The Disney film, Mulan,
tells the story of a young Chinese girl who pretends to be a boy and joins the
Chinese army as they prepare to fight the Huns. It’s one of my favorite Disney
films and was really the first time I watched a Disney movie with a girl power
theme. Mulan wasn’t a typical Disney princess. She wanted more than to just be
a wife. I remember when the film came out in high school how great it felt to have the main female character in a Disney film be a bad ass warrior.
The film itself is based on a Chinese legend, the “Ballad of
Mulan.” In the poem, which takes place in the Northern Wei, Hua Mulan takes her
father’s place in the army since he is old and her only brother is a child. She
was also known for her skills in martial arts and use of a sword. The tale goes
that she fought for twelve years with distinction but refused any reward,
opting instead to simply retire to her hometown.
Yet, if this were the whole of the story, it would be pretty
boring and definitely not qualify Hua Mulan as a bad ass. There is the story
above, but there is another story about Mulan that doesn’t have quite the same
happy ending. This is Chu Renhuo’s Romance
of the Sui and Tang.
In this tale, Mulan lives under Heshana Khan who agrees to
wage war against foreign invaders as an ally with the emergent Tang dynasty.
Like in the other version of the story, Mulan takes her father’s place in the
army because of his advanced age and her only male sibling is an infant. While
crossdressing as a man, she is intercepted by the Xia king, Dou Jiande, and
taken to his warrior princess daughter for questioning. This daughter, Xianniang,
first tries to recruit Mulan to her father’s army thinking that she is a man.
However, when she discovers that Mulan is also a women, the two become sworn
sisters.
This is where the story becomes more tragic. Ultimately,
Xianniang’s father is defeated. Both Mulan and Xianniang surrender with knives
in their mouths ready to be executed in Xianniang’s father stead. The Emperor
grants them reprieve and the imperial consort rewards Mulan with money to
provide for her parents and fund the princess’ wedding to the general Luō
Chéng. She is then given leave and returns home with plans to relocate to the
princess’ old capital of Leshou. There she finds that her father has died, and
her mother had remarried.
Still devastated by her father’s death, she is summoned to
the palace to become the Khan’s concubine. However, instead of suffering this
fate, Mulan commits suicide. Before she dies, she entrusts her younger sister,
Youlan, with Xianniang’s letter to her fiancé. Her sister dresses as a man to
deliver the message. After seeing through her disguise, Luō
Chéng turns his amorous attentions to Mulan’s sister.
Mulan’s final words are “I am a girl; I have been through
war and have done enough. I now want to be with my father.” She would rather
die than serve a foreign ruler as his concubine. There is an interesting
attitude in Asian cultures towards the act of suicide.
Ultimately, Mulan’s story is often regard as a legend rather
than a historical person since her name does not appear in Exemplary Women, a compilation of biographies of women during the
Northern Wei dynasty. That said, her story is included in Yan Xiyuan’s One Hundred Beauties, a compilation of
various women in Chinese folklore. While
she existed in the Shang dynasty centuries earlier, there is also a possibility
that this legend is based on Fu Hao, a Chinese female strategist.
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