The Meaning of Mulan, Part 2

II: Chu Renhuo's The Romance of Sui and Tang

In 1206, stirrings far beyond Song China were taking shape. A former slave, now tribal leader named Temujin, had united disparate Mongol tribes in a grand khuriltai. Now known as Temujin Khan, King Temujin, he would soon be known from places as far as Japan and England as Genghis Khan, the King of the World.1

Right: An image of Hua Mulan from a 1772 printed copy of Sui and Tang. Even without seeing the source, one can tell it takes place during the Qing Dynasty solely by her armor and uniform, which has features common to the Qing and Ming militaries.

The early Mongol Khanate that Temujin built did not border Song China. In between the two was the Jin, ruled over by the nomadic Jurchen, who had much more in common with the Mongols than the Chinese. Soon Temujin conquered the Jurchen, and followed that with a conquest of the Tangut ruled Xi Xia. Now the Mongols bordered Song China on three sides.

It was Temujin’s grandson, Khubilai Khan, who would initiate and complete the conquest of the Song, bringing the Mongol Empire to its greatest extent. Like the Northern Wei, he chose a Chinese rule name: Yuan. Famously religiously plural, the Mongols would soon come to lean more and more Buddhist. Khubilai Khan himself personally favored the Sakya Buddhist pandit Chogyal P’agpa. They also patronized Confucian and Daoist scholars, but as foreign conquerors, they would always be viewed as such.

The apex of the Great Mongol Khanate did not last very long. By 1368, the Red Turban Rebellion had managed to oust the Mongols back north across the Gobi. Having had a taste of imperial conquest, the Mongols continued to get drunk for the next couple of centuries over the glorious heights their civilization had ascended, while infighting, backstabbing, and deluding themselves into thinking that aaaaany day now, they would soon return to those heights.

The Ming Dynasty, replacing the Yuan, went about tearing down everything they could find of Mongol rule, and upholding as much native Chinese culture as they could to replace it. It was in Ming China where the Confucian bureaucracy became a ubiquitous governing philosophy and system, built off the Song system that Guo Maoqian had once been a part. The Ming bureaucratic system would spread to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and eventually inspire Western missionaries into a new meritocratic theory of government bureaucracy.

Despite the ideal of the Ming bureaucracy, it was hopelessly corrupt. Failures in the bureaucratic structure led to an inefficient military structure, rife with dissension and prone to rebellion. The long decline of the Ming Empire eventually led to its fall in the mid 17th Century, with the rise of the Qing Dynasty.

The Qing have already been glanced at in this story. The Liao Dynasty, of northern China, between the Song Dynasty and the Gobi, fell to the Jin. The Jin, like the Northern Wei and the Yuan, were not a Han Chinese dynasty, but ruled by a nomadic people known as the Jurchen. Nomadic tribes loosely related to the Mongols. The Mongols conquered the Jin in the 1200s, absorbing them into their empire but after the Yuan’s retreat back into Mongolia, the Jurchen reasserted their independence and began waxing in power through the 1500s.

In fact, by 1592, when the Hideyoshi launched his invasion of Korea, there was a precarious balance between Ming China, Joseon Korea, and the Jurchen tribes. They were united under a chieftain by the name of Nurhaci, nominally a vassal of the Ming. When one of Hideyoshi’s diplomats tried to backtrack that he wasn’t on the way to invade China, but was trying to open relations with Beijing and help them defeat the barbarians (i.e. the Jurchen), the Ming administration responded that the barbarians were already taken care of, and loyal vassals of the Ming.2 By 1618, this had changed dramatically.

Nurhaci wrote and disseminated the Seven Grievances, effectively declaring war against the Ming. They then set about invading China, causing enough disorder that a peasant known as Li Zicheng claimed to be a long-lost descendant of a Tang Emperor, and gathered a strong enough army to declare the Mandate of Heaven forfeit by the Ming. Li captured Beijing, leading to the young Chongzhen Emperor committing suicide. Li declared himself Emperor of the Shun Dynasty, but the capital was lost a few scant weeks later to the approaching conquerors.

The Shun Dynasty did not last long. In fact, after the Manchu captured Beijing in 1644, the Shun effectively collapsed, while Ming pretenders (known as the Southern Ming to distinguish the claimants from those who reigned in the “official” Ming Dynasty) lingered on in the south, in Burma, and even across the strait in Taiwan for another four decades, an echo of things to come in the 20th Century. Enthroned in Beijing, the Manchu openly declared the Qing (Pure) Dynasty, but it would take another forty years to mop up resistance in the south, and the last claimants to the Ming throne.

This was the political world into which Chu Renhuo (1635-c.17053) was born and wrote his incarnation of the Mulan story, The Romance of Sui and Tang.

Below: An extremely oversimplified map showing the Qing Conquest of Ming China (1643-1697). But in a grand scale, gives the rough approximation of the vast scale of conquest. During the takeover, the Manchu conquered a territory roughly equivalent to the United States east of the Mississippi.

The novel, published between 1675 and 1695 is impossible to read without seeing the heavy ennui related to the fall of the Ming. Though technically a Qing Dynasty work, Sui and Tang draws mainly from the Ming literary tradition, in which some of the greatest and best known classical Chinese novels were written: novels like A Journey to the West (1592), Romance of the Three Kingdoms (1522), and Outlaws of the Marshes (before 1524).4 Chu’s father was a civil servant in the Ming bureaucracy, which means it was very likely that Chu himself had a classical education. Though there is no reference to him having taken the civil service exam himself, pointing to a difficult life and career despite the fact that,

There were few cleaner breaks in imperial China’s long history than that between its last two dynasties. The switch was so abrupt as to leave the historians with little scope for dynastic elastication and so dramatic as to appear almost staged.5

The Qing retained the Ming bureaucracy, i.e. the class of civil servants that would become known in the west as the Mandarins, and thus lend this term to the main administrative language/dialect of China.6 The Manchu, like the Mongols and Tabgach before them, knew that to appeal to the vast Chinese population in their empire, they needed to appeal to them, and administer the Chinese in a Chinese way.

