Cho Chang

Cho Chang (born 1979) is a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of novels. She is a year older than Harry and is described as being very pretty and popular. Cho Chang plays Seeker for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team, and her favourite professional Quidditch team is the Tutshill Tornadoes. Her name seems to imply East Asian descent, very likely Korean or Chinese.

Cho was played by Katie Leung in the fourth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Harry first meets Cho during his third year at a Quidditch match. He notices that she is a "very pretty girl", which makes his stomach "feel funny", but other than exchanging a few one-liners during the game, the two of them do not interact.

During Harry's fourth year, his crush on Cho develops further. They exchange greetings at the Quidditch World Cup, and he later asks her to be his dancing partner at the Yule Ball. However, Cedric Diggory, one of the other champions of the Triwizard Tournament, is the first to have asked Cho out, and the two of them end up dating until Cedric is murdered by Peter Pettigrew on Lord Voldemort's orders at the end of the book. Nonetheless, Cho is still nice to Harry: for example, she refuses to wear one of Draco Malfoy's "Support Cedric Diggory/Potter Stinks" badges, a fact for which Harry is grateful.

At the beginning of Harry's fifth year, Cho surprises him by seeking him out several times and attempting to start conversations. Unfortunately for Harry, these encounters do not go well: the first time she comes by, she finds him covered with stinksap from one of Neville Longbottom's plants, and the second time she tries to talk with Harry, she ends up arguing with Ron Weasley about Quidditch teams instead. When invited, Cho and her friend Marietta Edgecombe join Dumbledore's Army, against the advice of their parents to remain on Dolores Umbridge's good side. Cho joins because Harry is the one teaching and because she is determined to fight against Voldemort after what happened to Cedric in the previous year. As a DA student, however, she has her ups and downs: she is able to conjure a corporeal patronus in the shape of a swan, but she also gets nervous and tends to mess up her spells when Harry is nearby. Harry and Cho share a kiss under a mistletoe shortly before Christmas, and on St. Valentine's Day they have a date of sorts in the all-wizard village of Hogsmeade, but Harry's inability to deal with Cho's continued grief over the death of Diggory, her jealousy of Harry's friendship with Hermione, and his overall inexperience in matters of the heart sour the experience.

When Marietta betrays Dumbledore's Army, she is afflicted by the hex placed by Hermione on the piece of parchment, signed earlier by all members of the DA. The pimples spell "sneak" on her forehead and prove to be impossible to remove. When Harry scorns Marietta for the betrayal, Cho defends her, irate at what she considers Hermione's "dirty trick"; this cools Harry and Cho's relationship considerably.

After the death of Sirius Black, Harry realises that his feelings for Cho have abated, perhaps because of his changed worldview. At the end of Harry's fifth year, Ginny Weasley reveals that Cho is dating Ginny's ex-boyfriend, Michael Corner. Harry's only reaction is to note that finding out she was now seeing someone else "did not hurt at all."

Cho barely makes an appearance in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Harry catches a glimpse of her hiding from him during the ride on the Hogwarts Express, and later mentions in a conversation with Ron that the two of them have "fallen apart". Since Cho is a year older than Harry and therefore leaves Hogwarts by the end of Harry's sixth year, it is doubtful that she is going to make much of an appearance in book 7, if any at all.

Though some have criticised that Cho Chang is a nonsensical stereotype of an East Asian name, it is worth noting that the vast majority of J.K. Rowling's character names have stereotypical ethnic connotations, employ hidden jokes, or use alliteration. For example, "Igor Karkaroff" is a stereotypical Slavic name, "Seamus Finnigan" is a stereotypical Irish name, and "Parvati Patil" is a stereotypical Indian name. The difficulty in the case of Cho is that it is impossible to precisely pinpoint her ethnic origin from her name: even though the surname Chang is most commonly found in China or Korea, there are no common given names that sound like "cho" in either of these countries. In fact, "Cho" is also a common Korean surname and it is possible that, not being very familiar with East Asian languages or traditions, Mrs. Rowling simply created a character using two surnames, not realising that she was committing this mistake.

In Chinese translations of the Harry Potter novels, Cho's given name is, "Autumn", pronounced "qiū" ("chiou") in Mandarin and "chāu" ("chow") in Cantonese. Since the action takes place in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong was under British control for a over a century, it would make 'historical' sense for Cho to be of Cantonese ancestry – in Cantonese is pronounced "chāu jēung" ("chow cheung"), which is a fair romanisation of her name into English. It is worth noting, that "chāu jēung" sounds close to the Cantonese word for 'frustrating', which somehow fits her character in the books, and, with a different tone, Mandarin "qiu" means "ball" (qiú), which is a clever pun on Cho's role as the Ravenclaw seeker, though it is unclear whether these are intentionally placed there by translators, or are just mere coincidences. Incidentally, the actress who portrays Cho in the movies, Katie Leung, is also of Cantonese origin.

"Cho" also means "butterfly" in Japanese, but since the surname "Chang" is not found among ethnic Japanese, it is probably just a coincidence.