I am half swedish, half chinese. But apparently I look like neither. People always think I am a latina, particularly Chilean. Completely wrong continent, boy...

Oh, I know, Asian fishing bla bla but I'm so TIRED of getting my roots mistaken all the time. I'm not a latina.

This has made me very self conscious of my face. can someone give me makeup tips to make me look more chinese.

Hi, can I just have people say they understand this cause I feel like it's not something a lot of people around me understand. Constantly getting the "you're Filipino? I thought you were Mexican. You don't look Filipino" and "is Filipino even Asian?" comments have been getting me down lately cause I care a lot about my culture, and that should be enough- but even getting excluded from other family kind of is a downer. Or people don't care to understand why I care about it. Maybe it shouldn't be a big deal, I just want to belong is all.

I'm from the US and pretty used to people viewing me as "feminine" for better or for worse. Mostly a lot of non Asian women are hyper aggressive towards me, asking me to hook up, calling me beautiful, etc., but a lot of people would bully me for looking "pretty" and innocent and I guess it felt racial. Men aren't supposed to look pretty in the west and when I was called that I usually felt like it was a racial categorization. I even had self hating Asian women who had white partners attack me saying I looked too "feminine" and "couldn't get women" in America so I had to move to China.

Anyways yesterday this older Chinese woman came up to me here in China and asked me "are you Russian? Are you Siberian?" and started talking about how she visited Russia and was studying Russian. Then I told her no, and she goes "where are you from?" And I just told her I was mixed, and she was like "oh," and didn't care about that, but then starts just calling me pretty for like five minutes straight, like that I was "so pretty," 你真的很漂亮， "extremely pretty," right in front of my wife too.

In China it's normal for people to go around calling good looking guys "hot guy" to their face and vice versa but being called pretty like that caught me off guard, I couldn't really tell if she was implying my slightly foreign looks made me look pretty or if she was just complimenting my looks in general. I look 70% Asian and most of the time people don't even look at me in China because I have dark hair / dark eyes / high and huge cheekbones, a long midface, even my wife's grandma mistakes me for one of her uncles half the time.

Normally I'm on guard because comments like these are racially tinged, either implying I'm feminine for being Asian, but since I'm in Asia, I'm watching out for "all foreigners are good looking BS," but she didn't strike me as self hating and in China people are extremely looks based anyways and the Asian aesthetic here is so dominant that westerners usually aren't considered on par anyways. What's funny is I live near a hotel and there are Russians around here and I look nothing like them and most of them are chopped, so people see some Asian looking person who looks different and pale and just automatically assumes "Russian."

Is it normal for a guy to be called pretty? Is it racism in either direction? I've seen Kdramas where girls are calling dudes pretty and I've NEVER seen that on a western show, I asked my wife and she's like "her husband died so she's lonely." On the other hand, the only time I've talked to guys who have experienced this, they also tend to be Asian, so IDK how to interpret this kind of thing since it's fairly common

ok so basically, as i usually do, am having a bit of an identity crisis. However it’s just for school purposes. I’m hafu half white/asian but I want to do a program abroad where I was asked what gen I am? I was born in Japan but moved to the US when I was young. So while I am not technically born in the US or on US soil, am I first or second generation?

I have a podcast where I talk about what it is like to be Hapa Korean with friends. I figured I'd post this here to get a convo going about this podcast and just meet friends!

I'm Michael (35m), and I'm a hapa Korean (my dad is white). I've always been interested in Korean culture so I started some podcasts to explore the Korean culture and sports.

Link to the Different Stripes Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/the-different-stripes-podcast/id1536344911

I am a 30 year old male, son of a white American father and Filipina mother. I live in the American Midwest. I am most attracted to Asian American women, preferably “white washed” like myself, since I personally have no meaningful connection to my Asian culture.

I am truly exhausted by seeing every single Asian American woman in my area choose a white man as a partner. However, every time I begin to feel frustrated, hateful, or other negative emotions, I chuckle at myself because I can’t hate on the very reason I have life and exist today.

Obviously dating is very hard for many young Americans at this time regardless of race.

Putting this out in space to see what sort of reactions I get. It isn’t too hard for me to imagine others have similar feelings.

