Episode #219 - Who Was the Real Mulan?

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Hey everyone, Sebastian here.

Just wanted to let you know that I will once again be participating in this year's Intelligent Speech Conference.

Deception, lies, fakery, fraudulence, and forgery is what they have on the docket for Intelligent Speech 2025.

So obviously, I've got to be there.

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Whatever your hot takes may be when it comes to the year of Our Lord 2020,

I think we can at least all agree that it was a bad year for the movies.

The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered cinemas around the globe.

The films that had been scheduled for release in the final three quarters of the year were either delayed, shifted to a streaming platform, or were cautiously released into a modified theater-going environment characterized by social distancing, masks, and reduced capacity theaters.

It's been estimated that the global movie industry lost around $32 billion in 2020.

It was a situation so demoralizing that some film companies even stopped reporting the dismal box office numbers altogether.

Film critics and industry watchers around the world started speculating openly about the potential death of cinema.

Things were bleak.

The global calamity we were all navigating meant that it was harder than ever for a film to make money that year.

As such, listing the box office bombs of 2020 almost doesn't seem fair.

For instance, Christopher Nolan's mind-bending science fiction film Tenant was one of the few films that dared a global theatrical release in the summer of that year.

When the marketing costs of the film were factored in, Tenet lost something like $50 million.

But when you consider that it still managed to gross around $360 million worldwide, that could arguably be considered a pandemic success.

Still, it was the kind of year where if you were going to release a film that had cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, you needed everything to break in just the right way.

The rollout needed to be thoughtful, strategic, and hopefully unblemished by controversy.

Even if you were just hoping to break even, there was very little room for error.

Arguably, there was no new film that navigated 2020 worse than Disney's live-action remake of Mulan.

The film was, of course, an adaptation of the beloved ancient Chinese poem The Ballad of Mulan, which tells the story of a young woman who disguises herself as a man and takes her father's place in the army after he is conscripted.

The live-action Mulan was meant to be an update on the 1998 Disney animated film of the same name.

Now, despite representing the denouement of Disney's 1990s animation renaissance, 1998's Mulan was a reasonable success in its day and still has many vocal defenders for whom it was a childhood favorite.

The 2020 film was following the trend of live-action remakes, including Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and the Lion King, all of which had grossed over a billion dollars at the global box office.

It's no secret that both the 1998 animated Mulan and the 2020 remake were made by Disney with the hope of tapping into the lucrative Chinese movie-going market.

Well,

partially.

Obviously, both films still needed to play well in North America.

So, it couldn't be, you know, too Chinese.

This is the paradox that has tested all recent Western adaptations of the Mulan story.

And it's the paradox that ultimately sealed the fate of one of 2020's biggest flops.

First, Mulan's production managed to make a number of enemies stateside, making unlikely allies of both pro-democracy, human rights-oriented student activists and ultra-conservative Republican senators.

You see, filming a lavish costume epic set in ancient China requires filming in China.

That means playing ball with the Chinese government.

In particular, Disney did some filming in one of the country's most controversial regions, the far western territory of Xinjiang.

This is the home of the ethnic group known as the Uyghurs, a group that many have argued have been violently persecuted by the Chinese government.

According to the BBC, quote, human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls re-education camps and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms.

⁇

Prior to Mulan's release, it became clear that parts of Mulan had been shot in Xinjiang, and the film's credits explicitly thanked both the Communist Party of China and the regional government of the Xinjiang region.

This created an uproar among both human rights organizations and a cadre of of American senators, who eventually published a letter lambasting Disney for, quote, aiding and abetting the CCP's atrocities, end quote.

Disney's CFO would later try and tamp down these criticisms by explaining that most of the film had actually been shot in New Zealand, with scenery having been filmed in 20 locations around China.

As for the controversial credits, she added, quote, it's common knowledge in the film industry that you acknowledge in the film's credits the national and local governments that allow you to film there.

And so, in our credits, it recognized both China as well as locations in New Zealand, end quote.

While true, these comments did little to quiet the critics.

And this was just the start.

Ahead of the film's release, the hashtag Boycott Mulan started trending on social media.

Now, believe it or not, this call for a boycott originally had little to do with Disney filming in the Xinjiang region.

Instead, the calls for a boycott were brought on by some comments made by Mulan's star, the Chinese-American actress Liu Yifei.

As you might remember, at the time Hong Kong was in the throes of a series of popular pro-democracy demonstrations.

At the height of tensions between the authorities and the protesters, when the Hong Kong police were being accused of excessive use of force, the actress decided that it was a good time to weigh in on social media.

In that moment, she tweeted out her support for the Hong Kong police, along with a provocative post from Beijing's People's Daily, one of China's state-run newspapers.

This met with harsh criticism from both Hong Kong activists and their supporters around the world, furious that a Chinese-born star whose international profile was about to become considerably larger thanks to her role as Mulan, seemed to be condoning the use of violence against pro-democracy protesters.

Those leading the boycott argued that Liu Yifei had no right portraying Mulan, a figure they associated with bravery, heroism, and the fight for justice.

They were convinced that Mulan would have supported the cause of the protesters.

The real Mulan, according to this camp, was actually the recently arrested 23-year-old activist Agnes Chao.

In their eyes, this young woman, who was putting her life on the line for Hong Kong, Kong, better captured the spirit of the ancient folktale than the Beijing-supporting American actress.

