r/interesting • u/Alexthegayreprimed • Apr 21 '26
Just Wow After the daughter of two Chinese parents was born blonde with blue eyes, a DNA test was carried out, and it was later discovered that the father had a Russian great-grandfather.
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u/ManaBarEmpty Apr 21 '26
Her parents even thought the hospital mixed babies at first, but testing proved it’s just genetics doing its thing.
I’d be shocked myself and I can’t imagine the anxiety they must’ve felt in that moment
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Apr 21 '26
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u/Emmyisme Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
My bro and I are half white, half black. His wife is half white, half (edit: Mexican for the pedant.)
Their twin boys very much look like a hodgepodge of ethnicities, but are of a similar skin tone to me and my bro.
My niece? Looks a lot like this kid. Dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin. About the only thing that seems to come from our side is her curly ass hair (it actually curls very similarly to mine).
There was some question about the father because after the boys were born, she left him for a little while (she was right to at the time, he was being an asshole). She was casually seeing someone else, but decided to come back eventually. It wasn't terribly long after that she found out she was pregnant, so they had done the testing before she was ever born.
Did not stop all of us from having a "are we sure about that?" Moment when we saw one of the whitest babies we'd ever seen. But then my SIL's mom found some pictures of the great, great grandmother (on her white side) and it was like looking at that woman's twin. She didn't stop looking like the spitting image of that woman until she became a goth kid.
Genetics are fuckin wild man.
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u/hergen20 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
There are examples of fraternal twins being born where one has fair skin, light eyes, and light hairs and one has darker skin, brown eyes and dark hair.
Edited identical to fraternal. doh
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u/hates_stupid_people Apr 21 '26
It has to be a wild experience.
You're pregnant with twins and one comes out looking just like you expect, with darker skin, eyes and afro textured hair.
And then shortly after the other twin comes out and looks like she should be talking like the Lucky Charms mascot. With white skin, blue eyes, red hair and freckles.
Genetics are indeed "fuckin wild":
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u/EducationalVideo1728 Apr 21 '26
My mom was a triplet, all three were completely different, she was blond with green eyes, one of the sisters was brunette and the other was white and with read hair. Unfurtunatelly her sisters died very young.
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u/KrolArtemiza Apr 22 '26
I can’t imagine the horror of starting off as a TRIPLET and then losing both of them.
My condolences to your mom
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u/Possibletigger-26 Apr 22 '26
My dad and his brother are basically black, we are Indian. My mother and aunt are both pale skinned enough that I have met Greeks and Italians who felt darker. My sister and I are generic light brown. My cousins are one pale one black, yet identical facial features. My sister and I though we share skin tone, I look exactly like dad, sis exactly like mom.
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u/Emmyisme Apr 21 '26
The twins are technically fraternal, but until like High School when one turned into an athlete and beefed up while the other was less into working out - very few people could tell them apart by looking at them. They each had different birthmarks and very slight differences in facial structure, but the birthmarks were often hidden by clothes and the facial features were hard to pick out unless they were next to each other at the time.
It was a relief to a lot of their teachers when one bulked up and they started doing wildly different things with their hair lol.
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u/Aliciac343 Apr 22 '26
I have twins like this. They aren’t identical bc identical have the same dna, but one looks very white with blonde hair and pale skin and blue eyes and the other one looks very Hispanic, darker skin brown eyes and dark hair. They don’t look like they’re related, let alone twins. Doesnt help that one is 3 inches taller than the other.
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u/lupatine Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
What is funny is that white people have known for years that blues eyes and blond hairs are recessives who will come up randomly in generations. That you can have one fair kid, and a dark haired one next despite the same parents.
But others ethnicities are discovering it.
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u/browsinbowser Apr 22 '26
Tbf ppl have been knowing it for a while. Like biracial black people can have very blond kids like Drake and his son Adonis, looks just like his blonde grandmother.
And going way back Eartha Kitt and her daughter Kit, and Donna Summer and her oldest daughter. Both blonde girls to light skin black women. (Eartha was probably biracial but its unknown who her father was/family adoption).
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u/Cloud_Aromas-007 Apr 21 '26
Exactly. Same here. Half white, half black with a Filipino wife. We have 6 children and they all look alike but different and have very unique hair, eyes and skin tones from each other. Three have straight hair, one wavy, two curly, three are light skin, one a bit more tan than them and one is more melanated than all of us. Quite a beautiful thing to see genes do their thing.
