Fa Mulan

**Fa Mulan** (**花木蘭**) is the beautiful main protagonist of Disney's 1998 animated feature film of the same name and its 2004 direct-to-video sequel. She is inspired by the legendary Hua Mulan from the Chinese poem The Ballad of Mulan.

####    Biography

Mulan is the only child of Fa Zhou, a former war veteran, and Fa Li. Mulan is forced to go to the town Matchmaker to find her a husband, which ends in humiliating failure. Shortly after, the Chinese Emperor's counselor, Chi-Fu, arrives in her village to announce that the deadly Huns, led by Shan Yu, have invaded China, and that one man in every family must serve in the war. Despite her protests, her father says that he will go in spite of his old age and old war wounds. Mulan decides to go in his place posing as a man, cutting her long hair with a sword, stealing her father's armor and riding away on her horse, Khan, so she will keep him from risking his life.

On her way to the army camp, Mulan meets Mushu, a small dragon who claims to be a guardian sent by her ancestors. He agrees to help her pass as a soldier. Though Mulan fails the army training at first, she uses her intelligence and becomes the first soldier to solve a puzzle set by Li Shang, her unit's commanding officer.

Afterwards, she rapidly progresses to become one of the best soldiers in the unit. She also makes friends in Yao, Ling and Chien Po, three fellow soldiers, though she is forced to hide her gender. Through the machinations of Mushu, the soldiers are called to the war front.

After finding that the Chinese Army, led by Shang's father General Li, has been completely destroyed by the Huns, Shang leads Mulan and the other soldiers to stop them. Despite the unit being outnumbered, Mulan is able to defeat the Huns by crushing them in an avalanche by way of a rocket. She sustains an injury from Shan-Yu, which results in her true gender being revealed. She is spared death, the punishment for a woman joining the army, as Shang's way of repaying the debt from Mulan rescuing him during the previous battle.

Mulan is left behind by the army and prepares to return home. However, she discovers that Shan-Yu and his five generals have survived and are heading towards the Imperial City. Mulan attempts to warn Shang, but she is ignored because she is a woman. However, when Shan Yu captures the Emperor, Shang, Yao, Ling, and Chien Po join her in a rescue attempt. Mulan disguises herself, Yao, Ling, and Chien Po as concubines and take out the Hun guards, allowing Shang to reach Shan Yu and the emperor. Yao, Ling and Chein Po escape with the Emperor, but Mulan remains behind after Shang is knocked unconscious by Shan Yu.

She reveals herself as the soldier who took down the Huns, which angers Shan Yu. While running from Shan Yu, she comes up with a plan to kill him by means of fireworks. While Mushu goes to get the fireworks, Mulan faces Shan Yu on the roof of the Emperor's palace. She disarms him with a paper fan and uses his sword to pin him to the roof, allowing Mushu to fire fireworks at Shan Yu, presumably killing him. Mulan is oppressed by Chi Fu for the final time when he arrogantly says that as a woman, she is unworthy of being called a hero and being worth anything.

Mulan is then confronted by the Emperor with her various crimes, having heard about them from Chi Fu. At the same time, he acknowledges that she saved all of China and bows to her out of respect. His gesture results in all the gathered people bowing as well. The Emperor first offers Mulan a council position then a job as consul, both of which Mulan refuses. The Emperor instead gifts her with his personal crest, and Shan Yu's sword. Mulan returns home, and is able to reconcile with her father. The end of the film shows Mulan inviting Shang, who had followed Mulan under the guise of returning her helmet, to dinner.