All of this certainly did not help the fate of Disney's live-action Mulan.

For many, the film, which its defenders insisted was meant to celebrate the heroism of Asian women, had been tainted by the geopolitics of the modern Chinese state.

But you would think that that given the nature of these controversies, the one place where this movie would still have played well would have been mainland China.

After all, it was a beloved Chinese story and featured a cast made up of legendary Asian actors, including Jet Li and Donnie Yen.

Not to mention Liu Yi Fei, who remains incredibly popular in mainland China.

Lu Yi Fei's comments may have been provocative, but they were also staunchly pro-Beijing, which meant that she had her defenders.

Disney had played nice with the Chinese authorities and had even thanked the controversial government of the Xinjiang region.

Surely, this meant that Disney could expect to do some business in Chinese theaters.

Well,

not so fast.

Disney certainly bet on the Chinese market saving this film.

The disruption of COVID-19 meant that the film never received a wide theatrical release in North America and was instead moved directly to Disney Plus.

However, the film was released in China in September of 2020, where theaters had temporarily reopened.

But the Chinese were not interested in this version of Mulan.

First, it seems that despite Disney's attempts to appease the Chinese government, the authorities may still have kneecapped the film by ordering major news outlets in the country not to cover its release.

Around the time of Mulan's release, Reuters reported that the Cyberspace Administration of China had been telling media outlets to avoid mentioning Disney's Mulan.

The reasons for this are still a little unclear.

The Reuters sources guessed that it may have been because the film had drawn unwanted attention to the situation in Xinjiang.

But it's also possible that this order was issued to keep Mulan from displacing a Chinese-made film from the top spot at the box office.

The ultra-patriotic Chinese war epic The 800 had been dominating theaters up to that point.

The idea of an American film pushing it off the top spot may have been distasteful to the authorities.

But, I should say, these are just guesses.

Perhaps most importantly, The film simply did not resonate with average viewers in China.

Despite receiving some positive reviews, the film had terrible word of mouth, especially in mainland China.

The popular Chinese online reviewing site Duban, which aggregates user reviews of films, ultimately gave the film an average rating of 4.9 out of 10.

Not good.

According to the reviewers on Dubon, the issue was authenticity.

Many of the reviewers didn't like that they could tell that they were being pandered to by outsiders who only had a superficial understanding of Chinese culture and history.

In a popular review later translated and quoted by Variety, a Dubon user argued that, quote, The Americans invited all the famous Chinese actors they could think of and piled together all the Chinese elements that they could find to create this car crash.

It's full of Western stereotypes and conjectures about China, and particularly ancient China.

End quote.

In other words, the filmmakers didn't fully understand what the story of Mulan means to Chinese people.

This criticism seems reasonable, especially when you consider that the film's director, four screenwriters, and head costume designer did not have any Asian heritage.

The people most instrumental in shaping the story and the look of the film, however well-informed or well-meaning they may have been, were still outsiders.

Their imaginative rendering of Chinese history might play in the West, but it came off as hollow and borderline offensive in China.

It was a Chinese story told through Western eyes, sold back to China.

Or, as another Dubon user wrote, quote, the shell was Chinese, but the soul was still foreign, end quote.

What's more, some argued that the changes made in the most recent adaptation misunderstood the message of the original story.

A review published by China's Southern Metropolis Weekly and quoted in the LA Times argued that, quote, the background story of Mulan is that she wanted to take her father's place, protect her family, and defend the people.

But the film turned Hua Mulan into a palace guard protecting the emperor.

The people that Hua Mulan wanted to defend became the background, end quote.

You may have noticed that just to underscore their desire for authenticity, that reviewer used one of the traditional Chinese names for Mulan, Hua Mulan.

But this brings us to the question of who was the real Mulan?

Was she a defender of the people, as this reviewer insists?

Or, as Agnes Chao's supporters insisted, was the real Mulan a campaigner for justice and an emblem of self-determination?

Was she a proto-feminist who subverted traditional Chinese gender roles?

Or a paradigm of traditional Confucian Chinese values?

Well, it all depends on who you ask and when you asked them.

But perhaps we should start from the beginning.

Was there a real Mulan at the heart of this beloved folktale?

Could there have been a historical figure who inspired centuries' worth of storytelling?

If so, was she even Chinese?

Let's see what we can figure out today on our fake history.

Episode number 219, Who Was the Real Mulong?

There's nothing better than a woman.

Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major, and this is the podcast that explores historical myths and tries to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story.

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It's February 8th, 2005.

This week, we are headed to ancient China to explore the legend of the beloved Chinese icon Mulan.

The story of Mulan is well over 1500 years old.

Sometime between the 4th and 6th centuries, an oral tradition about a young woman disguising herself as a man to save her elderly father from a military draft was first set down in writing.

Over the centuries, this story has become the root of dozens of poems, songs, plays, operas, novels, and then eventually major motion pictures.

Thanks to Disney, the story of Mulan has easily become one of the best-known Chinese folktales internationally.

Now, despite the fact that this story has been told and retold countless times, the core of Mulan's tale has remained remarkably stable.

Mulan is a young woman who is distressed when a scroll from the local military authority arrives at her home, ordering her father to report for military service.

Her father is elderly and has no adult sons who can take his place in the draft.

