon’s family told her before they had kids that Korean genes were strong, and the kids probably wouldn’t look like Kate.
In general, a lot of “white” physical traits are not dominant. Darker hair is dominant, darker eyes, darker skin… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Chang and Eng Bunker have been dead for 135 years. They married sisters (white southern farmgirls) and had a total of 21 children and have around 2000 descendants today, many of whom are active in genealogy and family reunion projects, and what’s amazing is that many of the descendants (mostly great-great- and further removed grandchildren) still have identifiable Asian features.
How exactly did they have sex, anyway? It must have been really awkward. Maybe not so awkward if you had lived your whole life attached to your brother - but awkward for the women, probably. Did they usually both do it with their respective wives at the same time, to save each other the frustration of one of the brothers having to lie there while the other one got laid?
I agree. It was probably not a big deal for the dudes, but what about the women? This is the kind of stuff that the Straight Dope is supposed to answer!
Actually, sources from the period would seem to indicate that no, they never did both wives simultaneously. The brothers would live three days in one brother’s house with his family, then three days in the other brother’s home with that family. So, presumably, one brother was having intercourse while the other wasn’t.
So when Chang was getting his swerve on, Eng was doing what, reading a book? And Mrs. Chang had her skirt hitched up and pretended to ignore the other dude six inches away, looking uninterested and smoking a pipe?
I’ve always found this odd as well. I’ve known lots of 1/4 Asian, 3/4 white people. Most of them had no identifiable Asian features except around the eyes, and that you wouldn’t notice unless they came out and said they had an Asian grandparent. Those kids look 3/4 Asian, not 3/4 white. I also find it strange that they all look so similar. Are some of them identical?
What did Jon and Kate do for a living before the kids? Does anyone know?
Didnt Chang and Eng marry women who were twin sisters???
(I may be thinking of another famous set of Siamese twins, or I could just be mistaken, but I am almost sure I read this somewhere)
My wife thinks that he was in IT and she was a nurse
Basically, yes.
Both the Chengs and other conjoined twins seem to develop and ability to “tune out” what the other twin is doing at times. The Chengs had also developed a system where each of them had separate houses and whomevers house they were at, that’s the one of the pair that decided what they were doing and where they were going, then after three days the other twin would get to be in charge. The two of them were very much different individuals so there were many times one twin would wind up doing or going somewhere he wasn’t particularly enthused about.
They did marry sisters, Adelaide and Sarah Yates, but as far as I know the girls were not, themselves, twins.
Continuing the Chang Eng hijack with apologies to Twickster (but then the OP was answered already):
From what I’ve read one would essentially lose consciousness when the band that connected them (on which their common navel was located) was stretched to max. I’m not sure if it was physiological- an actual passing out- or a willing yourself to sleep. Either way I wonder exactly where all the legs were when one couple was getting it on and the other was ‘along for the ride’.
One thing I remember reading about them from their own reminiscences was that they fought constantly when they were kids and that their mother (her name was Nok) once hung them over a fence- one on each side with the band on top- until they stopped. They said in all things she treated them the same as her other children and this included discipline. (She also disobeyed a direct order from the King of Siam to kill them; luckily he died soon after giving the order and his successor was fascinated with the twins and gave them expensive gifts.)
The most thorough bio of them to date was The Two by Irving Wallace and his daughter Sylvia Wallace. Unfortunately the Wallaces weren’t known as great researchers (I loved the Book of Lists series but I now know they were often way off-base in accuracy), but it’s certainly more reliable than the novel by Darin Strauss (which was very disappointing considering what he had to work with- same problem I had with the recent novel “The 19th Wife”- when you have two of the most fascinating characters of the 19th century you don’t need to make up melodramatic Dr. Quinn-ish fictional backstories). I keep hoping some grad student or descendant will write the definitive scholarly bio of them.
Their chair was on Antiques Road Show a few years ago and while I have no knowledge of antique appraisal I strongly disagreed with their estimate on the chair- $10-$12K at auction. The reason I strongly disagreed is that so long as it included documentation I personally would pay more than that if I had it to spare and never once regret it; I’m guessing it’s more in the six figures.
No prob. Though I’ve got an uneasy feeling I should be getting all moddy on y’all and suggest someone start a new thread, I’m actually fascinated that we’ve gone from a father of octuplets to Siamese twins, and the connection isn’t “unusual births” but ethnic background.
And since we’re free associating like hell:
Really, really good novel on conjoined twins: The Girls by Lori Lansens. It’s told in the alternating voices of the two girls, who have very distinct personalities. The novel had the potential to be gimmicky as all hell, but it ends up being a really interesting look at what their lives were like. Strongly recommended.
Some enterprising screenwriter could cobble together HBO’s next big hit just by reading this thread…