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To me, an Asian is someone on the continent of Asian ancestry-be it a sabra Israeli, Arab, Armenian, Indian, Sri Lankan, Chinese, Korean, Cambodian or Filipino person. Asia is the biggest contient, so it only makes sense that in terms of its size and diversity the people would look different based on different regions. People in West Asia have different features from East or South Asians (coarser, curlier hair; lighter skin (but still tan), sometimes light hair/eye color) because of mixing with Europeans, Blacks and even Mongols and Turks way WAY back in ancient times. South Asians look different from East Asians because they mixed with the Central/West Asian Aryans long ago and possibly even East Africans. Those parts of the continent were closer to Europe and Africa so it was easier for the influence to spread there, as opposed to the Far East.
The west is largely ignorant though; to westerners, they usually associate anything "Asian" with anything from East Asia hence the chopsticks, kungfu, etc. stereotypes.
The west is largely ignorant though; to westerners, they usually associate anything "Asian" with anything from East Asia hence the chopsticks, kungfu, etc. stereotypes.
Extremely agreed on this, the way of stereotyping the word "Asian" to only nothing but East Asian is such a typical ideology of the West. When you go to USA and ask a waiter in the restaurant about "what is the first thing come to your mind when I said Asian?", he will answer it's about something like Chinese/Japanese or small eye/yellow skin looking people.
The west is largely ignorant though; to westerners, they usually associate anything "Asian" with anything from East Asia hence the chopsticks, kungfu, etc. stereotypes.
The west is largely ignorant though; to westerners, they usually associate anything "Asian" with anything from East Asia hence the chopsticks, kungfu, etc. stereotypes.
For a long time the Chinese, and a lesser extent Japanese, were the main orientals Westerners were familiar with, partly due to the fact the Chinese were overwhelmingly the largest Asian immigrant group to the West. You had a lot of Chinese restaurants dating way back...but yeah, in Australia due to our location and the fact a lot of us holiday in the region we are also very familiar with South-East Asia, although of course there is a tendency to group SEA with EA.
I personally put more importantly on physical look to determine group of people and less on cultural identity.
Looks are fairly meaningless in the grand scheme of things vs culture. An Asian Australian like myself might look like someone from Asia, but if they say don't speak the language they're not going to be able to relate as much to that person as an Australian of a different ethnic background.
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