The Life of Mulan

She was a young Chinese girl - disinterested in women's chores and not ready to be married. She was more worried about the draft, which called for each family to send a son or brother to serve in the army in a war against the Huns. Since her father was disabled, she quickly purchased the required equipment: a horse, saddle, bridle, and a long whip. Disguised as a man, she joined the evening camps and left for the long journey. Ten years she was gone on a journey of ten thousand miles. As reward for her years of service, she was allowed to go home and was welcomed by all her family. It did not take her long to get back to her true identity - a woman; she resumed her feminine appearance by fixing her hair, resuming her old clothes and powdering her face. Her comrades were amazed and perplexed to find out that "he" was in fact, a woman, (Kington).

You might know whom I am talking about. Her name was Fa Mulan.

After hearing the story about Mulan, I spent some time thinking about what it meant for a woman in ancient China to transcend beyond the boundaries of gender and culture for family, honor, and duty. Mulan became a true warrior - one who encompassed not only the combatant and the housewife but the struggle between them as well. Perhaps it is because she creates a steadiness between "work" and "wife." Instead of differentiating between a warrior and a woman, she combines the two entities and becomes a woman warrior, an example of the symbiotic relationship between what was originally considered an oxymoron. Mulan participated by taking "a part in something, from which one is, at the same time, separated," as Paul Tillich vividly describes. Mulan was a part of a war as a warrior, while still she was separated from the war si...

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...omes the standard by which I measure myself. Though in some ways, I want to compare myself to the mythical female warrior, I believe that the very act of choosing a distinct path for my future is both a battle and a victory - and hence I am a warrior, Fa Mu-Krina, as I like to call myself. I am a survivor of my own destiny.

Works Cited

Bateson, Mary Catherine. "Multiple Lives." Advanced College Essay: Business

and Its Publics. 3rd ed. Ed. Denice Martone, Pat C. Hoy and Natalie Kapetanios. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 171 - 196.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.

New York: Knopf, 1976. London: John Lane 1977.

Tillich, Paul. "Courage and Participation." Advanced College Essay: Business

and Its Publics. 3rd ed. Ed. Denice Martone, Pat C. Hoy and Natalie Kapetanios. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 139 - 146.