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• 1 media/CTC_MulanBG.png media/Mulan_ResourceBanner.png 2021-11-15T15:39:34+00:00 The Female Mulan Joins the Army in Place of Her Father
  雌木蘭替父從軍 120 plain 3 2025-01-30T20:10:11+00:00

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  CONTENTS

  You can find modules that analyze various adaptations of The Female Mulan Joins the Army in Place of Her Father at the links below. To get a sense of the main themes and historical import of the original Mulan, please consult the "General Background" below.
  1. Hua Mu Lan 木蘭從軍 (1939)
     • "The Marking of Gender," a module on the 1939 live action film adaptation of Mulan.
  2. Hua Mulan 花木蘭 (1956)
     • "Transforming Into a Man," a module on the 1956 PRC Yu opera film adaptation of the Mulan.
  3. The Lady General Hua Mulan 花木蘭 (1964)
     • "How to Assume a Male Martial Identity," a module on the 1964 Hong Kong huangmeidiao opera film of Mulan.
  4. Mulan (1998)
     • "Reflection and Identity," a module on the 1998 Disney version of Mulan.

  
  GENERAL BACKGROUND

  
  The story of Mulan is one of the most famous and widely disseminated Chinese tales about a female martial hero. The earliest documented version of Mulan’s story, the “Ballad of Mulan” ("Mulan ci" 木蘭辭), was likely composed sometime during the Northern Wei period (386-535 CE). Ruled by a Northern steppe people, this dynasty created a new blend of nomadic and agrarian traditions. Mulan, a loving daughter in martial guise, was one such innovation, joining Confucian notions of filial devotion with steppe customs of female martial bravery. It was in the Yuan dynasty--another era characterized by an increasingly cosmopolitan amalgamation of steppe practices, rural culture, and urban life--that we have the first evidence of the story of Mulan entering the theatrical repertoire. Even though all the Yuan zaju plays about her have been lost, we can surmise that the development of her tale fit within an expanding corpus of stories about filial heroes.
  
  Importantly, filial love was not an abstracted feeling, but it manifested in acts of care, especially the attention lavished on the provision of food, medicine, and funerary practices for the older generation. For example, in the Yuan-dynasty painting “Four Paragons of Filial Piety” (“Sixiao tu” 四孝圖) (see fig. 1), four stories about men and women illustrate different acts of filial sacrifice: a daughter-in-law cuts off pieces of her thigh bone (gegu 割股) to cure her ailing mother-in-law; one son travels afar to provide the oranges that his mother favors; another goes ice-fishing to aid in the recovery of his sick mother; and a woman jumps into a river and searches for three days to retrieve the corpse of her drowned father. Amidst these stories about children going to extremes to attend to their elders’ physical welfare, Mulan’s story is unusual in that it allows the heroine not only to assume a male guise, but takes her beyond the confines of her household. In short, filial love meets martial arts adventure story and for good measure is topped off with a marriage.
  
  The first extant theatrical rendition of Mulan dates to the Ming dynasty. The Female Mulan Joins the Army in Place of Her Father (Ci Mulan tifu congjun 雌木蘭替父從軍, hereafter Mulan) is one of a quartet of plays in Four Cries of a Gibbon (Sisheng yuan 四聲猿) written by Xu Wei 徐渭 (1521-1593), a versatile writer of drama and poetry as well as a painter. It was Xu Wei’s two-act play that began to make Mulan a household name. In keeping with dramatic conventions, his play balanced Mulan’s martial exploits with the happy ending of a marriage. In the first act, after Mulan explains her determination to go to war, she buys military equipment and unbinds her feet, the latter a striking detail indicating her transformation from Mulan the daughter into Hua Hu the warrior. Then she practices with her weapons and joins the army to fight against the Northern steppe enemy army of Leopard Skin and his men. The second act describes Mulan’s heroic exploits on the battlefield and her return home.
  
  After Xu Wei’s put the story of Mulan into the public spotlight, it has been continuously adapted into many artistic and popular genres until the present day, including novels, painting, dramas, movies, and video games. Later renditions retain the basic storyline of Xu Wei’s Mulan, but add many other distinctive flourishes to appeal to new audiences.

  WORKS CONSULTED CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE

  Epstein, Maram. Orthodox Passions: Narrating Filial Love During the High Qing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019.

  Fu, Hongchu. "The Cultural Fashioning of Filial Piety: A Reading of “Xiao Zhangtu” (Little Zhang the Butcher).” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, 29 (1999): 63-89.

  Kwa, Shiamin. “The Female Mulan Joins the Army in Place of Her Father: Gender and Performance.” In How To Read Chinese Drama: A Guided Anthology, edited by Patricia Sieber and Regina Llamas, 151-167. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.

  Xu Wei. The Female Mulan Joins the Army in Place of Her Father, Act 1. In How To Read Chinese Drama in Chinese: A Language Companion, edited by Guo Yingde, Wenbo Chang, Patricia Sieber and Zhang Xiaohui, 93-110. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023.

  Yu, Jimmy Yung Fung. Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500-1700. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

  AUTHOR

  Patricia Sieber