PICTURED STORY OF MU LAN

A beautifully illustrated bilingual retelling of the folk song The Ballad of Mulan, made in Fuzhou by the Ling Yu Sing Gift Shop. Publisher's original pattern-woven brown silk boards with silk title label to the front cover. Concertina-style binding. Top and bottom edges orange. Illustrated with 10 colour paintings on silk, mounted on pattern-woven cream silk pages opposite a page with a caption in Chinese with an English translation below.An excellent example, the boards with a little wear to the corners with a couple of scuffs to the silk. The contents, with a single short closed tear to the caption page of picture 1, with a historical tape stain to the blank reverse are otherwise remarkably bright and fresh throughout.

According to the legend, as a young woman Hua Mulan enlists in the imperial army, in place of her father, in the guise of a man. She manages to keep her identity secret and, following her battlefield heroics, returns home and is subsequently rewarded for her courage by the emperor. Over centuries, the story has "provided a vision of womanhood that extended women's roles beyond the domestic sphere". In the 20th century, Mulan was promoted as a hero by early Chinese feminists inspired by her challenge to the traditional exclusion of women from public politics. The subject of several stage and screen adaptations, including the two Disney treatments (2008 and 2020). (Lily Xiao Hong Lee, A.D. Stefanowska, & Sue Wiles: Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: Antiquity Through Sui, 1600 B.C.E. - 618 C.E; 2015).