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The Ballad of Mulan

85 statements
15 feature instances
9 referencing feature instances

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The Ballad of Mulan	comment	The Ballad of Mulan (木蘭辭, Mùlán cí) is a Chinese poem written in (probably) the fifth or sixth century AD. It is the origin of the Mulan character, later known as Hua Mulan.note Her family name is portrayed as "Mulan" in the original poem, as women of the time were only referred to by their surname.The story opens with Mulan at her loom. She is sad that her father has been drafted and has no grown son to serve in his place. She leaves home to take his place in the army herself. After fighting for ten years, Mulan is honored by the Khannote No, not the Emperor. In any case, during the era which the ballad could have originated, there was no one Emperor of all China; between the fall of the Han Dynasty and the unification of China by Sui in 589, China was either splintered among various regimes (apart from the last decade of Sima Yan's rule after unifying the Three Kingdoms), or fighting civil wars. and offered a high position, but she turns it down. She then returns home and resumes living the life of an ordinary woman. Seeing this, her old wartime comrades are shocked to discover that she was female all along. The poem ends by asking how you would be able to distinguish between two running rabbits which was male and which was female.note This is likely a reference to Mulan's role in the army as a cavalry(wo)man. In addition, the Chinese idiom pū shuò mí lí (撲朔迷離/扑朔迷离; used to refer to something utterly puzzling) originates from here.Notable adaptations of the story include: The Xu Wei play The Heroine Mulan Goes to War in Her Father's Place (c. 1580). It did a lot to flesh out the very bare-bones story laid out in the original ballad, and elements that it invented have often been maintained in later adaptations. Perhaps most significantly, it was the first work to establish "Hua" as Mulan's surname. In the first two Cantonese dubs of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Nausicaä's name was changed to Mulan despite the film having little to do whatsoever with the actual story of Mulan. Nausicaä's name would be restored in the Blu-ray redub. The animated Disney adaptation Mulan (1998). invokedThe Direct to Video animated sequel, Mulan II (2004). The live-action Disney remake Mulan (2020). The Secret of Mulan (1998), the UAV Entertainment Mockbuster version. The live-action Chinese adaptation Mulan: Rise of a Warrior (2009). There are several other Chinese film and television versions of the story, which do not as yet have pages on this wiki. The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan, a 2019 young adult novel by Sherry Thomas. Mulan: The True Story, a historically accurate literary adaptation set in Northern Wei, with only a few errors in adapting, by Daniyar Z. Baidaralin
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_3aea01c7	type	Mounted Combat
The Ballad of Mulan / int_3aea01c7	comment	Mounted Combat: Mulan was very likely a cavalry(wo)man, given that the items she bought in preparation were either the horse itself, or various ancillaries such as a bridle and a whip.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_634d7074	type	Work Info Title
The Ballad of Mulan / int_634d7074	comment	Work Info Title: Would you guess that this is a ballad?
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_663f35c0	type	Only One Name
The Ballad of Mulan / int_663f35c0	comment	Only One Name: Due to the standards of the day only referring to women by their surname, "Mulan" was her surname and she had no established given name. It was centuries later, during the Ming dynasty, that her surname was first given as "Hua" (or "Fa", in Cantonese pronunciation) by the playwright Xu Wei and her given name became "Mulan". Other sources have given her surname as "Zhu" or "Wei".
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_7eb2bc15	type	Ambiguous Time Period
The Ballad of Mulan / int_7eb2bc15	comment	Ambiguous Time Period: There is no explicit mention of the time period or what war Mulan is fighting in. Due to the geographic and cultural references, it's traditionally assumed that the poem is set during the Northern Wei dynasty, in which case the war would be fought against the Rouran tribes, whom the Wei regarded as barbarians. By extension, Mulan's ethnicity is very likely to be Xianbei as in Northern Wei, only the Xianbei people could become soldiers. The location reference also tells us that the campaign was the same one Tuoba Buri (AKA Tuoba Tao, posthumously known as Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei) led against the Rouran Khaganate in 429.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_8c41d6e9	type	Nameless Narrative
The Ballad of Mulan / int_8c41d6e9	comment	Nameless Narrative: Aside from Mulan herself, no characters are named.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_97838192	type	Heroic Lineage
The Ballad of Mulan / int_97838192	comment	Heroic Lineage is probably a better-fitting trope, given the context of Mulan's homeland of Northern Wei.note In northern Wei, only the Xianbei people can be soldiers, and so it is common for generations of the same family/clan to fight in different wars over decades.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_a18d407b	type	Samus Is a Girl
The Ballad of Mulan / int_a18d407b	comment	Samus Is a Girl: The ending, from the perspective of Mulan's comrades.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_a6a6de9a	type	Humble Hero
The Ballad of Mulan / int_a6a6de9a	comment	Humble Hero: The Khan offers Mulan a government position for her service but she refuses, desiring to go home and reunite with her family after being away for twelve years.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_a8217606	type	Sweet Polly Oliver
The Ballad of Mulan / int_a8217606	comment	Sweet Polly Oliver: Possibly, a Downplayed Trope or even an Unbuilt Trope. While her comrades are surprised to discover that she's female at the end, there is no explicit mention that Mulan tried to disguise her gender. For all we know, they were just really unobservant.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_a8357dc2	type	No Woman's Land
The Ballad of Mulan / int_a8357dc2	comment	No Woman's Land: Implied. When the army draft is given to her family, Mulan laments that neither her elder father nor younger brother is eligible for war. Then, when she returns back home from the war and resumes her civilian life, her comrades express shock that Mulan is really a woman despite fighting with her for over 12 years. Heroic Lineage is probably a better-fitting trope, given the context of Mulan's homeland of Northern Wei.note In northern Wei, only the Xianbei people can be soldiers, and so it is common for generations of the same family/clan to fight in different wars over decades.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_aa6043ca	type	Open-Minded Parent
The Ballad of Mulan / int_aa6043ca	comment	Open-Minded Parent: Contrary to many future adaptations, Mulan's parents support her decision to take her father's place and even help her buy the supplies she needs before heading off to the army.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_c59bf35a	type	Ballad of X
The Ballad of Mulan / int_c59bf35a	comment	Ballad of X: The English title is translated as the "Ballad of Mulan".
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_dae5c997	type	Action Girl
The Ballad of Mulan / int_dae5c997	comment	Action Girl: Mulan, presumably. Her time at war is not described in any detail, but she does get honored by the Khan himself, so she can't have done too badly.
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The Ballad of Mulan / int_de5f028b	type	Barbarian Hero
The Ballad of Mulan / int_de5f028b	comment	Barbarian Hero: Mulan, on a technicality. While composed in the Northern Wei, it was first transcribed in the southern Chen dynasty, who saw the Northern Wei as "plaited barbarians" and thus, to them Mulan would have been a barbarian hero by the traditional Han Chinese standards of the Imperial era.
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