Or, as Daenerys Targaryen was once told after conquering a foreign kingdom, “Man wants to be king o’ the rabbits, he best wear a pair o’ floppy ears.”7

Though we should be careful not to think the Manchu were too accommodating to the Hanzi. They instituted a number of initiatives to maintain a separation between Manchu and Han, including restricting what clothes Hanzi were allowed to wear, what positions in the government they were allowed to have, and forcing all Han men to wear the hated queue.

If you’re not sure what the queue is, you are very likely aware of what it looks like: a shaved front of the head, and long, uncut hair on the back, braided all the way down the wearer’s back. In June of 1645, the Manchu Emperor – now the Qing Son of Heaven – declared that all Chinese men had ten days to comply with the order

after which any head with an unshaven pate (costume could too easily be improvised and the queue would obviously take time to grow) would be forfeited.8

As mentioned in Part 1, cutting one’s hair was considered a great sin in Confucianism, particularly Neo-Confucianism, the guiding state-philosophy of Ming China and the bureaucracy. To quote the opening passages of The Classic of Filial Piety,

Our bodies – to every hair and bit of skin – are received by us from our parents, and we must not presume to injure or wound them.9

This also forbid things like tattoos and earrings. The preferred form of execution was to be ordered to drink poison. Particularly egregious crimes – treason and patricide – often called for beheading, decapitation, or even the slicing method, were considered “dishonorable” ways to die, given that they required mutilating the body.10

The Manchu instituted the queue requirement forcing all good Confucian men to dishonor their parents by mutilating themselves. Many Chinese men took this a step further and became Buddhist monks. Monks had to shave their heads entirely, but were exempt from the queue, and therefore, of this symbol of Manchu dominance over their heads.11 Others fled southwards to join the Ming remnant.

Chu Renhuo, as a Hanzi, would have been left with these choices: wear the queue, join a monastery (and shave his head entirely), or join the resistance.

Given what little we know about him, it seems that Chu chose to live under Qing rule, and resist with the pen rather than the sword.

Chu’s father, a Confucian bureaucrat himself, would have given his son a proper education in Confucian classics and an understanding of the most important Confucian: filial piety. He also would have encouraged Chu to take the state examination and serve the government with loyalty and distinction. The fact that Chu didn’t is an indication of explicit refusal to serve what he saw as an alien regime.

We can also see subtle distinctions in the ways he viewed himself and his writing, as well. Chu Renhuo went by the courtesy name Xuejia, meaning something like “learn from Jia.” The Jia here is likely a reference to Xin Jiaxuan (1140-1207), a Song (Chinese) general who fought against the Jurchen.12 Robert Hegel says this indicates that Chu may have “secretly” held anti-Qing sentiments.13

In my opinion, the text of The Romance of Sui and Tang makes Chu’s sentiments anything but secret.

Mulan is not the subject of all one hundred chapters of Sui and Tang. Rather, the story is one of “epic history,” with hundreds of characters in the drama weaving in and out, much like Tolstoy’s War and Peace, or Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War, or for a more contemporary comparison of size and continental scope, Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Mulan’s story is found in Chapters 56 through 60.

The premise is the same as the original, with Mulan going to war in place of her elderly father. Though we are given more of a backstory on the Hua family. Mulan’s father, Hua Chengzhi, is not Han Chinese, but rather, Tabgach:

At that time, [Liu Wuzhou] met a strange woman. The woman's surname was Hua, her father's name, Chengzhi, signified that they were of the Tuoba Wei people, of Hebei province, as the commander of a myriarchy. He went on to marry a wife, Yuan, a native of the Central Plains. They cultivated an orchid tree for several years, but it refused to bloom. When Yuan gave birth to a daughter, the tree suddenly bloomed. So the parents named their daughter Mulan.14

Mulan has a younger sister named Youlan, and a baby brother named Tianlang. The Hua family, indicated by the Tabgach father and the Han Chinese mother, are mixed race. It’s worth considering the names Chu gives to Mulan’s parents: Chengzhi (i.e. a Chinese approximation of Genghis) and Yuan (i.e. cognate with the Dynastic title of Mongol-ruled China, i.e. a mixed race Chinese Empire).

Notably, Chu also writes that Mulan was born with “a loud voice, which was different from that of most children.” Something definitely to be said about Mulan being born not as the quiet, obsequious Confucian daughter. Indeed, we are soon told that Mulan, unlike Guo’s heroine, “refused to use the needle and thread, preferring to learn about and discuss the art of war,” a clear rejection of Guo’s characterization. Her father taught her to shoot a bow and arrow from a young age. Indeed, we are even told that “[women] learning to shoot the bow from horseback is something all families taught.”15

Her parents seek to make her a match, but Mulan refuses their offers at every turn. Then, at the age of seventeen, her country (ruled by a Turkic Khan) goes off to war. Hua Chengzhi, as a vassal to the Khan, is a commander of a thousand soldiers. But his wife, Yuan, resists, saying, “You are old, how can this task fall to you?”

