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.

[–] InverseParallax@voyager.lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Agreed, I work with dozens of western Chinese, japanese and koreans every day.

[–] FUBAR@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] aleph@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Yes, you can.

But it's not as prevalent.

[–] dodgypast@vlemmy.net 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] dodgypast@vlemmy.net 1 points 1 year ago

Pretty much why I was prepared to settle here.