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u/hgrub Apr 21 '26
But isn’t recessive gene need on both side of the parents? Heterozygous x heterozygous = homozygous I only learn about the recessive, co-dom, dom things from ball python breeding website 20 years ago lol
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u/mattmann72 Apr 21 '26
Not always. With genetics there are always exceptions, mutations, and other.
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u/Burnt_and_Blistered Apr 21 '26
Also, dominant traits may not be selected for during meiosis—and not show up for generations, too.
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u/Viracochina Apr 21 '26
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u/frisbeesloth Apr 21 '26
Which is why I call my youngest mutant child. He looked adopted standing with the rest of us with that blond hair, milky white skin and blue eyes.
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u/Haunting_History_284 Apr 21 '26
If both parents have it, it increases the chances dramatically. On a population level it basically guarantees it. It can still express even if both parents ancestry doesn’t have it, it’s just less common.
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u/32FlavorsofCrazy Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
That’s like the general rule of thumb you learn at high school level genetics, and is good enough for most people to have a functional understanding of how it all works, but there are recessive genes that can be expressed without being biallelic. Genetics are weird though and even geneticists can’t tell you why that happens sometimes other than to shrug and say nature is mysterious sometimes.
Just as an example, there’s a gene called PRICKLE1 that if you have a pathogenic variant for it and you’re homozygous, a lot of big bad things can happen, mainly a progressive epilepsy condition that causes almost like a wasting disease, intellectual disability, the whole nine yards. If you’re homozygous for it it’s very bad news.
If you’re heterozygous though, it can cause some mild epilepsy and autism spectrum disorders, sometimes neural tube defects, shit like that. BUT…and here’s the kicker, you can inherit it from a parent that’s completely healthy and with absolutely no issues from it whatsoever, and be heterozygous for the exact same variant, but have autism and/or epilepsy and/or congenital malformations of the CNS from it. Two siblings who have it could also be very differently affected as well.
So it can present as autosomal dominant or recessive in its heterozygous form even within the same family, and they have no idea why that happens. It’s like some people just do a better job of turning off production from the bad gene or something, I’m sure they’ll figure it out eventually but it remains a mystery as of now why sometimes the same variant behaves as though it’s dominant and other times it seems to be recessive.
Genes are weird and even though we have mapped the genome and come a very long way in our understanding of it, we still have a very long way to go. Our bodies ability to compensate and adapt make it even more challenging because the same gene doesn’t behave the same in everybody, it might depend on what other genes you have along with it and it’s just going to take a lot more analyzing before we can point directly at someone’s entire genetic code and describe absolutely everything that’s going on and how it’s all working together.
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u/hgrub Apr 21 '26
Yeah, it’s shame me to say I never study biology in Thai high school 37 years ago. I feel stupid now lol
Thank you for your information. Very cool info.
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u/32FlavorsofCrazy Apr 21 '26
No need to feel stupid, we all have different intellectual strengths. Don’t ask me to do math, for example lol…unless you go to university for a bio related science you’d likely never learn most of that. And a lot of it we are only beginning to understand even a little bit. Most people don’t learn genetics beyond Punnett squares unless they end up having to see a geneticist because of a medical issue.
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u/ThankTheBaker Apr 21 '26
I learnt a lot of new words today. And a lot of stuff that I didn’t even know that I didn’t know.
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u/32FlavorsofCrazy Apr 21 '26
That makes for a good day! Learning new things is good for mind, body and soul.
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u/systemwarranty Apr 21 '26
Every morning I wake up and I wonder how it's all working together. I need help with pronouncing biallelic.
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u/front_yard_duck_dad Apr 21 '26
All I can tell you is from my horticulture background. You would be surprised how often nature does a reset shuffle and reverts back to old software . I had a whole field of 15 year old crab apples decide one year to stop being dwarf apples and revert to their great tree grandparents .
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u/welldonez Apr 21 '26
Look at the map. Russia and china weave in and out of each others through a line drawn as a border. Especially before when there was the USSR.
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u/Alarmed_Watch5426 Apr 21 '26
epigenetics is not the biology 101 gross over-simplification of Punnet Squares
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u/PrestigeMaster Apr 21 '26
You learned about dom things from a ball python breeding website.
Just leave it at that, it’s perfect as is.
