Hua Mulan


Hua Mulan was a legendary/fictional female warrior from the Northern and Southern dynasties period of Chinese history, originally described in the Ballad of Mulan. In the ballad, Hua Mulan, disguised as a man, takes her aged father's place in the army. Mulan fought for twelve years and gained high merit, but she refused any reward and retired to her hometown.
The historic setting of Ballad of Mulan is in the Northern Wei, whereas a later adaptation has her active around the founding of the Tang c. 620. In 621, the founder of the Tang dynasty emerged victorious over Wang Shichong and Dou Jiande. The latter sired Dou Xianniang, another female warrior who became Mulan's laotong in the Sui Tang Romance.
The story of Hua Mulan has inspired a number of screen and stage adaptations. The Hua Mulan crater on Venus is named after her.

History

The Ballad of Mulan was first transcribed in the Musical Records of Old and New in the 6th century. The earliest extant text of the poem comes from an 11th- or 12th-century anthology known as the Music Bureau Collection. Its author, Guo Maoqian, explicitly mentions the Musical Records of Old and New as his source for the poem. As a ballad, the lines do not necessarily have equal numbers of syllables. The poem consists of 31 couplets, and is mostly composed of five-character phrases, with a few extending to seven or nine.
An adaptation by playwright Xu Wei dramatized the tale as "The Female Mulan", in two acts. Later, the character of Mulan was incorporated into the , a novel written by.
Over time, the story of Hua Mulan rose in popularity as a folk tale among the Chinese people.

Name

In Chinese, her name means magnolia. The heroine of the poem is given different family names in different versions of her story. According to later books such as Female Mulan, her family name is Zhu, while the Sui Tang Romance says it is Wei. The family name Hua, which was introduced by Xu Wei, has become the most popular in recent years in part because of its more poetic meaning.

Historicity

Mulan is most likely a legend rather than a historical person, and her name does not appear in Exemplary Women which is a compilation of biographies of women during the Northern Wei dynasty. Her legend is, however, included in Yan Xiyuan's One Hundred Beauties which is a compilation of various women in Chinese folklore.

Plot

Ballad of Mulan

The Ballad of Hua Mulan is set in the Northern Wei era. The poem starts with Mulan sitting worriedly at her loom, as one male from each family is called to serve in the army to defend the Tuoba realm from Rouran invaders. Her father is old and weak, and her younger brother is just a child, so she decides to take his place and bids farewell to her parents, who support her. She is already skilled in fighting, having been taught martial arts, sword fighting, and archery by the time she enlists in the army. After twelve years of fighting, the army returns and the warriors are rewarded. Mulan turns down an official post, and asks only for a camel to carry her home. She is greeted with joy by her family. Mulan dons her old clothes and meets her comrades, who are shocked that in the 12 years of their enlistment together, they did not realize that she was a woman.

''Sui Tang Romance''

Chu Renhuo's Sui Tang romance provides additional backdrops and plot-twists. Chu placed Mulan under the rule of Heshana Khan of the Western Turkic Khaganate. When the Khan agrees to wage war in alliance with the emergent Tang dynasty, which was poised to conquer all of China, Mulan's father Hua Hu fears he will be conscripted into military service since he only has two daughters and an infant son. Mulan dresses as a man and enlists in her father's stead. She is intercepted by the forces of the Xia king Dou Jiande and is brought under questioning by the king's warrior daughter Xianniang, who tries to recruit Mulan as a man. Discovering Mulan to be a fellow female warrior, she is so delighted that they become sworn sisters.
In the Sui Tang Romance, Mulan comes to a tragic end, which "differs from the endings of most of the Hua Mulan legends." Xianniang's father is vanquished after siding with the enemy of the Tang dynasty, and the two sworn sisters, with knives in their mouths, surrender themselves to be executed in the place of the condemned man. The act of filial piety wins reprieve from Emperor Taizong of Tang and the imperial consort who was birth-mother to the Emperor bestows money to Mulan to provide for her parents and wedding funds for the princess who confessed to having promised herself to general .
Mulan is given leave to journey back to her homeland, and once arrangements were made for Mulan's parents to relocate, it is expected that they will all be living in the princess's old capital of Leshou. Mulan is devastated to discover her father has long died and her mother has remarried. According to the novel, Mulan's mother was surnamed Yuan and remarried a man named Wei. Even worse, the Khan has summoned her to the palace to become his concubine.
Rather than suffer this fate, she commits suicide. But before she dies, she entrusts an errand to her younger sister, Youlan, which was to deliver Xianniang's letter to her fiancé, Luó Chéng. This younger sister dresses as a man to make her delivery, but her disguise is discovered, and it arouses her recipient's amorous attention.
In the novel, Mulan's father was from Hebei during the Northern Wei dynasty while her mother was from the Central Plain of China. But "even a Chinese woman would prefer death by her own hand to serving a foreign ruler," as some commentators have explained this Mulan character's motive for committing suicide. Mulan's words before she committed suicide were, "I'm a girl, I have been through war and have done enough. I now want to be with my father."

Modern adaptations

The story of Hua Mulan has inspired a number of screen and stage adaptations, including:

Stage

Television series