The Meaning of Mulan, Part 1

Below: Calligraphic Copy of the Ballad of Mulan penned by Song Dynasty calligrapher Mi Fu. c. 1094 C.E.

As a cultural touchstone, the cross-dressing warrior woman Mulan entered the wider, non-Asian consciousness in 1998, with the release of the eponymous animated Disney movie. Of course, your average Westerner knows little or less of the intricacies of Chinese history, and more than once have people referenced this Disney movie to me implying it as an authentic source on Chinese history.

(No, Dad, not just you.)

A few years ago, someone on r/AskHistorians, where I’ve often answered questions regarding Himalayan and Buddhist history, asked this question in relation to the story of Mulan:

In case you need a refresher, this question is in reference to how in the plot of the animated movie, Mulan puts her and her family at risk by dressing in men’s clothes and taking her father’s place in the Army. Discovery risks not only her life, but also the “honor” of her family.

Which brings up the poster’s question.

What exactly is the function of honor at stake here?

My original answer to this question, a dizzying-ly brief survey and description of Chinese history and philosophy earned me the coveted User’s Choice Best Answer, October 2019 Award, and 3rd Place in total for the year of 2019. For which I was awarded an r/AskHistorians mug.

Finally... it was all worth it.

I’d like to revisit this question and reexamine the sources in question with as much of a critical eye as I can: Guo Maoqian’s Ballad of Mulan, Chu Renhuo’s Romance of Sui and Tang, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and Disney’s Mulan (1998).

Like following the Norse gods from Snorri Sturleson’s Poetic Edda to Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok, this route passes through diverse centuries, national cultures, and landscapes of personality, which the face and voice of Mulan gives life and meaning to, every time.

I. Guo Maoqian’s Ballad of Mulan (12th Century)

It is unlikely that we will ever know if Hua Mulan1 was a real person or not, despite the “Hua Family Mausoleum” that one can visit today in Yan’an, Shanxi Province (which postdates the earliest extant evidence of such a person). Hua Mulan, or any variant of such a name, does not appear in historically attested documents until the 12th Century, in a Song Dynasty collection of yuefu folk songs assembled by one Guo Maoqian.

There is very little known about Guo himself. He was a minor official in the 11th Century, and the first of a family of five sons and five daughters. He was appointed to a government post in Hunan Province in 1084, and from there everything about him that is neither music nor poetry related essentially ends.2

Music and poetry appear to be a passion, or at least an obsession, of Guo’s. In his Anthology of Yuefu Poetry (樂府詩集), he collected nearly six thousand pieces.3 Among them was The Ballad of Mulan.

The Ballad begins with Mulan sitting, suddenly stopping an extremely important, very feminine activity: weaving at her loom:

The sound of one sigh after another, As Mulan weaves at the doorway. No sound of the loom and shuttle, Only that of the girl lamenting.4

Opening the ballad with Mulan weaving and then stopping is meant to demonstrate the end of her femininity. According to Xiaosu Sun in their 2008 dissertation, Mulan on Page and Stage, 

The embroidered luxury clothes had represented high civilization and symbols of political power since the Shang and the Zhou period; the women who knew how to produce fancy textiles were controlled as slaves.5 Weaving as traditional nügong “womanly work” has always been associated with both family and civic virtue. ... Domestic textile tasks such as weaving and embroidery were also seen as an exercise in filial piety … 6

Of filial piety, much more will be said, its importance for now is that it is symbolic of Mulan’s devotion to her father.

The ballad then lays out how war has come to Mulan’s country. We are told this through Mulan’s own voice, saying that she saw the “battle rolls” issued by the Khan. And that they all listed her father’s name. Since Mulan has no brothers, it means her father must go to war.7

Notably, the poem refers not to the Emperor, but to the Khan. This remains one of our more potent cues that The Ballad is set in, and Mulan owes her loyalty to, a non-Han Chinese liege. Most point to a country on the northern Chinese plain, who were made up of the Tabgach people, referred to in Chinese as the Tuoba, who took on the dynastic (i.e. governmental) name Wei, to be distinguished from an array of other “Weis” by specifying them as the Northern Wei.8 While signifying slightly different things, for the purpose of this article, they are interchangeable terms.

