The Story of Mulan: Women and War in Early Medieval China

Stanford University Center for East Asian Studies hosts a talk by Scott Pearce on the origins of the story of Mulan.

Scott Pearce, Professor, Western Washington University

The story of Mulan, a woman who went to war, has undergone many transformations, in China and beyond. Its earliest version, however, “The Poem of Mulan,”  was not Chinese in origin, but apparently came from among the Inner Asian Tuoba people who in the late fourth century conquered the Yellow River plain to establish the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534). Though the received version of the poem is in Chinese, evidence is strong that this was a translation of a folk song in the Tuoba’s Altaic language. In this paper we examine “The Poem of Mulan” against the background of Northern Wei history to see what it can tell us about the Tuoba army, its relationship to Tuoba society, and women’s role in that society.

Trained in the history of China, inner Asia, and Japan, and in Chinese thought and religion, Professor Scott Pearce specializes in the alien dynasties that ruled northern China during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. He currently is working on a book on the “great reformer” emperor, Xiaowen (r. 471-499), who refashioned his realm from an imposition by force of arms into a state that sought to rest upon the traditions of his conquered Chinese subjects. From this work come scholarly and teaching interests in many related issues, such as the encounter and interaction of cultures, the evolution of Buddhism in medieval China, military history, and the poetry of war.