Hua Mulan: a Girl Worth Fighting

Hua Mulan: A Girl Worth Fighting For Hilary Sotomayor Hua Mulan, the female Chinese warrior made famous worldwide in Disney’s Mulan (1998), has had a long celebrated cultural, historical, and political significance within Chinese society. The classic tale describes the life of a young woman who saves her ill and aging father from serving in the war by taking his place in the army. She conceals her identity for twelve years without being detected and achieves great status and victories in the military. In most adaptations of the story of Mulan, the story ends with Mulan rejecting all offers of valour, high status, and riches that the Khan offers her, and requesting to return home to her family. When she reaches her home, she discards her military garb and returns to her regular life as a filial and loyal daughter. Through these examples of virtue and loyalty, Mulan demonstrates characteristics worth emulating in Chinese culture, as shown through her continuing presence in Chinese culture. Since its earliest known publication in the sixth century A.D., the story of Mulan has had plenty of time to be preserved, revived, readapted, and incorporated into various cultural, historical, and political contexts. Because of the high esteem that the Chinese have held for Hua Mulan and her valorous deeds, it is natural that the story of Hua Mulan has had innumerable retellings of her actions and virtue over the last millennium. Each adaptation was created for its own purpose, be it entertainment or propaganda, and each adaptation carries its own unique context. Sharing the common plot line as described in the Ballad of Mulan, each version of Mulan uses her story, and the character herself, to send their own messages about virtuous characteristics that the Chinese ought to emulate, opinions on the state, and thinly veiled discussions of gender norms in Chinese society, in both ancient and modern China. In order to create a succinct summary of the ways that Hua Mulan has been conscripted for certain needs, a wide selection of mediums have been selected to supplement this discussion. This selection includes the original poem, various plays from the Ming dynasty and the early twentieth century, and movies from the early twentieth century, concluding with a discussion on Disney’s Mulan, one of the most recent versions of Hua Mulan. Comparing and contrasting versions of Hua Mulan’s stories will explore the question of what sort of woman she was, and the reason why she has continued to retain her relevance through to present day. Despite the many inevitable distortions that come with the many adaptations of a single story, Mulan has survived the test of time while maintaining at least some semblance of its original meaning and sentiment. 42 Given the large amount of time that Mulan has existed in Chinese culture, it is inevitable that historiographical debates about her origins appear numerous times in both scholarship and popular discussions within societies that have access to the story of Mulan. There have been many different accounts of when the original poem dates to, ranging from the fourth century, to the Northern Wei dynasty to the Sui.1 Because of this ambiguity, there are questions of whether or not Mulan actually existed, what ethnicity she actually was, or if the legend was written about similar events in contemporary scholarship. It is also debated whether or not the original ballad is fabricated.2 However, these details are not important to Mulan’s story, since the meanings she carries for the Chinese are far greater than the scope of these debates. The fact that children today are religiously taught the ballad in primary school textbooks attests to the minute importance attached to the historically vague nature of Mulan.3 Since her creation in the fourth-sixth centuries A.D., Mulan has acted as an example of the ideal person, and is commonly perceived as the most influential woman warrior in Chinese history.4 Mulan has been emphasised for her filial piety, state loyalty, valour, bravery, intellect, and military prowess in most adaptations of Mulan’s story; all qualities that writers and readers feel embody the ideal virtues of Chinese society.5 Although not initially written to portray Confucian values, much of what is treasured about Mulan in later versions of her story are her chastity, filial piety and loyalty to the state, often via her “female duties” and temporary male ones.6 Naturally, subsequent versions attach their own meanings to the tale of Mulan in their 1 Chuanmao Tian and Caixia Xiong, “A Cultural Analysis of Disney’s Mulan with Respect to Translation,” Continuum 27, no. 6 (2013): 865; Louise Edwards, “Transformations of the Woman Warrior Hua Mulan: From Defender of the Family to Servant of the State,” Nan Nü 12 (2010): 177; Hao Fu, “Biographical Sketches,” Chinese Studies in History 35, no. 2 (2001-2002): 30; Anna Wing Bo Tso, “Female Cross-Dressing in Chinese Literature Classics and Their English Versions,” Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal 16, no. 1 (2014): 114. 