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
To answer your second clarification, yes, if the Asians would begin to intermarry, you would see many more differences. But this is not likly since Asians tend to marry with in restricted lliniages. As a Semetic person, I can see many differences in the faces of the Chinese people I know and having worked in China, I see many differences. I don't view myself as "ultra observant" but once you get to know people and work with them, there are many variations. To answer your third clarification, small communites are often made up of 4 to 6 family liniages. There are "expectations" that the son of one family marries the daughter of a different family from one of the other linages. What this creates over time is famlies closely related to each other genetically. When young people go to the big city and the elders loose control over them, they may marry out of the village for the first time. This can create issues. Many of the more traditional rural areas still follow the old cutoms of parents selcting the wife or husband for thier children. This is breaking down as people leave the rural areas.

Additional Options and ratings are only visible when you login!