Great photo; it is only the pattern and route of the pale stripe on the face which betrays the fact this is not Tamiops swinhoei to my eyes - the postcranial body looks almost identical.
honestly if there wasn't the range separation I don't know that I could tell them apart. They did "look" quite different to the Swinhoe's I saw elsewhere but I'm not sure why and if both species were in one place I'd probably just put them down as "Tamiops sp." unless I got a very good look at them!
I think the body striping was different in some vague way, and they seemed darker, but what was really noticeable, which I didn't notice on the swinhoei, was the very black area around the ears. It was very striking.