Below: Map showing the Northern Wei (Tuoba) and Southern Qi. The Tuoba predated and lasted longer than the Southern Qi, so this map portrays the state of continental East Asia some time between 479 and 502.

The Huns, known in Chinese as the Xiongnu and the antagonists of Mulan (1998), had not been a threat to the northern Chinese plain for at least two centuries. By the Northern Wei the primary security risk in this part of the country was the Rouren.

Many in the West associate Buddhism with China, including some who worked in Disney.9 Though when Buddhism first appeared in China during the Western Han Dynasty (9-23 CE),10 it was considered largely a curiosity, and the province of foreign traders and merchants coming across the Silk Route. The majority of Buddhists who lived in China at this time were largely non-Chinese Central Asians, and were not of the Mahayana variety that basically encompasses all modern schools of Chinese Buddhism.11

We have clear evidence from a few cryptic mentions that Buddhism was indeed known among the Chinese prior to the Northern Wei, but not highly regarded.

For example, one Han Dynasty prince is described in the official Han Dynasty Annals as “fasting and performing sacrifices to the Buddha” in the year 65. It is unclear exactly how or why this was, but it may have been an early indication of the Buddha being subsumed into the Daoist pantheon. The prince described was himself a devoted Daoist, and there is no mention of the vast corpus of Buddhist texts, anything recognizable as Buddhist ritual, ceremony, or clergy, nor… well, much of anything else, for that matter.12

About five centuries later, as the Silk Route trade was in full swing, Buddhist communities, though of the non-Chinese variety, were popping up all over the place. Though it was still an urban religion, seemingly made almost entirely of Central Asian peoples, Sogdians being particularly notable.13 Buddhism didn’t penetrate high society China very well because they already had a high-society religion (Daoism) and culture (Confucianism). And Buddhism was anathema to both of them. Daoism was focused on the attainment of mystical immortality, while Buddhism was about extinguishing suffering (i.e. nirvana). Confucian orthodoxy held that one should never cut their hair or tattoo or intentionally cut their body, as the body is a gift from your parents, and honoring it was honoring those who gave you life (i.e. filial piety). Buddhism required shaving the head.

In terms of the afterlife, what was even the use of honoring your ancestors if they were reborn as something else anyway? How would they be there to guide you in Heaven if they were off suffering in ignorance and delusion, same as you? As Keay writes,

Other ideas, such as monastic celibacy and reincarnation, were simply offensive to a society in which procreation was seen as a moral duty and ancestors were cherished as spirits immune from the hazard of rebirth. While Confucianism harped on the individual’s duty to family and state, Buddhism signposted a path to salvation that neatly bypassed both.14

This was the ideological framework that The Ballad of Mulan was being composed in: the introduction and indigenization of Buddhism into Chinese life and culture. The Northern Wei period was one in which Buddhism started to spread and become ingratiated into Chinese society. The Tabgach, like future nomadic-based dynasties, had no qualm using Buddhist imagery and institutions to justify their rule, placing them above native Daoist and Confucian legitimacies, or at least making them co-equal. After all, they still had to rule over a Chinese people, and so adopted a Chinese name (Wei), though like the Mongols and Manchu after them, would always be seen as foreign conquerors.

It was the Northern Wei Khans who would meet with Kumarajiva (344-413) the monk and translator who would travel from Central Asia and become one of the foremost translators of Buddhist texts into Chinese. It was during this era that 30,000 monasteries were recorded, housing some two million monks.15

Confucianism also explicitly puts the Emperor, the quite literal ‘Son of Heaven,’ at the center of the classical Chinese worldview. Thing is, he’s always Chinese.

Or at least, he’s supposed to be.16

This issue of the Tabgach being non-Chinese gave them a legitimacy problem among the eyes of their Chinese subjects. So the Tabgach began promoting Buddhism to at least an equal degree as they made nods to Confucianism and Daoism. It was the Northern Wei who began the Chinese tradition of sponsoring all of these monasteries, translators, and monks.

