To any black person that visted Asia, did people ask if they could touch your hair?

I hope no one is taking this question the wrong way, i don’t want to offend anyone.

I don’t think it’s just Asia where that sort of thing happens given the vast number of articles Google produced on the subject.

I don’t know much about this subject except for what my daughter (who lives in Japan) tells me. Over there, they assume any native English speaker (especially a teacher) needs to be blonde. If they’re not blonde, they tend to be suspicious of the quality of the instruction. Yes, they are very racist.

Non-Asian people are quite rare in many parts of Japan. She spent 8 months in Hokkaido and one of her classmates was a very tall black man. She said he always created a scene everywhere he went, but she didn’t say people asked to touch his hair.

In fact, in Japan at least, they would probably never ask to touch a foreigner’s hair because of social taboos about associating with foreigners.

Ok well thank you for your answer Lightlyseared, it was helpful.

And i also wanted to thank you for your answer snowberry, it was helpful.

I think it happens everywhere to some extent. I remember being a young girl and wondering what black people’s hair felt like. I don’t remember if I asked any of my friends to touch their hair.

My grandmother used to reach out and touch my husband’s thick wavy hair, no one in my family had hair like his. She used to say it was like fur.

I don’t think it’s racist, it’s just curiously.

My daughter is tall, with straight, long blond hair—think Scandanavian blond. She went on a class trip to Japan and she said that the Japanese all wanted to touch her blond hair, so I can imagine that a black person would undergo the same thing.

@Rarebear When my niece was about 5 years old she had a friend who was platinum blond. One day her grandfather, my FIL, kind of asked out loud why a parent would bleach such a young girl’s hair. I guess he had never seen such blond hair, or always thought it wasn’t natural when he did.

It would not surprise me if Chinese people in China would be fascinated by black folk’s hair and want to tough it.

I went to China with a tour group last June. Some Chinese people wanted their pictures taken with my blonde hair and blue eyed friends. They were curious and thankful for the pictures. But a lot of Chinese people like to stare at me (the ugly old caucasian). One Chinese women started pointing and laughing at me. I started laughing and told her that she looks pretty funny too (thinking that she doesn’t understand English).

Thank you JLeslie, Rarebare, and gondwanalon, for the answers.

As an Asian, I think it really depends on the country. In some countries, like mine, that would be the last thing in anyone’s mind because of the strict rule of not touching a stranger. People are curious, sure, but something like that is just too unacceptable for someone you have just talked to for 30 minutes.

But if you are talking about Asians’ curiosity of Westerners’ appearance it general, then we are no different than your average American when it comes to other culture. Westerners and Asians are just too different. In our eyes, you are so large, your skin is so fale or so dark, your hair and eyes come in so many colors, and you age so fast sorry, I’m not trying to be racist. A foreigner walking around can attract some curious eyes one way or another. A little confession: I used to thrive in telling jokes with my friends about tourists’ appearance back when I was a stupid little shit whose world only consisted of home, school and sleep.

Um, well thank you for your answer Mimishu1995 tt was helpful.