As Commander Hua said, “I have no older sons to make up for my absence. How can I avoid service?” Yuan said, “If you use a few taels of silver, you may be able to ask for an exemption.” “It’s this silver that I will use to retire. From where will these soldiers come? There is nowhere to send the money.” Yuan said, “Don’t say that you are too old to rush out and destroy the enemy. It will only be this old woman and this young boy in the family, how can you leave us behind?”16

About a week after this exchange, Mulan recalls to herself the long history of female warriors and generals in history, coming to the conclusion that,

“Now, my father is so old, and I have no elder brother, only an infant brother and a younger sister. If he goes out today, on whom will he rely? If he dies on the battlefield, how can his bones be carried back home? “If I change into men’s clothes and enter the army in his stead, as long as I am well-behaved, I will not be defeated. Or in the span of one or two years, on the day of returning home, I would be doing right by my parents, though against their will. But I don’t know if I could convincingly change into men’s clothes, but there are portraits by which I can mimic.”17

She goes to her father’s room, puts on his armor and boots and adjusts them to fit her figure and size. When Hua Chengzhi comes home, he sees his daughter dressed in his armor. At first he is amused, but then he realizes that she is serious, and plans to go to war in his place.

“It’s a pity that you are a woman. If you were a boy, why worry about being a father? I still want you to go out and work hard, to make a career, and to glorify your ancestors!” Mulan said, “Don’t worry about your parents. Make up your mind, and tomorrow I will go to the command on my father’s behalf.” Her parents said, “You’re a girl. And you’re stupid.”18

But the next day, Hua Chengzhi opens the door to be met by soldiers from his unit.

Men shouted, “Commander Hua, let us depart.” When Hua Chengzhi opened the door, there were three or four soldiers of his unit, and they were about to speak when they saw the girl Mulan, changed into her mens’ clothes, who came out and said, “My father is old, and I will go in his stead.” Those men looked at Mulan and smiled, “Commander Hua, we didn’t know that you had such a big son! What a man [Hanzi]!” Seeing this situation, Hua Chengzhi couldn’t say anything else, so he said, with tears in his eyes, “Exactly.” The men said, “There is a good son. You should be doing this for your old man. Let him take a sword and a gun, and win an official position on his return. And so your family will be honored.” Mulan pulled her father in, said goodbye to her parents, and in a low voice, “Father, take care. Take care of my brother and sister. Now, I will go.”19

Hua Mulan, now explicitly mistaken for her father’s son, unlike her Guo Maoqian incarnation, carries her provisions and gun into battle.20 Notably after Mulan departs with the army, Chu writes that the entire village comes to know of Mulan’s march off to war. They even complain to the Huas “You two old folks! There is no reason for this!” Meanwhile, Chengzhi and Yuan’s hearts “burned day and night.”21

Mulan was soon promoted beyond “his” father’s old post as a local commander, and the Khan named “him” commanding officer of the rear horse division. She had thousands of men and horses at her command. Battle was soon joined between Tuoba and Xia forces, in which the Tuoba are defeated, but Mulan fights valiantly, rushing into the enemy camp, rescuing the Khan, and defeating the enemy, beating a tactical retreat.22

In the following battle, Mulan’s horse is cut out from under her, and she is pinned down. A soldier tries to help her, but as a result, both he and Mulan are captured by the enemy. Turns out that the army Mulan was fighting was made almost entirely of female soldiers as well, led by the Princess Dou Xianniang.

The women of the vanguard took Mulan and the general. When she reached their encampment, they then built a fire and rested. Xianniang thought to herself, “It’s not right to take these two as barbarian slaves to stay in our camp.” [She then ordered,] “Tell the men to bring them over.” Hearing this, the female soldiers brought Mulan [...] to her. Seeing that Mulan was skilled with the blade, she felt sorry for them, so she said to her, “My Princess adheres to a strict code, so you must be careful to obey her.” Mulan did not listen, and when she entered the tent, she saw the princess sitting down, and the female soldiers shouted, “Kneel!” [...] The Princess took a look at Mulan first and asked, “Your face is too white for a Hanzi. What is your name? Look at your dignified appearance. You will not be a pawn, to be so easily manipulated. If you are willing to submit to my court, I will promote you to be a general.” Hua Mulan said, “I will bow to you, but my parents are in the north. And they want me to return to settle down with them, then I can come help you.” The Princess scoffed angrily, “If you are willing to surrender, you will surrender. If you don’t surrender, why bother having a tongue? [We will cut it out.]” Mulan said, “I will bow to you. You are a heroine, so there is no shame. But if you cut me, I’m merely a woman, so not honored [by such an act].” “Is it possible that you are not a man, but a woman?” Mulan said, “It’s just so.” The Princess turned to her female soldiers, “You two take her to the back room and report back.” Two female soldiers dragged Mulan into the back room.23

This cut to black might be significant. Sun argues that the historic depiction of Mulan’s chastity is a key to her as a symbol of Chinese virtue in the face of barbarism. In Guo’s incarnation, we are not given a hint at all of Mulan’s sexuality. Merely her “womanhood” as symbolized by her dress and weaving. In Chu’s incarnation, Mulan is stripped bare for her sex to be confirmed, but only off screen while the Princess interrogates another prisoner. Sun argues that Mulan’s chastity, historically confirmed, is only later consciously turned on its head by later incarnations such as Zhang Shaoxian’s 1850 play (which depicts an explicit scene of Mulan having sex with her husband) or in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (which has Mulan get married, have sex, and go to war pregnant), or in Disney’s Mulan (1998) and its sequel Mulan II (2004) (which both depict Mulan in a Disney-chaste romance with the dashing Li Shang).

It’s possible that Mulan’s chastity is used as a device to depict a certain level of purity. That Mulan remains unsullied by barbarian penetration, despite being half-barbarian herself. Indeed, even though Chu’s Mulan is mixed race, Sun argues that this points to a sense of cultural superiority, as indicated by Princess Xianniang.

