It’s really hard to write about Mulan ‘cause everyone thinks she looks like this:

But in reality, she was a lot more bad-ass, so a more accurate depiction of her looks like this:

In fact, there are like, so many versions of this story ‘cause it was told first, then written and re-written till no one knows about the facts, so in a way, she’s kind of a myth. Anyway the story wasn’t written in prose form. It was in the form of a poem and it was called The Ballad of Mulan, and it was first transcribed in the Musical Records of Old and New, which was wayyy before the founding of the Tang Dynasty, even though lotsa peeps say this happened in the Tang.

Soo anyway, this piece of work is like, gone forever. Instead, another version was re-written by Guo Maoqian - it’s like, one of the first fanfics of Mulan, and he mentioned, “Um, yeah, the original ballad was inspiration for my poem, so yeah.” The poem also comes in the form of a ballad, so the lines don’t have an equal number of syllables. The lines have 5 syllables but sometimes stretch up to 7 or 9.

After that, someone else wrote another fanfic of this fanfic, ‘cause it was made into a Ming Dynasty novel, but at the same time, errbody knew of this story ‘cause it was told like one of them folktales you listen to your elders tell over the fire.

Also, lotsa people wonder about Mulan’s surname. Sooo the Annals of the Ming say her surname is Zhu, and the Annals of the Qing say it’s Wei, but Xu Wei, who was this playwright, gave her the surname Hua, cause it means flower, and all them lay-deez are always associated with flowers, yo. Besides, Mulan means wood orchid in Chinese (木兰) so it kind of fit.

Now on with the story.

Once upon a time, in the Sui or Tang or Song dynasty, there was a bad-ass girl called Mulan and she was real good at martial arts ‘cause her father trained her. Errthing was fine where she lived but one day, the Emperor sent out an edict which said, “Okay guys. I need one son from every family to fight the Tujie,” (NOT the Huns, which was so not like the Disney movie.) Some sources say Mulan had a brother, some say she didn’t, but if she had a brother, he was too young and her father was like, too old. And so, being the filial daughter that she was, she told her father, “Imma go,” but her family flipped their shit and started saying things like, “No, this is a man’s job and you’re a girl,” which was really annoying, to be honest.

Mulan dressed herself like a guy and challenged her dad to a duel. He was like, “WTF?” but he said okay, and in the end he lost and he saw that this mysterious soldier was his daughter, and he was all, “Kay, you can go. Yeesh.”

So Mulan went into the army and fought for 12 years. No, she didn’t meet a handsome man like Shang, so sorry, but she was really good and rose to the rank of a general, which was awesome. Eventually, though, they set up an ambush and it worked! She could go home. While errbody wanted gold and some rewards, she was all, “Nah, Imma just get a horse and ride home, kthxbye!”

And that was what she did.

Some stories say that she made friends with another General, called General Li, and Li was so impressed with her he was like, “Imma let you marry my daughter,” but when he went to see her, he found out that Mulan was a girl, so ooops - they couldn’t get married. Some sources also say that her army friends came to see her and they were all, “OH MY GOD SHE’S A GIRL WHY DID WE NOT REALIZE THIS?” And of course, the Emperor was freakin’ impressed with her that he wanted her to be an official, but she was like, super humble and said, “Uh, I’d rather not. I’d rather be with my family, and your palace is too far, so no. Sorry.” So basically she turned down the prestige and fame she would get from being in court, which kind of proved to everyone that she’s super worthy of being a hero.

Oh look! I’ve included one more bad-ass pic of her. The thing is, it’s super hard for me to type out this post because no one is really sure that any of the events are true, or if she ever existed. You can pretty much see that it’s been embellished here and there to idealize her somewhat. No one really knows and everyone is trying to figure her out, and if you ask me, this makes her super mythical, super kick-ass, and really powerful. I mean, it wasn’t cool to be a girl in Ancient China, like I said, but she made it so bad-ass, it’s a real hard act to top.

Edit: Fixed some of the errors made! I need to proofread more.