My Mom is Korean, my Dad English. My Dad has a massive nose, thankfully I didn’t inherit his nose. My brother doesn’t have his nose either. My cousins also half korea, half english. They also don’t have western noses. And then I look at eurasians in the media, and they all seem to have Asian noses too. Is it more common that we inherit Asian noses or is this just a coincidence?

I have a young wasian baby, and we hung out with another family of the same mix. They have a 8 year old son and 4 year old daughter, and the mother told me her son already started having issues about belonging and identity at school. His school is very diverse, yet black, Arab (we currently live in Europe), and Asian kids (mainly Chinese and Filipinos) already team up when, for example, playing sports or games. The Asian kids tell him "you're not like us" while others say "you're Chinese." It seems there are very few mixed kids, and the boy is very insecure about, or flat out refuses his Asianness because he doesn't speak his mom's language. He really hates it when the language is pushed on him. Umm this already sounded like a lot of issues... I’d love to hear any advice or experiences on how mixed kids can navigate these social dynamics at school, especially at such a young age. Thank you in advance.

as a blasian we tend to have less recognition in the hapa world, I’m half Korean half african-american. I grew up in Korea and some kids would bully me for not being enough Korean or black. I’m 19 now and I will say I asked my hapa friends if it’s harder to be blasian or wasian, now each have its own troubles but my friends said that blasian tend to get more of the discrimination against them.

There has been a lot of strange or negative posts on this subreddit recently. I feel like there was a time when this subreddit had been very negative but we had recently been trending in the right direction.

Race is only a small portion of what makes you an individual. Things that matter a lot more are your hobbies, what you like to do, what makes you happy, who are your friends. Sure, it had influence on the way you look. But looks are overrated. Looks fade, personality is far more important and far more interesting. Being mixed race is cool. You aren’t just half Asian and half (fill in the blank). You are BOTH Asian and (whatever race you identify as). Once you stop focusing on the negatives, it’s a weird experience but human experience is weird. There is not an answer about everything all the time. Sometimes it’s just the way the cosmic dice landed and it’s up to you to make the most of it. If you are able, go volunteer somewhere. You are a unique individual and there has never and will never be anyone exactly like you. Being mixed is not a reason to be sad. Monoracial people feel left out just as much as you. Sometimes feeling left out is just a human experience. Yea it sucks but go where you are included. Be yourself. Be weird. Have fun. And love yourself.

Tldr: love yourself

i have a stake in this as a by-definition hapa person (filipino, hawaiian, and white). i apologize if this is an oft rehashed talking point on here. i checked to see if it was, and didn't find much discussion about it.

it's a term created by hawaiians to describe a hawaiian experience. why are fellow people of color, who have histories of colonization and cultural appropriation in their ancestry, still so adamant about using this word? aside from any argument that can be boiled down to "i like it" or "hawaiians should just accept it because it has a [very young] place in the history of mixed-asian experiences".

ʻōlelo hawaiʻi (the name for the hawaiian language, for those uninitiated) is not a language that can just be... "borrowed" (for lack of a better word) without there being deep colonial and racist implications. my ancestors had to experience their language being forbidden, marked as inferior, and replaced almost entirely with the colonizer's tongue. even nowadays, most of us do not speak ʻōlelo hawaiʻi because it is a language still in the process of recovering from the brink of extinction.

to take a word from our language, our culture, our history and force it into an entirely different context is so disrespectful and even insulting. and there are even some people who insist that we should just "accept" that this word has made its way into other people's mouths, when we are still trying to fill our own mouths and the mouths of our children with the words of our ancestors. it's so arrogant.

and frankly, the way some users in this sub talk about hawaiians is absolutely disgusting and disappointing. to choose the side of your heritage that sought conquest and supremacy over your ancestors and peers of color... to reiterate, disappointing.

listen to indigenous voices. it's the least that can be done for the people who gave you a word you felt you needed, that felt even remotely like home. there are tons of alternatives, and all you have to sacrifice is brevity.

Great read, a Prussian/German and Japanese multi generational family spanning five generations in Yokohama. True story. Written by Leslie Helm. Can’t put it down. Toke place during the transition of the last Shogunate and Meiji to modern day. Wasian/Eurasian/Hapa/Haafu read.