From this perspective, we can view The Ballad of Mulan as a piece of Tabgach propaganda, meant to present the Tuoba as a legitimate, hard-working, and capable protector of the Chinese people.

Back to the story:

Mulan goes to war fighting with valor for over ten years. Afterwards,

They return to see the Son of Heaven, Who sits in the Hall of Brilliance. The rolls of merit spin a dozen times, Rewards in the hundreds of thousands, The Khan asks her what she desires, “I’ve no need for the post of a gentleman official, I ask for the swiftest horse, to carry me back to my hometown.”17

The use of “her” in line 39 is included in most translations for the ease of English readers. David K. Jordan (2004) writes,

The Khan asked what she wanted.18

And from Han H. Frankel (1976),

The
 Khan
 asks 
her 
what 
she 
desires.
19

But in the Chinese original, the line is made up with only five characters:

可汗问所欲20

None of these characters indicate she or her. In order of appearance may (可) Khan (汗) ask (问) what (所) want (欲). So the function of this part of the tale still indicates a degree of dramatic irony. It is not made apparent, unlike similar scenes taking place in later Mulan incarnations, of the Emperor offering Mulan, whom he knows to be a woman, an advisory position.21 In the Ballad, we are left not knowing if the Khan was ever aware of Mulan’s true nature, though the reader (listener) is made aware from the beginning.22

Mulan’s family is never presented as being concerned regarding Mulan’s sex or gender, rather only for her physical safety. It’s also notable that Mulan doesn’t depart in the middle of the night, disappearing before her family could stop her, but actually,

She takes leave of her parents at dawn, To camp beside the Yellow River at dusk. No sound of her parents hailing their girl, Just the rumbling waters of the Yellow River. She leaves the Yellow River at dawn, To reach the Black Mountains by dusk. No sound of her parents hailing their girl, Just the cries of barbarian cavalry in the Yan hills.23

After the war,

Her parents hearing their girl returns, Out to the suburbs to welcome her back. Elder sister hearing her sister returns, Adjusts her rouge by the doorway. Little brother hearing his sister returns, Sharpens his knife for pigs and lamb.24

Instead of asking for a province, or a position in the Khan’s government, Mulan asks merely for the swiftest horse to take her back home.

When she arrives, before celebrating her safe return to her family, Mulan changes her clothes:

"I open my east chamber door. And sit on my west chamber bed. I take off my battle cloak, And put on my old-time clothes. I adjust my wispy hair at the window sill, And apply my bisque makeup by the mirror.25

After this act of changing, Mulan, now dressed in women’s clothing, meets her former comrades in arms who have come to visit:

I step out to see my comrades-in-arms, They are all surprised and astounded: 'We travelled twelve years together, Yet didn't realise Mulan was a lady!'"26

It’s left ambiguous whether the monarch was aware of Mulan’s sex, and her family was well aware of her actions. Only Mulan’s comrades-in-arms were left ignorant. The only emotion we are given in the Ballad is surprise, particularly that the illusion was maintained for over a decade.

The response is simple,

The buck bounds here and there, Whilst the doe has narrow eyes. But when the two hares run side by side, How can you tell the female from the male?27

Mulan’s words are indicated largely by quotations, though it is implied that this comparison could also be coming from Mulan herself, or from the nameless narrator, or explicitly from the writer/singer. Compare to other forms of Chinese literature, for example the Ming Dynasty novels which usually ended on cliffhangers, beckoning the reader to “Read on!”28

When looking at this Ballad from the lens of Tabgach or Chinese listeners in the Northern Wei, the Buddhist imagery is unavoidable.

Buddhism features a wide pantheon of mythical beings. Among some of the most well known, particularly among the Mahayana schools, are the Bodhisattvas. Literally “enlightened beings,” bodhisattvas are distinguished from Buddhas, also enlightened beings, by being those who have foregone the extinguishing of suffering, and choose to remain in the realm of suffering and suffer for the sake of others. One feature of bodhisattvas is that they have the power to choose their rebirth, which is typically as a form where they can do the most good for the most amount of sentient beings.29

The Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, is one of the best examples here. Avalokiteshvara, himself a disciple of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, became fully enlightened and later took the form of an ape to father the Tibetan people.30 Later he took the form of a bee to buzz the Dharma to some worms. In another short text, The Dharma among the Birds (a rather poetic title often just referred to as bya chos, or “Bird Dharma”), he incarnates as a cuckoo to sing the Dharma to a mismatched flock of birds.31 He also took the form of the Tibetan Emperor Songtsen Gampo, who sent Tibetan scholars to India to develop a script, married Buddhist princesses from Nepal and China, and built thirteen temples to establish the Dharma across the Plateau and the Himalaya. Avalokiteshvara, called Chenrezi in Tibetan, is also said to incarnate as the Tibetan Dalai Lamas, the Bhutanese Zhabdrungs, as well as countless other gurus, ordinary humans, and sentient beings.

In the 17th Century, the Sixth Dalai Lama was deposed by Lhazang Khan. To ensure that a true incarnation would hold the throne until the true successor could incarnate and claim it, Chenrezi is said to have put one of his own incarnations in front of the Khan’s fingers. An ordinary monk named Yeshe Gyatso, who later stepped down when the recognized Seventh Dalai Lama, Kelzang Gyatso, appeared to replace the true, recognized Sixth Dalai Lama.32

Right: A thirteenth century statue of Guanyin, the female, primarily Chinese, form of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. This statue would have been carved during the Song Dynasty, or possibly in the Jin (which conquered half of the Song before the Mongols invaded). If Guo Maoqian thought of the Ballad of Mulan as I'm interpreting it here and not as a historical artifact from a more Buddhist age, this is the kind of image he might have had in mind. This statue is currently in the British Museum.

Avalokiteshvara also has a female form: Tara, known in Tibetan as Drolma (Tib: sgrol ma). Tara takes multiple forms as well: green Tara, red Tara, white Tara, and the mystical, rare, black Tara. These Taras all have their own attached reasons, stories, and rituals. Avalokiteshvara also has wrathful forms, that manifest frightening shapes, with fangs, claws, weapons, and wearing bandoliers of skulls to defend the Dharma against those who would destroy it.

Also, Avalokiteshvara also takes Chinese forms. Among the most popular is the female form of Kuan Yin.33

Mulan’s role in the Ballad has less to do with classical Chinese values, but places almost the entire emphasis on her willingness to die for her family. Regardless of what it may be saying beyond its value as pure entertainment, the original Mulan tells a very loud tale of the shifting understanding of Buddhism’s gentle and caring nature within Chinese society, to one that can also be a wrathful and protective force when it needs to be.

In other words, how the Tabgach sought to be perceived.

The Ballad of Mulan can be read as Tabgach propaganda. Just as the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara can lead sentient beings to enlightenment, and then become wrathful to defend them, and Mulan can weave for her family, and then head off to war to protect them, so the Tabgach wanted to present themselves as both a governing force to secure the economic and social wellbeing of the Northern Wei country, and as a wrathful, protecting force to defend the frontier.

As far as the original question goes, how might a Chinese woman be treated in the Tuoba military, and what honor she might lose as a result, the poem provides the answer of she might have been accepted, though regarded as abnormal, and the honor lost would be none.

That said, this is not military, but literary history.

Of course, all of the above is assuming that Guo Maoqian more-or-less correctly transmitted the text six centuries after the Tabgach ruled their portion of China. If we take an alternative view, that Guo wrote it himself, then we would need to reevaluate the Ballad not in the context of the Northern Wei, but among the Song Dynasty.

The Northern Wei, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms that surrounded it, fell to the first, albeit short-lived dynasty to unite all of China under one banner and one name: the Sui (581-618). The Sui, after only two Emperors, gave way to the mighty Tang (618-907). The Song (960-1279) followed a short-lived period of disunion34 and reestablished a Chinese Son of Heaven and Confucianism as the center of Chinese social and intellectual life. From Keay,