So Mulan makes the fateful decision to go in her father's place.

She procures everything she would need to look the part of a male soldier and reports for duty.

She then serves with distinction for a number of years, with none of her comrades ever once questioning her biological sex.

Then, after her tour of duty, she returns home, takes off her soldiers' clothes, and resumes her life as a woman.

It's a fascinating tale because it combines both deeply traditional Chinese values and an act of remarkable transgression.

While the the core of the story has remained more or less unchanged over the centuries, the story of Mulan has also proved to be incredibly malleable.

In the book, Mulan's Legend and Legacy in China and the United States, the scholar Lan Dong argues that Mulan's tale has been refashioned countless times.

And I should note here that Lan Dong's book is easily the best book in English on Mulan and has been an essential source for this episode.

So be prepared to hear that name a whole lot more.

I could not have made this show without that book.

Anyway, Landong explains that, quote, the meaning of the story varies in relation to the cultural context in which it is retold and through which the plot and moral import are reshaped.

End quote.

This process of retelling, reshaping, and reimagining Mulan has meant that pinning down the quote-unquote real Mulan has become a particularly difficult thing.

For instance, in the aftermath of the release of the most recent Mulan film, many Chinese viewers were annoyed by the changes made to the character by the screenwriters.

In angry reviews, disappointed viewers claimed that Disney's live-action Mulan did did not accurately reflect the story of a figure they identified as Hua Mulan.

The Mulan with the family name Hua was, for many, the real Mulan.

But the irony is that the family name Hua is a fairly late addition to the Mulan story.

In the earliest written versions of the tale, the heroine is identified only as Mulan, which itself may have been been a surname.

The family name Hua first appears in an opera about Mulan written in the 16th century.

In other plays from that era, Mulan was also given the family names Zhu and Wei.

Over time, the name Hua Mulan has become favored in China for its poetic overtones.

Turns out, the words Hua and Mulan paired together translate to something close to magnolia flower.

I bring this up because the insistence that Hua Moulin is the quote-unquote real Mulan isn't quite right.

At best, Hua Moulin is the 16th century Mulan, and the tradition goes back much further than that.

But exactly how far back does it go?

Can we trace the tradition back back to a real human being whose biography roughly maps onto the story of Mulan?

Well, interestingly, there are a number of Chinese towns and provinces that claim Mulan as a native daughter.

For instance, in the village of Huahyantu in China's Shaanxi province, you can apparently find Mulan's grave and a shrine dedicated to the illustrious heroine.

However, the city of Wanzu in Hebei province also has been proposed as the true hometown of Mulan.

This is based on a long lost inscription in a temple allegedly dedicated to the hero.

Yet another shrine in Yucheng County in Hainan province tells visitors that that town is actually the true birthplace of Mulan.

And that's just the start.

There are at least three other towns that I've come across in my reading that have been identified as the real home of Mulan, and there are surely many more.

In fact, for centuries, the historicity of Mulan was largely taken for granted by the Chinese.

The poems and plays about her were simply assumed to have been based on a true story.

According to Landong, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, references to Mulan as a real person can be found in dozens of local histories from all around China.

But when you have so many places claiming things about the real Mulan, one starts to wonder if you can trust any of them.

By the 1800s, this clearly started bothering some Chinese scholars, who tried their best to reconcile competing claims about the biographical details of Mulan's life.

For instance, in the early 1800s, one Qing dynasty historian wrote that his research had suggested that, quote, Mulan was probably a native of Bo and had been buried in Wan, end quote.

No doubt, both Bo and Wan had documents and grave sites that allegedly attested to the historical reality of Mulan.

So, there's no shortage of written material from China that claims that Mulan really existed.

However, almost all of it was produced after the 16th century.

The more pertinent question is whether there's any evidence of a historical Mulan that predates the earliest poems about her.

Or did Mulan start her existence as a fictional character who was later historicized by eager local historians, looking to put their town on the map as the birthplace of China's best-loved woman warrior.

Well, to answer that question, we need to dive into the earliest Mulan traditions and see what they reveal about this character.

Let's check it out.

The earliest known version of the Mulan story comes from a poem known as Mulan Shi, which commonly gets translated as the ballad of Mulan.

But it's still a little unclear exactly when this ballad was originally composed.

Its first confirmed appearance in writing comes from a 12th century text known as The Collected Works of the Music Bureau.

As the name suggests, this book was an officially sanctioned collection of Chinese poems and songs considered to be classics in their day.

That book contains two versions of the Mulan story printed side by side, one called The Ballad of Mulan and the other called The Song of Mulan.

The original Ballad of Mulan is both undated and unattributed.

But the author does tell us that he found the poem in an earlier text known as Musical Records Old and New.

Most experts date that text to the 6th century.

But some experts think that the poem is even older than that.

Many believe that the poem originated as an oral tradition that took shape as early as the 4th century.

Specifically, the language used in the ballad seems to suggest that it came out of what's known as the Northern Wei dynasty.

This was a dynasty that controlled much of what we now think of as northern and western China from 386 to 535 AD.

Now, interestingly, this dynasty was founded by a group known as the Xianbei.

The Xianbei were originally a confederation of steppe nomads, a horse archer people culturally similar to the later Mongols or the Huns.