## Trivia

* She is friends with Princess Clara.
* When she meets Mike Mazinsky, she says that she looks familiar, and then reveals that Mike's father was once an exchange student to China, rooming with Mulan and her family, and John taught Mulan how to speak English, mentioned in Toondoncoulus Race when she appears with her husband and their daughter.
* Mulan is the only Disney Princess to be of East Asian descent.
* Her pink bridal outfit is very often confused for a *kimono* (Japanese), but is actually the Chinese garment *hanfu*.
* Mulan is the only Disney Princess to not be royalty. She wasn't born into royalty, nor did she marry a prince.
* Mulan spends most of the time in her training uniform, her battle armor, or her blue infiltration dress, while in the merchandise, she is shown mostly in her "normal" dress or her pink matchmaker dress.
* Mulan is the second Disney Princess to have both parents alive and present during the entire film, the first being Aurora in 1959 and the third being Rapunzel in 2010, and Merida being the fourth in 2012.
* Mulan means "magnolia blossom" in Chinese. It could also mean "wood orchid".
* While her name is "Fa Mulan" in the Disney film, in the actual Chinese legend her name is "Hua Mulan", though they are both pronounced similarly (Fa being Cantonese).
* The name Mulan uses while disguised as a man – Fa Ping – is a pun on the Chinese term for "eye candy".
* In the Chinese dub, when giving her fake name to *Li Shang*, she states her full name is Hua Ping. *Hua Ping*translates directly as *Flower Vase*, and is modern Chinese slang for an effeminate homosexual male. This is adapted into the Chinese dub so that when *Ping* is introduced, the others think he is a feminine homosexual male, and use that as the basis as to why 'he' tries, and fails, to be manly.
* Mulan is left handed, but is seen using the sword in her right hand, so she may be ambidextrous.
* Originally, the film makers planned to have Mulan join to the army to get out of her society. Though the way she feels about society is still present in the movie, it is not made to be the main point. She seemed selfish and unlikable that way, so animators stuck to the traditional way of her saving her father.
* Mulan's voice was originally going to be done by Tia Carrere, who later voiced Nani Pelekai in *Lilo & Stitch*. Lea Salonga *(her singing voice)* was considered but her voice wasn't low enough for Ping before they found Ming-Na.
* Mulan was featured in the 100th issue of *Disney Adventures Magazine*.
* When Mulan disguises herself as a male, her eyelashes and double eyelid disappear and her eyebrows grow thicker, but when she dresses like a woman again, her eyelashes grow back, her double eyelid comes in again, but her eyebrows remain thick.
* Mulan touches her hair a lot because animators noticed that Ming-Na did.
* Mulan is, by far, the Disney character (heroine or villain) with the highest body count ever. The production team had drawn 2,000 Hun soldiers during the Huns' attack sequence, along with 2,000 more horses. Only six Huns survived to the avalanche and only one of them (Shan Yu) is killed later. This makes Mulan's final body count to 3,994 (Shan Yu is killed by Mushu, rather than Mulan, and not a single horse survived).
* Mimi Chan did the motion capture for Mulan's martial arts moves.
* In the Disney Princess line-up and dolls, Mulan is often shown as being more tanned than the others besides Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Tiana. However, in the new 2013 type line-up and their merchandise, Mulan is shown as the palest one.
* In the Special Edition DVD audio commentary, it is said that though Mark Henn is her animator, Christopher Sanders (Little Brother's animator) was the one who mastered her quirky character.
* Mulan is often noted in an audio commentary that she uses her mind to solve problems and with the learning at the camp can use a combination of strength and intelligence.
* In the deleted part of "Reflection", Mulan says, "they want a docile lamb, no one knows who I am," which is true throughout the first movie and sometimes between scenes of Qui Gong and Mulan's marriage in the second movie, she claims to have told Li Shang everything.
* The recoloring of Mulan's redesign may be due to the fact that red and gold were often considered by the Chinese as the colors of communism or because in ancient China, the royal color was gold and red was the color of luck and prosperity.
* All of Mulan's dresses in the first film had a blue bodice and a red sash.
* Mulan sings a remix of another song in the play *Mulan Jr.* called "Written in Stone". She also sings a remix of "Keep 'Em Guessing".
* On the cover of *Mulan 2*, Mushu is holding a ring (probably an engagement ring), but it is never in the movie or given to Mulan, possibly due to Chinese marriage traditions.
* Her side of the yin and yang necklace is the yang side, associated with masculinity.
* Although Mulan cuts her hair, it remains long in the Disney Princess merchandise.
* Mulan is shown in several deleted scenes in which one she is daydreaming of how she wants to demonstrate her adventurous/tomboyish spirit.
* Mulan's curtain has white ducks or swans on it.
* Mulan is the second Disney Princess to say a prayer, and the first to pray multiple times she says one to her ancestors while on her way to the Matchmaker in *Honor to Us All*. She silently prays to them two more times, once in "Reflection", where she kneels before their alter, another where she lights incense and bows to them before she leaves to take her father's place in the army.
* Mulan is so far the only Disney Princess not to have a celebrity pose as her in the Disney Dream Portrait Series.
* In the second film, she states that she would like "a big wedding, one or two children, and spicy food". She also responds to other questions with "right away, no, and pink".