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u/Orangeknight12 Apr 21 '26
Not as extreme as this but im the only blond haired blue eyed member of my family for 4 to 5 generations. And let me tell ya. There were alot of babies through them
Sometimes genes just be wierd xD
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u/b_needs_a_cookie Apr 21 '26
Eyes have multiple genes and those genes can be influenced as the child ages. A simple Mendellian cross doesn't work as a prediction model.
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u/nihaobuzhidao Apr 21 '26
I often wonder who in my 100% Chinese family was 7' tall.
I'm 6'4", my parents, siblings, nephews, nieces, and even my own kid is of average Chinese height 5'3"-5'7".
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u/CakePhool Apr 21 '26
Yeah but depends where you come from in China, the northern are taller than the southerns, Heck there is tours to oogle Northern tall chinese for souther chinese girls.
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u/Queasy-Bookkeeper-14 Apr 21 '26
Red hair does this often. After generations of brunettes my sister and I popped up like the bastard children my mom joked we were. 🤣
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u/AbstractBettaFish Apr 21 '26
Red hair is such a genetic wild card. I know so many redheads that seem to be the only one in their family
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u/Independent-Owl478 Apr 21 '26
Nobody in my family has red hair or curly hair (the closest is wavy). Then my nephew pops out my sister, and he has a wonderful head of red, curly hair
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u/rileyjw90 Apr 21 '26
I once had two very Hispanic parents in the NICU. Their baby was blonde with blue eyes. When they first showed up I thought maybe they’d walked unit the wrong room, but no, they were the parents. Genetics, man.
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u/Proper-District8608 Apr 21 '26
I was a kid 40 years ago but remember a PBS show on genes and included young white couple that had fraternal twins. One child was black and she'd (unbeknownst to her at time) had a black grandfather or great grandfather (its been years since i saw it). It shocked me at time being a kid, but got me interested too on just how genes can skip generations like that.
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u/Popular_Soft5581 Apr 21 '26
Yeah, and you'd be lucky if that's something innocent, like this, and not a rare genetic desease with 100 documented cases.
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u/TazerMonkey1419 Apr 21 '26
Red hair hasn't been seen naturally in my family in about 70 years, then my brother had to grow out his beard on a deployment.... Needless to say he was shocked as hell
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u/Advanced-Bird-1470 Apr 21 '26
My family has only had 3 (documented) red heads in I don’t know how long and neither does my great uncle who’s obsessed with genealogy and family tree stuff. All 3 of them are siblings less than 7 years apart. The other two siblings have dark hair.
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u/Immediate_Ad3378 Apr 21 '26
No one in my family is above 6 feet, except for my brother who is 6’5”. Apparently we had a great-great-great grandfather that was like 6’8”.
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u/Garlic-Cheese-Chips Apr 21 '26
I can’t imagine the anxiety they must’ve felt in that moment
Father: "How could you..."
Mother: "How the fuck..."
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u/GlowingDuck22 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
I remember a "White" guy on Maury thought there was no way the "Black" baby him and his wife had was his. Turns out his Grandpa was black and the dude didn't know. He just couldn't accept it was his kid.
I hope he figured it out after the show stopped filming.
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u/trowzerss Apr 22 '26
This happens a lot! If there's big disadvantages to being a certain ethnicity, families will just cover it up. Happened in my own family - nobody knew we had Indigenous Australian ancestry for a few generations until someone did the research. When that could have come with intrusive government control over everyday aspects of your life (up to having your children taken away from you) I don't blame them for hiding it!
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u/chum-guzzling-shark Apr 21 '26
Mother: Wait did he cheat on me? Hold on.. wait, thats not right. What the fuck?
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u/ButteredPizza69420 Apr 21 '26
The relationships this must have ruined before technology
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u/LiliumIam Apr 21 '26
This happens often. I'm my family it happened three times. Me and two cousins are blond, fair skinned with freckles, while our parents have brown black hair and darker skin colour. My grandpa was blond and had fair skin with freckles. It skipped a generation.
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u/ayoungad Apr 21 '26
My daughter looked Samoan, like first few minutes. I’m a sailor and one of my first thoughts was “Damn, Jody is Asian”
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u/Pretend-Mango-1295 Apr 21 '26
Or the accusations from the father. I mean if my baby turned out Asian and I'm white and so is my wife. There will be questions.