Mulan returns, her sex confirmed, and explains how she went to the Khan’s army in her father’s place.

[Hearing this tale, the Princess Xianniang said with a sense of pity,] “You are such a filial daughter! I did not expect that the bold Northern people would bear such a great filial daughter. I want to respect you with good manners.” [Mulan thanked her,] “Your highness (Dou Xianniang), you are as superior as a golden bough with jade leaf, while I am just a low-class fool. I am so grateful for your generosity, how could I dare to expect more from you?”24

Sun argues that this acceptance by the Princess of a woman she only moments ago referred to as a “barbarian slave” is because “she felt that the Han Chinese succeeded in spreading their Confucian values among the barbarians. The bold people in the North accepted the notion of filial piety and then became civilized. In other words, it would be possible for Dou Xianniang to see Mulan as a successful example of cultural assimilation.”25

Mulan and the Princess then make a vow of laotong to one another, a kind of blood-sisterhood, where unrelated women are now, for all moral and spiritual purposes, declared sisters.

Princess Xianniang said, “I hate that I am a woman and can’t add to the light of the sun and the moon,. But I didn’t expect you to have such a heart. How would you feel should I have one less friend, and one more sister in you?” Mulan said, “I don’t dare accept this.” But Xianniang said, “I have decided, you don’t have to be modest. I don’t even know how old you are.” Mulan said, “I am seventeen.” Xianniang said, “I’ve been a concubine for three years, so I will occupy the first position.” They both bowed to Heaven four times, and then they turned around and bowed to each other four times likewise. In the army, there were no big feasts, but after an evening meal, Xianniang brought Mulan to sleep with her in her own tent.26

Mulan and Xianniang are later brought before the Tang Emperor, who is so enamored with the warrior sisters that he insists that Mulan becomes his concubine.

Below: A far more detailed map of the ongoing campaigns between the Qing and various Ming supporters and pretenders in the south. Though not relevant at all to The Romance of Sui and Tang, these would have been current events during the childhood and young adult life of the author, Chu Renhuo. He would undoubtedly have known people who fought both for and against the Qing, and probably both. And he probably would have been a part of conversations in hushed tones that secretly hoped the pretenders and rebels might be victorious over their Manchu oppressors.

Let’s back up and discuss the mental and spiritual world of Chu Renhuo and how it reflected the political situation. As mentioned, Chu’s father was a Confucian bureaucrat, educated with the reformed curriculum of the Confucian reformer Zhu Xi. Neo-Confucianism27 is distinguished from its pre-reform Confucianism by

a host of different ideas about how the cosmos worked and how the individual, as part of it and in accordance with its workings, might discover his own parallel path to moral perfection. The society and government composed of such enlightened individuals would then automatically be realigned in harmony with the cosmos. Man had the potential for good, or ‘humaneness’, within him; but to realise it, he needed to understand what human nature consisted of and how the mind functioned. Ancient concepts such as the ‘Mean’ (a state of lofty impartiality) and the ‘Supreme Ultimate’ held the key.28

Put another way,

The process proposed here is an inductive one. Man is required, whenever he encounters any thing, any affair, or any relationship, to look beyond its mere surface.29

The geopolitical events that spurred the reform of Confucianism in the Song Dynasty was the loss of almost half their territory to the predecessors of the Manchu: the Jurchen. As Gardner describes,

The loss of the north [by Song to Jurchen] was a terrible shock to Chinese scholar-officials. For them, it represented far more than just a straightforward military or political defeat; it meant that the Way was in steep decline. Had the Chinese emperor and his ministers been behaving as virtuous Confucian rulers and ministers should, the Way would have prevailed, and the north would not have been vulnerable to “barbarian” attack. What led these men to stray from the Confucian path of moral cultivation and virtuous government?30

Reorienting the Empire towards a restoration of relationships has precedence in Chinese history. Wang Mang did this in 9 CE, usurping the Empire from the Han boy-emperor, and then proceeding to get him and his entire government killed in a one-man dynasty known as the Xin.

But what were these relationships that so badly needed restoring?

According to Confucius, there were five:

1. father-son 2. ruler-subject 3. husband-wife 4. elder sibling-younger sibling 5. friend-friend31

Reorienting the world into these virtuous relationships, four of them explicitly hierarchical, would set the world aright, make for a virtuous government and a righteous society, and bring about harmony. Governments that adhered to the virtuous maintenance of these relationships were said to possess the “Mandate of Heaven,” i.e. a divine right to rule.

This first one is arguably the most important (and given the mixed sexes involved in this instance in particular, we could probably change to parent-child), and is referred to as filial piety. As discussed above in the Classic of that very virtue, filial piety begins by acknowledging what your parents give you – your body, your life – and devoting the rest of yours to honoring your parents for that. Throughout much of Chinese history, abdication of filial duty led to criminal consequences.

In Sui and Tang, Mulan honors her parents by physically protecting them, risking her life in battle to keep them safe. However, Sun argues that this might be more complex than it first appears:

If filial piety is the rationalizing moral principle that enables Mulan to perform as a cross-dressing warrior within the patriarchal society, Mulan’s parents cannot justify her extreme behavior in terms of filial piety anymore. Mulan was supposed to go back to her inner chamber, get married and continue her husband’s patriline. Unlike the happily-ever-after versions, Mulan in Sui Tang yanyi refused to get married. She wanted to stay in the outside world and make her career as a female general.32

I would argue differently, that Mulan disobeys her parents wishes by going off to war – a denial of surface-level filial piety – to protect her family – a higher-level filial piety. After all, Mulan is acknowledged as such by her sister, Princess Xianniang. She also exemplifies virtue in these other relationships: she is a good subject to her Khan, saving his life in battle, she is a virgin, saving herself for the man her parents have theoretically betrothed her to, and rejecting becoming the Emperor’s concubine, she bows to Princess Xianniang as her elder sister, and ultimately, they become good and loyal friends.

