“Chuugoku” (中国), the Japanese name for “China”,¹⁾ is a dated nickname for the Touhou Project character, Hong Meiling, which was prevalent in the 2000s. It was often associated with an ill-treated, lazy depiction of her, likely for comedic reasons, but it can be interpreted as derogatory.

In the past, there was a time when Touhou Project fans couldn't figure out how to read her name, since it was the early 2000s and the profiles were buried in the omake.txt,²⁾ so the community had debates on whether her name was 'Kurenai Misuzu' (kun-reading) or 'Hong Meiling' (on-reading), then people joked that they simply call her 'Chuugoku' and the nickname managed to stick with the community for quite a while.

At one point, ZUN allegedly 'approved' of this nickname,³⁾⁴⁾ then he forgot that he did this,⁵⁾⁶⁾ and some fans believe he wasn't really taking the worldbuilding seriously at the time. In the canonical fighting games, there was a running gag of characters forgetting her name, then they kept bringing the cast back, so Meiling had to have actual character development as they couldn't keep recycling the joke.

The nickname roughly died after Meiling became a main character for Touhou Hisoutensoku in 2008, and the joke simply ran its course, similar to PAD Maid. In addition, the Touhou Project series ended up introducing more Chinese-style characters with the direction it was headed, such as Seiga or Junko, so the nickname will 'stick out' if it were tried today. Regardless, it's a legacy nickname, so it's still vaguely used.

• In the Touhou Soccer fan game, Meiling was 'Jack' (ジャック) in reference to Super Chinese.

• Murasaki Moyashi, PAD Maid - Other early nicknames for the Koumakan characters.
• Touhou Character Names (ZH)