Chinese, the

Since Britain as a colonial power did not engage with China even on a diplomatic level until 1793, and Chinese visitors were rare in Britain, there are comparatively few terms for them in British English. However, Chinese indentured laborers arrived in numbers in America during the California Gold Rush of 1849 and shortly after that in Australia. Because of their low immigrant status, economic competitiveness, and obvious cultural differences, the Chinese were given a great variety of nicknames. Of these, chink , recorded from about 1880 in America and from the 1890s in Australia, has become dominant.

Describing the community’s sociolinguistic status in the United States, Irving Lewis Allen observed: “The Chinese are so various nicknamed [Allen documents 38 different names] because in the nineteenth century they were the largest Asian immigrant minority in the nation and they were thought to be the ‘ultimate alien.’ The terms, many of them dating from the 1870s and 1880s, clearly echo the resentments toward the mass immigration of cheap industrial labor, which forced competition with white, native-born labor. Compounding these conflicts with the native-born, the Chinese often settled in big cities and into large and pertinacious enclaves, which heightened their visibility” (1983, 94).

The terms range from ironic cultural references, such as buddha-head, celestian , and little-brown-brother to the overtly hostile moon-eyed leper, squint-eyes, yellow-belly, yellow-peril , and yellow-bastard . Even apparently innocent terms provoke anger in the target community, as H.L. Mencken noted: “The Chinese greatly dislike the terms Chinaman and Chinee , just as the Japanese dislike Jap ” (1945, 374).

The Chinese community has in typical fashion attracted many ethnic stereotypes and jokes. In his Dictionary of Invective (1989), Hugh Rawson lists sixteen phrases using Chinese as an epithet, suggesting incompetence, fraud, or disorganization. They include Chinese ace , “an inept aviator”; Chinese deal , “a pretended deal”; and Chinese fire drill , “sheer chaos.” However, not a Chinaman’s chance —that is, no chance at all—reveals their disadvantageous situation.

In Australia a remarkably similar situation developed. Even the basic term Chinaman carried considerable hostility, as is seen in the Sydney Bulletin in 1887: “No nigger, no Chinaman, no lascar, no kanaka [laborer from the South Sea Islands], no purveyor of cheap labour, is an Australian.” Chink is recorded from about 1890, chinkie from about 1876, followed by a whole host of terms—namely chows, opium smokers, quangs, slants, paddies , and yellow bastards . In Our Australian Cousins (1879), James Inglis noted that, for some reason, the Chinese were especially incensed by the label of paddy , commonly used of the Irish. On a geopolitical front, the ominous formulation yellow peril dates from about 1900.