That said, one of the beautiful things of literature is that both things can be true and coexist at once. And in this case, I think this is most likely.

When the Mongols conquered China in the 1200s, a new era of trade and multiculturalism brought new ideas and concepts to the intellectual life of Asia. As Richard J. Smith writes that this intellectual openness was a result of “life in the Mongol empire [being] vibrant in many respects, as China became increasingly “globalized” and “multi-cultural” in a response to the openness of these self-styled world conquerors to alien influences of all kinds.”33 Of course, when the insular Ming Dynasty took over from the Mongols, they sought to do away with obvious Mongol cultural influences, replacing them with native Chinese ideas untainted by alien invasion. The Qing Dynasty, formed by the northern Manchu people,

sought to legitimize themselves as the protectors of China’s cultural heritage, patronizing and promoting traditional Chinese scholarship, values, political and social institutions, rituals and other social practices, art, literature, and music. But their worldview encompassed far more than the Middle Kingdom, as evidenced by the special administrative arrangements they made, as well as the vocabulary they used to express their self-image as pan-Asiatic rulers.34

Why did the Jurchen change their name to Manchu? The term’s etymology is not well understood, but one leading theory, is that Hong Taiji (1592-1643), son of Nurhaci, made the change to explicitly draw a connection with the Bodhisattva Manjushri. Why explicitly align themselves with Buddhism? The key lies in the “pan-Asiatic” in Smith’s quote above. The highest Buddhist ruler was the cakravartin, a “world turning” king. One who was given authority to rule over all peoples.

The Confucian Emperor, on the other hand, the Chinese Son of Heaven, was by his very definition, assigned to rule over all nations. However, the peak of this empire was always in China. From the Emperor’s throne, he was surrounded by his immediate family, outwards the government of Confucian bureaucrats, outward from them the vassals of Chinese provinces, then further out, “little brothers” like Korea, then further out, half-civilized barbarous tribes who were only sometimes vassals and tributaries like Japan, Vietnam, or Tibet.35 And finally, there was everyone else: i.e. all of the barbarians who have not yet entered the Chinese imperial sphere of influence.

For a cakravartin to usurp the place of the Son of Heaven was to dethrone the entire Sino-centric worldview. To take the Confucian ecumene and make China merely a piece of someone else’s empire, not the imperial center itself. The name change may also have signaled a threat as well: Manjushri was said to live on Mount Wutai in Shanxi Province. Something that the Jurchen may have understood as transmitted by Tibetan Lamas.36 When the Qing took power, they wove their rule with Buddhism at an intimate level. Manchu Emperors took empowerments and declared themselves students of the Dalai Lamas in the 1600s, the Panchen Lamas in the 1700s, and the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, was a regular sight at court in the declining days of the Qing Dynasty.

Every time a conquest dynasty came, Buddhism was held above native Chinese ideas. This makes sense on the face of it: Sino-centric ideas would favor native Chinese social and political structures. Buddhism as a foreign ideological framework didn't necessarily favor one people over another, and it could be said even encouraged a philosopher king regardless of his origin. Buddhism was even blamed at certain points in Chinese history for causing these corruptions and downfalls, though even when Zhu Xi and others repudiated them, they were weaving Buddhist influence into their own work.37

Back to Sui and Tang.

Mulan and Xianniang journey to the Tang Emperor, who is both impressed by their cunning and martial prowess, and is aroused. Hearing that Mulan disguised herself in her father’s armor as an act of filial piety, and hearing of her feats in battle, the Tang Emperor demands that she become his concubine. Mulan refuses, saying that she has been promised to one Luo Cheng, “the son of Luo Yi, governor of Youzhou.”38 Again, we have this paradoxiacal loyalty: to obey the relationship to her betrothed (wife-husband) she must betray the relationship to her sovereign (ruler-subject).

Mulan returns home, tragically having had no idea that her father became sick and died less than a year after she left. Her mother, Yuan, tried to “drag along” Mulan’s siblings, but “barely survived herself.” Finally, she was forced to remarry a man by the name of Wei.39

Mulan no longer fits into this society. Her family is no longer hers. Her sovereign is defeated in battle, and the new one asks her to betray her sexual chastity. In the words of Sun,

If her loyalty to the Turkish Khan was her appropriate motivation to fight, her surrender to the Han army had already betrayed her Khan, let alone her refusal to marry the Khan. Parental absence and her unmarried status eventually nullified Mulan’s fighting function. As a woman who is unable to fulfill filial duty and loyalty, Mulan does not fit into the patriarchal society anymore. As a single woman armed with extraordinary martial arts, she becomes potentially dangerous, a threat to the orthodoxy. Therefore, I infer, Chu Renhuo’s choice for Mulan’s fate is reasonable: Mulan has to die. She is paying the price for being an extraordinary woman who deviated from the patriarchal society.40

And indeed, that’s what happens. Mulan goes to her father’s grave, bows to it four times, weeps, and cuts open her throat. Her mother and stepfather bury her next to her father.41

The Confucian relationships are emphasized so much in Chu's work because he is upholding the values of filial piety. Ultimately, however, they lead to tragedy. Was Chu repudiating these values, or emphasizing them? In my analysis, I would argue that he was of two minds about them: that the values are worth little but themselves, that in resistance to the barbarian threat, a level of pragmatism was necessary. However, what were they fighting for if not the intimate ideals that made one Hanzi?

