Origins-Disney Version

Mulan

Mulan, or Hua Mulan* is a legendary Chinese heroine. Was she a real person? Maybe. If so, she would have come from the Central Plain sometime before the Tang Dynasty. The oldest story featuring Mulan is a 6th century poem by an anonymous author, called Mulan Shi, or The Ballad of Mulan.

The poem is only 62 lines, making for the barest scaffold of a story. It begins with Mulan weaving as she worries about the conscription notices she saw at the market. Her only brother is too young to go to war, so she dresses up as a man to go in her father’s place. She spends twelve years away at war, and no one discovers that she is female. Just like in the Disney movie, she is offered a minister’s position by the emperor, but chooses to return to her family instead. Once she goes home, she dresses as a woman again. Her comrades of over a decade see her and are super surprised. In closing, she tells them an allegory about rabbits. It basically says that in times of danger, it is difficult to tell men from women.

The playwright Xu Wei expanded on the story in the 16th century, during the late Ming Dynasty. He provided the reason Mulan had to go instead of her father (old age and illness). By the time of the Ming play, foot binding was in common practice, adding a complication to the gender-switch. The play describes how she painfully unbinds her feet and learns to walk normally again. Also included is a magical potion that can rebind her feet when she returns home. In the play, her parents arrange a marriage to a neighbor and accomplished scholar. After she gives up her incredibly successful military career, she happily marries and defers to him.

As you might have noticed, the original Mulan was probably not a feminist story. Mulan holds a traditional female role, converts to a male when necessary, and then returns home to resume her place as a woman. Mulan is actually a story of family devotion, and in particular, filial devotion to her father. Disney may have depicted her as defying her father by joining the military, but in all the Chinese versions I’ve encountered, she gets permission from her parents before she leaves. In many versions, she defeats her father in combat to prove that she should be the one to go to war.

Her struggle to gain military prowess, and the threat of death should she be revealed, were Disney inventions. It’s natural that they wanted to make her an underdog and provide the story with more conflict, but in all the Chinese stories, military aptitude was not a problem. Many of the stories describe how she practiced martial arts before she ever thought of joining the military, and was wildly successful once she did.* Keeping her sex a secret was never about threat of death, it was about protecting her virtue from the men around her.

Her virtue was the unfortunate focus of a couple famous novels about her during the Qing Dynasty, when the cult of chastity was in full steam. These stories were both tragedies. In Sui Tang Yanyi by Chu Renhuo, she comes home to find that her father is dead and that she’s been ordered to be the Khan’s concubine. Instead, she kills herself on her father’s grave.* In the novel Mulan qinü zhuan, after she reveals her gender to the Emperor, he becomes suspicious that she may be a traitor, and plots to assassinate her. Hearing about his scheme, Mulan kills herself in front of his envoy in an incredibly gruesome manner.*

The happy, feminist patriot who probably inspired the Disney version came from the twentieth century. The Disney love interest originated in a popular movie that came out in 1939, Mulan congjun. The producer threw out the marriage arranged by her parents for one with General Liu Yuandu, who she falls in love with while she’s in the military. In the 1964 opera Lady General Hua Mulan, his name becomes General Li. He longs for Mulan too, making him super confused about his sexuality. After he rationalizes their feelings as brotherly love, Mulan tells Li that if he could turn into a woman, she would marry him. She does marry him in the end, but first she has to fend off the men who want her to marry their daughters.