The origin of "La Chinita"

Yesterday, I was talking to a football teammate of mine who is Asian and also named Julia. She told me she had a friend, Ellen, who was going to come and play next week. Without even thinking, I asked, “Oh, she’s china too, right?” with the Spanish pronunciation of China (cheena). My meaning was, “She’s Asian too, right?” Vanessa, our Mexican friend, about busted a gut laughing.

My Mexican football teammates started calling me “chinita” (Chinese girl) early on in my career in the local Mexican league, which I joined when I was 17. I think it was partly because I was Asian, and partly because my name could be a Mexican name, but my features were most definitely not Mexican, and they were confused by the incongruity. At the time, I thought they were making an assumption about my heritage, but I was too shy to ask them about it. When they asked me where I was from, I told them I was from Korea, but they still called me “chinita,” and gradually, I came to understand that it was just a habit, that Mexicans and Latinos in general just called all Asians “chino/china.”

I also found “chinita” to be endearing in its own right. First of all, the “—ita” suffix made it seem more of an affectionate term, rather than merely a label, or worse, something derogatory. Second, by using the Spanish word for Asian, I felt that my teammates were acknowledging my roots, as well as accepting those roots into the community. Far from being offended, I felt proud that this one term, “chinita,” could encompass both my Asian roots and my ability to speak Spanish as equally important parts of my identity.

Not that my teammates don’t know or acknowledge my Korean heritage. When school took me away from last summer’s season before it had ended, spectators in both leagues asked my teammates, “Where’s the Chinese girl?” My teammates responded, “She’s not Chinese, she’s Korean.”