Taming the Barbarian Empress: Post-alteric Imaginary of Gender Egalitarianism and Pan-Chinese Nationalism in the Legend of Xiao Chuo

Representations of ethnic minority women often symbolized China’s efforts in nation-building. This study uses insights from the post-alteric frame to analyze the images of the Khitan empress Xiao Yanyan in the 2020 TV series the Legend of Xiao Chuo (LXC). It uses a critical multimodal discourse analysis of the series and viewer comments to examine three images of Xiao as her relationships with two romantic partners unfolds: the unruly and innocent child; the self-sacrificing political victim; and the pan-Chinese superheroine. Taming the great Khitan empress has created a spectacular matriarchal fiction for cosmopolitan Chinese post-feminists and endorsed the grand narrative of assimilating ethnic minorities into the building of China’s identity as a pan-Chinese “melting-pot.”