Qu Yongxian has served as assistant researcher of the Institute of Ethnic Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences since 2009. Her research focuses especially on the myth of southern ethnic minorities and the epic of Dai people. Her publications (all in Chinese) include “Searching for the Epos of the Dai People” (2010), “The Female Inheritors Who Sing the Dai’s Poetry” (2011), “The Textualized Form of Dai Narrative” (2011), and “The Dai and Tai People from Southern China to Southeast Asia” (2012).