Ching Chong

Ching chong ching chong chong, ching chang chong.

"Ching, Chong, Oh Mister Ching Chong,
You are the king of Chinatown.
Ching Chong, I love your sing-song,
When you have turned the lights all down."

— "Ching Chong", by Lee S. Roberts and J. Will Callahan

A Stock Phrase used by non-Asians to be racist against the Chinese, and, due to Interchangeable Asian Cultures, other Asians as well. Not to be confused with Ching-Chang-Chong, the usual German name of the game Rock–Paper–Scissors.^note Incidentally, one of the Cantonese names for the game 猜程尋 is pronounced like "chai ching chum".

Naturally, since the phrase is a racist insult, this is largely seen as a Discredited Trope, unless if used in a Dude, Not Funny! context. In fact, a lot of Asian-Americans consider this to be on par with the N-word. Subtrope of As Long as It Sounds Foreign for the Chinese language. See also El Spanish "-o", for the arguably Spanish equivalent of this trope.

---

Examples:

Anime

• Ghost Stories:
  Hajime: Oh perfect, it's in Japanese. Ching chong nog nig tow! Wait, that's Chinese. Luckily I can read barricade.

Comic Books

• Lucky Luke: One Rantanplan story has the Daltons hide in a Chinatown, having mugged passing Chinese people for their clothes, with William saying "ching chang choing". When they meet the head of the local triad, he says it referring to Rantanplan (who's set to become the owner of most of Chinatown's buildings), with the triad head telling him he agrees with William (even if he'd never stoop to using such vulgar language).

Films — Live-Action

• Dumb and Dumberer uses this, when Harry and Lloyd try to communicate with a Chinese exchange student. They then nickname her Ching Chong.
• Minari: A white girl comes up to Anne at a church social, says "Stop me when I say something in Korean," and actually starts off with "Ching chong" before babbling a lot of other nonsense. But when Anne tells her that she actually said the Korean word for "aunt", the white girl is thrilled.
• The Wild World of Batwoman used a spirit that alternated between this and talking very, very slowly during the seance.
• Cheech & Chong's Next Movie shows Cheech's cousin, Red, asking Chong how Chinese parents name their children. The "punch line" involves the sound silverware makes when it hits the ground. (Ching chang chong, bing bang bong.) Bonus discomfort points when you remember Chong's father in real life was Chinese.

Literature

• The protagonist in A Chinese Girl In The Ghetto receives this every day.
• In The School for Good Mothers Frida, the only Asian out of about 200 women, tries to discourage the other mothers from gossiping about her ex-roommate, who just quit (in the orientation, they were warned that gossiping was against the rules, and they are constantly being recorded). In response, she gets harassed and called "an uptight Chinese bitch". One of the white mothers makes ching-chong noises in her ear.

Live-Action TV

• The Colbert Report: Daniel Snyder (owner of the Washington Redskins sports team) attempted to make amends to Native Americans by starting a charity, but the name of that charity contained "Redskins," which is commonly seen as an epithet against Native Americans. In response, Stephen announced he was launching "The Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever" for Asians. Although people who actually saw the bit on television were less likely to complain, a staffer for the show tweeted the joke and put the context in one tweet, then the joke in another. Naturally, the second tweet spread far and wide without the context, along with calls to "#CancelColbert." The joke originally aired on a Thursday, then caught fire on Twitter on Friday. The next Monday, Colbert apologized.
• Chappelle's Show: In a skit about the blind, black white supremacist Clayton Bigsby, the character refers to this at one point when talking about Chinese people.
• In the second episode of 30 Rock, Tracy suggested for himself a character named "Ching Chong" who plays ping-pong.
• When the Mock the Week crew started ragging on the 'Racist Door' (used when one of them made a joke about nationalities, thus opening the door for others to be made), Frankie Boyle played it off as a section in a children's television show:
  "Hello, children! Shall we open the racist door? Who's behind- Oh, it's Ching-Chong Chinaman!"
• Hilariously mocked by an Asian performer for New Zealand's Got Talent, who wrote and sang an entire song about being called Ching-Chong (notably how it blocked her from other East Asian stereotypes like becoming a doctor and limited her to being a good ping-pong player).