But the Song were not notable Buddhist patrons like the Sui and Tang; ordination was strictly regulated, with the sale of monk certificates affording the state a useful source of revenue; and in the face of the Confucianist revival, Buddhist establishments were undergoing a slow secularisation that marginalised their doctrinal heterodoxy while emphasising their social role in teaching, caring for the sick and elderly, managing their large estates and, as here, affording an economic sanctuary to those to whom the state was indebted. Buddhism, in effect, was slowly buckling under regulatory pressure from above and subsidence from below as popular practice became permeated by indigenous superstitions and local spirit cults. The Middle Way was becoming one of many – Daoist, Confucianist and animist – and barely distinguishable from them.35

That said, Buddhism was fully established in Chinese society by the 10th Century. So whether Guo himself was explicitly a Buddhist or not, Buddhist ideas would have been mixed and infused into his own ideas of metaphysics and identity. Something that would soon become standardized in the writings and philosophy of Zhu Xi (1130-1200), the founder of Neo-Confucianism.

The Buddhist imagery would not have been lost on Guo, whether as transmitter of historic folk songs, or as composer of the Ballad. If we consider him as the composer, then he would have been drawing comparisons of the Song Emperor as both Confucian Son of Heaven, Buddhist Bodhisattva, and Daoist deity. It he was using the word Khan, then he was drawing on the time-immemorial Chinese literary tradition of discussing modern politics, philosophy, and identity in historic fiction.

If this is the case, then Guo would have been in good company among other writers who expanded on the Mulan mythos. Among them, the 17th Century, Qing Dynasty writer, Chu Renhuo, a devout Confucian, anti-Manchu Chinese nationalist, and author of The Romance of Sui and Tang.

But for more on that, READ ON!

Next: Part 2 of 4. Chu Renhuo's Romance of Sui and Tang

Discuss this Article on the r/JackAdrian subreddit.

Footnotes

1. Mulan’s family name has been a subject of some literary debate. Gou Maoqian’s Mulan has no surname. Chu Renhuo uses Hua, which seems to be the most popular since the character used to write it means “flower,” which pairs nicely with Mulan, the characters used for her meaning “magnolia.” Fa is the name used in both Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (written as “Fa Mu Lan”) and in the Disney (1998) interpretation (“Fa Mulan”). Given Kingston’s family came from southern, Cantonese-speaking China, in my inexpert opinion on Chinese dialects, I think it is a possibility to consider that this may be a difference in dialect.

2. Birrell 1988. p. 8.

3. Ibid. p. 9.

4. Guo/Yuan 2006. ln. 1-4.

5. Worth noting here what Kingston writes early on in The Woman Warrior, “There is a Chinese word for the female I—which is “slave.” Break the women with their own tongues!” (p. 47.)

6. Sun 2008. p. 10.

7. Guo/Yuan 2006. ln. 9-14.

8. The Tabgach were originally part of the “Xianbei” Confederation of nomadic tribes, itself rather obviously a Chinese exonym. From Keay,

The Tabgach (in Chinese ‘Tuoba’), the confederation’s main tribal component, first fell out with allies in the plains of the north-east. Following a row over a consignment of horses, the Xianbei swooped down to settle matters, and as ‘the Northern Wei’ (386–534), the Tabgach leadership then steadily eliminated Xiongnu, Qiang and other dynastic rivals. By 439, from their capital at Pingcheng (Datong in northern Shanxi), they had reunited all China above the Huai River. (Louyang again.)

They would be succeeded in the sixth century in a familial civil war that would split them into the Eastern and Western Wei.

9. More on that later.

10. Western Han is distinguished from the earlier Eastern Han, because of a brief interruption by Wang Mang who attempted to found the Xin Dynasty (9-23 CE), and the Later Han (947-951), which was a rump state in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907-979) which tried to claim authority and the Mandate of Heaven by calling back to the illustrious Han Dynasty (collectively the Western and Eastern Hans, ignoring the Xin, 202 BCE – 220 CE), usually considered China’s “Classical Period.”

11. Skilton 2003. p. 165.

12. Keay 2010. Enter the Enlightened One.

13. In my opinion, this situation is comparable to say, Buddhism or even Islam in the West today. The majority of Buddhist temples and Muslim mosques are located in urban centers, primarily because those are the major hubs of trade and immigrant settlement. This was most likely exactly the case in medieval China.

