All Asians Are Alike: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Non-Asians mistaking that all Asian peoples are of one ethnicity in particular. It is most commonly applied to East Asian countries such as China and Japan, but occasionally confusion may set in between other Asian countries as well, such as India and Pakistan.

 

 

It's something of an ongoing controversy over whether people should be able to identify the ethnicity of Asian people based on their physical characteristics. Audiences sometimes react negatively when an Asian actor plays a character with a [[Fake Nationality|different ethnic ancestry]], such as a Korean-American actor playing a Japanese-American, because it carries the implication that Asian ethnicities are not physically distinguishable. However, other people (such as [[Margaret Cho]]) insist that ethnicity is not always so obvious to the naked eye, and that telling a Thai from a Tibetan can be as difficult as telling a Dane from a German.

 

Related to [[Did Not Do the Research]] and [[They Just Didn't Care]]. A [[Sub-Trope]] of [[Mistaken Nationality]]. Stepfather to the [[Far East]].

 

{{examples}}

* Hei, the protagonist of ''[[Darker than Black]]'' is (probably) Chinese, but briefly poses as a Korean in the second season.

* In ''[[Gosick]]'', most of the Sauville residents guess wrongly on Kazuya's country of origin, the common answer among them being that he's Chinese. One kid even calls him "Mr. Chinese" despite Kazuya's vehemence and, when they introduce themselves properly, comments that his name is weird. This is hardly surprising, given the relative lack of international travel during [[The Roaring Twenties]].

* In ''[[Black Lagoon]]'', Revy refers to Shenhua as "Chinglish" and is corrected and told that Shenhua is in fact, Taiwanese. Although the island of Taiwan is technically part of the Republic of China and almost all Taiwanese are ethnically Han Chinese, most Taiwanese do in fact prefer to assert their distinct cultural and political identity. Revy herself is Chinese-American.

* Likewise [[Inverted]] in ''[[Azumanga Daioh]]''. In order to show off her English skills, Yukari goes up to a blonde, blue-eyed man and starts speaking English to him. Turns out he's German.

 

== Comic Books ==

* In 1942 the US State Department developed a comic book for US personnel in China called "[http://www.ep.tc/howtospotajap/howto01.html How to Spot A Jap]." The book relied on [[Values Dissonance|stereotypical depictions]] of Japanese.

* The DC Comics [[Alternate Timeline]] [[Crisis Crossover]] event ''[[Flashpoint (comics)|Flashpoint]]'' was criticized when [http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2011/05/flashpointmapbig.jpg a map of the world] was released that listed an "Asian Capital" in China, since it fell into this trope.

 

== Films -- Live Action ==

* In ''[[Brain Smasher A Love Story]]'', the Chinese assassination team is constantly having to say, "We are ''not'' [[Ninja]]s!" They are happy the one time someone else says it first. "They're not ninjas. They're Chinese." So happy that they don't beat any one up there.

* Invoked in ''[[Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle]]'', where Harold (who is Korean) is repeatedly mistaken for Chinese/Japanese. Kumar is Indian, but mistaken for Arab in the second movie.

* Some people criticized ''[[Memoirs of a Geisha]]'' for casting Chinese and Korean actors in Japanese roles.

* In ''[[Goldfinger]]'', Harold Sakata (Japanese) plays Oddjob (Korean), even though in the book ''Goldfinger's'' Korean [[Mooks]] hate being called "Japs" by Americans.

* Played around with in the courtroom drama ''[[True Believer]]''. A man on trial for murder was identified as the killer in a lineup. His defense attorney tries to get the cop who supervised the lineup to admit that all of the other people in it were Chinese, while the defendant is Korean, which could have helped set him apart from the decoys. The question is stricken by the judge, however, who rules that the detective is not an expert in ethnicity and could not distinguish between them by sight alone.

* In the original ''[[Iron Man]]'' comic book, Tony Stark met professor Yinsen in Vietnam during the Vietnam war. Now, Yinsen is a Chinese rather than Vietnamese name, but the comic book character comes from a fictional place called "Timbetpal," so it's at least possible he is of Chinese descent. However, the origin of Iron Man was later retconned so that he met Yinsen while both of them were being held captive by terrorists in Afghanistan. The ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'' movie follows the retconned origin story, except that in it Yinsen comes from a village in Afghanistan and clearly looks like a man of Middle Eastern descent (he's played by the Iranian-American actor Shaun Toub), but inexplicably he still has a Chinese name.

* Played for comedy in ''[[Black Dynamite]]'', in which Vietnam War veteran Black Dynamite recalls a mortally wounded Viet Cong child and repeatedly calls him Chinese.

* ''[[Gung Ho]]'' is about American factory workers and Japanese auto executives learning to work together. The phrase "gung ho" is actually derived from Chinese words meaning "work together." Ironically, it was coined as an Americanism by soldiers in WWII who were ''fighting'' the Japanese.

** Jackie Chan plays a "Japanese Thug" in ''Kung Fu Girl''

** ''Duel to the Death'' features an entirely Hong Kong cast in a film where half the characters are Japanese.

 

== Literature ==

* Demonstrated in ''Tangerine'' with the (South) Asian twins Maya and Nita, whose names in the paper following a soccer match are wrong, to Paul's dismay.