Music

• The Missy Elliott song "Work It" contains the line "black white Puerto Rican Chinese boys, wang-thang thang-a thang-a thang-y thang".
• Rucka Rucka Ali actually made a song titled "Ching Chang Chong" mocking various Asian stereotypes.
• Red Hot Chili Peppers made a song called "Around the World" with lyrics that go, "Ding dang dong dong deng deng dong dong ding dang," in a faux-Chinese accent.

Recorded And Stand Up Comedy

• Louis C.K. uses it for Self-Deprecation; he describes wondering what a Chinese woman is thinking, "and my dumb brain is telling me she's just thinking: 'Ching chung cheeng, chung cheeng chaing.' That's how dumb I am, that I think Chinese gibberish that I made up is in her actually Chinese mind."
• Patton Oswalt's "Annihilation" tour has a joke where he woke up and saw "Korean Peninsula" was trending on Twitter and believed that President Trump probably went on TV and did a racist impression of Asian people including spouting Asian-sounding gibberish.

Webcomics

• Achewood uses it here.
  "Do you even understand Chinese?"
  "NO WAY THAT SHIT IS INSANE. IT'S ALL, CHING CHONG WING WONG"
• Lampshaded in this "Polandball'' comic: Brazilball uses this phrase to insult several countryballs (and cityballs), and gets a leek shoved into him in response.

Web Original

• In A Very Potter Musical, Harry uses this in the song "Ginny's song reprise (cho chang)", to the white, Southern Cho.
• A UCLA student posted a video titled "UCLA Asians in the Library", complaining they would answer their phones and "say 'Ohhh! Ching chong ling long ting tong? Ohhh!' just as one is about to have an epiphany while doing Poli-Sci homework." Shortly after the video went viral, she posted an apology and withdrew from the school for her own safety, as she had received death threats.
• The UCLA video was spoofed in turn with the song "Ching Chong: It Means I Love You" by Jimmy Wong wherein the (Chinese) singer "admits" he has no idea what ting tong means.
• A YouTuber, The Mechanic Shark Channel, making fun of China in few of his videos and even made "Xi the Pooh Bear" a "Big Bad" who say "Ching chang chong".
• This has been said in Game Grumps as a form of Refuge in Audacity to poke fun at racism instead of actually being racist (or their brand of "accent humor.")
• In "Chow Town" by StamperTV, a man tries to impress his date by placing an order in Chinese. His idea of "speaking Chinese" consists of pulling his eyes into an almond shape with his fingers, yelling "Ching", "Chang", "Chong" and the ordered items, while the waiter just calmly writes down the order as if this was normal.
• Mastermind: When the Mastermind starts blowing up cities with his Doomlaser, he bids "adios" to Madrid and "auf Wiedersehen" to Berlin. When he gets to Hong Kong, he awkwardly stammers out "ching chong cheng" before giving up and asking if any of his minions speak Chinese.
• shaun posits that Cho Chang, as the sole East Asian in the Harry Potter books, got her name from author J. K. Rowling making a something resembling name from Ching Chong.

Western Animation

• In the Family Guy episode "Jerome Is the New Black," Peter sees a Time-Life Music ad on TV for a compilation of "the Rat Pack's most bigoted songs," including one by Dean Martin called "Chinaman's Chance":
  ''And Mr. Chinaman say, in his Chinaman way
  a ding-a-ling, a ching-a-chong a ching-a-chong choo.
• The French dub of Futurama replaced the (relatively good) Cantonese swearing of Amy Wong from the English dub into this trope, a dark mark on an otherwise good dub.
• Grampa Simpson does this in The Simpsons, in the episode "Children of a Lesser Clod", when an Asian orderly (who is speaking perfect English) shows up to return him to the retirement home.
  Chinese Man: Come on Mr. Simpson, you need to be back at the Retirement Home.
  Grampa: Thank you Ping-Pong.
  Chinese Man: My name is Craig.
  Grampa: Suuure it is.
• South Park: when Butters and Cartman try to act Chinese when infiltrating a P. F. Chang's. Compared and contrasted against the restaurant's Chinese customers, who speak actual Mandarin.
• In Robot Chicken, President George Bush calls a Chinese ambassador (delivering a Gremlin) "Ching Chong" during their visit to the US.

---