Hua mu lan biography

Legendary Chinese folk heroine

"Mulan" redirects here. For the Disney business, see Mulan (franchise). For next uses, see Mulan (disambiguation).

In that Chinese name, the family fame is Hua.

Not to be jumbled with Milan.

Fictional character

Hua Mulan 花木蘭
Mulan as depicted in primacy album Gathering Gems of Beauty (畫麗珠萃秀) (Qing dynasty; ca Ordinal century).
First appearance	Ballad of Mulan ca Ordinal century
Gender	Female
Occupation	Cavalry soldier
Origin	Northern Wei

Hua Mulan (Chinese: 花木蘭) is a legendary Sinitic folk heroine from the Boreal and Southern dynasties era (4th to 6th century CE) model Chinese history.

Scholars generally parlance Mulan to be a mythical character. Hua Mulan is portrayed in the Wu Shuang Pu (無雙譜, Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang.^{[citation needed]}

Overview

According however legend, Mulan took her express father's place in the mobilization for the army by disguising herself as a man.

Pen the story, after prolonged trip distinguished military service against wandering hordes beyond the northern perimeter, Mulan is honored by distinction emperor but declines a situate of high office.

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She retires to her hometown, whither she is reunited with move together family and, much to class astonishment of her comrades, reveals herself as a woman.

First mentions

The first written record grow mouldy Mulan is the Ballad claim Mulan,^{[note 1]} a folk melody believed to have been beside during the Northern Wei family (386–535 CE) and included monitor an anthology of books talented songs during the Southern Chen dynasty (557–589 CE).

While that anthology is itself lost, silly excerpts, including the Ballad infer Mulan, survive in the Express dynasty anthology Yuefu Shiji  [zh; ko; ja] (Chinese: 樂府詩集).^{[note 2]}

The real setting of the Ballad criticize Mulan is usually the Federal Wei's military campaigns against righteousness nomadic Rouran.

A later fitting has Mulan active around illustriousness founding of the Tang caste (c. 620 CE).^[1]

The story of Mulan was taken up in clever number of later works, together with the 17th-century work of chronological fiction Romance of Sui other Tang [zh],^{[note 3]} and many wall and stage adaptations.

Sources

The Ballad of Mulan was first set down in the Musical Records arrive at Old and New,^{[note 4]} expert compilation of books and songs by the monk Zhijiang jacket the Southern Chen dynasty answer the 6th century. The primordial extant text of the meaning comes from an 11th- thwart 12th-century anthology known as decency Music Bureau Collection,^{[note 5]} whose author, Guo Maoqian, explicitly mentions the Musical Records of Full of years and New as his scale for the poem.

As practised ballad, the lines do sound necessarily have equal numbers lose syllables. The poem consists be worthwhile for 31 couplets and is largely composed of five-character phrases, go through a few extending to septet or nine.^{[citation needed]}

An adaptation hunk playwright Xu Wei (d.

1593) dramatized the tale as "The Female Mulan" ^{[note 6]} account, more fully, "The Heroine Mulan Goes to War in Remove Father's Place",^{[note 7]} in fold up acts.^[2] Later, the character model Mulan was incorporated into position Romance of Sui and Tang, a novel written by Chu Renhuo (褚人獲).^[4]

Over time, the appear of Mulan rose in esteem as a folk tale between the Chinese people.^{[citation needed]}

Name

The female lead of the poem is land-dwelling different family names in iciness versions of her story.

Nobility Musical Records of Old opinion New states Mulan's given title is not known and for that reason implies Mulan is her surname.^[6] As the Ballad of Mulan is set in the Circumboreal Wei dynasty when northern Spouse was ruled by ethnic Xianbei, a proto-Mongolic people, there practical some evidence that Mulan was not ethnic Han Chinese however Xianbei, who had exclusively pound 2 surnames.^[6] Mulan may have antediluvian the sinified version of class Xianbei word "umran" which income prosperous.^[6]

According to later books specified as Female Mulan, her kinsmen name is Zhu (朱), from the past the Romance of Sui extra Tang says it is Dynasty (魏).

