Mulan, the Maiden Chief

A young woman named Mulan sat at her spinning wheel, sighing deeply.

“Why are you sighing like that?” someone asked her. “Are you afraid? Are you in love? Please tell me why.”

“It is neither fear nor love,” Mulan answered. “Put those foolish ideas away. What I long for is a warrior’s glory. I want to save my father’s dear life and rescue my country, and so I will face the dangers of the battlefield. I am not what I seem. My father has no son to lead his soldiers, and I have no brother. So I must ride my father’s horse and hurry off to war.”

At daybreak she left her home. By evening she was resting where mountain streams thundered and soldiers in armor marched. At last she reached the northern plains, and the mountains disappeared behind her. The sun shone cold there, and the winter wind cut through her again and again.

In battle a thousand enemies fell around her, but Mulan came through it all and returned covered in glory.

In the palace at Chang’an, many noble knights knelt before the throne, but the bravest of them all was Mulan.

“No, my prince,” she said. “I have done my duty, and I want no reward. Only let me go home to cheer my old father.”

She came to her father’s door as a commander, with trumpets blaring. But when she took off her helmet with its waving plume, there stood a lovely young woman.

About this story

This telling follows “Mulan, the Maiden Chief,” a short rhymed English poem in Eva March Tappan’s China, Japan, and the Islands of the Pacific (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), the first volume of her series The World’s Story. Tappan lists the poet as unknown and dates the poem between 502 and 556 A.D. Her introduction presents Mulan as one of the women who fought in those years. These are the anthology’s historical claims; this brief legendary poem does not establish Mulan’s biography.

The English poem is brief: in a few rhyming stanzas Mulan explains why she must go, rides north through the cold, wins glory, refuses any reward and comes home, where she is revealed as a young woman. This telling keeps every one of those moments in prose, with the battle described a little more gently.

Read the original: The World’s Story, vol. I (Internet Archive)

Best for ages 9–12 — a daughter who goes to war in her father’s place and wants nothing but to go home.

Listen to Mulan’s own answer

The opening question gives Mulan only two possible motives: fear or romantic love. She rejects both and names glory, her father and her country. Her wish to return home is therefore consistent with her original purpose. The public reward matters less than completing the duty she chose.

Compare the first and last speeches

Underline what other people assume about Mulan, then list the aims she states herself. Which aim explains her final request? Discuss how the story changes when she gets to explain her own actions.

Talk about it

• Why does Mulan say she must go to war?
• Why do you think Mulan refuses a reward from the prince?
• What do you imagine her family felt when she took off her helmet?

Related stories

• The Wonderful Man — a Chinese mother who secretly lives as a man for her son’s sake
• The Three Evils — a strong young man who goes off to fight as a soldier
• Yang Oerlang — a hero who sets out to rescue a parent