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原创翻译：龙腾网翻译：星际圣母转载请注明出处

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Just finished the movie Hua Mulan. Have some questions out of curiosity.

If she really exist, how did she manage to hide her female identity in the military? Pardon me, women have things like menstruation monthly, go toilet every day and simply look different when taking a bath. Is it really possible?

刚刚看完电影《花木兰》。我出于好奇，有一些问题。

如果她真的存在，她要怎样才能隐藏她的女性身份？原谅我，女人每个月都有月经，每天要上厕所，洗澡的时候身体看起来根本不一样。她真的有可能隐藏这些吗？

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原创翻译：龙腾网翻译：星际圣母转载请注明出处

Philip Naudus

Up until the Qing dynasty, historians agreed that Mulan was a real person. Several Ming dynasty historians even acknowledged the Ballad of Mulan as her autobiography.

The earliest surviving manuscxt to mention Mulan dates back to 850 AD. In his book Duyizhi, Li Rong wrote a single sentence about Mulan:

Long ago, a woman named Mulan took her father’s place in battle. She wore military garments for thirteen years, and her comrades never discovered that she was a woman. (Original Chinese text)

Around a hundred years later, Guo Maoqian compiled a collection of poems into a book, which included the Ballad of Mulan. Because Guo explicitly mentions that he retrieved this poem from the Musical Records of Old and New (which have now been lost), most historians believe that the Ballad of Mulan predates Duyizhi.

The complete text of the Ballad of Mulan appears below (calligraphy by Song dynasty calligrapher Mi Fu). You can read an English translation here.

直到清朝，历史学家才赞同花木兰确有其人。有几位明朝的历史学家甚至认同《木兰诗》是她的自传。

现存最早提到花木兰的作品要追溯到公元850年。在《独异志》一书中，李亢关于花木兰的描写只有一句：

"很久以前，一名叫做花木兰的女子替父出征。她身穿军装13年，她的战友从未发现她是个女人。"

大概几百年后，郭茂倩编撰收录了一本诗集，其中包括《木兰诗》。由于郭茂倩明确提到这首诗是他从新旧乐府（现在已经遗失）中还原得来的，大部分历史学家认为《木兰诗》的写作时间早于《独异志》。

木兰辞的全文如下（书法作者为宋代书法家米芾）。你可以在这个链接中看到英文翻译。

Sadly, some details were altered while Mulan’s story was being passed down. For instance, Li Rong states that Mulan went to war for thirteen years while Guo Maoqian’s version of the Ballad of Mulan says that she was away for twelve years. But the important question to ask is whether any significant alterations were made to Mulan’s story before it was finally written down. Unfortunately, we have no way of answering this question. So, most modern historians are quite pessimistic and assume that the entire tale is nothing more than a legend.

This does not mean that Mulan is fictional. While it’s possible that she was a real person, we just can’t reconstruct her true story with any degree of accuracy.

可悲的是，当木兰的故事一代一代往下传诵的时候，有的细节被改变了。比如，李亢的陈述说木兰入伍打仗去了13年，而郭茂倩版的《木兰诗》说她去了12年。但是重要的问题是，在木兰的故事最终被写下之前，故事有没有任何重大改变。不幸的是，我们没有办法回答这个问题。所以，大部分现代历史学家对此非常悲观，他们推测这整个故事只是一个传说。

这不是说木兰是虚构人物。她有可能是真实存在的人物，只是我们没有任何事实依据来重构她的真实故事。

However, this has not stopped historians from trying to discover the historical Mulan. Ming dynasty historian Zhu Guozhen wrote an argument in favor of using women in the army, citing Mulan as precedence. Later, two other historians reproduced printings of the Ballad of Mulan, citing Mulan herself as the author. (However, Guo Maoqian wrote several centuries earlier that the author of the Ballad of Mulan is unknown; it is unlikely that these historians had somehow uncovered the author’s true identity.)

So, was Mulan a real person? Maybe. It’s hard to say.

I did some digging around in some art galleries, and this is the earliest painting of Mulan I could find (by Ming dynasty artist Tang Yin).

If Mulan was a real person, she might have looked like this. But the one thing we do know is that she did not look like this:

然而，这并没有阻止历史学家们探究历史上的木兰。明朝历史学家朱国祯写过一篇支持女子入伍当兵的评论文章，文中例举了木兰的事迹。后来，又有两名历史学家重印了《木兰诗》，并把木兰本人列为作者。（然而，郭茂倩早在几个世纪之前就写道《木兰诗》的作者未知；这些历史学家不可能莫名其妙地知晓作者的真实身份）

所以，木兰是否确有其人？也许有。很难说。

我在一些美术馆搜寻过，这是我能找到的最早的有关木兰的画（作者为明朝的唐寅）。

如果历史上确有木兰其人，她可能看起来像这个样子。但是我们都知道她看起来不会像这个样子：

Brandon Bohrer

Out of curiosity, do you know why she was historically considered real and later considered fictional? Wikipedia mentions that she is usually considered fictional today and points to her story not being in “Exemplary Women” which was a record of historical Northern Wei women but that her story was in One Hundred Beauties which covered women in folklore.

Obviously Wikipedia is not the end-all-be-all, but I would like to read your thoughts.

出于好奇问一下，你知道为什么她在历史上被认为是真实存在的、后来又被认为是虚构的吗？维基百科提到，现如今人们通常认为她是虚构人物，她的事迹没有被记录北魏历代女子突出事迹的《列女传》所收录，但是描绘女性民俗传说的《百美图》收录了她的故事。

显然维基百科并不是毫无错漏的，不过我想听听你的想法

Philip Naudus

Modern historians are much more skeptical of what they consider to be authentic than they were in ancient times.