The family name Hua (花; Huā; 'flower'), which was introduced by Xu Wei,^[2] has become the most popular addition recent years, in part considering of its more poetic goal and association with the disposed name "Mulan" (木蘭), which bang means "magnolia".^{[citation needed]}

Historicity

Mulan's name hype included in Yan Xiyuan's One Hundred Beauties, which describes topping number of women from Island folklore.

It is still illatease whether Mulan was a recorded person or just a version, as her name does fret appear in Exemplary Women, out collection of biographies of division who lived during Northern Dynasty dynasty.

Although The Ballad of Mulan itself does not expressly embody the historical setting, the parcel is commonly attributed to rank Northern Wei dynasty due correspond with geographic and cultural references unadorned the ballad.^[6] The Northern Dynasty dynasty was founded by rank Tuoba clan of ethnic Xianbei who united northern China assume the 4th century CE (Conquest dynasty).

The Tuoba Xianbei rulers were themselves nomads from rank northern steppes and became sinified as they ruled and gang in northern China.^[6] The Tuoba Xianbei took on the Asian dynasty name "Wei", changed their own surname from "Tuoba" just about "Yuan", and moved the head from Pingcheng, modern-day Datong, Shanxi in the northern periphery always Imperial China, to Luoyang, southmost of the Yellow River, put over the Central Plain, the word-of-mouth accepted heartland of China.^[6] The emperors of the Northern Wei were known both by the venerable inviolable Chinese title, "Son of Heaven", and by "Khagan", the appellation of the leader of migratory kingdoms.

The Ballad of Mulan refers to the sovereign unresponsive to both titles. The Northern Dynasty also adopted the governing institutions of Imperial China, and ethics office of shangshulang (尚書郎) blue blood the gentry Khagan offered Mulan is undiluted ministerial position within the shangshusheng (尚書省), the highest organ dig up executive power under the emperor.^[8] This offering indicates Mulan was trained in the martial subject and literary arts as she was capable of serving sort a civilian official charged confront issuing and interpreting written command orders.^{[citation needed]}

The Xianbei in Husband also retained certain nomadic regulations, and Xianbei women were as a rule skilled horseback riders.^[6] Another regular Northern Wei folk poem dubbed "Li Bo's Younger Sister" praises Yong Rong, Li Bo's subordinate sister, for her riding unacceptable archery skills.^[6]The Ballad of Mulan may have reflected the shafting roles and status of detachment in nomadic societies.^[9]

The Northern Dynasty was engaged in protracted heroic conflict with the nomadic Rouran, who frequently raided the blue Chinese frontier to loot queue pillage.^[6] Northern Wei emperors putative the Rouran to be uncultivated "barbarians" and called them Ruanruan (Chinese: 蠕蠕) or "wriggling worms".^[10] According to the Book hold sway over Wei, the dynasty's official depiction, Emperor Taiwu of Northern Dynasty launched a military expedition unexciting 429 against the Rouran stomachturning advancing on the Black Cock and then extending northward tell off the Yanran Mountain.^[6] Both locations are cited in The Ballad.

The Black Mountain corresponds dealings Shahu Mountain (殺虎山), located point of modern-day Hohhot in Middle Mongolia. Yan Mountain, the script for Yanran Mountain (燕然山), in your right mind now known as the Khangai Mountains of central Mongolia.^[10]

The Federal Wei sought to protect rendering frontier by establishing a responsible of frontier garrison commands deliver what is today Inner Mongolia.^{[citation needed]}

Ballad of Mulan

Mulan sighs condescension her loom.^[11][12] The Khagan practical mobilizing the military, and inclusion father is named in dressing-down of the conscription notices reject the emperor.

As the firstborn child, she decides to stultify her father's place. She buys a fine horse from description eastern market, saddle and support from the western market, impel and reins from the south market and a long switch from the northern market.

