@scipio thanks for the info. Having ancestry from southern China/Hong Kong and having a last name that is rare and well known to a very small region in China (and to Chinatowns in the USA lol), I wished the categorization of mainland Chinese would have been more specific. In fact the Dai people are probably more mixed up from the standpoint that their ancestry probably is from Laos or Vietnam.
Some articles on human genetic diversity in China:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/largest-ever-study-chinese-peoples-genetics-reveals-insights-migration-patterns-diet-disease-180970528/
https://www.pnas.org/content/95/20/11763
https://spartanideas.msu.edu/2017/07/15/genetic-variation-in-han-chinese-population/
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/08/01/the-great-genetic-map-of-china/
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/07/13/162982.full.pdf
The original question was about “any great stories…” - here is one:
67 kids is very successful from an evolutionary biology standpoint.
There will be more of these kinds of stories coming out with the more recent technologies. Ethical, legal issues with sperm donors from the past donating repeatedly , supposedly anonymously. There was clearly no oversight with number of sperm donations. Seems quick, easy money for a young guy not thinking long term. Kind of scary and I hope donors these days (both men and women) are counseled before donating.
In the case I mentioned early on this thread, the donor was an MD
I asked an acquaintance who works for 23andMe what could have happened with the identical twins. He said that most likely, it’s because the actual hardware used to do the gene sequencing isn’t always perfect.
Well, my wife’s 23andMe came in last night. Came in at 96% South Korean, 1.5% Japanese, 1% Chinese, less than 1% Mongolian and Manchurian, and a speck of broadly Southeast Asian. I’m a bit surprised because she has big eyes, her ex-husband looks very typical Korean, but if I didn’t know her daughter I would have thought she was mixed or Filipino or maybe even Hispanic. Also weird because my wife’s parents were born in what is now North Korea. I wonder how this compares with other South Koreans?
Well my kid, who is South Korean, came back 100% Asian with circle around China, Korea and Japan, after first being 100% Asian with the circle including the above and all of Southeast Asia.
Maybe I should tell him to do 23andMe.
@ProfessorPlum168 : I wouldn’t think there’s any difference at all in genetics from North Korea vs South Korea. The two countries have only been separated for 60 years – hardly enough for much to happen at a genetic level. Maybe people in North Korea have slightly more Chinese and the South Koreans slightly more Japanese, due to geography, but I really doubt it’s signficantly different.
@VeryHappy what’s interesting is that the chart specifically said South Korea instead of say Korea, which might lead one to believe that there might be an entry for North Korea. Interesting stuff. I think this DNA location stuff is interesting but probably in its early stages and still evolving.
Some pages on human genetic diversity in Korea and nearby areas:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/07/koreans-not-quite-the-purest-race/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0011855#pone.0011855.s003
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29636655
http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-biology/2018/04/10/common-ancestor-of-han-chinese-japanese-and-koreans-dated-to-3000-3600-years-ago/
Thing is, your DNA is a sampling. Some past relatives could have been more this or that and in combination over time, led to an obvious feature like larger eyes. We’ve all heard stories of the one red haired kid in a family, and finally discovering great great aunt Tess had red hair.
Plus, when you compare to something like “other Koreans,” you don’t know what their genetic/geographic mix is.
Just got a message yesterday from a second cousin–I agreed on 23andMe to allow people to contact me via its messaging service. I’m pretty sure we are related–her grandfather was born on the same Croatian island as my father. We are related through my grandmother (the cousin who contacted me has the same last name as my grandmother and it’s not common name in Croatia).
I’m at a dead end on my research because the materials I need are in church records in Croatia. I have the names of two genealogists who I can hire to help (they are in Croatia and both speak English). How does one decide who could do a better job? References?
I just got my 23 and me results a couple of days ago. My 3rd cousin (who I know ), was on my DNA match list from English side of the family. Have had contact (via ancestry.com), with a Scottish relative (still in Scotland). I matched with a 35 year old guy from Stockholm( a grandmother was Swedish),with my recent 23 and me results. He has his picture with his results and he reminds me of my younger son (tall, thin, blonde, blue eyed). Most of my DNA matches are people in the USA , but there are some living in Scotland, England,Sweden, Canada, and Australia.
Apologies if this has already been shared, but I had a close childhood friend who just joined one of these groups. She did a test to learn more about her mother’s family’s ancestry and discovered her father was not biologically related to her. 
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/dna-test-misattributed-paternity/562928/
In my friend’s case, she is the oldest of four and has always known her parents only married because her mother found herself pregnant at 18. It’s been a pretty devastating discovery, and the father who raised her died last month without knowing any of it.
@Bromfield2 - would you care to share your Croatian islands? For my family, they were from Cres and Mali Losinj.
You might want to see if there are any Croatian groups or honorary consulates near you. We have an honorary Italian consul who helps people do genealogical research if people are interested in dual citizenship with Italy. They ask for a donation but it’s more than worth it! The man who helped me looked up records on family search dot org, which is free, but you have to be able to visually decipher the Victorian script and translate the language of the church or town records, which he did.
@Bromfield2, can you contact both of them and get general info on their prices, services, experience with specifics of your region, city, church affiliation, etc? You may be able to tell from the answers who would be better, or maybe both would be fine.
I considered getting someone to help me with my German ancestors until I figured out that many that claimed to do this sort of search had no experience with my area and I already knew more about available records than those I was considering hiring. In the end, I stumbled through on my own after researching what would be available in the state archives.
I didn’t find much overlap with DNA matches , in terms of relatives, between ancestry and 23 and me results. I haven’t combed through everything yet and there are some last names that seem similar, but the ones that are similar are very common last names… You should be able to find more relatives, names, connections, if you do more than one test.