On the historicity of Mulan
@carrot-s-cross-station wrote:
Coincidentally, the Ballad of Mulan is in our Chinese finals exam next Thursday. Anyway, as far as I know Mulan never existed outside of said ballad - certain literal works place her in various eras from Northern Wei to founding of the Tang, but the original ballad dates back to the Northern and Southern Dynasties from 420 to 589. It’s just a popular folk song-style poem that was adapted by the Music Bureau, and there is no reason to believe that Mulan was a real historical figure at all.
As for the heroines who predated Mulan, the only one I’m familiar with is Sun Shangxiang from the Three Kingdoms era, and tbh most people just remember her as having gotten hitched to Liu Bei in Zhou Yu’s ‘gave up the girl and lost the soldiers to boot’ epic fail that was immortalized in a Chinese idiom. She most definitely gave the impression of having been badass, but most of her characterization comes from literary works and history tells us little more of her after her marriage.
All in all, despite rumors there is little to suggest Mulan was anything more than a well-known and adored folk heroine. Kind of like Sun Wukong from Journey to the West - he’s hella famous, but it’d be bordering on the illogical to suggest an actual monkey warrior had existed irl. Not claiming that there were never women who dressed up as men to join the army though - females have always been grossly underrepresented in Chinese history, so who knows what cool shit might’ve gone down then.
Finally, whether she was real or not, Mulan represented the bravery and strength Chinese women have always had, even if history rarely records it. Not everyone crossdresses to join the army, but generations of Chinese girls grew up learning her story and being inspired by her. Never mind the fantastical tales and Disney adaptation - girl’s got guts and that’s what really matters. Also, yes I admit: she really is my fave Disney princess, simply because she’s the only one who actually resembles me.
Several other people wrote in (thanks, y’all!) to say that the Mulan legend was based on, well, Mulan – that Mulan was a real person. Problem is, there’s just not enough out there right now* to say she existed. My personal hunch is that someone like her existed, enough to spur on the legends, which took on a mythic quality afterwards. I don’t have anything to back that up aside from seeing that general pattern appear numerous times with other figures in my research.
I will say two things: the first is that while, as pointed out above, women are historically underrepresented in virtually every culture, China has a surprising number of awesome women on record. For those curious, I recommend checking out Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century. I was pretty surprised how much was in there when I picked it up.
The other is that Mulan recently had an awesome-looking live action movie!
@medievalpoc reblogged a thread about it a couple days ago, but since that post contains a link to view the entire movie – and I’m unsure of the legality of said link, and am a bit uncomfortable about piracy, having worked in the industry myself – I am not reblogging it. But hey, if you’re committed, you can probably find it. Looks cool from the images!
* - When I say there’s not enough evidence right now, I mean it – from what I understand, China has a metric crap ton of historical records sitting relatively untouched, especially compared to those of Western Europe. Given that nobody is even sure when Mulan was supposed to have taken place, it’s entirely possible someone will uncover a mention of her somewhere unexpected.
