ABSTRACT
As both evidence and a result of the accelerating globalization undergone by the Chinese media and Chinese society at large, images of foreigners and foreign countries have nowadays become ubiquitous on the Chinese TV screen. They reflect the popular imagination of the Other and partake in constructing a “modern” and cosmopolitan image of China. Through the Self/Other dichotomy, television has, and continues to, play an important role in articulating a Chinese national identity and promoting Chinese nationalism as an ideology. This chapter focuses on critical readings of images of foreigners in recent popular TV drama serials – in particular, Modern Family and My Natasha – in light of the dynamic interplay between nationalism, Occidentalism, and self-Orientalism.
