Talk:Hua Mulan

Early comments

Any objections to removing the movie poster from this page? There is already a page for the movie Mulan that contains the same image... William Wallace does not have a picture of Mel Gibson next to him. Hiberniantears 18:23, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:83.235.171.123 restored the poster after you removed it, saying it was "better than no illustration at all". I have replaced it with a public-domain image that I hope everyone can agree on. —Caesura^(t) 19:08, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Caesura! That's just what I was looking for. Hiberniantears 23:57, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand why the first paragraph says that her story comes from "a famous Chinese non-fictional poem", while in the Overview section we read of myths... If it is a myth or a legend, albeit an important one in the Chinese culture, how can it be non-fictional?

I don't know your conventions, but I thought I'd offer a heads up that this: "In the Discovery Channel series "Warrior Women", aptly hosted by actress Lucy Lawless, the legend of Mulan is referenced as having been inspired by the true story of Chinese female general Wang Cong'er." while maybe true, is incorrect. The legend of Mulan predates Wang Cong'er's birth by more than 1000 years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.35.148 (talk) 19:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

There really should be a more definite statement about whether or not this story is believed to be fact or fiction. As of right now, it doesn't say either way. 14.202.44.49 (talk) 03:16, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Fa Mulan ??

The name Fa Mulan is sometimes used in place of Hua Mulan - does anyone know the issue here? --Ishel99 10:11, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Dialect. Some variants of Chinese use /a/ for /wa/ and /f/ for /h/. Seems to me a bunch of central dialects fit that pattern, but without looking it up I'm not sure. --Diderot 15:14, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I count some twenty-four thousand pages on the Internet with the string "Fa Mulan" [1], so your question is a good one. I have answered it in the article. Unfortunately, User:Eiorgiomugini insists on removing the information. Eiorgio, unless you provide at least some sort of justification for your removal, I will have to start treating such edits as vandalism. — Gulliver ✉ 02:16, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

The Disney movie used "Fa", which may account for the Google results. Cythraul (talk) 23:48, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Fa Mulan is the Cantonese way of saying the name. Hua Mulan is Mandarin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.54.181.243 (talk) 03:35, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

No, it's not the Cantonese way. It would be Faa Muklaan. Only the first syllable was adopted. Disney created this clusterfuck "Fa Mulan" pertaining to no actual dialect for the sake of simplicity of pronunciation for Western people. Disney's invention shall not interfere with the article on the actual historical tale. Moreover, Northern Wei is obviously in the North and has nothing to do with Cantonese. Eiorgiomugini was right, it shouldn't be deemed as vandalism. --Explosivo (talk) 13:32, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

The link to the English poem doesn't work

Can this be fixed? I'd like to read it.

It seems to be fine now.

Quotations

One cannot alter quotations. The material I added from The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady is quoted material. The quotations were intended to show how a published translator rendered the original onomatopoeia. For example, it says "She only hears the Yellow River's flowing water cry tsien tsien. You cannot change the spelling of this. If you desire to add information, that is fine. For example, you could add the modern Mandarin pronunciation of those characters in pinyin (although that is unnecessary because the Wiktionary links contain this information). But do not alter quoted material. — Gulliver ✉ 02:16, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Gulliver, this material as it is presented in the article is not a quote: it is not enclosed in a quotation mark nor indented in a new paragraph. In fact, it is probably not a good idea to take a direct quote from this book (from back in 1976), if the author used WG (or whatever it is) when the modern standard is pinyin.

If your argument is that "tsien-tsien" is some kind of a "reconstruction" of an ancient pronunciation, then it is also quite obvious that the author is using a WG-derived representation for this reconstruction.

In fact, Mr Sergei Anatolyevich's database gives something quite different: [2]. As such, it fits neither modern standards nor Wiki conventions (which is to use pinyin preferentially and WG supplementally). (Another example of the difference between authorities when it comes to reconstruction.) Finally, millions of Chinese people read the poem in modern Mandarin (or whatever language they are speaking) and have no problem understanding the onomatopoeia. So "reconstructing" onomatopoeia in this way, using a non-standard representaiton such as this is quite troublesome and redundant.

