Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Asians looking alike	aime-cinema	06/15/06
Why is it that all Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Taiwanese, Burman people all look alike? I just recently saw a picture of kids in a Japanese school and to me they looked almost identical to one another. Same for those other nationalities. They sure don't have the variation in facial features that Europeans have.
Clarification/Follow-up by aime-cinema on 06/16/06 1:02 am: So the reason why Asian people look alike is because they have a more limited gene pool than Europeans? Because even when I see pictures of Beijing the people are homogeneous in their facial features, and even when I go to China town in San Francisco the people are pretty homogeneous in their appearance. (Same hair texture, nose shape, mouth shape, physique, etc. Clarification/Follow-up by aime-cinema on 06/16/06 4:04 pm: So the reason why they look so homogeneous is because they haven't intermarried with other Asian cultures? So if Chinese people and Japanese people started intermarrying I would see more differences in their appearance? How come when I scan their faces I can't see differences? When most Asian people scan European faces can they see differences? In 50 years do you think Japan will have more diversity and interracial marriages? Clarification/Follow-up by aime-cinema on 06/16/06 4:28 pm: And what did you mean that in small communities they have close relationships with one another and have a limited gene pool? How do Asian people tell themselves apart? Being ultra-observant? Clarification/Follow-up by aime-cinema on 06/16/06 10:39 pm: So for generations and generations all the kids from Family A will marry all the kids from Family B? And also this is off topic but I am aware that China only has one time zone. How does it work with only one time zone when it spans 5,000 miles? When it is 8:00 AM in Beijing and everyone is going to work, it would be really 4:00 AM in western China. Does that mean people in western China go to work before the sun rises? Thanks.
Answered By		Answered On
rsalier		06/16/06
Hi Aime-cinema It may seem that they "all look alike" but they don't there is as much variation in facial features and head and face shape as with other cultures. There are some communities in Japan and other Asian countries as well as other parts of the world where due to a limited gene pool, many of the people have a realtive close relationship with each other, there is a more homogeneous appearance between individuals but this does not happen as much today as in the past. Today's mobility does change this dynamic. If you look at the Yanamami Indians of the Brazilian rain forest, the Pygmies of the Congo or the Kung San bushmen of the Kalihari Desert, there is a lot of similarities between the facial features. But then these are very small communities as noted above. But look at people from Shanghai or Bieging or from Hong Kong, and you will see that they don't look alike nor do they sound alike.

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