galoisien

East Asia is a geographical term. Genetically, Japanese, Vietnamese and Chinese are very very much apart. In fact, I believe the Japanese are either closer to the Turks and the Finns (Ural-Altaics), or were Austronesians who were subjugated by Altaic influence. The Vietnamese come from a very very ancient people who have an extremely long archaelogical history there (the Khmer). The origins of the Chinese are interesting -- they're a very young people obviously, but it's hard to map their origins -- the Chinese languages are full of Austronesian, Khmer, Turkish, Mongolic and Indo-European substrata so there's good evidence Old Chinese was the product of this nifty little process called creolisation.

So IMO PAFN is quite diverse. The Indians often have their own clubs so maybe that draws most of them away from PAFN. We also have people from Nepal, Tibet. I have good friends from Pakistan but they tend to align themselves with the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and *gasp* the Indians, though I don't know all of PAFN. Is Russia European or Asian, Occidental or Oriental? Hmm, ancient question that confronted Tchaikovsky and Peter the Great. Russians however, do have their own community, support network and language house. PAFN would welcome people from Central Asia and ethnic Siberians, if more of them applied to UVA.

As a Singaporean Chinese immigrant to America I feel this huge disconnect with people from Mainland China actually -- I can recognise some of the things they say, despite their r-coloured Northerner drawrrrl, and some of their cultural customs but it's like looking at a long-lost brother who grew up in another country. I think PAFN does a good job of integrating those who would be vulnerable to self-segregating because of the lack of a support network.