Do we have the so called ' Malaysian look?'

Malaysians don’t have stereotypes.

Or should I say, Malaysians don’t have a specific type of look that can be easily recognized outside the country.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing our Manglish or slang and all of the moulded cultures we've given our respect to all this while.But there is often a situation that I encounter when I speak to Asians or Westerners; they get very different perceptions on my nationality at first sight.

So this is what usually happens.

The first time I spoke to my Canadian-born Chinese friends, they thought I come from Hong Kong. I didn’t think it matter anyway since our conversations are all English-based, so I just politely slid through it by saying ‘Oh no, I’m a Malaysian.’ I then continued saying that Malaysia is pretty near to Singapore.

Their reply was one of the biggest jokes in my life.

One of my friends said: “I’ve heard of Singapore. I used to think that Singapore was in the States.”

Me:.......

So when I moved on and encountered some Japanese, they spoke Japanese language to me.
Sumimasen, anata was nihon-jin desu ka?
I said I’m not.

That was not the first time. During my Japan trip, when 9 out of 10 people I came across with thought that I was a Japanese ,just like them.There was even once when I went out alone and then an old man approached to me and asked about my nationality. He thought that I’m a Japanese, and because he likes to meet Japanese, so he started sharing his story with me. I stood there and listened for half and hour, almost frozen because of the winter chill which sent shivers down my spine. He even gave me his address before he left for the seabus, inviting me to his house. Strange enough, it was my weirdest encounter in Vancouver so far.

Then one day when I went out for shopping, suddenly a Korean came up to me and started yakking in Korean.I could only smile to him and said goodbye innocently because I don’t know how to speak in Korean.

When I went to Taiwan, people assumed that I was a Taiwanese.

It’s not only happening when I’m in Canada, the same question repeats on everywhere I go, just that the language changes.


However,in Canadian’s eyes, they’ll just think that I’m an Asian (of course, 95% of them haven even heard of Malaysia) .To them, Chinese are Asians, regardless of which part you come from. They’ll be impressed if someone who comes from Southeast Asia can converse in English fluently. I didn’t take it as sarcasm because I came here to polish my English as well, knowing that my English was incompatible to them at that time.

I’m not sure how many times I have encountered with situation like this, but I then came out with a conclusion:

People will generally include you as part of them when you’re in their country. Just like they’ll assume that you are a Taiwanese when you go to Taiwan, Hong Kong people in HK, Chinese in China and so on.

This doesn’t happen on me solely, it does happen to some of my girlfriends as well. I’m not sure if my ‘Chinese’ genes weren’t strong enough, or appearance can be so‘universal’ that no one would think of me as a Malaysian on their first guess. Another explanation I can think of is because Chinese can be easily found everywhere;
since the Chinese population is so overwhelming,it becomes a hard task for the others to determine the nationality of a Chinese.

Seriously, I don’t know if I should be happy or sad. But one thing I like is that I can understand most of the languages spoken by them, without their acknowledgement since they can hardly guess my nationality right, at least none of them got it right so far.

Good or bad, I think that’s one of the ways we are ‘globalizing’ parallel with the technology advancement. To me, as long as we shape our characteristics and behaviours in a good manner, we'll gain respect everywhere we go, because accent and steoreotype can be neglected if we don't poke fun at each other for what they've been doing all the while.