Given that the pinyin representaiton is (1) certain, (2) standard, and (3) does not differ that much from Mr Anatyloyevich's reconstruction, I think it's the way to go. --Sumple (Talk) 04:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Musical Records of Old and New

These are described as dating from the sixth century, which in the original version was further described as mostly ruled by the Tang Dynasty! I've changed it to reading the century before the founding of the Tang, but if the original writer was confused in his centuries rather than his Dynasties, someone should fix this. I have no idea when the Musical Records of Old and New dates from.

"Based On"

Having seen both the Disney movie and opera, "Lady General Hua Mulan", I have to say that both versions took liberties with the original story, which seems fairly barebones compared to either movie. If anything, I would say that the opera is also "based on" the legend, and, if anything, the Disney movie was based on the opera: the love interest angle was in the opera, and Disney seems to have faithfully copied it. Or is this too nitpicky?FlaviaR 05:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese

I'm pretty sure this cannot be right. The Traditional chinese opens with the same five characters repeated 20 times. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:49, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I've replaced it with a version I found in the history. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:53, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

three uses of onomatopoeia in the poem?

I'm curious as to how the inclusion of onomatopoeias is mention-worthy? Is that rare, for writing of that period? I don't mean it should be taken out, I just think it'd be worthwhile to include a little clarification regarding its mention. (3rd paragraph of the intro section) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Matt.lohkamp (talk • contribs) 06:19, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Abused?

Asserting that Maxine Hong Kingston "abused" the poem in her work doesn't sound very objective. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.175.107.4 (talk) 08:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The story

I had to read the article twice to understand what was bothering me about it. Oddly, it doesn't summarize or even discuss the actual story. That makes the article of questionable usefulness :-) it's fine and useful to discuss its history and impact, but the article is about the character, so it's bizarre that it doesn't tell us Hua Mulan's (supposed) biography. -- Lalo Martins (can't log in right now) 10:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.5.227.13 (talk)

I was just reading through the article and thinking the same thing. Where's the story? What did Hua Mulan (supposedly) do to make her the heroine this article claims her to be? If someone could provide even a brief summary of the poem or later novel I believe it would greatly improve this article. —MearsMan ^talk 19:48, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

The commenters above are correct. There's nothing in the article of the person "Hua Mulan", only a discussion of the poem. That seems to imply that she is fictious and does not exist outside the poem. Yet, this article is tied to various history portals: WikiProject Military history, WikiProject LGBT studies, and WikiProject Women's History. So, which is it? Is she a real historic figure or merely the fictional subject of an historic poem? Thank you, Wordreader (talk) 03:48, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Why is this connected to LGBT? Just because she disguised herself as a man to fight on her fathers behalf, doesn't make her trans, and there is no evidence to suggest she was a lesbian.14.202.44.49 (talk) 03:18, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Hua Mulan: Chinese or Nomadic

Hi, just edited the part arguing whether Mulan is a Chinese heroine or a nomadic one (against China).

The previous argument considers that the title "Khan" referring to the leader of Mulan's nation is a nomadic title. As argued in my new edit, it can be also used along with the Chinese title of "Emperor" in certain dynasties. And more importantly, in the poem, the route that Mulan followed from her hometown to the battlefield (From the Yellow River to the Yan Mountains) is clearly in a northward direction, which can not be a nomadic invasion route to China. Therefore Mulan is undoubtedly a heroine defending China against northern invasions.

Probably a non-Han Chinese. Clues include that she could ride, fight with swords and archery. 109.150.151.227 (talk) 02:13, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Version of the ballad

I have checked all the external links, and they all are different from the version of the ballad in the article. It's particularly obvious when you look at the line beginning with "The male rabbit." Where does this version come from? It's appeared and disappeared throughout the article's history, but if this is truly a pre-published version rather than someone's paraphrase, it could use a source. And if it is a paraphrase, can we replace it with a historical version of the ballad? Teddywithfangs (talk) 17:37, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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Article Opening

Why does the article's first sentence say "Hua Mulan...is a legendary Disney princess from the 90s, who was originally..." when the Disney adaptation isn't even mentioned until the the "Modern Adaptations" section? The article is clearly not about the Disney character (not to mention that the Disney character is "Fa Mulan"), so why such a prominent mention? 24.14.224.157 (talk) 03:20, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