In the late 4th century, a Zhanbei clan, known known as the Toba managed to take control of much of northern China and formed a government based on a model set by earlier Chinese dynasties.

This is actually a very common story in the history of China.

A group of steppe nomads sweeps into the country as raiders and conquerors, but eventually they settle, become less nomadic, and pick up the mantle of local government.

Along the way, they intermarry with traditional Chinese power brokers, adopt the culture, fashion, and government traditions of the Chinese, and before you know it, they are just another Chinese dynasty.

Although, to some, their roots as nomads from the steppe always mark them as outsiders.

Now, as I'm sure some of you listening already know, the dominant ethnic group in the history of China are known as the Han, or the Han Chinese.

The Han were traditionally from the central agricultural regions of China around the Yellow and Yangtze rivers.

This means that much of what we think of as Chinese culture is deeply associated with the Han ethnic group.

But it needs to be said that not all Chinese culture is Han culture.

In fact, the long history of China is about the interplay between many different ethnic groups, mixing with one another and creating new and diverse Chinese identities.

Still, there's a narrative in China which has been promoted at various times in history, especially by Han-dominated dynasties, that the Han are the natural rulers of China and the only true Chinese people.

Non-Han people don't particularly care for this narrative.

With that in mind, the significance of Mulan's roots in the Northern Wei dynasty should hopefully become a bit clearer.

The Northern Wei dynasty was founded by the Xianbei, which means that its rulers were not ethnically Han Chinese.

In fact, in the 4th century, the Han Chinese regarded the Xianbei people and the Northern Wei dynasty as barbarians.

The irony, of course, is that Mulan would eventually be adopted as the most Chinese of Chinese heroes.

But if the scholars are correct and her story comes from the Northern Wei dynasty and reflects the values of Xianbei culture, well then Mulan may not have originally been Chinese.

Or rather, she would have been understood as an ethnic outsider by the Han majority in central China.

Now,

why do we think that Mulan's story comes from the Northern Wei dynasty?

Well, that has to do with the language used in the poem.

So, I think it's time that we heard this poem.

Not only will this help illustrate exactly why experts place this tale in the Northern Wei dynasty, it will also help us flesh out the plot of the Mulan story.

As the expert Lan Dong points out, this first ballad lays the groundwork for all the Mulan adaptations and retellings that came in the future.

So, it's worth hearing.

Also, thankfully for podcasting purposes, the poem's not that long.

In fact, I was a little surprised at how short this poem is, considering how many novels, plays, and now films it has inspired.

So let's hear the ballad in its entirety.

Now, obviously there are many translations that one can choose from, but I'm going with a 2010 translation done by the Harvard University scholars Xiamen Kwa and Wilt Edema.

I find this translation to be a bit more lyrical than some of the other ones I've read.

So that's what I'm going with.

Now, if you find yourself confused by this poem, don't worry, I'm going to be breaking it down.

But going in, you should probably know that when the poem refers to the Son of Heaven, that's the Emperor.

It isn't some God that they are in the presence of, although some folks may have regarded the Emperor that way.

But the Son of Heaven is the Emperor.

All right.

The Ballad of Moulin.

A sigh, a sigh, and then again a sigh.

Moulin was sitting at the door and weaving.

One did not hear the sound of loom and shuttle.

One only heard her heave those heavy sighs.

When she was asked the object of her love, when she asked who occupied her thoughts, she did not have a man she was in love with.

There was no boy who occupied her thoughts.

Last night I saw the summons from the army.

The Khan is mobilizing all his troops.

The list of summoned men comes in twelve copies.

Every copy lists my father's name.

My father has, alas, no grown-up sons.

And I, Mulan, have no grown-up brother.

I want to buy a saddle and a horse to take my father's place and join the army.

To the eastern market, there she bought a horse.

To the western market, there she bought a saddle.

To the southern market, there she bought a bridle.

To the northern market, there she bought a whip.

At dawn, She said goodbye to her dear parents.

At night, she rested by the yellow river.

She did not hear her parents' voices calling for their daughter.

She only heard the Yellow River's flowing waters, always splashing, splashing, splashing.

At dawn she left the Yellow River's bank.

At night she rested on the Black Mountain top.

She did not hear her parents' voices calling for their daughter.

She only heard the whinnying of Crimson Mountain's Hunnish horsemen.

Myriads of miles she joined the thick of battle, crossing the mountain passes as if flying.

Winds from the north transmitted metal rattles.

A freezing light shone on her iron armor.

A hundred battles and the brass were dead.

After ten years, the bravest men returned.

When they returned, they met the Son of Heaven, the Son of Heaven seated on his throne.

Their honorary honorary rank went up twelve steps.

The Khan asked Mulan what he might desire.

I, Mulan, do not care for an appointment here at court.

Give me your racer, good for a thousand miles.

Take me back again to my old hometown.

Hearing their daughter had arrived, her parents went out the city welcoming her back home.

Hearing her elder sister had arrived, her sister put on her bright red outfit at the door.

Hearing his sister had arrived, her brother sharpened his knife that brightly flashed in front of pigs and sheep.

Open the gates of the pavilion on the east.

Let me sit down in my old western room.

I will take off the dress I wore in battle.

I will put on the skirt I used to wear.

Close to the window, she did up her hair.

Facing the mirror, she applied makeup.

She went outside and saw her army buddies.