 

* In a season two episode of ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|M*A*S*H]]'', the Korean liaison officer semi-sarcastically explains the difficulty in finding the father of a half-American baby as, "You all look alike to us." There's also several episodes that deal with or make reference to the difficulty in people being able to tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Korean people. An Asian blackmarket salesmen posing as a general even uses the trope to deflect suspicion away from himself, claiming, "We all look the same." The show often reused actors as [[Fake Nationality|multiple races]]. Japanese-American Pat Morita appears as a South Korean officer, while Japanese actor Mako appears as a Chinese doctor and a South Korean interrogator.

{{quote|'''Frank Burns:''' When are you going to learn about Chinese treachery? Didn't Pearl Harbor teach you anything?}}

* In ''[[Star Trek]]'', the character Sulu was supposed to represent all Asian cultures, so Gene Roddenberry deliberately gave him a name that is not nationally specific, taking it from the Sulu Sea, which touches all the shores of Asian nations. He was eventually revealed to have a Japanese given name. He's been played by a Japanese-American, George Takei, and a Korean-American, John Cho.

* Played for comedy in ''[[Eastbound and Down]]'' when Ashley Schaeffer entertains some Korean business executives with Japanese food and a crossdressing geisha dancer. In the series finale, he brings it up again to lampshade it and admit his mistake.

 

== Music ==

* All over the fucking place in "China in her Eyes" by Modern Talking. With an extra dose of [[Asian Gal with White Guy]].

 

 

== Theater ==

* ''[[Avenue Q]]'' -- "Tried to work in Korean deli / But I am Japanese." Or in the Australian performance, "tried to work in Chinese restaurant." The actress in the Australian performance was Filipino.

* Inverted in ''[[Flower Drum Song]]''. When Wang's son asks him what the man who robbed him looked like, he says, "Don't ask me what he looked like. All white men look alike."

 

== Video Games ==

* Invoked in ''[[Guilty Gear]]'': Anji Mito is a Japanese person (in this "verse," their race was almost wiped out in a war with the eponymous Gears, and are placed in protective colonies throughout Asia supposedly for their own safety) who takes up the guise of a Chinese person in order to travel freely.

* In ''[[Fallout 3]]'''s Mothership Zeta expansion, Paulson (a 19th century cowboy) refers to Toshiro Kago (a 16th century [[Samurai]]) as a "Chinaman" until he is corrected.

* In ''[[Syndicate]]'' reboot, the Aspari syndicate is formed from the Yakuza and Triads and employs both Chinese and Japanese.

* For the early ''[[Mortal Kombat]]''s Midway had trouble keeping the races of the Asian characters straight, which is why you have things like Chinese Ninja and the series' main character (a Chinese Shaolin Monk) being named after a Japanese samurai in preproduction and the like. Later games retconned all of this to make sense to a certain degree. This is also likely why all of the Asian characters yell gibberish when they [[Calling Your Attacks|utter battle cries]].

 

* Turns up in the penultimate panel of [http://nonadventures.com/2009/05/16/doom-goes-the-dynamite/ this] ''[[The Non-Adventures of Wonderella]]''.

* Similar to the ''Discworld'' example listed above, ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' gives us Azure City, a deliberate mishmash of Asian tropes and settings, in homage to the "Oriental Adventures" of D&D, which played this trope alarmingly straight.

* ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'': Bob obviously can't tell the difference between [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20120428.html Japanese and Chinese]...

 

== Web Original ==

'''Critic''': You're not Vietnamese.

'''Girl''': Who cares? All Asians are the same! }}

 

== Western Animation ==

** Parodied in "City Sushi" when a Japanese sushi restaurant opens next door to City Wok. The residents of the town refer to both restaurants as "Chinese"—and to the area where both restaurants are situated as "Little Tokyo"—much to the frustration of the owners, who are violently racist toward each other. The owners put aside their differences to educate residents on Asian cultural diversity in the hopes that residents will come to share their hatred of the others' culture. Ultimately it's revealed that {{spoiler|the Chinese guy is actually a white man with multiple personality disorder}}.

 

 

== Real Life ==

* Since the 9/11 attacks the number of [https://web.archive.org/web/20140220071424/http://www.civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/arab-americans.html hate crimes against Sikhs in the US] skyrocketed in number as many Sikh immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and their families were mistaken for Arab-American Muslims and horrifically beaten. This most likely relates to clothing customs: Sikhs are required to wear a turban by the customs of their religion. Many Westerns don't know the difference between Sikhs and Arabs, and typically associate turbans with Arabs.

* A common joke in the Russian [[Anime]] fandom is to call anime "Chinese pornographic cartoons" after one [[Critical Research Failure|utterly clueless]] and [[New Media Are Evil|sensationalist]] newspaper report.

* The website [http://alllooksame.com/ AllLookSame] invokes this trope and challenges you to tell the difference.

* For the 2011 ''[[Green Hornet]]'' movie, The Internet Movie Database [https://web.archive.org/web/20110303204323/http://www.movieline.com/2011/01/imdb-thinks-asians-are-pretty-much-interchangable.php at one point listed] Korean-American [[John Cho]] as Kato, when in fact the role was played by Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou. About 500 subsequent movie reviews have also committed the same error. Cho himself joked on [[Twitter]]: "I am beginning to suspect that I am not in the Green Hornet movie."

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]

[[Category:Race Tropes]]