Ron, the Chinese Cho

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 21048

Too many ideas said:
> Personally, I have just always imagined that Filch is probably gay--this only adds to the lonliness and isolation from society
> that he feels at Hogwarts.  But as Jamieson implied, that is not the main issue for him.  His is squib shame.


Hmm, possible.  All the same, I've always found Filch's devotion to his cat a bit fishy.  Makes me wonder if, under the influence of Quikspell and Magigro potion, Filch summoned all his weedy powers to turn someone into a cat, missed, and hit his beloved, then could never get her to turn human again, leaving him twisted and bitter...

Emma:
> "True, Ron can be a bit needy.  But Ron is a teenage boy.  As a     
teenage girl, I'm going to offer my expert opinion that ALL teenage  
boys are needy.  He may not grow out of it completely, but it should 
lessen with time.  All teenagers are somewhat insecure, and this 
tends to lead to neediness.  I think Ron will get better as he gets  
older."
Scott:
> --I basically agree. As a teenage boy I'm going to offer the "expert" 
opinion that not *all of us* are *that* needy. I'm certainly needy to 
a certain extent, but I'm not that much like Ron, far more Harry or 
Hermione. 


I think the thing with Ron is that he, like Ginny, is too honest and upfront to hide his insecurity effectively.  Ron is the classic little brother who's always lived in the shadow of someone else, and is therefore very defensive about anything that lowers his status still further (e.g. poverty, taunting from Draco, etc.) and craves attention and adulation of his own.  Hermione, being JKR junior exaggerated, is therefore probably the "little girl who feels plain, and tries instead to gain control and praise by studying furiously and being better than everyone else at all things academic".  Especially in PS/SS, she really is a kid with something to prove.  Harry, having been raised in an atmosphere of hostility, contempt and disinterest, conceals how he feels (remember in CoS when Dumbledore asks him if he has anything to tell him and he goes through all his horrors privately and then replies "No"?)

Hui:
> Some Chinese families would be delighted if their daughter is
married to a rich white kid whose parent works as some kind
of an official (meaning a stable job!) It all depends on what
kind of family she's from. There're all types of Chinese
families! Some are more supportive of the kids' own choices
and some are more old-fashioned.


I also think there's a significant cultural difference between mainland Chinese families (you're from mainland China, right Hui?) and the overseas Chinese, particularly those living in Western countries (after all, China's changed a lot since most of the overseas Chinese left).  The ol' migrant fossilisation often means that migrants, especially those to a very different culture (e.g. US, Australia) have more old fashioned values: migrants often take with them the customs of the time when they left the motherland.  My mother's values are still pretty 1960s Malaysian Chinese, whereas my own visits to Malaysia and the international students from Malaysia I've met suggest a very different country.
 
Margaret:
> Well, I believe "Chang" is a Chinese name (rather than, say,
Japanese or Korean), but I'm not sure about "Cho."  She could be
a mix, of course, father Chinese and mother something else.
 
Milz:
> 'Cho' is a Japanese name, like the character 'Cho-Cho San' in the 
opera "Madame Butterfly". According to a Baby Names book at the 
office, the name 'Cho' means  'butterfly'-----something for the 
Animagi speculators  and the Patronus speculators to think about.

Hui:
> OTOH, "Cho" could be a Chinese name as well. It could mean "autumn"
(the chinese translator thought so), which is a plausible enough name for
a Chinese girl. Or it could mean "surpass," which is kind of boyish, but
not so bad either.


This is veering a bit OT into the dim fields of linguistics, but I've always assumed that Cho is overseas Chinese, not from China, as the romanisation for her name in hanyu pinyin (standard system in mainland China used for converting the sound of Chinese characters in Mandarin into the roman alphabet) would be Qiu Chang or Chou Chang (any comments, Hui??).  As her family are presumably living in England, they could well be Hong Kong Chinese, prior to the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, which would make them Cantonese speakers.  "Cho Chang" looks more like a romanised Cantonese name than a Mandarin name to me.
 
The real problem both we and the Chinese translator are having here is that we can't tell what "Cho Chang" really means because this is just a phonetic rendition of a name written in characters.  As Hui points out, there are lots of characters which could be pronounced "Cho" and "Chang", all with different meanings.  We'd have to ask JKR and see how much research she put into this, and whether she had any particular characters in mind...

Aberforth's goat:
> I think most readers are at least a little worried about Ron. His combination of
insecurity and jealousy, his lack of a defining quality or talent (apart
from chess-playing and bad jokes)--it's all a little worrisome.
 
Hey, remember that JKR based Ron on her best friend Sean, so I'm sure she's fond of him.  I think the best thing for Ron's insecurity and jealousy would be to achieve something truly great on his own, so he feels like a worthy, successful person in his own right, instead of just Percy's little brother, or Harry's sidekick.

Pippin:
> JKR has hinted that we are in for some startling developments in the Dursley family. Wouldn't it be ironic if Dudders 
turned out to be gay? 

Ooo, as JKR would say, well spotted!  Though I thought nancy boy wasn't as specific a term as all that, I though it just meant a boy who was a bit finicky and effeminate and wimpy, not specifically gay...



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