14. Ibid.

15. Skilton 2003. p. 166. It’s not specified in this source whether all of these monasteries and monks were in the territory of the Northern Wei, but it is either A. the Annals themselves that are the source, and so probably counting them, or B. unlikely, given the shifting of borders. Buddhism was also arriving by sea from the sea-route via the South China Sea. Though it was Kumarajiva and his successors who would set the pace for Buddhism in China, not the non-Mahayanas coming from the south. Either way, through assimilation or conversion, the northern schools of Chinese Buddhism are the dominant form, and the form necessary to discussion here. Even this, of course, is a gross oversimplification.

16. And barring one, singular exception, (Wu Zetian, 604-725), it’s always he. Though, even this asterisk has its own asterisk. The title for the Emperor of China is always “Emperor,” though Chinese nouns are typically not gendered unless specified. The term for “Empress” carries both the meaning and connotation of “Emperor’s Wife,” which even itself is pretty strong. More often it carries the implication of “Emperor’s Consort,” or “Mother to the Heir,” not literally the female equivalent to an Emperor. So while you will often see people write Empress Wu Zetian, it is just as common, and just as accurate to refer to her as Emperor Wu Zetian.

17. Guo/Yuan 2006. ln. 35-42

18. Guo/Jordan 2004. ln. 39.

19. Guo/Frankel 1976. ln. 39.

20. Guo/Jordan 2004. ln. 39.

21. Including in the Disney (1998) incarnation, but also most notably in the Biography of Extraordinary Mulan, by an unknown author. In this interpretation, written sometime between 1732 and 1827, Mulan fights in the name of the Tang Emperor Taizong. She is rewarded for her leal service with the title “the general of Wuzhao.” (Sun 2008. p. 26.) How this ends… we’ll see next week.

22. Personally, I would have written “The Khan asks them what they desire,” as it is an acceptable pronoun for a person of unknown gender. (Consider the dialogue, “Who left their jacket here?” “I don’t know, I didn’t see them.”) Though there could be a level of ambiguity over the Khan asking just Mulan, or the whole army.

23. Gou/Yuan 2006. ln. 21-28.

24. Guo/Yuan 2006. 43-48.

25. Gou/Yuan 2006. ln. 49-54.

26. Gou/Yuan 2006. ln. 55-58.

27. Gou/Yuan 2006. ln. 59-62.

28. Keay 2010. Wang Mang and the Han Reprise. The “Extra Mythology” interpretation of this story has Mulan herself pointing out the rabbits and indicating to her comrades that one can’t tell male from female as they run. Arguably, this interpretation, as the Extra History team makes reference to multiple times, is an attempt at “correcting” the Disney version of the tale. Even the thumbnail of the video is titled “Mulan (Sans Mouse).” Yet, while the Extra History team does a great job at trying to tell native and indigenous stories from those perspectives, they are still a Western media team and seem to be drawing interpretations from modern lenses, not necessarily from that the Northern Wei or a Chinese listener in the 6th or 13th Centuries might have understood.

29. This is one basis for the tulku (Tib: sprul sku) system in the schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Dalai Lamas, in theory, choose to be reborn in the forms of their successors, among people that might further the cause of the Dharma. For example, the Third Dalai Lama chose to reincarnate as the son of a Mongol prince to further the alliance between the Geluk Sect and the House of Altan Khan, initiating an alliance between Geluk Buddhism and Mongol warriors that persists to this day. For more on this topic, see my previous series Who Murdered the Sixth Dalai Lama?

30. Laird 2007. Chapter 1.

31. Norman 2010. p. 18. For a translation, see Conze and Bacot (2002).

32. Adrian 2024. Part 6/6: Sanguine Aftermath.

33. Often romanized as Guan Yin or Guanyin.

34. Though for almost the entire time that the Song existed, there were other Chinese or Chinese-adjacent states, including the Xi Xia, the Nanzhao, and the Liao. So while the Song Dynasty is often considered the “halcyon days” of native Chinese rule (Keay 2010. 12: By Land and Sea.) due to a number of economic and social factors, it was still an era of “disunion” if one considers the modern People’s Republic view that everything under the borders of the current reigning Chinese state are all “Chinese.”

35. Keay 2010. 11. Caving In.