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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,029,399 times
Reputation: 11862
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JL
Not really. They consider the older generation that settled abroad as Vietnamese(right after 1975), but they consider the second generation Vietnamese as Americans. My niece traveled with my sister and the local Vietnamese asked her if she spoke any Vietnamese. Even my relatives in Vietnam pretty much have accepted this. The Vietnamese that can send their kids abroad to study in the States are doing so in hopes of them eventually getting residency. Some have married and had kids, so they are aware of this.
Good to know they're accepting. It's just that in some Asian countries they make a big deal about 'blood' and 'ancestry', like Korea, Japan.etc. Even if you've lived in Japan for generations, if you're of non-Japanese ancestry you'll always be a foreigner.
Europeans, in general, treat me more as an Australian than an Asian, and a lot of Asians do too, it's just I still get that attitude from a segment of the population.
Probably depends on which European country you go to, too. ^_^
(I conclude my situation with the Holland teenagers is just a lucky guess thing, since they were just passing by....)
As an American/Korean I get this when I'm in Korea visiting family. I'm a banana, Korean on the outside but white on the inside. I actually know the Korean language and it doesn't matter, they can sniff me out like dogs. lol
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,029,399 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by PoppySead
As an American/Korean I get this when I'm in Korea visiting family. I'm a banana, Korean on the outside but white on the inside. I actually know the Korean language and it doesn't matter, they can sniff me out like dogs. lol
Of course, any Korean you couldn't recognise your Korean accent must be deaf.
Even with my Australian accent some (a minority I guess) Thais, Chinese etc can't seem to accept that I'm Australian.
Of course, any Korean you couldn't recognise your Korean accent must be deaf.
Even with my Australian accent some (a minority I guess) Thais, Chinese etc can't seem to accept that I'm Australian.
So funny you say that because I watched a movie about an Asian from Australia with that same problem. It must be popular enough to do a show about. lol
It's hard in the middle of nowhere. You aren't really an Aussy and you aren't really culturally an Asian. You are in between to most people. I have this same issue.
In America the first thing people see is Asian, in Korea the first thing people see is a lost American Asian who needs to come back home where they belong. What can one do? I've never fixed this.
ha ha ha ha
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,029,399 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by PoppySead
So funny you say that because I watched a movie about an Asian from Australia with that same problem. It must be popular enough to do a show about. lol
It's hard in the middle of nowhere. You aren't really an Aussy and you aren't really culturally an Asian. You are in between to most people. I have this same issue.
In America the first thing people see is Asian, in Korea the first thing people see is a lost American Asian who needs to come back home where they belong. What can one do? I've never fixed this.
ha ha ha ha
Actually I don't like it when people say I'm 'not really' an Australian. I came here when I was in nappies, I don't know what it's like living anywhere else. I'm a citizen of Australia (had to denounce my Singaporean citizenship) so of course I'm an Australian first. Our prime minister came here at age 6 yet nobody questions her Australianness because she's from Wales, it annoys me... Apart from eating maybe slightly more Asian food than the average Euro Australian (of course I ate plenty of Western food at home as well as out) I'm Australian. It's not because I'm ashamed of my Asian heritage; in fact sometimes I wish I actually had more culturally connection to it, but I can't pretend to be anything other than a cultural Westerner I'm afraid. I can't speak any other language, and well yeah...it might be different for you, though, since I assume your parents spoke Korean at home? I know some people I know with parents from Hong Kong like that. My parents actually grew up speaking English (schooled in English too), they're from Singapore and Malaysia, and are pretty westernized as a result.
But yes, there are still a minority who might still see me as 'Asian first', but I think that attitude is becoming rarer as Australia's becoming more multicultural. I guess some Asians in Asia just can't seem to understand that not all Aussies are white.
Actually I don't like it when people say I'm 'not really' an Australian. I came here when I was in nappies, I don't know what it's like living anywhere else. I'm a citizen of Australia (had to denounce my Singaporean citizenship) so of course I'm an Australian first. Our prime minister came here at age 6 yet nobody questions her Australianness because she's from Wales, it annoys me... Apart from eating maybe slightly more Asian food than the average Euro Australian (of course I ate plenty of Western food at home as well as out) I'm Australian. It's not because I'm ashamed of my Asian heritage; in fact sometimes I wish I actually had more culturally connection to it, but I can't pretend to be anything other than a cultural Westerner I'm afraid. I can't speak any other language, and well yeah...it might be different for you, though, since I assume your parents spoke Korean at home? I know some people I know with parents from Hong Kong like that. My parents actually grew up speaking English (schooled in English too), they're from Singapore and Malaysia, and are pretty westernized as a result.
But yes, there are still a minority who might still see me as 'Asian first', but I think that attitude is becoming rarer as Australia's becoming more multicultural. I guess some Asians in Asia just can't seem to understand that not all Aussies are white.
You must have seen that one video with the 2 white guys speaking Chinese. cause they were born and raised in Hong Kong. You wouldn't call them Chinese, would you ?
I'm not saying you're wrongly complaining about this - I'm just saying.
The German Vice President was born in Vietnam. I think he only lived there for a couple of months. He was in Vietnam on an official trip just this week. I read a couple of interviews he gave there, and it was always "He's one of us", "Our" etc. He constantly had to fend off questions/doubts. He, literally, must have said at least 10 times that he's German, his home is Germany etc. Some quite embarrassing questions they asked.
But, it's a poor/developing country. People are very traditional, and everything else that comes with that. Besides, how many people will call themselves, for instance, American? Mostly, it's just Vietnamese, Chinese etc. So it's not just those who live there, but also those who have been living abroad for a long time. Even several generations. I'd just ignore it if it bothers you. It's not really a major problem.