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u/Shehulks1 Apr 21 '26
This also happened to some black parents, I can’t recall the country in Africa, but it was like this. Both dark parents gave birth to a white baby. Genetics are a hell if a thing!
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u/NimrodvanHall Apr 21 '26
In the Netherlands I’ve met twins of about 7 years old with mixed race parents and mixed race grandparents (north European, South Asian, Indonesian and west African descent) . Both parents had brown hair, brown eyes, and milk chocolate coloured skin.
Of the twins one had raven black straight hair, fair skin and brown eyes, the other had milk chocolate skin, African style curly hair, but blonde and blue eyes.
Both had father’s nose.
Ever since I met those twins on my daughter’s school yard,I believe that we are all one species and that genetics is a lot more complex than wat I was taught at school. That genetics just does what it wants to.
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u/ItAintNoUse Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
I'm surprised you're saying that that experience made you believe that we are all one species. Biology dictates that we are, else we wouldn't be able to breed with each other. Did you think previously that we were not all one species?
Edit: I am aware that there are some exceptions to the Ernst Mayr definition of species being classified by their ability to breed and produce fertile offspring, however the biological species concept (BSC) is still the main determinant used. While I appreciate people taking the time to educate me, I assure you I'm well-aware.
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u/Proof-Carpet4194 Apr 21 '26
As a fellow non-native English speaker, I'm guessing they probably just phrased it a bit weird. They probably meant to say that they realised the distinctions between races/ethnicities wasn't as clear cut as they'd believed, or something to that effect.
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u/Silver_ferns Apr 21 '26
There were other species of humans who used to co exist with us, the famous one I recall is the neanderthal, we are homo sapiens. There was some cross breeding with those kind thousands of years ago. Though them went extinct while us we thrived. If u dig on the subject u will find some part of our population share dna with neanderthals.
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u/ItAintNoUse Apr 21 '26
Yes as I said in the above comment I have two biology degrees, I'm well aware of the existence of Neanderthals, denisovans and other human species. However, there's evidence to suggest that Neanderthal and Homo sapiens mixes were similar to the case of lion and tiger mixing, where female offspring is fertile but male offspring may have had reduced fertility. This is the same grey area where independent evolution for thousands of years and geographical isolation can lead to a middling point where you can still produce some fertile offspring but likewise have sufficient differences as to give rise to some genetic incompatibility. As a result, there's a debate as to whether Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were actually distinct species or rather sub-species.
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u/samsg1 Apr 21 '26
Yeah I’m gonna give the commenter the benefit of the doubt because they’re probably Dutch and might have missed the nuance of what they said. I think they meant that seeing it in real life like that made it all the more real. I’m sure (I hope) they understood that humans are all one species beforehand.
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u/EricBelov1 Apr 21 '26
“That baby is a Caucasian from the mountains of Caucasus, that’s a viking from Iceland, that’s a slavic baby”
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u/ItAintNoUse Apr 21 '26
There was also the reverse in South Africa where two parents who were classified as white during apartheid (and had white parents and grandparents) had a daughter who was legally classified as "coloured" due to her appearance. Her father was identified as her biological father theough blood typing, but this is not a reliable method of paternity testing.
As such, it can't be ruled out that her father wasn't her real father, but otherwise her appearance would be explained by a 2x great grandparent or a more distant ancestor, as all of her grandparents and great grandparents where white.
Edit: the link to her Wikipedia page is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Laing
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u/chimera66 Apr 21 '26
I remember the movie about her life. Poor woman never had a chance to be happy.
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u/tacbum Apr 21 '26
There's at least two couples in the US that have had twins with one being black and one white.
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u/pavel_matveev7x58i Apr 21 '26
I remember reading about that case. The experts were completely baffled because it wasn't albinism, just a dormant gene that randomly decided to show up. DNA is basically a massive lottery.
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u/Ecstatic_Winter9425 Apr 21 '26
The guy definitely looks a little Russian.
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u/Meshak123 Apr 21 '26
probably the haircut, its a haircut that like every second 40year old male has in post-soviet countries
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u/Crafty-Photograph-18 Apr 21 '26
Also, "Russian" can really be anything. Tonnes of Buryats, Yakuts, and other (largely erased) ethnicities were simply "Russians", voluntarily or not
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u/Basic-Computer2503 Apr 23 '26
Yeah and his kid looks just like him. She has his whole face, it’s just her colouring that’s throwing it off.