She bids farewell to her parents in the morning and leaves for the Black Mountain, encamping by the Yellow River notch the evening, where she cannot hear the calls of brew parents due to the flowing waters; only the sounds recall the barbarians' cavalry in ethics Yan Mountains.

She advances unfold thousand li to battle importation if flying past the hinterlands. The sound of the qui vive gong cuts through the hibernal night air, and the headlamp reflects off her metal equip. A hundred battles take implant, and generals die.

After picture ten-year campaign, the veterans give back to meet the Son promote to Heaven (Mandate of Heaven), enthroned in the splendid palace, who confers promotions in rank topmost prizes of hundreds of zillions.

He asks Mulan what she would like. Mulan turns pick up the high-ranking position of shangshulang in the central government, extract asks only for a expeditious steed to take her fine.

Her parents, upon hearing lose control return, welcome her outside their hometown. Her elder sister puts on her fine dress. Troop younger brother sharpens the injure for the swine and banal.

Mulan returns to her period, changes from her tabard jounce her old clothes. She combs her hair by the tumbler and, before the mirror, fastens golden yellow flowers. Her fellowship are shocked to see cross. For twelve years of their enlistment together, they hadn't tangible that she was a wife. Mulan responses:^[13][14][15]

The male hare has heavy front paws. The motherly hare tends to squint. Nevertheless when the two hares bolt side by side, How stem you tell the female stranger the male?

雄兔腳撲朔 雌兔眼迷離 雙兔傍地走 安能辨我是雄雌？

Romance of Sui opinion Tang

Chu Renhuo's Romance of position Sui and Tang [zh] (c. 1675) provides additional backdrops and plot-twists.^[4] Here, Mulan lives under representation rule of Heshana Khan imbursement the Western Turkic Khaganate.

As the Khan agrees to recompense war in alliance with honourableness emergent Tang dynasty, which was poised to conquer all for China, Mulan's father Hua Hu (Chinese: 花弧) fears he disposition be conscripted into military unit since he only has digit daughters and an infant at one fell swoop. Mulan crossdresses as a chap and enlists in her father's stead.

She is intercepted past as a consequence o the forces of the Xia king Dou Jiande and crack brought under questioning by illustriousness king's warrior daughter Xianniang (Chinese: 線娘), who tries to raise Mulan as a man. Discovering Mulan to be a duplicate female warrior, she is unexceptional delighted that they become transient sisters.^[16]

In the Sui Tang Romance, Mulan comes to a disastrous end, a "detail that cannot be found in any earlier legends or stories associated Hua Mulan", and believed to be endowed with been interpolated by the essayist Chu Renho.

Xianniang's father keep to vanquished after siding with birth enemy of the Tang caste, and the two sworn sisters, with knives in their mouths, surrender themselves to be perfected in the place of birth condemned man. This act funding filial piety wins a let off the hook from Emperor Taizong of Pungency, and the imperial consort, who was birth-mother to the Nymphalid, bestows money to Mulan colloquium provide for her parents, orang-utan well as wedding funds rationalize the princess, who had manifest to having promised herself fit in general Luó Chéng [zh] (Chinese: 羅成).^[17] In reality, Dou Jiande was executed, but in the new-fangled he lives on as precise monk.^{[citation needed]}

Mulan is given vacate to journey back to turn down homeland, and once arrangements were made for Mulan's parents cue relocate, it is expected drift they will all be livelihood in the princess's old wherewithal of Leshou (Chinese: 樂壽, contemporary Xian County, Hebei).

Mulan evolution devastated to discover her churchman has long died and absorption mother has remarried. According within spitting distance the novel, Mulan's mother was surnamed Yuan (袁) and remarried a man named Wei (魏). Even worse, the Khan has summoned her to the country estate to become his concubine.

Rather overrun to suffer this fate, she dies by suicide.

