• aleph@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It’s much easier for an East Asian person to become integrated into a Western society than the other way around.

    You can live in Japan/China/Korea for decades, be married and have children with a local, and speak the language fluently and people will still call you a foreigner to your face.

    • FUBAR@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can be born in a western country as an East Asian and still also be called a foreigner and asked where are you really from

    • dodgypast@vlemmy.net
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      1 year ago

      My son is 50/50 Thai / English.

      We live in Thailand and he is accepted as 100% Thai.

      I admit that I’ll never be accepted as Thai but that comes with benefits as well as drawbacks.

      • aleph@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It’s generally easier on the kids in Thailand, I think, because mixed race couples are more widely accepted there than in Japan/China/Korea.

        I did a few years teaching ESL in Seoul and out of hundred kids, there were just two siblings that were mixed race - Korean mom and American Dad.

        Even though these two kids looked basically Korean (except their hair was dark brown instead of black) and spoke fluent Korean, I was shocked that some of the other kids in the class referred to them as 외국인 (foreigners), the exact same word they used to refer to me as white man.

    • Nothus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s true that they’ll call you a “foreigner” to your face, but they don’t mean anything bad by it in most cases. It’s just a classification, understandable since these aren’t really “melting pot” nations. I’ve lived in all three places and never had anything but positive regard from people who see me as a foreigner. Even when I got arrested in Beijing, I was really impressed with how I was treated.

      • aleph@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I never said they necessarily mean anything bad by it, though.

        Regardless of whether your status as a foreigner is perceived as being positive or negative, you’ll always be a foreigner.