Her army buddies were all flabbergasted.

We marched together for 12 long years and had absolutely no clue that Mulan was a girl.

The male hare wildly kicks its feet.

The female hare has shifty eyes.

But when the pair of hairs runs side by side, who can distinguish whether I, in fact, am male or female?

So, that is the ballad of Mulan.

Short, simple, and yet I understand why it's resonated over the course of centuries.

That ballad went on to inspire dozens of adaptations and retellings in the form of songs, operas, and in the Ming period, a whole series of plays.

As it turns out, the 2020 live-action Mulan wasn't even the first live-action film to adapt the story.

In 1939, a Chinese film company created Mulan Joins the Army, which ran for a record-breaking 83 days in Shanghai.

In some versions of the story, Mulan's military exploits are fleshed out and made even more dramatic.

In other versions, Mulan is given a love interest.

The Ming Dynasty plays usually ended with Mulan getting married, because much like the Shakespeare comedies from the same period, a wedding was synonymous with a happy ending.

But it all starts with this fairly economical poem, nested inside of which are some profound ideas about gender and gender performance.

Not to mention themes of loyalty, the relationship between parent and child, the life cycle, and the growing pains associated with becoming independent.

I didn't really expect to be as taken with this poem as I have been, but you know, sometimes classics are classics for a reason.

But before we dive into the themes, let's return to the question of the poem's origins.

What clues are there that this poem comes out of the Northern Wei dynasty?

Well, first there's the way that the poem refers to the emperor.

You may have noticed that the emperor is called both the son of heaven and the khan.

Son of heaven is the traditional Chinese title for the emperor, whereas Khan is the traditional name used by the leaders of steppe nomad groups.

You might recognize it from the name Changis Khan.

Now, it might seem a little strange that the poem oscillates between those two terms until you learn that the leaders of the Northern Wei dynasty used both titles.

Interestingly, as the poem was adapted and the tale was retold, the word Khan was one of the first things to get dropped.

That word identified Mulan with a non-Han ethnic group.

As this story was embraced as a Chinese classic, the elements that suggested its roots in the Zhanbei culture were steadily sanded away.

So in later tellings, Mulan could seem more unambiguously Han Chinese.

However, as Lan Dong has suggested, The gender performance, which is at the very heart of every version of this story, seems to reflect the values of the nomadic Jean-Bay people.

She explains, quote, The Jean-Bé had been a northern nomadic people, and their women were skilled at horse riding and archery.

Representation in the ballad of the masculine spirit as a characteristic of northern women is reminiscent of some other northern folk songs that portray heroic women as skilled archers and horse riders.

If the ballad came from a similar background, the story of Mulan's excellence in serving the army resonates with the experience of real tribe women.

End quote.

Now, I think that is a fascinating reading.

One of the big questions about Mulan that is debated by experts is why a story about a woman transgressing her traditional gender role was so enthusiastically embraced by pre-modern Chinese society, a place that famously had some pretty rigid gender roles.

Well, a piece of that puzzle may be that the original poem came out of a culture with a different set of gender roles.

In John Bei culture, the idea of a female warrior wasn't quite as outrageous.

You may have noticed in the ballad that Mulan switches into a warrior fairly easily.

No one tells her she can't do it because she's female, not even her parents.

When her comrades, who Wilt Edema charmingly translates as her army buddies, I just like that detail, when they discover that she's not biologically male, They're not angry or upset that Mulan violated some taboo against women fighting in the army?

They're just surprised that they didn't notice.

Moulin then gets the last word in the poem, where she uses the famous hair metaphor to explain how easily physical differences can be obscured.

The poem ends with Moulin saying, quote, The male hair wildly kicks its feet.

The female hair has shifty eyes.

But when the pair of hairs runs side by side, who can distinguish whether I in fact am male or female?

End quote.

Now this final metaphor has gone on to be one of the most famous and enduring parts of the poem.

Many later adaptations would circle back to this metaphor.

Even Disney's 2020 live-action Mulan has an allusion to those lines.

The point seems to be that biological sexual difference becomes less important and harder to distinguish in the heat of battle or in the course of great deeds.

You could argue that this perspective is very steppe nomad, where female warriors were not unheard of.

Fans of this podcast might remember our series on the Amazons, where we looked at the idea that Scythian women women likely fought as warriors.

They were also nomads from the Eurasian steppe.

If there was a real Mulan, she may have had a lot in common with those women.

In the ballad, becoming accepted as male is as simple as trading one set of tools, the loom and the shuttle, for another set of tools, the saddle, the bridle, and the whip.

This is emphasized by an entire stanza that describes Mulan going to the four markets to get the right gear.

As Shiamin Kwa and Wilt Edima explain in their notes on their translation, Mulan's, quote, transformation into a man primarily involves equipment, suggesting that it will be deeds that distinguish her, end quote.

They later continue, quote, but when the military buff coat is taken off and her hair is styled and makeup reapplied, it is not in response to a service or social role.

She is putting on femaleness.

Or, to put it the opposite way, femaleness is a kind of social role.

As the visual vocabulary and the hair metaphor seem to imply, gender, like a social role, is something that can be put on.

End quote.

That is a fascinating point.

If you accept Qua and Edema's interpretation, even in this very ancient poem, there's a recognition that gender roles have less to do with biology than is sometimes assumed.

