Cho Chang is 1 of 3 Asian characters in the books. Seriously. There’s the Patil siblings and Cho. Rowling can shove all the representation now through Twitter that she wants, but let’s be real. Most likely she imagined Hogwarts as white with a total of maybe 5 students of color total. So let’s look at how Rowling saw fit to portray East Asians. Starting with the name.
Cho. Chang. I’m gonna take a wild guess and assume she was meant to be Chinese. Her name is LITERALLY TWO LAST NAMES. ONE OF WHICH ISN’T REALLY CHINESE. From what I can tell, Cho is a more common Korean last name. If Rowling was going for ‘accuracy’ then why not give Cho a name like Elizabeth, or Catherine if you want to keep the alliteration. Off to a great start here. Let’s take a look at her personality. What do we know about her? She’s vaguely popular, Harry finds her pretty, she’s sad most of the time because of Cedric’s death, and she’s a ravenclaw. I’d like bring the patil twibs back up again, because of one of them is also a ravenclaw. 2/3 of the named Asian characters are in the smart house. I’m just gonna leave that there. Obviously, having smart Asian characters isn’t a problem. I’m Chinese, and I was insanely proud of being a ravenclaw when I was 12. However. When you have 3 Asian characters total, and none of them are given an actual personality, maybe don’t put 2 of them in the ‘smart house’. I’m aware Cho Chang isn’t the most insensitive thing Rowling has ever written, but I think it’s telling that this is how she thinks she should write her singular East Asian character. A nonsensical name combined with the personality of sad and smart.