May be a stupid question, but was dueling a guy who had red-eyes spirit face down, and the person was still able to activate. They didn't activate on summon of chow and I knew it was a trap card, so I chose trap.....
Some cards can be chained, in this case Red Eyes Spirit can be activated at any Phase of the player's turn so it can chain to Chow Len. Cards like Floodgate/Wall of D can only activate when certain criteria allows them to, so Chow Len can stop these cards.