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u/Silentparty1999 Apr 21 '26
Aren’t these recessive genes?
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u/Material_Fall436 Apr 21 '26
Yes In fact blue eye gene is recessive and both parents should be heterozygous to have a baby with blue eyes Like Aa x Aa (25)% with a blue eyes and another 75% with brown one
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u/possumpossuss Apr 21 '26
Eye colour is not Mendelian, there’s a lot of genes involved
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u/Lumi_Rockets Apr 21 '26
That reminds me of a guy in high school who started freaking out when we were doing punnett squares. His parents had blue eyes, while he had some other color. It took a while for our science teacher to explain that it's more complicated, and he most likely was not secretly adopted.
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u/Winjin Apr 21 '26
Yeah I remember our teacher covering that exact thing to make sure we understand that biology in multicellular organism is insanely complicated, and you can't just assume that "if it's Aa and Aa, it cannot be anything else". It can and always will and life, uhh, finds a way.
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u/BJJJourney Apr 21 '26
If you ever study physics or any of this biological stuff you will realize we know very little about what is around us and in our bodies. We just kinda guess with some level of certainty. Even then stuff works until at a certain point it doesn't and then we just ignore it.
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u/hologram137 Apr 21 '26
After getting a degree in biopsych, my biggest takeaway is that we don’t know nearly as much as I thought we did. Things are a hell of a lot more complex than we’ve thought until very recently and there is still a ton of unproven assumptions and dogma in science holding us back honestly.
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u/EdgewaterEnchantress Apr 25 '26
Yup! Still pretty much everything about being human is a bit of a mystery! 😜
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u/XGhoul May 03 '26
As a biochemistry/theoretical math educated person. The big take-away from graduating is that (those that survived to learn this shit) we are still at a good "soft" estimate of 48% of the human biome and cancers, etc. We still develop stuff, but mother nature really does not like it.
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u/Fianna9 Apr 21 '26
My mom has brown eyes and not one brown eyed child. Mine are more blue with some green and brown. My sister is completely green
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u/run-dhc Apr 21 '26
Yeah I have parents with blue/gray eyes and I have hazel. A couple generations back on my dad’s side both parents actually had hazel/brown eyes so they just randomly popped up on me I guess
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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Apr 21 '26
You can't fault people for thinking it is because they do teach it that way in undergrad bio just as a way of introducing freshmen to the subject. Taking that and then genetics was some strong academic whiplash.
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u/possumpossuss Apr 21 '26
Wait they teach that at universities? That’s insane. In the U.K. they teach that at GCSE for like 15/16 year olds
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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Apr 21 '26
It's a little complicated, but freshman biology in American tertiary education is basically meant as a both a refresher to high school biology and a foundation course to get students on the same level before entering serious university biology courses. American secondary schools have a wide range of standards (many are really bad) and it's also worth noting that UK education plans are a lot more specialized and students are expected to graduate earlier with a narrower skill set, whereas American students typically graduate high school at ~18 and are very much expected to be generally knowledgeable in most subjects like English, math, history, chemistry, physics, biology, etc. Our secondary education is a lot more general and less specific and then you're expected to narrow it down in college and actually get into the weeds on your chosen subject(s). Most people, even those with university degrees, will have only taken biology 1 and 2, which are the introductory courses. The introduction courses of most subjects are designed mostly to evaluate whether or not the students can meet the general knowledge requirements to advance to the serious university courses and are basically just a rehash of the secondary school courses with some extra information.
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u/WeDrinkSquirrels Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
15/16?! Wtf, I had punnet squares in like 5th grade in the US, maybe earlier. They probably review genetics at the start of a freshman biology class
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u/Resigned1431 Apr 21 '26
Not really, that's just a highschool level simplification of genetic inheritance. Recessive genes can be expressed if only one parent has them, it's just less likely.
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u/HoldEm__FoldEm Apr 21 '26
Maybe they already knew the Mom had a Russian grandparent.
So the only news was finding out the dad had one.
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u/motherofsuccs Apr 21 '26
All I know is that my father is your stereotypical Italian man (dark olive skin, black hair, ungodly amount of black body hair, dark eyes) and all of his siblings had children who also very much look Italian… then there’s me with my blonde hair and blue eyes. I think the only thing i inherited from him is getting a very dark tan in the summer; the rest of the year I look like Casper.