Sui and Tang is often described as a work that heralds the rise of the Tang Dynasty, often considered China’s “golden age,” as divinely ordained, or Heavenly Mandated, in this case.42 Reading Mulan’s story from Chu’s pen, one would never know that. Mulan’s is a tragedy: a woman who is extraordinary, clever, loyal, outspoken, chaste, and fierce, and yet loses everything. As a Tabgach woman, she assimilates into a Chinese mentality. As a Chinese woman, she is a virtuous Confucian. In isolation, the story told this way is one where Chinese identity falls when confronted with barbarian conquest, and that this is tragic.

It’s anti-government propaganda by way of depression.

After returning from the Spanish Civil War, in which George Orwell fought on the losing side, he returned to an England that was preparing for War with the Fascist powers any day now. In this environment, where he felt that the cause of the Working Class was in decline, he was betrayed by his friends who espoused Leftist ideals and then sang Stalin’s praises (and then by extension, the Nazis after they made a deal with the USSR), Orwell wrote Coming Up for Air.

This is a novel of George “Fatty” Bowling, a man who wants nothing more than to escape his nagging wife and ingrate children to go fishing at a pond in his old home town. So he lies to his wife, saying he’s going on a business trip, and goes across England to find the fishing hole. He arrives in the town to find it overbuilt and confusing. Gone are the rolling hills and agrarian idyll of his youth. They’re replaced with smokestacks, factories, and abject poverty. He returns to his old neighborhood to find an asylum. An attendant there gives him directions to the old fishing hole, but when he arrives, there’s no water, just a pit filled with garbage.

In Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, a Native Canadian sniper returns home from the Great War with his last vials of morphine and memories of his friends and comrades all dead in the mud of France. The novel is darkly poetic, reminiscing not about the war in Europe, but about how warfare among his people once had a ritual, religious quality. It was personalized, sacred, and transformative. And there was nothing like this in Europe. There was nothing sacred about facing a machine gun. Nothing transformative about drowning in the mud. Nothing personal or ritualized about being atomized by an artillery shell. The world they once knew through the myths and stories of their ancestors was gone.

The story of Mulan reads much like this to me, with Chu Renhuo lamenting a world in decline as a new one rose in its place. One where good Confucian sons, like him, were forced into a position of submission and subservience, from their hair to their government. And at the same time, the novel glorifies China’s golden age, the Tang Dynasty, upholding them as an Empire that had the Mandate of Heaven. As hopefully a new native Chinese Dynasty might get someday soon.

In this mold, Mulan is recast from Guo’s Buddhist Bodhisattva, to a model Confucian daughter, one who is too good for the new world she finds herself in, so she departs.

Other Qing era writers present similar paradoxes for Mulan to navigate. As mentioned earlier, in the Extraordinary Biography Mulan serves with distinction and takes the Emperor up on his offer to declare her a councilor. She is granted the name “General Wu Zhao,” but forces at court conspire to convince the Emperor that he will be defeated and dethroned by one named Wu. Convinced it’s Mulan, the Emperor accuses her of disloyalty. To prove her devotion to her sovereign, the anonymous author of the Extraordinary Biography has Mulan cut out her own heart and present it to him. However, the prophecy does indeed come true. The Emperor is dethroned and succeeded by the female Emperor Wu Zetian.43

If the majority of Sui and Tang is supposed to uphold the image of a glorious Chinese golden age, then Mulan’s chapters certainly put a drag in that narrative. Neither the 2012 or 2013 television adaptations of Sui and Tang, Heroes of Sui and Tang Dynasties 1 & 2 (2012) and Heroes in Sui and Tang Dynasties (2013), cast Mulan’s part. Best not to draw attention to an audience in modern China how leal service to the sovereign and respecting one’s filial duty might end only in tragedy when trying to present the Imperial golden age as divinely mandated.

At least, her casting was not in the cast list. I’m still working my way through both series, so as of this writing, I have not encountered any Mulan in the show. That said, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was originally supposed to include Sherlock Holmes as the League’s central figure, but Alan Moore worried that Sherlock might steal the show, and the rest of the ensemble would fall to the wayside. So he relegated Sherlock to a minor, flashback role. It’s entirely possible I’m ascribing malicious intent where none exists. Perhaps the creators of both shows saw Mulan as a larger-than-life figure who might steal the show. That said, if that is the case, it does feel a bit odd that they wouldn’t bother to include her to draw more eyes.

After all, Mulan does linger large in the psyche of what it means to be a strong Chinese woman. An image and idea that they carried with them across the ocean.

But for more on that, READ ON!

Next: Part 3 of 4. Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

Discuss this Article on the r/JackAdrian subreddit.

Footnotes

1. As I wrote in Who Murdered the Sixth Dalai Lama? my brain can’t help but correct Genghis Khan to the slightly more accurate orthography of Chinggis Khaan. The important point being the “G” in Genghis should be pronounced as a soft “g,” like in the English ginger. To the disbelieving who spent their whole lives saying “Kenkis,” consider that the most common romanization of the Arabic equivalent of the term is Jinghiz or Jinghez, and they were far closer to the Mongol speakers than Geoffrey Chaucer, who probably introduced (or at least, popularized) the pronunciation of a hard palatial sound at the beginning of this title in The Canterbury Tales. Specifically, the opening lines of The Squire’s Tale reads,

At Sarray, in the land of Tartarye, Ther dwelte a kyng that werreyed Russye, Thurgh which ther dyde many a doughty man. This noble kyng was cleped Cambyuskan. (Chaucer 1933. ln. 9-12.)

