well i had a talk with my brother last night and he brought up some interesting questions that i would like to answer. manly being that i am bored and forgot to upload my pictuers of my Beijing trip last weekend.
But the first was asked after i mentioned that Qingdao has 30,000 koreans and maybe 20,000 japanese. he asked if i could tell the difference. now lets just take this as not an "all them asians look alike" joke and more of how do you tell the difference between a Frenchie and an American? (obvious, Americans dont talk like they have peanut butter stuck to the roof of their mouth). But it is actually really easy, especially with koreans.
they tend to take pride in standing out. All the Korean guys have long hair, and a lot wear hats. Not much of a disguise right? but because of this not chinese person here will have long hair or wear a hat, because they dont want to look like the Koreans. i dont think its because they hate them, i mean would you be happy if someone said you look Canadian?.
the Japanese are harder to spot, but they do stand out. they tend to keep to groups of only japanese people. the chinese and japs do not have a great history of getting along. but, i think the japanese make it worse by staying in only japanese areas. they also tend to hide their japanese-ness, maybe in fear of the chinese. who knows. they also carry themselves with this air of stoic confidence. They as well have different hair cuts then the Chinese.
so thats the way to stereo tpye and pigeon whole about 2.3 billion people. all in two paragraphs!!!! man i am good.
next post will be on languages, and learning them. well more on lack of learning them.