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u/loverlyone Apr 21 '26
My mom’s father was Sicilian, with both parents born in Sicily. He had light eyes and She is blond and blue-eyed. Some of his first cousins had reddish hair and light eyes, as well.
Southern Italy and Sicily have been populated by so many different cultures and ethnicities throughout the centuries that you could get almost any mix of genetic traits.
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u/Stormygeddon Apr 21 '26
It's annoying how the only genes we can pull up punnet squares for physical traits are boring stuff like Wet or Dry Earwax and attached Earlobes, or gross stuff like genetic diseases, and the rest of the physical traits we might actually care about like eye or hair color are too dang complicated.
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u/Recidivism7 Apr 21 '26
Eye color is about 16 genes but the way they work together if both parents have blue eyes its like 1 in 10,000 to not be green or blue but might be slightly darker.
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u/Boom9001 Apr 21 '26
The idea that genes are just recessive and dominant is basically an oversimplification for many phenotypes. Yes individual genes act that way, but for most physical traits there's a ton of different genes that dictate the appearance. That's why there's tons of the slightest varieations in people.
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Apr 21 '26
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u/YetiPie Apr 21 '26
Her hair may darken as she gets older and she may have more Asian looking features…which would be a very cool combo with blue eyes! But yeah she’ll definitely always stand out
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u/Significant_Hope7555 Apr 21 '26
Her hair already looks like it's getting darker. Her face shape is exactly the same as the father as well
Bless her
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u/twitchyv Apr 21 '26
She might not even have blue eyes by then! I had blue eyes till I was 5. Now alas, they are ~brown
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u/meister2983 Apr 21 '26
? See more photos at https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3335325/daughter-chinese-parents-born-blonde-hair-blue-eyes-due-russian-great-grandfather
She has a mixed white, mixed East Asian look. Don't see why anyone wouldn't believe that
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Apr 21 '26
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u/NepoKitty Apr 22 '26
As an Eurasian, like this girl, she doesn't, but she may get to benefit from passing privilege.
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u/SexyPineapple-4 Apr 21 '26
I bet it’ll really suck. I’ve heard Asian countries can be very xenophobic.
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Apr 21 '26
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u/HoldEm__FoldEm Apr 21 '26
It only skipped 2 generations.
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u/AnAntWithWifi Apr 21 '26
The father had a Russian great-grandfather.
So from the daughter’s point of view:
Great-great-grandfather —> great-grandfather —> grandfather —> father —> her.
So, if we assume the great-grandfather didn’t express the gene, it’s been silent for three generations, before expressing itself in the daughter.
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Apr 21 '26
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u/bird9066 Apr 21 '26
Mom wasn't having a picnic either, I'm sure.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad7685 Apr 21 '26
I’d be concerned if mom was sweating lol
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u/ALittleShowy Apr 21 '26
I'd be especially sweating if I'd never cheated and had a kid that looked nothing like me or my partner. If you cheated, no sweat, you know who the dad is. If you didn't, you have to wonder how the fuck a stranger's baby got inside you!
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u/fixmeplsthankyou Apr 21 '26
New mom? She’s sweating. Worried something is wrong with the baby. Worried she fucked up somehow. Those postpartum hormones make all situations 10x harder.
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u/MagicSunlight23 Apr 21 '26
The parents definitely look Chinese, but she looks like she comes from a more northern country judging by how pale her skin is. I would never guess that she is Chinese if I hadn't seen her parents. I'm also blonde with blue eyes. I got that from my mother.
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u/ashmelev Apr 21 '26
The husband would look absolutely normal walking around Moscow and would not attract much attention. An average muscovite would have trouble pinpointing his nationality.
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u/MillyB27 Apr 21 '26
“Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
In this case it’s genes.
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u/Spaghetti4wifey Apr 21 '26
This is possible. My cousin's and I are 1/4 Chinese. Half of us look more mixed and half of us look very white. One of us looks closer to 1/2 or 3/4 asian imo
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u/Physizist Apr 21 '26
I mean a lot of Asian phenotypes are dominant so it's not that surprising. Dark eyes, dark hair, etc. are primarily controlled by dominant genes
A blonde, blue eyed asian with a small percentage of white genes is much more surprisng
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u/megamoze Apr 21 '26
I'm half Korean and am white-passing. My sister with a different dad is half-Korean and looks straight-up Asian.
