The truth about East Asians....

[anrakushi]

i agree with what tenchu said above

I wouldn't know how to describe how i can tell the differences between the east asian countries of china, korea and japan. i would, as said before, put it down to the fact i have had a lot of dealings with people who were born and raised in said countries and i have learnt to notice the subtle differences (although some are very clear) but i wouldn't know how to put it down in words. i think if you spend enough time in their company you will start to pick up on the differences yourself.

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by Tenchu

Ronin4hire, I mean no disrespect, but you have got it absurdly wrong.

First, the difference between the blue eyes of a German and of a Scandanavian is big. Germans have more grey colored eyes, Scandanavians have more sky blue eyes.

Second, the Scottish and Irish aboriginals do NOT have red or blonde hair. The people liveing in those countries have the hair that color because of the viking conquest that now forms Britan. The original natives of the UK ALL had brown eyes and brown hair. There is a lot of mixed blood in Europe, but you can pick where they originally came from. But then, I see a blonde girl with sky blue eyes and say Scandanavian, but she is British, well, her blood was Scandanavian at least. The russians with blue eyes look different yet again. It is a fine line, and you can mistake it, but there is a difference in them all. Some of these differences arnt limited directly to country borders though, I mean, the Germans and Polish are pretty much the same race, and so on...

It is the same fine difference that separates the Asians as well, but they are all different

I will believe you as soon as you provide me with a link with some sort of scientific data. Till then I'll continue to call bullsh-t.

[Ronin4hire]

I'm not talking about "race". I'm talking about nationality.

[anrakushi]

ronin4hire calling nationality from looks is impossible. there is nothing linking looks and nationality. no one in this world would say they can tell someones nationality with certainty from any physical appearance or even their accent. i don't believe the person you were arguing about this with is claiming nationality but rather race.

the fact is that in china's population is more than 90% Han Chinese, Korea and Japan are homogeneous countries with around 98-99% of the population being of that countries race.

in contrast australia's population is just over 2% of native australians, the rest are immigrants although 37% claimed their ancestry is Australian (one can only assume this term was used because they have several generations born in australia) as much as 31% say their ancestry is English and many other countries make up the rest.

[MMM]

Originally Posted by Ronin4hire

Fair enough.. I am still interested in seeing what you see though.

I am curious why you say it is "impossible" to tell, and why anyone who says they can is a liar.

Did you take the test?

[noodle]

I think saying that you can tell is slightly wrong. You should probably word it as, I can "sometimes" tell. Because lets face it, even if you put a group of japanese people together, sometimes you'll think they look japanese and sometimes you'll think, oh wait, they look slightly different, i wonder if they are ALL actually japanese.

I have to help asian (mainly japanese and chinese) students everyday in my university. I can understand the slight subtle difference that you guys are talking about, but sometimes if not most times, it's just impossibly hard to tell from physical/fashion apearences. In fact, from fashion it's especially hard, because young chinese/japanese adults seem to have very similar fashion these days.

But, i have to say one funny difference i've noticed between chinese and japanese. I sometimes know if someone is japanese by the technology (more of money) that he/she has. I seem to notice that japanese students seem to be rather wealthy and are never worried about using daddy's credit card!! But of course, this is just the students i've been working with!

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by anrakushi

ronin4hire calling nationality from looks is impossible. there is nothing linking looks and nationality. no one in this world would say they can tell someones nationality with certainty from any physical appearance or even their accent. i don't believe the person you were arguing about this with is claiming nationality but rather race.

the fact is that in china's population is more than 90% Han Chinese, Korea and Japan are homogeneous countries with around 98-99% of the population being of that countries race.

in contrast australia's population is just over 2% of native australians, the rest are immigrants although 37% claimed their ancestry is Australian (one can only assume this term was used because they have several generations born in australia) as much as 31% say their ancestry is English and many other countries make up the rest.

Hey, it wasn't my assertion that physical characteristics run along national lines. It was the many people in this thread that disagree with me.

And yes I'm aware of the culturally homogenous makeup of many of these East Asian nation-states compared to Western nation-states (notable exceptions being Singapore and Malaysia). However you will have to prove that the people of this region are in general, seperated into nations along the lines of physical characteristics (i.e. race. basically you'll have to prove that the Chinese are a seperate race from the Japanese from the Koreans). I believe they are not seperated by race, rather by culture.

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by MMM

I am curious why you say it is "impossible" to tell, and why anyone who says they can is a liar.

Did you take the test?

I say it's impossible to tell via physical characteristics alone. For it to be possible the differences would have to be constant. For it to be possible, the various nationalities in the region would have to be defined along these physical characteristics

And yes I took the test, I failed.

[emiluvsjmusic]

i took the test and i failed... lol

[Ronin4hire]

Like I said... I'm not talking about race. And if you accept that race doesn't coincide with nationality then how can you argue that Chinese, Japanese, Korean people are distinguishable from each other via physical characteristic?

Also I'd like to use my own example to give more insight into the reasoning behind my position.

Take one attribute, say height, facial proportions, whatever you want. Let's imagine that we took a sample size of say Koreans for arguments sake and a sample size of Japanese people (or if you like pick any other set of nationals from whatever region you want). Now say we calculated the AVERAGE dimensions of said attribute and correlated all the data on a bell curve. Chances are you'll find that while they might vary slightly on AVERAGE, they'll more than likely overlap each other. OK... how does this make it possible to determine an INDIVIDUAL based on an a set attribute.