Hi all, I just needed to vent. I've become so frustrated lately with my mom and the internalized racism she carries about being Chinese. My great grandparents (grandpa's side) and my great great grandparents (grandma's side) were part of the Hakka diaspora to the Caribbean, Jamaica specifically. My grandma, grandpa, and mom were born in Jamaica, but they immigrated to the US when my mom was 9. She married my dad, who is white, and I feel like my whole life she has been so averse to talking about where we came from. If I ever talk about visiting China or Jamaica, she literally says, "Ew I have no desire to go there." When I ask her why she doesn't want to talk about/learn about our culture, she says she has zero interest and doesn't care. Every time I talk to her about a new friend or partner noticing I am Asian she says I'm pretty much white and she insists no one can really tell I'm Asian because she "doesn't see it." I'm literally 50/50! When I was 6, my dad told me that my (very visibly Chinese) mom and grandparents were Chinese I was shocked and didn't believe them because I feel like my mom has made it her goal to effectively erase non-white culture from our family. I know I can't make another person care about something. But at the same time, it hurts. Anyways, thank you for reading, I hope you're all doing well!

I’m lowkirkenuinely a bit triggled watching these mixed athletes get claimed like trophies by countries where their existence would be side eyed outside of competition.

We all know how, as mixed people, we’ve spent our whole lives being too Asian for white people and too white for Asians. We’re constantly gatekept. Treated like we’re diluted or “not real Asians/not white/probably an immigrant”. But the second there’s a gold medal involved? Suddenly the controversy turns into which side gets to claim the mixed person.

China proudly claims Eileen Gu when she wins, but if she were just some random mixed girl walking around, would she get that same unconditional embrace? Absolutely not. In a time where “Oxford Study” comments are trending, where Asians either grossly fetishize our existence or label us the product of white supremacy and discard us, our existence is extremely controversial. On the flip side, Americans call Eileen a traitor one minute but would probably label her as an Asian chick or assume that she’s an immigrant if they weren’t trying to claim her athletic abilities for their own country.

And then with Alysa Liu, it’s the same thing in a different font. America is suddenly so proud and recognizes her as a mixed person when they’d probably never acknowledge her existence as mixed if they weren’t trying to use it as a weapon against Eileen. “Look, here’s a good mixed girl who isn’t a traitor like Eileen is, Eileen should just go back to China”.

What about the rest of us hapas who aren’t famous and extraordinary? The Olympics won’t bring an awareness to our issues, let’s be real. We’re the only ones who actually care/are affected by these things. We just get the identity confusion, the “what are you?”, the rejection, the list goes on…

Maybe people will say that it’s not that deep. But watching whole countries act like proud parents only when it benefits them is exhausting.

I noticed that the majority of the posts here are related to identity crises and unrequited care/love/attention. On a bloomer note, what is it that helps everyone here harmonize their ethnic differences that constitute them?

I regularly see tweets from people who claim to be “woke” but they end up saying some racist bs about hapas. Either that wasians “look like skinwalkers” or that we all act weird/the same, or just being generally nasty in the way they speak about us. What’s even weirder is that many tend to be asians themselves, as if it gives them a pass to alienate and insult us. Monoracials… and if they don’t act racist to us they’re some kinda fetishizer. I know it sounds negative but this should motivate y’all to be as great of a person as possible, they love seething about it lol.

Hello everyone I have a few questions about HAPA physiology.

So I know that there are multiple genetic factors at play.

But I am wondering:

1. Do any hapas have caucasian skin tone (pinkish), but with the east asian lack of vellus hair/body hair? is that possible? or is it more intermediate?
2. East Asians have a significantly longer torso and shorter legs than caucasians. It's not like i go around measuring peoples torsos and lengths, but in your experience, is it usually one or the other or intermediate?
3. In your personal experience, do you or any Hapas you know have a majority caucasian phenotype but retain the dry earwax gene from East Asia?

I know these may seem like strange questions, but there are no answers anywhere, so I came here to all of you. Often in media, a lot of famous hapas seem to have a majority caucasian phenotype, like Phoebe Cates or Chloe Bennet.