What do you guys call East Asians?

I'm British born Chinese, I'm not in a "perculiar country thousands of miles away". I'm telling you what I know. If you choose to ignore me, a Chinese person giving you advise on not insulting Chinese people, that's on you. Don't blame anyone else if you end up insulting someone you really don't want to insult.

So one British-Chinese person (you) says they find the term "mildly insensitive" combined with the five Chinese guys in my office who explicitlyy said they don't find it insensitive/offensive/racist at all, not forgetting the abundance of Chinese restaurants that use the term "Orient" in their name... this is hardly compelling evidence to support that it's a racist term. Not to mention, the unlikely day I do offend an oriental person by calling them oriental, I will never know they were offended as, according to you, they don't like to rock the boat. So, for now I will choose to ignore you.

See, you're objectively wrong here. Oriental studies at the University of Oxford involves the study of "Arabic, Chinese, Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Hebrew Studies, Japanese, Jewish Studies, Persian, Sanskrit, Turkish."

A lot of what goes on in Oxford is beyond the overwhelming majority of British natives' understanding and awareness. Quoting what a specialist course at an elite university considers the term to mean does not in any way reflect how it is used by ordinary people. I repeat, nobody in day-to-day life says oriental to mean Jewish, Turkish, Egyptians or many of those other places listed on that Oxford course.

But if you do insist it be taken into consideration, I'd say that when the world's greatest educational institution (often ranked #1 university in the world) uses the word oriental to mean Chinese/Japanese/Korean et al. then you can't complain, can you, when people use the word oriental to refer to... Chinese/Japanese/Korean people.

/r/AskUK Thread Parent