This poem could also be read as reflecting the melding of cultures that was occurring during the Northern Wei dynasty, the more flexible gender roles of Xianbei culture contrasting with the more strictly defined roles common in Han Chinese culture.

So, to bring it back to the question of the real Mulan, I think it's safe to say that the language of the poem, the clues about the original composition date, and the thematic concerns of the ballad all place its original composition comfortably in the Northern Wei dynasty in the 4th or 5th century.

Now, this means that most of those towns that I mentioned earlier could not have have been the real hometown of Mulan.

Many of them simply are not in the right place geographically.

But the bigger issue for those local Chinese histories that insisted that Mulan was a historical person is that none of them predate the literary tradition.

The ballad of Mulan is older than any historical document that mentions Mulan.

The local histories that try to place Mulan as a real person were mostly written between the 16th and 19th centuries, a solid millennia after the original ballad was likely composed.

That means that the fictional Mulan came first.

Now, it's still possible that the oral tradition that provided the source material for the written ballad of Mulan was about a real person.

The Janbei tradition of female horse archers suggests that it's at least possible.

The only problem is that we have no evidence of that real person outside of the poem.

So locating a real person in history who inspired the ballad may be impossible.

However, there are a number of figures from Chinese history who are Mulan-like.

That is, warrior women who stepped into traditionally male roles at times of crisis.

While these women did not directly inspire the ballad of Mulan, they can help us understand the role these types of women played in Chinese society.

Their stories can also help us understand exactly why a potentially subversive story like Mulan's became so embraced by many centuries' worth of Chinese people.

So let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll get into it.

It seems like any time I talk about China on this podcast, I always end up having to talk about Confucius.

Now, I really want to be careful not to give some overly simplistic thumbnail sketch of Chinese culture and philosophy.

As I've hopefully underscored in this episode, China is a large, diverse place whose borders have shifted and changed countless times over thousands of years of history.

The various Chinese states that have existed over the centuries were often multi-ethnic empires that encompassed a myriad of cultural and language groups.

China is not a monolith, neither is Chinese philosophy.

But with all that said, there's no denying the massive influence Confucian philosophy has had on the history of China.

Now, if you want to hear me speak at length about Confucianism and the various reactions to it, then feel free to check out my series on the first Chinese Emperor from season 5 or my series from last season on the Great East Asian War of the late 16th century.

In both those series, Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism are central to the story.

So feel free to check those out if you have not already.

I go pretty deep in those series, but I still feel like I've just scratched the surface of Confucius the person and Confucianism the philosophy.

I'm sure one day I'll end up doing an entire episode or series on Confucius.

But I'm going to talk about him again here because you need to understand a few things about Confucian philosophy to understand the story of Mulan.

Over the long course of Chinese history, the philosophical schools inspired by the teachings of the sage Confucius, who may have lived sometime in the 5th or 6th century BC, have waxed and waned in terms of their influence and popularity.

But my go-to Mulan experts, that is Lam Dong, Xiamen Kua, and Wilt Edema, all agree that for much of history, the story of Mulan was popularly understood using a Confucian moral framework.

Now, at first, that might seem a little strange, given that Confucianism is all about the careful observance of prescribed social roles.

Confucians generally like structure.

That is, everyone in society knowing their place and appropriately fulfilling their role.

Children should honor and obey their parents, while parents should benevolently protect their children.

In the same way, subjects should honor and obey their kings, and kings should benevolently protect their subjects.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that Confucianism is also associated with some fairly rigid gender roles.

In the Confucian model, women are supposed to fulfill the roles of wife, mother, and homemaker.

Domestic work is often, but not always, understood as women's work, along with tasks like weaving, as Mulan is described doing at the start of the ballad.

Men are meant to be the heads of the family and function as breadwinners.

Their work is supposed to be external to the home, be it physical labor, commerce, government service, or, importantly for our story, military service.

So you would think that the story of Mulan, which is all about a woman literally stepping away from the loom and taking on a man's role, would be rejected by people who had embraced Confucian morality.

It would be easy to assume that Confucians would be scandalized by this story, or at least would look down their noses at it as an example of barbarian behavior.

But this is not the case at all.

In fact, the story of Mulan has been embraced as a deeply Confucian story.

I would wager that this seemingly paradoxical interpretation of Mulan is what often flummoxes Westerners and non-Chinese folks folks who attempt to tell her story.

To understand why Mulan is actually a perfect Confucian hero, you need to understand a bit about China's history of formidable women.

In her book on Mulan, Landong does an excellent job of laying out China's history of female warriors, avengers, and knights errant.

Now, I would call this a surprising history, but I think it's only surprising if you're not Chinese.

Landong points out that for many generations, Western accounts of China and Chinese history emphasized the plight of women while ignoring a more complex history of gender relations.

As she puts it, quote, In the Western historical imagination, patriarchy and patrilineal male kinship rigidly structure traditional Chinese society to the degree that women are deprived of fundamental rights and are inferior to men without exception.

⁇ End quote.

Dong argues that while there's no denying that pre-modern Chinese society, influenced as it was by Confucianism, was deeply patriarchal, the situation was much more nuanced and complicated than that.

The role of women in pre-modern Chinese society was considerably more dynamic than the stereotype might suggest.

That dynamism is reflected in the embrace of the Mulan tradition.