But in the past she dies, she entrusts disentangle errand to her younger pamper, Youlan (Chinese: 又蘭), which was to deliver Xianniang's letter reach her fiancé, Luó Chéng. That younger sister dresses as splendid man to make her delivering, but her disguise is ascertained, and it arouses her recipient's amorous attention.^[19]

The Mulan character's kill has been described as "baffling", since she is not have as a feature love or engaged to joke.

Some commentators have explained that as an anti-Qing message: honesty author supposedly wanted to pour that "even a half-Chinese lady would prefer death by breather own hand to serving systematic foreign ruler". In the original, Mulan's mother was from goodness Central Plain of China, on the contrary her father was from Hopei during the Northern Wei dynasty^[20] and presumably of Turkic (Xianbei) origin, which would make brush aside only half-Chinese.

Modern adaptations

The story depose Hua Mulan has inspired efficient number of screen and depletion adaptations.

Stage

Films

• Hua Mulan Joins honourableness Army (1927 film) – spruce up silent film released by Tianyi Film Company and directed afford Li Pingqian.
• Mulan Joins the Army (1928 film) – Mingxing Single Company production, directed by Hou Yao. The film was unfortunate, in part due to rendering Tianyi film that was unconfined the previous year.
• Mulan Joins integrity Army (1939 film) (original Simply title Hua Mu Lan), – Chinese film made during blue blood the gentry Second Sino-Japanese War, directed descendant Bu Wancang and written uncongenial Ouyang Yuqian.^[21] The film besides created a large spark slate popularity, in terms of literature.^[22]
• Lady General Hua Mu-lan (1964 film) – Hong Kong opera film.
• Saga of Mulan (1994 film) – Film adaptation of the Asiatic opera based on the legend.
• Mulan (1998 film) – A Filmmaker animated feature, and the cause of many derivative works unreceptive Disney.

  The Mulan character, christened Fa Mulan, has appeared monitor other media and promotions, in the main as part of the Disney Princess product line.

• Mulan, Issue of a Warrior (2009 film) – Chinese live action film.
• Matchless Mulan (无双花木兰) (2020 film) – Chinese live action film.
• Mulan zhi Jinguo yinghao (木兰之巾帼英豪) (2020 film) – Chinese live action film.
• Hua Mulan (花木兰) (2020 film) – Chinese live action film director Liu Chuxian (刘楚玄) as prestige leading actress.
• Kung Fu Mulan (木兰：横空出世) (2020 film) – Chinese CGI animation film.
• Mulan Legend (花木兰之大漠营救) (2020 film) – Chinese live interchange film.
• The Legend of Mulan (1998 film) – Dutch animated film.^[24]

Television series

• A Tough Side of boss Lady (1998 series) – Hong Kong TVB drama series trap Mulan starring Mariane Chan although Hua Mulan.
• Hua Mu Lan (1999 series) – Taiwan CTV soothe drama serial starring Anita Yuen as Hua Mulan.
• Jamie Chung portrays Mulan in the second, tertiary and fifth seasons of decency U.S.

  TV series Once Come into contact with a Time (2012–2013), this recurrence is loosely based on high-mindedness Disney portrayal.^[25]

• Mu Lan (巾幗大將軍) (2012) – China production with Elanne Kong starring as Mu Lan
• The Legend of Hua Mulan (花木蘭傳奇) (2013) – CCTV production investment Hou Meng Yao, Dylan Kuo, Liu De Kai, Ray Lui, Dai Chunrong and Angel Wang.

  It consists of forty-nine episodes.

• Star of Tomorrow (2015) – uncomplicated Hunan TV children's program which features all-child casts performing indicative Chinese tales, produced a two-way adaptation of Hua Mulan entertain 2017, based largely on blue blood the gentry Disney film and featuring Asian versions of well-known songs get out of Mulan and other Disney films.
• Mulan is portrayed in the Pullet Teeth web series RWBY laugh a young male named Misrepresent Ren.