2 Tian and Xiong, 865; Feng Lan, “The Female Individual and the Empire: A Historicist Approach to Mulan and Kingston’s Woman Warrior,” Comparative Literature 55, no. 3 (2003): 232; Fu, 30; Shiamin Kwa and Wilt L. Idema, “Mulan: Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend with Related Texts,”. Edited by Shiamin Kwa and Wilt L. Idema (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2010): xii. 3 Tian and Xiong, 865; Jinhua Li, “Mulan (1998) and Hua Mulan (2009): National Myth and Trans- Cultural Intertextuality,” in Heroism and Gender in War Films. Edited by Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Jakub Razecki (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014): 187, 189; Qian Ma, Women in Traditional Chinese Theatre: The Heroine’s Play (New York: University Press of America, 2005): 34. 4 Fu, 30-31; Zhang Renjie, “Ode to Mulan: Seeing the Animated Film Mulan,” Chinese Sociology and Anthropology 32, no. 2 (Winter 1999-2000): 32; Li, 187, 189; Kwa and Idema, xii. 5 Lan, 229, 232; Fu, 31; Edwards, “Transformations of the Woman Warrior Hua Mulan: From Defender of the Family to Servant of the State,”, 177; Max L. Bohnenkamp, “An Anonymous Work from the Book of the Manor House of Lord Che,” translated by Max L. Bohnenkamp and Na Xin in The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011): 326; Kwa and Idema, vii. 6 Tso Wing Bo, 114-115; Lan, 232-233; Li, 189. 43 own contexts, with some versions depending on the last known version of Mulan for further additions to China’s “heroic tradition”.7 Building off of the filial piety and virtue present in the original ballad, subsequent versions have added characteristics such as the four womanly virtues of Confucianism (chastity and fidelity, womanly words, womanly bearing, and womanly works) wherein one ought to behave modestly, speak softly, dress up prettily, and do their women’s work diligently to please and honour the husband and family, as seen through various references to Mulan’s work on the loom.8 The addition of chastity to Mulan’s story came in the Song dynasty, which raised moral issues around the chastity of women at war.9 The versatility of the story of Mulan is, in part, what continued its active participation in Chinese culture.10 Without it, there would be nothing that modern audiences would find relatable in her story, as strict gender norms are slowly and intentionally being dismantled within most modern societies today. Issues of Mulan using cross-dressing in order to cross gender boundaries are often discussed within later versions of Mulan, and by scholars who have written about her. Although one might assume that the strict dichotomy of male and female roles in ancient Chinese society would make cross-dressing, especially for a woman to enter a “man’s world”, highly treacherous, cross- dressing was viewed as amusing or as a seemingly simple plot device.11 The original ballad, for example, makes no mention of Mulan’s crossdressing until the end of the poem, where she reveals herself to be a woman to her comrades after twelve years of concealing it. Mulan’s cross-dressing was accepted by audiences because of the urgency of the situation, and is figured as a solution that aids in fulfilling her filial piety and loyalty to the state.12 Additionally, what solves the issue of Mulan gaining power in the “man’s world” is her return to the domestic sphere.13 Given the ballad’s lack of attention to her cross-dressing, it is not surprising that patriarchal themes still exist within the story, despite feminist interpretations that came into play in the early twentieth century, especially with the creation of Disney’s adaptation in 1998. 7 Lan, 229; Joseph R. Allen, “Dressing and Undressing the Chinese Woman Warrior,” positions 4, no. 2 (1996): 346; Edwards, “Transformations of the Woman Warrior Hua Mulan: From Defender of the Family to Servant of the State,”, 175-177; Li, 189; Kwa and Idema, vii, xii. 8 Tso Wing Bo, 115, 118. 9 Lan, 233; Edwards, “Transformations of the Woman Warrior Hua Mulan: From Defender of the Family to Servant of the State,”, 180 10 Kwa and Idema, xii; Edwards, “Transformations of the Woman Warrior Hua Mulan: From Defender of the Family to Servant of the State,”, 176. 11 Tso Wing Bo, 112; Edwards, “Transformations of the Woman Warrior Hua Mulan: From Defender of the Family to Servant of the State,”, 177. 12 Allen, 347; Roland Allenburger, “Is it Clothes that Makes the Man? Cross-Dressing, Gender and Sex in Pre-Twentieth Century Zhu Yingtai Lore,” Asian Folklore Studies 64, no.

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