Wide Sleeves and a Graceful Pose

About this drawing

Mulan in Hanfu calls to mind a heroine who was famous in China about 1,500 years before any movie studio got involved. Her story comes from the Ballad of Mulan, an anonymous folk poem usually dated to around the fifth or sixth century.

It opens with a surprisingly quiet scene. A young woman sighs at her loom. The army has called up her aging father, and the family has no grown son to send. So Mulan makes a plan. She buys a horse and gear, dresses as a man, and rides off to war.

The poem spends little time on battles. It jumps across twelve years of service in a few lines, then brings her home in glory. The emperor offers rank and riches. Her answer is one of the best moments in the ballad, because she turns it all down and just asks for a fast ride home.

Back at the house, she changes into her old clothes and walks out to greet her fellow soldiers, who are stunned. All those years, and nobody had guessed. Later writers expanded the tale for plays and novels, adding details the poem never mentions. Nobody knows if a real Mulan existed. Her fame comes from what she stands for, which is courage and loyalty to family.

• china
• legends
• heroines
• traditional dress