For a while, I’ve noticed this. A situation occurs where your ethnicity is mentioned, and it feels like most of the time, non-Asians automatically assume you’re chinese. Two things can be basically going on in your mind:
1) You are Chinese and are like “Wow, you have a sixth sense of Asianness!”
2) You aren’t Chinese and are like “Wow, you suck!”
And depending on where you live, this may happen quite often. This is somewhat understandable…I mean, I can’t usually tell what ethnicity an Asian is. Particularly in the U.S., Chinese are one of the biggest (if not the biggest) percentage of Asians in the country as well. So maybe there’s some validity to all this, but still, it can be annoying, especially if you fall under number 2. This annoyance stems from Chinese essentially representing all Asians.
image credit: www.lukechueh.com
Does this happen to you quite often or is it a rare occasion and I’m just goofy? 
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October 13, 2008
I’m not Chinese, but am Asian so I fall into category #2. Apparently I look Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese etc… — I can’t blame them since my eyes are chinky—But more often than not, I’m always mistaken for Chinese. I would generally shrug it off, but you’re right… it gets annoying.
Moral of the story is: Don’t generalize, right?
Thanks for pointing this reality out and making it available for the world to see.
Hopefully, everyone will learn not to generalize and take time to ask if an Asian person is from China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Korea etc.
October 16, 2008
@Lady
Yes, hopefully people won’t automatically assume we’re Chinese. Since I’m Chinese, I guess it’s not too annoying for me, but I can understand that it can be for you sometimes.
I guess on a positive side, you could educate people who call you Chinese about other Asian ethnicity in a pleasant way. That way, the next time that person runs into an Asian person, he/she won’t automatically assume he/she is Chinese.
Oh by the way, I went by your website and noticed it’s based on China even though you aren’t Chinese. Interesting site!