In the eastern market she bought a steed,
At the western a saddle and cloth;
In the southern market she bought a bridle,
At the northern a long whip;Hastening thousands of miles to decisive battles,
Crossing mountains and passes as ifflying!
The northern air carries the sentry’s drum,
A wintry sun glints off her coat of mail.After a hundred battles the generals are dead,
Ten years now, and the brave soldiers are returning!The poem goes on to describe Mulan’s rejection of an official post and her
desire simply to return home. Once home, she removes her campaigning
clothing, does her hair and makeup, and dresses in her female robes. It is
only then that her comrades in arms realize that she is a woman.^38 Of
course, the reference to makeup reinforces the notion that she was of the
upper classes (who could afford such luxuries). The army she served in
fought on the northern border, not within the settled agricultural lands of
China. Like Fu Hao, thefictional Mulan fought northern enemies of the
ruler without giving up her core femininity. Even so, Mulan, unlike Fu
Hao, had to hide her sex and change her clothes (and roles) to resume her
place as a female. Fu Hao openly performed all of her roles; by the
Northern and Southern dynasties period, a woman, even infiction, had
to distinguish between a martial, or at least military, role in a masculine
realm, and the role of a woman.
The Return of Chinese Infantry
The ethnic split between those who fought and those who farmed was most
clearly explained by Gao Huan in the sixth century:
To the Xianbei he would say,“The Han are your slaves. The men till for you; the
women weave for you. They provide you with grain and silk so that you are warm
and well-fed. For what reason do you bully them?”The Han Chinese were treated
to a different speech.“The Xianbei are your retainers [ke]. For a single measure of
your grain and single length of your silk they attack bandits so that you are safe. For
what reason do you regard them as a scourge?”^39
But while Gao Huan’s regime, the Eastern Wei, was well supplied with
cavalry, his opponents were not.
88 The Six Dynasties