Historical Usage
The prevalent usage of this phrase began as an insult during the gold-rush eras of the 19th century in Ballarat, Australia, when the Chinese gold prospectors were of Ch'ing (which is in Wade-Giles romanization, Chinese character: 清, also spelled "Qing" in Pinyin romanization) Dynasty origin.
While usually intended for ethnic Chinese, the slur has also been directed at other East Asians. Mary Paik Lee, a Korean immigrant who arrived with her family in San Francisco in 1906, writes in her autobiography that on her first day of school, girls circled and hit her, chanting:
Ching Chong, Chinaman,
Sitting on a wall.
Along came a white man,
And chopped his tail off.
A variation of this rhyme is repeated by a young boy in John Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row in mockery of a Chinese man. In this version, "wall" is replaced with "rail", and the phrase "chopped his tail off" is changed to "chopped off his tail".
In 1917, a ragtime piano song entitled "Ching Chong" was co-written by Lee S. Roberts and J. Will Callahan. Its lyrics contained the following words:
"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."
In the United States, Asian Americans have historically been slow in responding to negative speech.
Read more about this topic: Ching Chong
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