Mulan - The rider from the North

The release of the first trailer for the live adaptation of Mulan by Disney studios was frustrating for many reasons, but it would be hypocritical to say it was a surprise. At first sight, we are following the bland adaptations of the Disney classics initiated by The Jungle Book in 2016 (which was the most interesting until now). Not necessarily bad films but so redundant and copied and pasted that they become perfectly useless since they have not given their model time to age enough to justify a modern remake. Not to mention that, in the context of an adaptation that is too "faithful", the directors attempt brief personal touches lost in a work that is not theirs and can then create dissonant moments that are missed or even ridiculous (I think of you Beauty and the Beast with your falsely gay Le Fou, your extremely superficial protagonists, your Frenchmen hostile to culture and your Paris between Renaissance and Middle Ages as historic as a cliché).

On the other hand, their advantage is that they put a legend back on the scene which can encourage the most curious to dig into the original tales to find out which adaptation is closest to it.

And that's good, Mulan being without question one of my favorite Disney movie, let's dive into its history and its heritage.

China has one of the oldest cultural heritages in the world. If the unification of the six big states of the region succeeds in -221 to establish the first emperor Ying Zheng (giving the name of his state to the newly-formed country: Qin), the first traces of civilization emerge from the 21st century before our era in the Yellow River valley (Huáng hé).

Its history is complex, impossible to summarize quickly (and above all, it is not the subject of this article), but it must be understood that as a huge, ancient, powerful and prosperous country, it has a very eventful history. Whether from the inside through internal power struggles and revolts (like the Three Kingdoms period that we know in the rest of the world thanks to the book of the same name and its adaptations) or from the outside by the invaders, the raids of poorer nations or its own policies of aggressive expansions, China has experienced a great deal of violent disturbances and wars for over two thousand years.

Since the period of the Warring States (from the 4th century before our era to the birth of the Qin empire two centuries later), it has been divided several times and entirely conquered twice by external powers (by the Mongols in the 13th century, then the Manchus in the 17th). And its military history is continuous during the period renamed "Century of humiliation" which extends from 1839 (with the opium wars against the United Kingdom) to 1945 with the end of the second Sino-Japanese war which traumatized the country with at least twenty million dead in eight years (of which "only" three million were soldiers) through operations carried out by Japanese whose atrocities would have horrified the Nazis.

However, despite or perhaps "thanks" to this history loaded with wars, China is one of the rare cultures who does not glorify beyond measure its military past through war heroes as we did in Europe with Jeanne d 'Arc or the Richard the Lionheart. However, China still has its own heroes and, after all these centuries of war, it is obvious that men were not the only ones who stood out in conflicts. Like all nations, China had many important women in its history.

If all areas are of course concerned, let us focus here on the military subject to see which fighters China was able to generate, starting with Mulan, the best known of all.

But before concentrating on the subject, I would just like to make a note on the place of the woman in China because it seems to me that the theme is appropriate and that this will helps us to comprehend the importance of a woman warrior in this culture.

To put it simply, China remain a country where patriarchy has always been extremely established. If the freedoms and opportunities of women vary according to times and regions, men still possess a largely predominant power, particularly in the upper classes of society so codified that they prohibit women from any form of individuality. As a result, the preference of parents was typically focused on their sons, a phenomenon aggravated by the one-child policy from 1979 to 2015 which caused many selective infanticides and therefore a demographic imbalance (according to the economist Amartya Sen, to achieve a biological balance between men and women in the world, in 1990, 100 million women were missing, including 50 million for China alone).

This mentality is notably the result of Confucianist thought imposing obedience on the father, the husband and the son. However, the establishment of the communist regime in 1949 initiated a gradual change of mentality with the idea of gender equality. As early as 1950, the Marriage Law eliminated (in theory) forced marriages, concubinage, betrothals of kids, dowry and created the right to divorce for women.

In 1978, the country opened up to a market economy and women are now the majority of 61% among workers and students. Forty-nine Chinese women have since become billionaires, which represented two-thirds of the world's female total in 2018.

Despite everything, mentalities evolve slowly and, in reality, discrimination is still very present. According to a World Economic Forum report, China is ranked 100th out of 144 in terms of gender equality.

The list of problems is long: one in four women is a victim of domestic violence, they are practically absent from high political ranks, in the event of a divorce, the property is not divided in two but generally returns to the husband and according to the All-China Women's Federation, 87% of women graduates have experienced discrimination in their job searches.

The Chinese government is not recognized for its tolerance against criticism, and activists are either ignored or repressed, even during peaceful marches.

On the other hand, the State likes to put forward the creation of a law against domestic violence... since 2016. It is also criticized for its very imperfect implementation even if the progress is welcomed.