Of course, Chaucer was writing in Middle English, i.e. Anglo-Saxon language that was beginning to shift with heavy Latin and French influences. This can be obviously seen in Chaucer’s own name: the soft Geoffrey directly adjoining the soft Chaucer. Had Chaucer been born a few centuries earlier, he would probably have been known as “Keffrey Chauker.” So it’s very possible that “Cambyuskan” is meant to be pronounced “Chambyuskan.”

Regarding the translation of Chinggis Khaan as King of the World, this is the term that Mongols themselves communicated to me, though one is more likely to see English-speaking writers translate this term as Great King.

2. Kato Kiyomasa, the samurai commander charged with the subjugation of Hamgyeong Province, would cross the Tumen River and fight Jurchen tribes regardless of this rebuff. It is unknown if Kato knew of this exchange between the Japanese and Ming envoys. Even if he did, it’s probably little more than evidence of his loyalty to Hideyoshi’s goals in invading China. Kato’s rival, Konishi Yukinaga, was one of the primary diplomats trying to eke out a diplomatic solution to the conflict, while Kato seemed to lay claim to the title as Hideyoshi’s most loyal samurai. If he was informed that the Jurchen were vassals of the Ming, all the more reason to make war against them, as Hideyoshi’s ultimate goal was the conquest of China. (Hawley 2014. Chapter 11: On to Pyongyang.)

3. Chu Renhuo’s death is uncertain, but reference is made to him living on a document dated 1704.

4. The dates included here are the earliest possible dates. In reality, the dates of composition for all of these novels is disputed, and given that they comprise dozens of volumes each, probably spanned decades, as Sui and Tang did. Not only that, but the early manuscripts all vary slightly, giving scholars a difficult time finding scraps and having to question whether their findings are parts of pieces that inspired these writers, or are actually early editions of the work, thus requiring pushing the dates forward even farther. The earliest of these is probably Outlaws, as a reference to the work was found dating precisely to 1524, pointing to an earlier composition. The author considered most likely to have written it, Shi Nai’an, lived 1296-1372, meaning he witnessed the decline and fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, and the early rise of the Ming, giving his life an interesting parallel to Chu Renhuo. Given that Outlaws is about a rebel group rising to the occasion to defeat a barbaric enemy, it’s not hard to see the parallels both in the historic context of the times Ourlaws was written, and with Chu.

5. Keay 2010. Overwleming Ming.

6. Ibid. The Great Rites Controversy.

7. Martin 2011. Daenerys I

8. Keay 2010. From Jurchen to Manchu.

9. Legge 1879. Xiao Jing. This sentence is taken literally in the opening paragraphs of the Classic. Given as a teaching from master to student, the full passage reads,

(Once), when Zhong Ni was unoccupied, and his disciple Zeng was sitting by in attendance on him, the Master said, "The ancient kings had a perfect virtue and all-embracing rule of conduct, through which they were in accord with all under heaven. By the practice of it the people were brought to live in peace and harmony, and there was no ill-will between superiors and inferiors. Do you know what it was?"Zeng rose from his mat and said, "How should I, Shen, who am so devoid of intelligence, be able to know this?" The Master said, "(It was filial piety.) Now filial piety is the root of (all) virtue, and (the stem) out of which grows (all moral) teaching. Sit down again, and I will explain the subject to you. Our bodies - to every hair and bit of skin - are received by us from our parents, and we must not presume to injure or wound them. This is the beginning of filial piety. When we have established our character by the practice of the (filial) course, so as to make our name famous in future ages and thereby glorify our parents, this is the end of filial piety. It commences with the service of parents; it proceeds to the service of the ruler; it is completed by the establishment of character. It is said in the Major Odes of the Kingdom: Ever think of your ancestor, Cultivating your virtue."

10. The slicing method, though it was recorded as early as the 10th Century, was one favored by the Manchu. This method, known also as the “death by a thousand cuts” prolonged the pain and bleeding, keeping the victim alive for very long while their life force quite literally drained out of them.

11. Keay 2010. From Jurchen to Manchu.

12. Sun 2008. p. 30.

13. Hegel 1981. p. 206-7. This is purely speculative, hence why it’s going in a footnote and not in the main text, but I think it’s also worth considering the mindset of an author. Chu Renhuo may also have considered his own family name as being somehow related to his anti-government feelings. The very first Chinese imperial dynasty, the Qin, rose to unite “all” of China for the first time in the second century BCE. In what is known as the Chu-Han Contention, or sometimes the Chu-Han War, the short-lived (only two emperors) Qin Dynasty gave way to the long-lived Han Dynasty, China’s contemporary to the Roman Empire. As the state of Qin led to the Qin Dynasty, the state of Chu led to the Han Dynasty. During the brief period when Chu was subjugated under a Qin empire, Keay writes,

To cries of ‘Great Chu shall rise again’, it would do just that when the Qin experiment in empire foundered. From Chu would come the contenders for a new dynastic dispensation; and under one of them, the founder of the Han dynasty, its softening southern mix of extravagant expression, encrusted artistry, shamanic mysticism and lachrymose verse would colour the mainstream of northern Chinese culture. (2010. Stone Cattle Road.)

My theory, and it is merely that, is that in a language which lends itself so readily to pun and plays on words (for example, the intimate, superstitious relationship in Chinese and Sino-adjacent cultures like Korea, between the words “four” and “death”) Chu Renhuo may have viewed himself casually in a nominally determinative way, drawing a line between Chu rising again over the Han, that perhaps he might be a source of another rising against a new barbarian empire.

