The Nationality and Faces

I am Taiwanese, but I am very often thought as Japanese by many people worldwide, including Japanese and Taiwanese. When I traveled to the US and to continental Europe, people thought I am Japanese and therefore talked to me with their cute but limited Japanese. That's okay for me since I know most foreigners, especially not from east Asia, could not tell the difference between Asian people. However, when Japanese and Taiwanese (hey...we are from the same country okay?) start to say the same thing, I am increasingly interested in the reason why they say that.

The first reason I came up with is I speak fluent Japanese. Okay, but millions of foreigners (I mean, to Japanese we are foreigners) in the world speak Japanese, and we Taiwanese learn English as well, but why we did not look like American or Australian or English people?

Then I thought it might has something to do with the history. Taiwan was a colonial of Japan. My grandparents were deeply influenced by Japanese culture, as a result, they act, talk, live like senior Japanese. Therefore, they influenced my parents and then me. (Got to make sure if my siblings are considered as Japanese.)

Or maybe, Taiwanese people actually have no features, hence we easily coloured by the culture we are interested in. My Japanese learning friends look like Japanese, Korean learning friends look like Korean, and even though it takes time, those professors teaching German or French were changed by the culture they spent time with. Here I have a question for non-Asian people, does the similar situation happen in your country? (Hopefully someone would answer me someday...)

But why we Taiwanese have no individual features? Well the problem is probably caused by the history of Taiwan. Long long ago, Taiwan was invaded (or colonised) by Spanish people, and then the Dutch, and then Japanese, finally some Chinese people came here and mixed with Taiwanese. Ancient Taiwanese might be the mix of ancient Chinese and original Taiwanese, but the history influenced us too much that we now have our own story.

Wait, I just said we have the own story but we do not have individual features? Yes, that the biggest problem. People talked the romantic French, polite Japanese, elegant English... but what did we have? Maybe we have too much, so the exotic gene will be activated once we are interested in some culture?

Now I am in the Heathrow airport waiting for the plane going to Helsinki. I will know if people there would consider me as Japanese.