It turns out there have been a number of women from throughout Chinese history who took on important military roles and were celebrated for it.

Landong argues that understanding the stories of these women can help us understand how there was, quote, a favorable environment in China for cultivating Mulan as an ideal hero.

First, there's evidence that in specific circumstances, women were able to become military commanders in China, starting from the most ancient times.

For instance, the archaeological excavations of the Shang Dynasty tombs, which date to around 1200 BC, have unearthed bronze inscriptions and ceremonial bones that speak of a female military commander named Fu Hao.

Most experts believe that Fu Hao was a consort of the Shang Emperor, Wu Ding.

Inscriptions found in the tombs seem to suggest that the emperor ordered Fu Hao to command his forces and lead military campaigns in his name.

Now, we don't know much else about this figure, but these inscriptions demonstrate just how old the concept of a female warrior and military leader is in Chinese society.

While female war leaders were admittedly rare, women would continue to have a role in military affairs in China for centuries.

But to get to a figure who more closely resembles Mulan, we need to flash forward roughly 1500 years to a remarkable 13-year-old girl named Jun Guan.

The young woman known as Jung Guan first appears in an official dynastic history known as the History of the Jin.

That book records the events of the Jin dynasty which existed from 266 to 420 AD.

Now, this is significant because she is one of the first Mulan-like figures to appear in a work of history and not just a song or a poem.

The History of the Jin is the Chinese equivalent of an early medieval chronicle.

And if you've been listening to this show for any period of time, then you know that those kinds of sources always need to be handled with care.

But when it comes to this period, the history of the jinn is about as trustworthy a source as we're gonna get.

One of the more memorable episodes from this history is the account of the siege of Jiangcheng, which took place around 315 AD.

We're told that the city of Jiangcheng was surrounded by enemy forces and things were not looking good for the defenders.

The head administrator of this city was a man named Jun Song, and he knew that his supplies were dwindling and the only hope would be if one of his allies in the neighboring cities swooped in to break the siege.

He needed to get a message to those allies, but getting past the army that had surrounded the city was a dangerous proposition.

But in this hour of need, a warrior stepped forward who volunteered to lead a small group of riders who would sally forth from the gates, push past the besieging army, and ride hard for the nearest friendly city.

This warrior was none other than Jun Guan, the city administrator's 13-year-old daughter.

Impressed by the girl's bravery, others soon volunteered to join her.

It was an audacious plan, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

So, Junguan's father allowed her to lead this group of riders.

The history of the Jin tells us that Jun Guan, quote, led a group of warriors to break through the barricades, stealing out of the city by night.

Guan directed her soldiers in fighting and making advancements until they reached a nearby mountain where they were accepted from the enemy's pursuit and attack.

Honestly?

Pretty badass, Jun Guan.

From there, we're told that Jun Guan and her warriors connected with her father's allies.

A rescuing army was raised, and the siege was broken.

Then, sadly, Jun Guan disappears from the record.

Now,

is Jun Guan the real Mulan?

Well, her story certainly predates the Ballad of Mulan.

And she's a teenage girl who also happens to be a formidable and brave warrior who saves her father and her people.

But obviously, her story differs enough from Mulan's not to make it a clean one-to-one.

There's no gender cosplay in Jun Guan's story.

Also, there's nothing that connects her to the Northern Wei dynasty.

So, experts don't think that Jun Guan is directly reflected in the Ballad of Mulan.

However, Lan Dong argues that Jun Guan's historical example is one of the reasons that the Ballad of Mulan was not perceived as subversive.

Mulan's military heroism had precedence in Chinese history.

Another formidable military administrator who predates Mulan is a woman who the history of the Jin calls Mrs.

Zhu.

During the Jin era, she was the mother of a court official who had been in charge of the defense of a regional capital.

When that capital was threatened by an invading army, Mrs.

Zhu took an energetic interest in the defense of her home.

The history of the Jin tells us that as an invading army was closing in on her city, she noticed that one part of the city's defenses was inexcusably weak.

So she personally, quote, led more than a hundred maids and female residents of the city to build a new defense wall at the corner of the weak point, end quote.

The history tells us that this reinforcement of the defenses proved crucial, and ultimately the besieging army gave up and retreated.

In thanks to Mrs.

Zhu, the people renamed their city Fu Ren Cheng, or the City of the Lady.

The examples don't end there.

There's also the tale of Lady Liang, who lived during the 12th century.

She became famous for helping her military leader husband turn the tide in a battle by grabbing a pair of drumsticks and beating the war drum.

The fearlessness of Lady Liang and the sound of her drum apparently inspired the soldiers who went on to win the battle.

Another figure who lived close to the time of the original composition of the Ballad of Mulan is Lady Jian.

She is sometimes described as a tribal leader, but her life is attested to in two separate historical texts known as the History of the Northern Dynasty and The History of the Sui.

So we're pretty sure that she actually existed.

In that first text, she's described as demonstrating a talent for diplomacy and military leadership from a young age.

It states that, quote, the lady was wise and competent from a young age.

While living in her parents' household, she was able to regulate and pacify the troops and direct military operations, coercing other tribes for for cooperation.

Now, interestingly, Lady Jian was not dismissed as being unfeminine.

In fact, if the histories are to be believed, she was considered highly desirable as a wife.