To add to article

To add to article: which province of China was Hua Mulan supposed to have been from? 173.88.241.33 (talk) 01:42, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

What we call China now, and what China back then was, are completely different. The same landmass was divided into many areas with local rulers of Han, and non-Han, and Sinicised origins. China was a big melting pot of the East Asian civilisation; a bit like the USA now. Ask yourself the question, what and who is an American, and then ask the same question but replace American with Chinese. 109.150.151.227 (talk) 02:19, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Misquotation of Huang

The article originally started: Mulan comes to a tragic end, a "detail that cannot be found in any previous legends or stories associated Hua Mulan"

However, this is taken out of context. Huang goes on to clarify: "the ending differs from the endings of most of the Hua Mulan legends."

The fact that Huang concludes by saying "most" indicates that he did not intend his statement to be a superlative.

During the Ming Dynasty (prior to Chu Renhuo's work), historian Zhu Guozhen commented on what he thought was the story of Mulan (see chapter 21 of 湧幢小品). The similarly between the endings of these two accounts is striking. Chu Renhuo must have referenced Zhu Guozhen's work. Even if he didn't, saying that Chu Renhuo invented this conclusion on his own is false.

Huang's point is that Chu Renhuo produced the first FICTIONALIZED account which has thus ending. But the article was trying to make it sound like he was the first to come up with the idea for this conclusion altogether. The fact that he goes back to clarify himself, combined with the fact that it was actually Zhu Guozhen who proposed this ending, means that it's unfair to make Huang sound as if he's so sure that this ending was Chu Renhuo's invention.

Therefore, I've modified the citation to be less emphatic. I would prefer it to be removed altogether because it's still misleading without being addressed in detail.

Mulanbook (talk) 09:37, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Disputed information

Originally, the article read: There was no treatment of the legend since the two 12th century poems, until in the late Ming, playwright Xu Wei (d. 1593) dramatized the tale as "The Female Mulan" (雌木蘭 or, more fully, "The Heroine Mulan Goes to War in Her Father's Place" (Chinese: 雌木蘭替父從軍; pinyin: Cí-Mùlán Tì Fù Cóngjūn), in two acts.

The fact that there was no treatment of Mulan between the Tang and Ming dynasties is disputed (source). I have reworded the article to not cite disputed information.

I am leaving this note here so that this can be reincorporated into the article later. At this point, this short article does not have a place for scholarly debate. However, it might have a place once it becomes a more substantial article in the future. Mulanbook (talk) 23:14, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

References

"was a legendary female warrior"

Should this be "is"? I think the general consensus is that Mulan was entirely fictional, and not semi-fictional or barely known about in recorded history, aka like Mary, Mother of Jesus. --Trans-Neptunian object (talk) 20:58, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Good catch, Trans-Neptunian object. I changed it. Yours, Wordreader (talk) 03:12, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks!--Trans-Neptunian object (talk) 12:26, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

@Arorapriyansh333: See this. --by Huhu9001 (talk) at 09:02, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

the story outside china

Hi. I was wondering if there are studies about the non Asian tales similar to Mulan and their possible derivation from it. For example, we know Cinderella comes from the greek tale of Rodopi, but we also have the IX century chinese tale of Ye Xian: we don't know if those tales were related or how they spread, but they are the same tale to the core. Same thing happens with Mulan: we have Costanza, a XVI century italian tale where a princess searchs fortune as a knight, and the XVII century french tale of Belle-Belle ou le Chevalier Fortuné, where Belle-Belle goes to war instead of her father because he's too old and poor, and she saves the reign from a war and a dragon. And in both tales she keeps refusing the love of the queen that believes she's a boy; and when the king discovers she's a woman he honors her even more. The similarity with Mulan are there, expecially with Belle-Belle. Both the tales I mentioned are literary fairytales, so I guess the knowledge of the autors about chinese tales could be investigated. Does anyone know if some studies and books talk about the possible influence of Mulan's story in the west? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.88.236.13 (talk) 17:51, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Legendary or mythical?

If she is not real, shouldn’t it say «mythical» instead of «legendary»? Henrik242E (talk) 00:06, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Myths are not fictional or unreal. They are typically religious narratives that involve supernatural figures. Dimadick (talk) 14:42, 3 January 2023 (UTC)