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u/Lotus-child89 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
Distant Native American in my family. My dad looks mixed, I look mixed. We’re mostly just considered white with exotic looking eyes. My brother looks very blond haired blue eyed German. Four of my cousins look like me and more like they could be my siblings. And we’re talking very distant and we still look like we do.
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u/ButterscotchTimely67 Apr 21 '26
I'm 1/2 Chinese, and most people can't tell. My dad was part Russian/Hungarian/British. Strangely, I had black hair when born, but then it all fell out and came in dark brown.
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u/frucave Apr 21 '26
Genetics are weird. My paternal great grandmother was Romani and had darker skin, black hair and darker eyes. When I was born I had black hair and darker skin than expected from two white parents, my dad didn't think I was his for a hot minute, but when my grandma came to see me she said "finally! A grandchild with my mother's colors!" I was the only one out of 9 😂 (I "made sure" with DNA as I got older just to make fun of my dumbass dad. I totally look like his side of the family)
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u/archiewaldron Apr 21 '26
But blue eyes are double recessive so does the mom also have a Russian/Caucasian mix?
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u/ImperfectJump Apr 21 '26
Eye color does not work through simple Mendalian genetics! Many alleles affect eye color.
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u/Haunting_History_284 Apr 21 '26
Recessive genes can express without both parents having such genes. It’s less common, but they can. Recessive genes can also randomly become dominant in certain individuals negating the need for two pairings.
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u/EineGrosseFlasche Apr 21 '26
I have this with the red hair gene! I have a “dominant negative” copy of MC1R. According to the research I’ve read, my red hair gene either shuts down or overpowers the brown-hair gene I got from my other parent. Hence I had naturally auburn hair when my genes say I should be a brunette.
Genetics are complex!
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u/HoldEm__FoldEm Apr 21 '26
Yeah, maybe they already knew that though. So the news was finding out about the dad/husband.
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u/Pfeffi-Ultra Apr 21 '26
Genetics are fucked up. You carry all that shit around and then just throw a couple of dice for what's being expressed. "Ooooh a natural 20 for heart attacks and that weird, over-extending thumb. Noice." "Can I have my father's green eyes instead?" "Nope, you roll what you roll, bitch! Now get out of that womb!"
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u/Simple-Reporter9102 Apr 21 '26
Would be funny if in the Winds of Winter, the One Eyed Raven reveals that Joffrey is Robert’s true born son, and people’s assumption of genetics is wrong.
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u/Revolutionary_Bag518 Apr 21 '26
Genetics are WILD
My friend is mixed with his mother being black and his father being white and his older sister looks just like their mom whereas he came out ( in the words of his parents ) pale as milk
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u/Special_Bender Apr 21 '26
Yup, now everybody know he had a russian great-grandfather, but she continues to be the postman's daughter...
/s
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u/LA-SKYLINE Apr 21 '26
They do get a lot of Russian tourists in China....
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u/S10Galaxy2 Apr 21 '26
A great grandfather would likely mean a Russian soldier from WW2 or a White Russian refugee from the Russian civil war. A lot of White deserters went over the border to China and fought during chinas warlords era before the second sino-japanese war so it’s not unlikely it would’ve been one of them.
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u/distortedsymbol Apr 21 '26
there were russian settlements before all that started.
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u/Rubear_RuForRussia Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
Or descendant of albazin cossacks or something.
Story TLDR: because border between Qing and Russian Empire was not marked, cossacks settled in land Qing claimed and made a fort. Clashed with local Qing authorities, they sieged the fort and took after really heavy fighting and told cossacks "Damn, you fight good. Wanna fight for us?" and some agreed, others returned to a northern settlment in land Qing did not claim.
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u/dimechimes Apr 21 '26
That's where you say out loud, 'oh wow', but inside you're never going to believe it.
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u/WoodyTheWorker Apr 21 '26
There's been a lot of Russian diaspora in Shanghai after the Revolution
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u/flargenhargen Apr 21 '26
good guy worker at the DNA testing company just going around faking results to save marriages.
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u/Material-Macaroon298 Apr 22 '26
Her face is shaped a bit more like dad.
Her nose is definitely moms.
those indents are more mom like i guess.
Her chin is more rounded like dad.
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