Comparing three peoples

By Chang Soon-hee

It isn’t too difficult for me to distinguish the nationality of my next door neighbors in the streets of Seoul as I happen to have Chinese and Japanese cousins.

It isn’t easy, however, to pinpoint the exact contrasts between Chinese and Koreans when they are not speaking. We all look alike, with the same skin and hair color and eye shape, and wear similarly tinted clothes made in China.

Chinese, nonetheless, talk and laugh much more loudly than Koreans and their gestures are generally more pompous.

On the other hand, differentiating between Koreans and Japanese is easier. Though it’s not a template, the faces of especially elder Koreans are in a way more quadrilateral and have more prominent cheekbones than those of the Japanese.

Generally speaking, Japanese women have thicker hair than Koreans and buckteeth, and keep nodding when they speak. As a crowd, each group has a different ambiance. There are the restless Chinese, rude Koreans and reserved Japanese, in a manner of speaking. All of us, however, have two common aspects ― a reverence for elders and a fondness for American culture.

Evolution apparently is making rapid progress in the form of girls’ faces as they are getting more of an egg shape nowadays. By the way, we grannies find the eyes of the ice skating queen, Kim Yu-na, much prettier than the unusually large eyes of certain female TV anchors or weather girls.

Some Korean boys find Chinese girls more attractive than their own kind while I hear many Japanese men think the girls on our peninsula are prettier than those on the continent or in their own islands.

The easiest way to distinguish the different nationalities perhaps is to see their cooking and eating habits. Like art, human palates seem to have no boundaries and people recognize the same fine dishes regardless of their race or nationality.

While we are basically rice and noodle eating people, the Chinese have few prejudices about food and eat almost anything their mouth and stomach accept. As a Chinese proverb says; they eat everything that has two feet except humans, that has four feet except desks and chairs, and that fly around in the air except airplanes.

Somehow fish and submarines are not included in the saying. In their long hungry history they had to eat everything their mouth and stomach didn’t reject. The hard-working Chinese continued to develop their culinary techniques using every available raw material. They eventually discovered how to cook shark’s fin, swallow’s nests, bear’s paws, and even the humps of camels and trunks of elephants.

Although Korean and Japanese grow similar produce, the nationalities have a large difference in their food preference. People on the peninsula prefer meat to seafood and vice versa for the Japanese. We Koreans more often use garlic and hot pepper in our cooking while the Japanese use wasabi, vinegar and soy sauce.

While Chinese, overall, maintain a commercialistic disposition and shrewd, Japanese sustain details in their craftsmanship and Koreans do not know how to finish their work. Like old Korean houses, they leave their works almost always incomplete, for example, sliding and swing doors never close air tight.

Being craftsmen, Japanese don’t care much about politics but obey the laws and social morals and have high pride in their own work, while Koreans pay keen attention to politics and compare themselves with their own neighbors and demand equality with street demonstrations.

The writer is a grandmother who once lived in Closter, New Jersey. She now finds Seoul more comfortable. Her email address is ham1940@gmail.com.