In ancient times, historians didn’t have the resources to research events with extreme rigor. If they went to a library, they might miss a resource that was only held by a library in another province.

Thanks to an increase in the speed at which information can be amassed from different provinces in China (and all over the world), we have now found that Mulan had many different “localized” histories.

Igor Sabirov

Mulan originally was most probably an interpretation or even translation of original Tuoba folk song. There are of course many variations of this song, the oldest being perhaps 木蘭辭 from Northern Wei. Mulan was exceptionally popular during Tang when many altars and shrines were set up in her name. Tang was one cosmopolitical empire and ruling Li family was of Tuoba/Yuwen origin, which may partially explain Mulan’s huge popularity at the time.

If one look at the verse itself, its non-Huaxia nature becomes obvious. For example, she strangely calls the emperor 可汗, that is hakan, a supreme title for the steppe empires from Rourans (with whom historical Mulan would have fought) up to Mongols.

Moreover, among other things the ballad says

Or roughly

The male rabbit hops from the beginning;

the female rabbit’s eyes are misty;

Both rabbits are running along the ground;

how can you tell whether I am male or female?

木兰的故事最初可能只是对起源于拓拔部的一则民谣的解释甚至翻译。当然，这则民谣有很多版本，最古老的版本也许就是北魏的《木兰辞》了。在唐代，木兰的故事格外受欢迎，人们设立了很多以她命名的祭台和庙宇。唐朝是一个世界性的帝国，统治者李氏家族来自拓拔部/宇文氏，这也许在一定程度上解释了为何木兰当时大受欢迎。

如果你看看这首诗本身，其非华夏的属性就非常明显。比如，让人莫名其妙的是，她称呼皇帝为可汗，这是从柔然（即历史上木兰与之交战的势力）到蒙古等各草原帝国的最高头衔。

另外，诗中写道：

雄兔脚扑朔

雌兔眼迷离

两兔傍地走

安能辨我是雄雌

This passage looks a bit weird and actually is not motivated by the flow of the poem. She pretended to be a a male so no one can tell, but what the use of these jumping and misty eyes passages? It seems that a Chinese verse simply preserve it from the Tuoba [?] original in the Yuefu library. The History of Northern Wei lists lots of Tuoba books, of which most unfortunately nothing remains to stay, this could have been an excerpt from a song book, which are listed as well. To add an argument, 扑朔 and 迷离 definitely do not look very Chinese. These verbs do exist in dictionaries as this is actually a chengyu in modern Chinese but just as hapax legomena. It’s either this very poem or its citations were we can see them.

这一段看起来有点怪，事实上破坏了诗的流畅性。她把自己装扮成男人，这样就没人知道她是女人，但是为什么要用脚扑朔和眼迷离这些句子？看起来这只是从《乐府诗集》拓拔卷中留传下来的一首中文诗歌。《魏书》中例举了大量拓拔书籍，最不幸的是，这些书籍如今没有一本留存于世，这首诗可能是《魏书》中列举的其中一本拓拔诗集收录的诗。还有一点，扑朔和迷离看起来肯定没有什么中文特征。字典里的确有这两个动词，因为这其实是现代中文里的一个成语，但是这两个词是罕用语。我们可以看到，要么这首诗有点怪，要么它的举例有点怪。

Plus, the rabbit (a hare) theme is reflected in Mulan’s name as well. 木蘭 should be read something close to *muklan in Middle Chinese. Which is somewhat close to old Altaic (Turkic, Mongolian and Manchurian) words for rabbit/hare/jerboa, e.g. Chuvash molgač which ultimately stems from earlier *molganč, that is simply “jumper”.

Symbolically, Chinese had two types of rabbits. One is the Moon rabbit, often connected to Xiwangmu, the other a Buddhist hero who literally sacrifices itself to Buddha by feeding him with its flesh. Both doesn’t really fit the poem and Buddhism was severely persecuted most of the Northern Wei.

另外，免子（野免）的主题也反应在了木兰的名字上。木兰在中古汉语中的读音应该类似“莫克兰”（译注：这位网友是俄罗斯人，不知道他的依据是什么，但是上古汉语中确实有双音节汉字，比如“疙瘩”是从上古汉语中“结”的发音演变而来的，至于中古汉语中“木”的发音是不是“莫克”就不得而知了）。在某种程度上，“莫克兰”跟阿尔泰语系（突厥文、蒙古文和满文）里免子/野免/跳鼠一词的发音类似，例如楚瓦什语里的“molgač”，这个词基本上源于一个更早的词汇“molganč”，意思是“跳跃”。

具有象征性的地方是，中国以前有两种兔子。一种是月兔，另一种是佛教徒的英雄，它把自己的肉献给了佛祖食用。两者都不符合诗中描写的免子，而且在北魏统治期间，大部分时候佛教徒都受到了残酷的迫害。

Matthew Higdon

Probably not.

“Hua Mulan” was a female warrior of imperial Chinese legend.

Her name first appears in the historical record in a folkloric tale known as the Ballad of Mulan. As originally told, the story of her origins and military prowess took place sometimes during the Northern Wei period (late 300s to early 500s CE).

大概不是真的。

“花木兰”是中国帝国时代传说的一位女战士。

民间传说《木兰辞》是最早记录她名字的历史资料。据这份最早的资料叙述，她的身世故事和英勇事迹发生在北魏朝（公元3世纪末至公元5世纪初）的某个时期.

【龙腾网】QA:花木兰是中国历史上的真实人物吗？