14. Chu 2001. Chapter 56. Unless otherwise indicated, these translations are my own, and are admittedly poor. Not to be used as a philologically rigorous presentation of The Romance of Sui and Tang.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. When thinking of a “long gun,” Chu Renhuo might be thinking of the folangchi, which Samuel Hawley describes as “a crude, small-bore cannon so named because it had been introduced by the farangi, the Portuguese, a century before.” (Hawley 2014. China: The Ming Dynasty in Decline.) Though China was the birthplace of gunpowder, it was used primarily as an explosive projectile, not as a propellant. Though early hand cannons existed as early as the Song and Yuan Dynasties, it was the Europeans who seemed to develop them into a systematic weapon which became standard and began being incorporated into East Asian armies starting in the 1500s. (Keay 2010. In Singing-girl Towers.) Early folangchi models were soon innovated and expanded by Chinese (and Japanese, and Korean) gunsmiths, with the che dian chong (lightning quick firearm) and the san yan chong (three eyes firearm) seeing service. This last one was notable for having three barrels put together in a triangular formation. A soldier could load all three at once, be ready to fire thrice in quick succession. Compared to the average European or Japanese arquebus circa 1600, this gave the san yan chong wielder a huge advantage in firing rate, though at the expense of accuracy. It is almost certainly these types of firearms that Chu Renhuo is thinking, as opposed to a more accurate collection of Tang weaponry, of which these types of gunpowder based small arms was not available.

21. Chu 2001. Chapter 56.

22. Chu 2001. Chapter 57.

23. Ibid.

24. Sun 2008. p. 31. [Brackets are my own clarifying additions.]

25. Ibid.

26. Chu 2001. Chapter 57.

27. A problematic term just as “Confucianism” is, but let’s just run with it for now.

28. Keay 2010. Sunset of the Song.

29. Gardner 2014. Chapter 5.

30. Ibid.

31. Gardner 2014. Chapter 2.

32. Sun 2008. p. 32.

33. Smith 2008. p. 140.

34. Smith 2008. p. 171.

35. There’s a lot to say about China’s relationship with Korea, Vietnam, and Tibet. I’ll definitely be dissecting Ming-Tibet history one of these days, which I find very fascinating. China’s relationship with Vietnam, including in the Mind period, was one of push and pull. The Vietnamese were sometimes vassals, and sometimes at open war with the Ming. The Vietnamese, like the Koreans, modeled their own examination system and curriculum after the Ming. A system which was in place in some form until the 20th Century (Ho Chi Minh’s father having been one of these bureaucrats). Korea was explicitly known as “little China” and understood as the “younger brother” of China throughout the Ming-Joseon Period, which Hawley describes, “Unofficially, however, Korea’s worldview was more finely graded. China, the “civilized center,” of course came first. Korea, the “small civilized center,” came second, and all other nations fell further down the ladder according to their perceived level of Chinese cultural attainment.” (2014. Chapter 4: Korea: Highway to the Prize.) This relationship was considered so emotionally and spiritually important to 16th Century Confucians that when accused of disloyalty to his liege the Wanli Emperor (1563-1620), King Seonjo of Joseon (1552-1608) was distraught, laid in bed for days at a time, and became depressed until a complete exoneration was delivered directly from Beijing.

36. This type of name change signaling dynastic intention has precedence. Batu Mongke (1472-1517) was bestowed the title Dayan Khan by his wife, Manduhai Khatun (1449-1510, Khatun is the female version of Khan, i.e. Queen). Dayan was a play on words. To Mongol ears, it sounded like “King of the Whole,” yet to Chinese ears Dayan sounded like Da Yuan, or “Great Yuan,” i.e. a threat to restore the Mongol Empire that the Ming desperately feared. Clearly, the Ming did indeed hear the name like that, and Chinese envoys refused to use the term, calling him instead Xiao wang zi, or “Little King.” (Weatherford 2015. Chapter 10.)

37. Gardner 2014. Chapter 5.

38. Chu 2001. Chapter 59.

39. Chu 2001. Chapter 56.

40. Sun 2008. p. 32.

41. Chu 2001. Chapter 60. As mentioned previously, Confucian execution methods tried to maintain the cohesiveness of the body, hence the preference for poisoning or hanging. That Mulan cuts her own throat might point to a rejection of her Confucian virtue that did her so little good. It might also be that she was honoring the Tabgach half of her, rejecting her mother’s Han half (whether it was a traditional way for Tabgach to commit suicide, I’m not sure, but the important thing would be that Chu might have thought as much, as indeed, that the Japanese [the dwarf barbarians] tended to do so by cutting open their belly before having their heads chopped off spoke as much to their barbarism in Chinese eyes as everything else).

Maybe there’s something else going on. The Kingdom of Chu was destroyed and the first Chinese Empire, the Qin Dynasty, rose in its stead. A Chu-based vassal overthrew the second Qin Emperor (Qin Er Huangdi) but one Xiang Yu wanted to restore the Kingdom of Chu to the status of an independent state, while Liu Bang, the King of Han, wanted to bring about a new Chinese Empire, the new Han Dynasty. Xiang Yu knew his war was lost long before his death, but according to the great historian Sima Qian, Xiang Yu’s final days were ones where he refused to submit or surrender. Still, Liu Bang, the future Han Emperor, was determined to take him alive.

‘I have heard that Han has offered a reward of a thousand catties of gold and a fief of ten thousand households for my life,’ said Xiang Yu. ‘So I will do you a favour!’ And with that he cut his own throat and died. (Keay 2010. Pawn to king.)

Not to lend credence to my own theory regarding Chu’s conception of his own surname, but this incident of Mulan repeating the same act as the last King of Chu reads to me like a very clear allusion.

42. Keay 2010. Like a breath of spring.

43. Sun 2008. p. 26.