You must have seen that one video with the 2 white guys speaking Chinese. cause they were born and raised in Hong Kong. You wouldn't call them Chinese, would you ?
I'm not saying you're wrongly complaining about this - I'm just saying.
I'd consider them to be Hong Kongers. I mean, they were born there, raised there, and speak Chinese. They certainly wouldn't be English or German or French or whatever else their parents' nationality was.
A few years back, I was working at a hotel in Santa Monica and we had a Japanese tour group come in. I had just finished Japanese 2 and the hotel had started selling to Japanese tour companies telling them that they had staff who spoke Japanese because of me, and a Japanese-Brazilian cook. One of the guys on the tour was white, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and with his Japanese girlfriend. I figured he was an expatriate of some European country, but no... he was born and raised in Japan. He explained that his grandparents were Americans who stayed in Okinawa after WW2 and opened a business, and on the other side, his family were missionaries from the Netherlands. I guess that the common language between the parents was Japanese; he spoke only a tiny bit more English than the other people on tour, had the same mannerisms as a Japanese guy would...
Coming from a country that's not homogeneous, and more specifically having spent my entire teens and adult life in diverse, major coastal metropolises, it's not hard to imagine someone of a different ethnic extraction growing up in another country and being of that nationality. If I move to Japan with a non-Japanese woman and we have a kid there, even if they grow up speaking English and being over six feet tall and blonde and blue-eyed like me, they'll still have grown up in Japan, going to Japanese schools, watching Japanese TV, eating Japanese food, having Japanese friends and romantic interests, using Japanese cultural norms... same if they were to grow up in China or Hong Kong. People in that country may look at them and immediately think they are a foreigner and that will give them a drastically different experience from other people from that nation, but that won't make them any more American than they would have been!
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,029,399 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glucorious
You must have seen that one video with the 2 white guys speaking Chinese. cause they were born and raised in Hong Kong. You wouldn't call them Chinese, would you ?
I'm not saying you're wrongly complaining about this - I'm just saying.
The German Vice President was born in Vietnam. I think he only lived there for a couple of months. He was in Vietnam on an official trip just this week. I read a couple of interviews he gave there, and it was always "He's one of us", "Our" etc. He constantly had to fend off questions/doubts. He, literally, must have said at least 10 times that he's German, his home is Germany etc. Some quite embarrassing questions they asked.
But, it's a poor/developing country. People are very traditional, and everything else that comes with that. Besides, how many people will call themselves, for instance, American? Mostly, it's just Vietnamese, Chinese etc. So it's not just those who live there, but also those who have been living abroad for a long time. Even several generations. I'd just ignore it if it bothers you. It's not really a major problem.
Yes, I would call them Chinese. Of course they're not 'all' Chinese in a sense, they still have American ancestry, but culturally and in nationality they are Chinese. As Chinese as I'm Australian. Of course whether other Chinese call them real Chinese or not is another matter. Ethnic groups are a relative thing anyway.
Yeah that attitude is common in Asia. They speak of the overseas Chinese/Vietnamese/Japanese as if they can never escape that identity even after many generations.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,029,399 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by 415_s2k
I'd consider them to be Hong Kongers. I mean, they were born there, raised there, and speak Chinese. They certainly wouldn't be English or German or French or whatever else their parents' nationality was.
A few years back, I was working at a hotel in Santa Monica and we had a Japanese tour group come in. I had just finished Japanese 2 and the hotel had started selling to Japanese tour companies telling them that they had staff who spoke Japanese because of me, and a Japanese-Brazilian cook. One of the guys on the tour was white, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and with his Japanese girlfriend. I figured he was an expatriate of some European country, but no... he was born and raised in Japan. He explained that his grandparents were Americans who stayed in Okinawa after WW2 and opened a business, and on the other side, his family were missionaries from the Netherlands. I guess that the common language between the parents was Japanese; he spoke only a tiny bit more English than the other people on tour, had the same mannerisms as a Japanese guy would...
Coming from a country that's not homogeneous, and more specifically having spent my entire teens and adult life in diverse, major coastal metropolises, it's not hard to imagine someone of a different ethnic extraction growing up in another country and being of that nationality. If I move to Japan with a non-Japanese woman and we have a kid there, even if they grow up speaking English and being over six feet tall and blonde and blue-eyed like me, they'll still have grown up in Japan, going to Japanese schools, watching Japanese TV, eating Japanese food, having Japanese friends and romantic interests, using Japanese cultural norms... same if they were to grow up in China or Hong Kong. People in that country may look at them and immediately think they are a foreigner and that will give them a drastically different experience from other people from that nation, but that won't make them any more American than they would have been!
I think there are many more Sharon Balcombes than we realise. The thing is, although Hong Kong and to a lesser extent Tokyo are cosmopolitan, the attitudes of the natives is different to us in the US or Australia which are composed almost ENTIRELY of people from elsewhere, although even here there are some ignorant people who question how really Australian an Asian looking person is.
It would be interesting to meet this European-Japanese gentleman. Did he speak English with a Japanese accent?
There are also many 'Eurasians' in Singapore and Hong Kong who are culturally Singaporean/HK (although S'pore is more western). Some speak in a bit more British accent, although many speak just like any other Singaporean, because they ARE Singaporean. The Hong Kong actress Nancy Kwan was half Chinese, half British yet when she went to Hollywood she was typecast as an Asian all the time and generally thought of as a Chinese first. It's as much cultural as it is genetic, if not moreso. In fact HK has many people with some non-Chinese ancestry, Bruce Lee was 1/4 German, for instance, although you couldn't tell from his looks.
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