So it was that she married a powerful Chinese governor.

But as the wife of the governor, she did not simply retreat into domesticity, but instead governed alongside him as a partner.

She famously led the military with her husband and was instrumental in crushing various rebellions.

When her husband died, Lady Jean stepped in as the governor herself.

In the year 558 she and her son led their armies to victory against another rebellion in their province.

She was honored multiple times by the emperor for her administrative and military skills.

In art she is usually presented wearing armor and carrying a sword and a spear.

Now, these are just a few examples of impressive warrior women from Chinese history.

There are many more.

What's fascinating is that all of these women are presented as heroes in the Chinese histories.

This is despite the fact that they were stepping outside what was typically considered the proper role for a woman in those societies?

The authors of the histories seem fairly unconcerned with the fact that these women took on what were traditionally considered male roles.

The question is, why?

Well, Lan Dong provides some important insight when it comes to understanding why these heroines were so readily accepted in a seemingly rigid Confucian society.

She writes, quote,

The potential conflict between the heroine's violation of gender roles and their conformity to Confucian doctrines is often neutralized.

Their transgression is often rooted in the central values of Confucian ethics, such as filial piety, that is, honoring family, and loyalty, and occurs in exigent circumstances.

Whereas some European Amazons and military maids dressed as men to pursue power, individual liberty, true love, or happiness, the Chinese heroine steps out of the family quarters to fulfill her duty as a daughter, a wife, or mother in particular situations.

End quote.

In that passage, I think Landong puts her finger on what Western storytellers often miss about the Mulan story.

They confuse Mulan with Western female characters who disguise themselves as men.

She points out that Western characters often dress as men in pursuit of very different goals and in line with a very different value system.

Think about the historical examples I just hit you with.

Jun Guan is a hero because she's ready to put her life on the line in service of her father in a time of crisis.

Mrs.

Zhu is a dedicated mother who helps her son and her son's city.

Similarly, Lady Liang is a devoted wife who steps out of a traditional woman's role for the greater good of helping her husband succeed in battle.

And finally, Lady Jian takes her deceased husband's place when the occasion calls for it.

In the same way, Mulan changes her clothes, buys a horse, and joins the army out of devotion to her aged father.

In Confucian philosophy, the bonds of family trump the constraints of any gender role.

In this sense, Landong tells us, quote, These women's participation in military affairs exemplifies Confucian ethics.

They were were driven by loyalty to the emperor, their husbands, or filial piety to their fathers.

Hence, the heroine has a compelling reason to cross the boundaries between gendered domains.

⁇

Her point is that in Confucian China, some values were more important than a strict adherence to gender rules.

Once I understood that, the original ballad of Mulan, all of a sudden, made perfect sense.

At first, I was a little surprised by how much a non-issue Mulan's assumption of a male identity was in the text.

Her parents don't forbid her from doing it.

They bid their daughter a fond goodbye and are only sad because they miss their child.

In the end, when she reassumes a feminine identity, her buddies are surprised, but they're not scandalized or betrayed.

What Mulan had done was certainly daring, but like all those real Chinese heroines, she had done it out of a deep sense of loyalty and care for her family.

She had honored the highest value.

The fact that she had assumed a new gender role to do that was excusable, even admirable.

So,

was there a real Mulan?

Well, as far as we can tell, there was no one person whose story inspired the Northern Way ballad of Mulan.

However, the ballad reflects the real experience of nomadic Jean Bei women.

who were noted as formidable horse riders and archers.

It also echoes the experiences of many female military leaders who lived before and after the original composition of the ballad.

The daring Jean Guan, the 13-year-old girl who led her horsemen through a siege and saved her city, was quite likely a real person.

As was the formidable Lady Jeanne, who led her province and was victorious in many battles.

These women may not have directly inspired Moulin, but their experiences can help us understand the poem in a deeper, more profound way.

This might be the key to adapting Mulan in a way that is satisfying to people who are already deeply familiar with the source material.

Those looking to tell Mulan's story should seek out the real Mulans from history.

These real women from China's past can help us understand the nature of the character's heroism and how her acts are understood in the Chinese context.

The real Mulan is as complicated and nuanced as the country that produced her.

Getting her story right requires a light touch.

Okay,

that's all for this week.

Join us again in two weeks' time when we will look at an all-new historical myth.

I hope you enjoyed that one, and I hope my pronunciations weren't too bad.

I'm sure I didn't nail most of those, but it was not for lack of trying.

I really listened to some native speakers pronounce the words.

I went to YouTube videos, but I'm sure I didn't quite nail it.

So I appreciate your patience, especially if you are a Mandarin speaker or someone that speaks another Chinese dialect.

As always, before we go this week, I need to give some shout outs.

Big ups to David Love, to Don Watts, to Danielle Bakan,

to Paul D,

to

Gilhem de Roquefeu.

Oh my gosh, there's no way I did that correctly.

My apologies.

Big ups to Chris Chatfield.

Big ups to Beth.

Big ups to Jessica Squires.

To Cradle Pyre,

to Kiara Hargrove, to Regina, to Brendan Voss,

to Gerald Greenwood, to Kendall Scarberry.

to Joel M.

to Andreas Singer

and to William Brown.

All of these folks have decided to pledge at $5

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My name is Sebastian Major.

And remember, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real.

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There's nothing better than a one-place life.