Surprisingly, however, China is the only country in the world where a woman can become an Imam.

It is also interesting to know that, since women have often been denied access to classical education, they have developed their own secret script in Hunan province: the Nüshu (女 書, literally: writing women). It is a phonetic script of 600 to 700 characters in syllables, which represents half the normal characters of the regional dialect (tuhua) and makes it one of the most effective simplifications of Chinese. It was invented around the 10th century and used until its prohibition by the Japanese in the 1930s by fear that it would be used to send secret messages. Currently, it is the only gender-specific writing in the world.

Even if it is very slow to come, equality is somehow established if we compare the freedoms of women today with those of half a century ago. To say that the situation is not frustrating is something else... But we must remember that a few decades ago, a woman was considered the property of her husband's family, was scratched from records if she never had a son and could be returned for ransom (without her children) to her family of origin if her husband died.

As Erick Tjong, whose SaphirNews article helped me a lot, sums it up well "women's rights will be allowed as long as they can be controlled".

This article has only scratched the surface of the very serious problem of the place of women in China which is far too complex to be summed up so quickly. We could have talked about the tradition of feet binding, human trafficking or the fact that, despite the presence of "second women", Chinese men are still widely preferred for their attentions to the Koreans and the Vietnamese. The missing female population is thus slightly compensated by women who seek to emigrate to avoid marriage in these countries where domestic violence is much more tolerated than in China. Anyway, let's hope that mindsets will continue to move in the right direction as quickly as possible.

Now let's go back to the main topic of this article and talk about the origins of Mulan.

She appeared as the main protagonist of The Ballad of Mulan (木蘭 辭 under her original name, which gives Mùlán cí in pinyin, the transcription in Latin alphabet) in 568 in the book Collection of music of yesterday and today (古今 樂 錄; Gǔjīn Yuèlù). However, the oldest physical trace found dates from an 11th century anthology, Poetry Yuefu (樂府 詩; Yuèfǔshī) where the author explicitly cites the source of the poem. It is constituted of 31 verses composed with sentences made with five characters (with the exception of some made with seven or nine characters).

Full english translation of The Ballad of Mulan

The action takes place during the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-589) and portrays how Mulan takes the place of her old father in the army because her brothers are too young to serve. She flees the family's home after having bought and equipped a sturdy horse, then pretend to be a man to respond to the mobilization. She then serves for twelve years in the war in the North of the country, gaining the respect of all and accomplishing great deeds. At the end of the war, when the sovereign rewards his most valiant fighters with land, titles and wealth, she only asks to borrow a camel to return to her family. There, she resumes her feminine habits and, when her former comrades in arms come to visit her, they are struck with amazement when they realize that they have fought for more than ten years alongside a woman without knowing it. The poem ends with this sentence:

When the two rabbits run side by side,

How can you tell the female from the male?

Starting from this text, we can determine many elements of the original context. Certain turns of sentences and expressions cannot date from the 6th century because they were not used before the Tang dynasty (618-907). No wonder since the oldest copy that has come down to us dates back, as we have seen, to the 11th century. Knowing that the text has been revised over time, we can therefore question other elements or simply re-situate the whole action in a different context from a "classic" China in which we generally imagine it.

Thanks to certain elements of the text, it is now accepted that the first versions of the poem probably date back to the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534) which must be detailed a little to provide a clearer context.

This dynasty was founded by a Turkish tribe, the Tabghach (called according to their Chinese name in the West, the Tuoba). Small note necessary for comprehension: when we talk about Turkish people, we mean the thirty cultures speaking a language related or derived from Turkish. Only a minor part descends from the tribes originating in Central Asia since their distribution goes from Eastern Europe to the West of China and from Cyprus to Siberia. The Ottoman Turkish is itself derived from the blending between Arabic and local Persian with the Turkish spoken by the leaders.

Originally, it was a large hunter-gatherer people of Western Siberia which gradually divided during the first millennium. Those who remained became the Toungouses while the Turks and Mongols became nomads in the steppes of northern China. The Turkish-Mongols were composed of many warrior tribes, sometimes forming brief civilizations which generally did not survive the death of their founders. 

Over time, the Mongols returned to their homelands or merged with the Turks who pursued their expansion to the West as one of their peoples, the Huns, had done previously. While the Mongols were moving east, the Turks were going west and the two peoples were then clearly separated. Their differences will become more marked in the 9th century when the Turks abandon their common religion with the Mongols, tengrism, in favor of Islam which they discover when they join the Samanid army (in present-day Iran).

It was in the 11th century that the Turks settled in Anatolia, took power in various places and gradually lost their Asian features over the generations while keeping their name that is still used today.

