Dragon Lady

[1][2] Inspired by the characters played by actress Anna May Wong,[3] the term comes from the female villain in the comic strip Terry and the Pirates.

[3] Wong plays Princess Ling Moy, a version of Fu Manchu's daughter Fah Lo Suee.

Today, "Dragon Lady" is often applied anachronistically to refer to persons who lived before the term became part of American slang in the 1930s.

For example, one finds the term in recent works about the "Dragon Lady" Empress Dowager Cixi (Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi; Chinese: 慈禧太后; pinyin: Cíxī Tàihòu; Wade–Giles: Tz'u2-hsi1 T'ai4-hou4), who was alive at the turn of the 20th century,[11] or references to Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong as having started her career in the 1920s and early 1930s in "Dragon Lady" roles.

[16] Josef von Sternberg's 1941 The Shanghai Gesture contains a performance by Ona Munson as 'Mother' Gin Sling, the proprietor of a gambling house, that bears mention within presentations of the genre.

Contemporary actresses such as Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies may be constrained by the stereotype even when playing upstanding characters.

[15] Lucy Liu is a 20th and 21st century example of the Hollywood use of the Dragon Lady image, in her roles in Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and its sequel, and Payback.

An example of headwear for Dragon Lady costumes is the Hakka hat or other headdresses with eastern inspiration.

Examples of this in The World of Suzie Wong include Nancy Kwan's character in cheongsam that accentuates her hips and breasts.