Honestly, I cant really differentiate betwen Viet, Thai, Cambodian, Indonesian, Phillipino etc.
That means you can't distinguish between
Cham Vietnamese,
"native" Thai, Cambodian, Indonesian, Philippino.
How would you call it 'very typical'? You said yourself that there is no unified look.
I said there's no unified look, but there exists "range of looks". Though the boundary is unclear, but you can't say the range is unbounded.
I would say they look Chinese and not very Viet. Besides, alot of so called "vietnamese" are ethnic Chinese.
They are
olympiad team from all across the country. What's the probability of having ALL of them being ethnic Chinese?
p.s. I know that their names are quite simple (e.g. "明海", "英強"), and that's how I deduce they are typical Vietnamese.
I thought so 
... I know alot of so-called "Vietnamese" but actually have Chinese ancestry. A typcial PURE Vietnamese wouldn't look very Chinese.
It's YOUR ASSUMPTION.
{edit: Why should you assume that the 'pure ones' will look more Indonesian than Chinese?}
I think that they are typical Vietnamese, so I would say that Cantonese generally do not have the ability to distinguish Kinh from them.
I'm sure not many look "Indon-like" in Vietnam. You should take a trip to Hanoi.
Oh, those Vietnamese are not even all Hanoian.
Thats what I was thinking of. Since the Vietnamese is a Mon-Khemer language not Sino-Tibetan like all other Han languages.
Languages can't prove anything. Sino-Tibetan also includes Tibeto-Burman group. Do you know Burmese customes? And how average Burmese looks?
well,grasy wasn't born in mainland china so i guess he learned chinese language and dialects from books rather than from native speakers. thats why some fo the stuff he wrote was't all accurate.
I learn from "native" speakers, my parents. (actually they speak other Chinese language)
Unfortunately I can't speak other dialects than Putonghua nor understand them correctly...
Of course I meet some native Sichuanese, but my listening is quite poor (sort of...) and will not stand some lazy and fast speech of some BJers...
No difficulty communicating in Putonghua with others except with terminologies/jargons.
HK people are genrally darker than northern/central chinese because for god-sake HK is located in tropical zone.
HKers sometimes identify Mainlanders by using skin. I've seen a HKer that somehow can identify mainlanders in one sight.
you know. why would gu tianle get tanned if HK people discrimnates dark skin HKnese like HKy4eva have said? 
doesn't sound controdiction? 
I look 鄉下佬 because of my skin and I don't see any discrimination to me...
thats not quite true,i've lived in henan,zhengzhou for 14 yrs,and there are lots lots country people. the thing about them is that they are quite tall and strong-build(prolly from all the farming),but ofcause they are darker(from farming)
Yes, 鄉下佬 is generally darker than developed-city dwellers.
Yes I do. Actually, I tend to find Cantonese in Guangdong darker than HK Cantonese. Also, HK Cantonese are taller, as quality of life is higher in HK.
I have not compared directly HK with Guangzhou Cantonese. But this should be true.
you can see that southern china(including HK) is in the darker zone
I guess it's curve approximation. Just like any other ways. Take a few points and use
extrapolation.
Assumption used: the gradiation is very smooth.
Same here, I ve passed for Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean.. I think if my eyes were bigger and had double eyelids, I can try for Malay too
No way. Even "large-eyed" Chinese will be distinguished correctly by Malays
The thing is, looks can be very deceiving as I found out in Australia during my studies.. During that time, I got acquainted with quite a number of Vietnamese friends in school.. There were of course some very Chinese looking ones as well as not so Chinese-looking ones (like Vietnamese or Khmer whatever). The funny thing is when I queried about their ancestry, the Chinese-looking ones stated they were pure Vietnamese and had no Chinese roots or links, while a couple of the Indo-Chinese-looking ones actually had Chinese ancestry!
Well, there is an issue about look differences between "Northern Viet" and "Southern Viet". I don't know how different they are, but the issue-makers said something like "Southern Viet are mixed with Cham and Khmer... and that's why *some Southern Vietnamese doesn't look very East Asian".
Of course, some. Some are "pure Northern migrant" and therefore will pass Southern Chinese easily.
I think these "some" Southern Vietnamese should look neither Chinese nor Malay.
{Observation: mixed Malay Chinese (50-50) tend to be indistinguishable from Malay.
Deduction: 20% Malayic ancestry may make you look not very Chinese.}
Edited by qrasy, 22 May 2006 - 06:21 AM.
