Ling Woo is a fictional character in the US comedy-drama Ally McBeal, portrayed by Chinese-American actress Lucy Liu.

[2] At the time, she was cited as the most famous and only significant[3][4] representative of Asian women on US television (besides news anchors and reporters).

[5] Ally McBeal is an American television series created by David E. Kelley which ran on the Fox network from 1997 to 2002.

[6] Ling Woo was a character written by Kelley specifically for actress Lucy Liu after she failed to secure the role of Nelle Porter in the show.

[7] Woo appeared for the first time in the second season as a client suing a Howard Stern-like talk show host named Wick.

[4] In 1994 Margaret Cho had a brief prime-time show called All American Girl, which was not popular with audiences and did not last a full season.

[4] Unlike the 1970s depictions of docile East Asian women on TV, Ling's character was the opposite, but still a classic stereotype, that of the Dragon Lady.

[1] At the time, she was the only significant representative of Asian women on television[4] in the United States (besides news anchors and reporters),[5] leaving no one else to counteract this prominent stereotype.

[12] Describing her as "fearsome, devouring, vicious, cool," and with an "exotic sexuality", Georgia State University professor Greg Smith sees Woo as a stereotype of Asian women, a "Dragon Lady".

[6] Woo is the only major character in Ally McBeal who does not have an origin story for her particular neurosis,[11] and is exempt from the psychoanalytic focus given to others in the series, which Smith attributes to her Asian "mysteriousness".

[11] Woo is cast as a villain,[13] underscored by her frequent appearance to the theme music that accompanied the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz.

"[11] University of Wyoming Associate Professor Tracey Patton sees Woo as the embodiment of the Asian fantasy woman, the seductive temptress expert in eroticism who is knowledgeable in the art of sexual pleasure unknown to the Western world.

[4] In one episode, she agreed to have sex only after her partner signed a health waiver and confidentiality agreement to protect her sexual secrets.

[13] Woo's sexual foreplay with Richard Fish included sucking his fingers, dropping hot wax on him, and performing a "hair-tickling massage" on his bare chest.

In regards to this encounter, Jeff Yang stated: "What she offered was not too far from an Oriental massage – hair splayed across his chest, his stricken face, the whole interracial thing.

Darrell Hamamoto, Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis, describes Ling as "a neo-Orientalist masturbatory fantasy figure concocted by a white man whose job it is to satisfy the blocked needs of other white men who seek temporary escape from their banal and deadening lives by indulging themselves in a bit of visual cunnilingus while relaxing on the sofa.

One episode features a dream sequence in which Ally McBeal and Ling Woo go on a date and kiss on screen.

[1] The episode won its time slot among young adult viewers during its showing in the November 1999 sweeps, even beating Monday Night Football.

[14] Woo made the "damn hot kiss" even hotter because "she's the exotic, erotic experimenter of the group", according to Scott Seomin, media director at that time for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

[11] She frequently responds with a range of animal growls and snarls[11] and breathes fire like a literal manifestation of dragon lady.

[11] Smith sees these effects as reinforcing the bestial undertone of the Asian stereotype, making her appear inhuman.