To come back to our Turkish Tabghach tribe, it was established in present-day Mongolia and was part of the larger Xianbei people (鮮卑; Xiānbēi). During the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms (304-439) they took power in northern China where they founded the northern Wei dynasty which dominated the country from 386 to 534. It was therefore in this context that the Ballad of Mulan was born.

According to doctors David R. Knechtges and Taiping Chang in their book Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide, there is a very good chance that the ballad is actually a Chinese transcription of an older tale from the northern steppes. It is true that the Northern Wei dynasty is particularly recognized for the intense cultural mixing that they initiated and the introduction of many ideas from other countries (such as Buddhism from India) while accelerating the integration of non-Chinese populations present on the territory.

In the Ballad of Mulan, readers may notice that the sovereign is not called Emperor or by his Chinese name Huangdi but he is designated as Qaghan. This title is also spelled Khagan and is equivalent to the rank of emperor in Turkish and Mongolian cultures. It appears precisely for the first time in the Xianbei confederation and can mean "Great Khan" or "Khan of the Khans".

The title Khan himself designates a rank of sovereign or military leader. It is one of the only Turkish-Mongolian words known worldwide because it designates many powerful titles in the world (as in India or Iran) and is especially linked to the most renowned Mongolian of all: Genghis Khan (his real name being Temüjin).

The war mentioned into the ballad also refers to the war raging between the northern Wei dynasty and the Ruanruan (a nomadic brotherhood from the Xianbei) located on its northern border.

In addition, those most accustomed to Chinese culture may have noticed that the name Mulan did not really have phonetic links with Chinese female names. Indeed, before becoming popular thanks to the ballad, Mulan was a first name worn typically by men from non-Chinese peoples who dominated the military posts of North China. This link between a woman and the army is not trivial since the Mongolian women enjoyed a much higher social status than the Chinese women. Having a female main character who also attains the status of a fighter is far less surprising in Mongolian culture than in Chinese culture from that time.

This notion was also cleverly used in the Disney movie of 1998 by a subtle detail: after Mulan destroyed his army, she faces the chief Hun Shan Yu and tie up her hair so that he realizes that she is the soldier responsible for his fall. Unlike all the other characters, Shan Yu then makes no comment on the fact that she is actually a woman, he only seeks revenge.

Among the Mongols, women could hunt and fight alongside men, choose their husband (s) and divorce them if they wish to do so. There are, furthermore, traces of clans led by women, or even empresses. For his enemy, Mulan is, therefore, just a soldier like any other to be confronted with as much respect as a man.

It should also be noted that it is extremely rare in the history of art to not have any sentimental or romantic allusion in a story with a female main character, which is only possible in a culture that does not perceives women only as wives and mothers.

To return to her name, most naming websites explain that Mulan is a female first name which refers to the magnolia when written in its Chinese form 木蘭 (Mu: Wood, Lan: Orchid). The problem is that it is particularly feminine in this form, and no one could have pretended to be a man by bearing it openly it as in the original text.

On the other hand, as said above, at the time of the ballad, Mulan was a Mongolian name carried by many soldiers from the Northern Wei kingdom. As Sanping Chen recalls in his book Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages, in this Altaic form (spoken in Eurasia), it was more probably pronounced Muklan (its current Cantonese pronunciation) and referred to the stag. He quotes Sergei Starostin who evokes the Altaic word mulaI  "cervid", the tungus mul-, then the proto-mongol maral, "mountain stag", and the proto-Turkish bulan, "stag" as very probable roots of this name. He also details the Altaic word bulān (or buklān) designating all cervids and even evokes the Turkish lexicographer of the 21st century Mahmud ibn Hussayn ibn Muhammed al-Kashgari who adds that this word would also designate the unicorn (therefore more probably the Indian rhinoceros).

Far from the Chinese feminine name evoking flowers (his surname "Hua" added in future adaptations simply means "flower"), Mulan, on the contrary, comes from Mongolian warriors and evokes the deer and other large animals charging their opponents head on.

In summary, the heroine of the Ballad of Mulan came from a tribe who had recently conquered northern China but was not strictly speaking "Chinese" (understand "han", the founding ethnic group of China). She most likely came from a settled Mongolian family (which explains the importance of the horse in the ballad since these people relied heavily on their use in combat) and probably did not even speak Chinese since the Xianbei spoke Turkish.

Here ends this lengthy introduction to situate this Chinese heroine in a historical context very different from the one we usually picture. Even if nothing indicates that the ballad is based on a woman who really existed, it is important to understand that it is, nevertheless, a credible story probably written to pay tribute to all the women underestimated simply because that they were not men.