Opinion | What the popularity of a Qing dynasty drama, The Story of Yanxi Palace, says about China’s appetite for feminism

Haining Liu says underlying the runaway success of the Chinese TV series are regressive and patriarchal attitudes to women that persist even in the aftermath of China’s #MeToo movement

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Consorts of the Qianglong Emperor take centre stage in the Chinese drama The Story of Yanxi Palace. Photo: Handout

Published: 8:00am, 19 Sep 2018Updated: 10:07am, 19 Sep 2018

Actress Cynthia Nixon did not get very far in her recent efforts to become New York governor. Disappointing. But when she first announced she was running for office, I felt my virtual reality had finally coincided with real life. The strong-minded female lawyer Miranda, who Nixon played in the popular show Sex and the City , stepped off the television screen as an aspiring politician, thrusting the series that captivated audiences at the turn of the millennium into relevance again today.

In China, a different type of drama is dominating the screens of millions of viewers – stories of love and palace intrigue at the court of the Qianlong Emperor (1735-1796) during the Qing dynasty and featuring his many wives and concubines. The new champion is The Story of Yanxi Palace, which set a single-day viewer record on August 12 with 530 million people tuning in, and garnered over 15 billion views by its finale on August 27. About 82 per cent of those viewers were women, according to Yi En Data, a mobile-based application monitoring viewership.

What’s not to like? The residents of the Forbidden City looks fantastic in luxurious silk costumes with beautiful accessories. The series works even better if the female viewer imagines herself as the heroine, adored by the most powerful man, defeating every other woman to win his heart and being chosen as his favourite consort. The combination of love and power is intoxicating.

But every time I threw myself into watching the series, something didn’t feel quite right.

In The Story of Yanxi Palace and many similar Qing court dramas, a woman’s virtue is judged by how obedient she is to her husband, the emperor, and how many male offspring she provides him with. Her existence is defined by the status conferred on her by one man in exchange for her own identity. To be successful on this path, she must be pretty, fertile, gentle and resourceful, embodying perfection without being herself. On her deathbed, the first wife of the Qianlong Emperor is said to have yelled out, “Who am I really?”, offering an unusual feminist twist.