CJK people actually do look very similar anyway, which is not surprising as there are a lot of shared genetics.
The way people tell them apart is going to be mostly based on current popular fashion, which is quite difficult to do with these bust shots and what I'm guessing are older pictures
The problem is I put like 70% as Chinese, because I guarantee there's a Chinese person in the world who looks exactly like the portrait. China is so mixed that it's a total wildcard.
This website is just the author's personal judgment exercise.
I am pretty sure it's 20+ years old. Just based on when I remember taking it.
Sep 14, 2001 it was taken out of beta.
I remember taking it as a freshman in college and getting well above random chance. 60–70% correct? A year later I took it with my sophomore roommate, from China. Again, 2/3-ish correct. He scored about random chance from what I recall.
I've always thought you could tell. Not 100% of the time; there's plenty of genetic mixing, Japanese people and Koreans share somewhat recent genetic history, Korea and China border each other, China is a ton of different ethnicities, etc. But certainly better than random chance if you've been around enough East Asians in your life.
I agree with a descendant above who said fashion is really useful. That's super true. I used to joke at uni that an East Asian wearing pastels was invariably Korean (this is very much NOT the case in SK these days). Japanese have had very distinct youth fashions for twenty years, as I lived there and witnessed them, and nowadays I can be across the playground with my kids and see a woman and immediately know by what she's wearing that she's from Japan.
China, being enormous, is a mixed bag.
That being said, there's facial structure stuff. It's kind of hard to put into words. It's a vibe you get. There's a university (Penn State or something?) that has a professor who puts his huge survey sociology class online. He talks about this, that early and constant exposure to some group(s) makes you better, for the rest of your life, and recognizing them. Has to do with attractiveness, too.
He brings white girls up to pick which Asian guy is the most attractive, and you can tell they really struggle to articulate it. But he brings Asian girls up and say exactly which one and explain why from his clothes, his facial features, etc.
It really is like if you aren't around (in this case) Asian people growing up, you have a kind of facial blindness where they alldolooksame.
I think it's the same with white people. There are some who look unique to their country and I can tell with high confidence but for others, I have no idea; they just look like a generic white person.
For example, I think these public figures look/looked very stereotypical for their country:
German: Otto Von Bismarck
English/Scottish: Hugh Grant, David Bowie, Winston Churchill, Maggie Smith
French: Napoleon, Jacque Chirac, Alain Delon, Gerard Depardieu, Francoise Hardy
American: Clint Eastwood, Abraham Lincoln, JFK
Swedish: Agnetha Faltskog
lol
What’s really wild to me is having spent time in both Mexico and Thailand, I have seen some people in Mexico that could have a twin in Thailand. That was really unexpected.
I also get "you look/feel so familiar" a lot.
Happy to know I'd fit in in a number of places haha
13/18 on food. Even with a lot of the same general types of food, the presentation and specific ingredients made a lot of them somewhat simple. I got tripped up on a few, though, where I overthought it ("a Japanese X is usually not like this") or ones where it was really a tossup for me between Chinese and Korean since I'm less familiar with those foods.
Also, Asians in their native countries are more distinctive vs. say, fully “Americanized” Asian Americans who I feel are a separate category that is more homogenous with each other than their country or ethnicity.
Another point I’ve observed more recently is that Korea and some parts of the Sinosphere are converging in aesthetics. Japan still seems to be doing its own thing. Though culturally I’d say Japan and Korea nonetheless share the most similarities.
Some of them look more like non Chinese people than like I he Chinese ethnicities.
> officially recognizes 55 ethnicities
In any case, I thought the "you all look the same" racist trope is that east asian people look similar to one another individually? is there an actual expectation of being able to tell the actual ethnicity/countries apart?
Domain created 2001-07-18
In my second go around I scored 11/18. Genius learn fast.
That said I really love food. I cook all 3 types often and go out to eat all 3 types (and even regional variants) quite frequently.
Is it good or bad? I don't know.
It would be a better test if it were from the collarbone-up, no clothes or makeup.
Delineating Korean and Japanese "looks" already seems a fool's errand if you consider that archeological evidence demonstrates close cultural and trade relationships (or alternatively: astronomically unlikely astonishing examples of parallel developments) between the two regions dating back at least to the Neolithic period - and that the current "native" population seems to only date back no farther than that period despite archeological evidence of prior populations.
Of course this all also exists in the context of Chinese history which largely hinges on what exactly you want to call "China" historically as for most of its written history there really wasn't a single unified entity.
We tend to project backwards a notion of nationhood that in the West largely only came about in the 19th century. In Europe, as a German, I find my own country to be such an obvious example to this as people from all nooks of the political spectrum will find ways to try and shoehorn the modern federal republic into an unbroken chain of history starting with the "Germanic" tribes valiantly resisting Roman rule.
In my country's specific case, the origin myth is completely nonsensical if you look at the actual historic record. The shared identity of the various tribes settling the region only existed from the outside perspective of Rome which simply referred to all foreign territories as being settled "barbarians" (because that's what the foreign languages sounded like to Romans - to put that in perspective, imagine we unironically called Asians "chingchongs").
The first entity with the word "German" in its name was the Holy Roman Empire but the words "of Germany" were only added centuries later and for the longest time the mythological warrior Hermann who "repelled" the Roman invaders by "uniting the tribes" was seen as a villain because - true to its name - the Holy Roman Empire saw itself as the successor to the Roman Empire. It literally included parts of Italy after all and was preceded by the Carolingian Empire (covering much of the same territory but more of modern France). And of course more recently we've learned that the tribes were actually more divided than unified following the conflict with Rome and that the role of Hermann may have been heavily overstated due to the fact that he was a Roman soldier and thus provided a good basis for a grandiose narrative.
You could point at the Kingdom of Germany as a historical root of German identity but there was no shared cultural identity during that period and certainly no awareness of it among its population. The common folk for most of the middle ages would have most likely only been aware of their local ruler or clergy with a faint awareness of the overarching power structures but migration through trade not withstanding separations were often as strong between neighboring villages as between modern countries.
The closest thing we get to an idea of a "German national identity" is following the conquest by Napoleon and the rise of an aristocratic/mercantile republic monarchy which provided the democratic roots for the modern republic - but even in WW1 "German" culture was heavily defined by Prussia (which covered most of German territory). Historically therefore it seems less like German nationalism was the politicalization of a shared ethnic, cultural and political identity but rather provided a framework to fabricate such an identity in its absence. Even if you ignore the absurdity of claiming a unified "German" cultural identity, the now popular notion of there being such a thing as a "German" ethnic identity flies in the face of there still being distinct native but "non-German" ethnic populations in parts of Germany despite centuries of Germanization and assimilation (notably Danish Germans in the North and Sorbs in the East).
Much like trying to draw the line where you "enter the atmosphere" of the Earth, borders are ultimately arbitrary delineations no matter how you define them and populations will move around, mix and change over time. The abstractions they help us create are likewise arbitrary and have more to do with assertions of power and control than any grander mythology used to justify them.
E.g. one of the Mongol invaders from Medieval Total War II had a soundbite that said "You all look the same to me!". I guess we all do.
https://archive.ph/http://alllooksame.com/
>this is what happens generally when you fight against anything out of anger. It’s not that you have no justification for fighting; the real problem is that your efforts only make the situation worse, not just for others, but for yourself also.
Problem is that it's hard to recognise that something is worth our moral efforts without feeling angry at the same time. Stoicism is constant work.