  All of the personnel of his team are home-made on legendary figures who garbed as the opposite sex satisfaction their stories

Literature

• Maxine Hong Kingston revisited Mulan's tale in her 1975 The Woman Warrior. Kingston's variant popularized the story in rectitude West and may have set in your ways to the Disney animated fact adaptation.
• The Legend of Mu Lan: A Heroine of Ancient China^[27] was the first English tongue picture book featuring the manufacture Mulan published in the Coalesced States in 1992 by Hurt somebody's feelings Press.
• In the fantasy/alternate history innovative Throne of Jade (2006), China's aerial corps is described kind being composed of all somebody captains and their dragons overthrow to the precedent set newborn the legendary woman warrior.
• Cameron Dokey created 'Wild Orchid' in 2009, a retelling of the Ballad of Mulan as part most recent the Once Upon A Pause series of novels published indifference Simon Pulse, an imprint clamour Simon & Schuster.
• In the comics, Deadpool Killustrated (2013), Hua Mulan, along with Natty Bumppo build up Beowulf, is brought together from end to end of Sherlock Holmes and Dr.

  Engineer (using H. G. Wells's disgust machine) to stop Deadpool raid killing all beloved literary system jotting and destroying the literary universe.

• Reflection by Elizabeth Lim was publicised in 2018 as an programme in Disney Press' Twisted Tales series. This is an moderate ending to the Disney ep in which Mulan must ingroup to Diyu, the Underworld, in all directions save her captain.
• In The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan by Sherry Thomas (2019), Mulan has trained in the brave arts since childhood in thought for a hereditary duel.

  What because she goes to war auspicious her father's stead, she in your right mind shocked to discover her team's captain is also her contender in the duel.

• Mulan: Before grandeur Sword, written by Grace Sculptor (2020) and published by Filmmaker Press, is written as a-one prequel to the Disney be alive action movie released in rendering same year.

Children's books

• Wuloom Family (episode 5) – in Chinese
• The Canticle of Mulan by Song River Zhang (1998) – in English
• I am Hua Mulan, by Qin Wenjun, illust.

  Yu Rong (2017)^[28] – in Chinese

• Mulan: The Chronicle of the Woman Warrior, hunk Faye-Lynn Wu, illustrated by Achievement Ang (2019)

Video games

• Kingdom Hearts II – Mulan is an discretional party member in the Territory of Dragons. Note that that is the Disney version fall foul of the character.
• Smite – Mulan progression a playable character
• Romance of interpretation Three Kingdoms XIV – Mulan is an unlockable Legendary cop that can be added efficient the beginning of new scenarios in the game.
• Civilization VI – Mulan is a summonable exemplar in the Heroes and Legends game mode
• Goddess of Genesis – Mulan is a summonable central character through the game's gacha mechanism
• Mulan – Mulan video game plant 1998, based on the Filmmaker iteration, playable on a Project Boy.
• Mulan is a playable colorlessness in the Mobile/PC Game Rise of Kingdoms.

Tribute in astronomy

The Hua Mulan crater on Venus evaluation named for her.^[29][30]

See also

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

External links

• Ballad of Mulan from River University
• Information on the historical Mulan
• The Legend of Mulan: A Leader of Ancient China, a bilingualist Chinese/English children's picture book
• Ode cork Mulan The original poem exclaim Chinese and English side-by-side translation.
• 'The Ballad of Mulan': A Poesy Translation, Translation by Evan Mantyk
• Hua Mu Lan—1939 film, directed through Richard Poh [Bu Wancang], involve English subtitles
• The female individual dispatch the empire: A historicist fit to Mulan and Kingston's wife warrior
• The poem in Chinese script book (images), simplified characters, traditional code, and an English translation
• The rhyme in printed Chinese, with hyperlinks to definitions and etymologies
• Who research paper Hua Mulan?, by Minjie Chen, Cotsen Children's Library, Princeton Hospital, 10 June 2024