Song of Mulan, Wei Yuanfu

    Mulan is holding the shuttle and sighing.
    “I ask again, because of whom?
    I want to hear from whence these woes.”
    The feelings stirred are forced to her face.
    “Father is on the army rolls,
    Yet every day his strength declines—
    How can he walk for thousands of li?
    He has a son too young to go.
    The Hu sands sink both horse and soldier,
    The northern winds crack men’s skins—
    Father is old and getting feeble,
    He uses his strength to prop himself.
    Mulan will take his place and leave—
    Feed horse and ready arms, then go.”
    She exchanges her fine silk gown,
    She washes off her white face-powder:
    She spurs her horse to the army tents,
    With fervent sighs, takes sword in hand.
    At dawn they camp ’neath snowy mountains,
    At dusk they stop by Qinghai Lake.
    They capture at night a Yan brigade
    And also seize the Yutian Qiang—
    The general triumphs and returns,
    Foot-soldiers head to their hometowns.
    When Father and Mother see Mulan,
    They’ve utmost joy, which turns to sorrow—
Mulan now must endure the faces of her parents,
So she unwraps her sleeves and tunes her strings to sing:
    “Before an ardent soldier’s might,
    I’ve now a tender girl’s appearance.
Our family raise their cups, congratulate my parents,
Now understanding men and women’s worth’s the same.”
    Before her gate, her former comrades,
    Ten years together through thick and thin—
    At first they joined a band of brothers
    And swore through war to never change,
    But now when they behold Mulan—
Although her voice is right, the look of her face is different.
    Amazed, they do not dare step forward,
    Their gasps are followed by happy sighs.
    If our generation had officials
    With integrity like Mulan’s—
    Loyal and filial, both unchanging—
How, for a thousand ages, could our fame be lost?

( 木兰歌 )

This is the earliest surviving literary retelling of the Mulan story, by mid-Tang scholar-official Wei Yuanfu (701-771). It adds a few details missing from the original ballad, such as why her father can’t serve, that have become canon. (If you’re interested in how the Mulan story has evolved over the centuries, this website is All About That, including several texts in translation, including this one.)

Hu refers generically to the peoples of the northern steppes and deserts and where they live, Qinghai Lake was in the northwest frontier of modern Qinghai Province, and Yutian was a country even further west in what’s modern Xinjiang ruled by the Tibetan-related Qiang peoples. Yan usually means the region of the northeastern Warring State of that name, roughly Hebei + Liaoning, so unless Mulan’s army is scrambling across the entire northern frontier (and it’s possible that’s intended), it’s probably a generic “in the north” reference, possibly evoking Mt. Yanran (see 3TP #201). The sleeves are cloth wrappings worn to protect the forearm when you don’t have armor (you might have noticed these in the recent Mulan Disney movie). More accurately, she prepares her “strings and reeds,” a general idiom for musical instruments that doesn’t work on the literal level, given she’s singing; I dropped the reeds and supplied “and sings” to clarify.

Can’t say I’m fond of the patriotic moralizing conclusion, especially compared to the gender interrogation of the original ballad. Indeed, overall I prefer the original, folk-process gaps in the narrative and all.

---L.