Writers get inspired from many sources: be it places, things that happened to them, people they know, etc. But being born in Europe or in the Americas might make it difficult to create interesting East Asian characters for books or movies due to the cultural differences. That's where your workshop...

Perhaps the story that you're writing right now is set in a distant land ruled by the Joseon dynasty, or maybe it's set in the Tibetan mountains, or is about a Thai kid that went to Australia by walking on water. Fiction is fiction, and many writers have different ways...