"Click, click, click. Mulan wove cloth in the house. Yet we could not hear the sound of the shuttle, but the sound of Mulan's sight ... " This is the opening of The Ballad of Mulan, a well-known folk song in north China. The heroine of this ballad was a heroic woman in the north named Hua Mulan. The song tells how Hua Mulan disgrished herself as a man, and joined army in place of her father.

It is said that Mulan lived in Northern Wei Dynasty, and that people in the north were fond of praticing martial arts. When Mulan was about ten years old, her father, an ex-soldier, taught her military skills, including martial arts, horse riding, archery and swordsmanship. Hua Mulan also read her father's books on military science in her spare time.

After Emperor Xiaowen's reform, Northern Wei Dynasty saw a picture of socio-economic development and more stable lives. To ward off incursions by Rouran nomads, the ruler of Northern Wei ordered that every household provide a man to join an expedition against them, Mulan's father was old then, and her younger brother was too young to go and fight. So Mulan decided to join army instead of her father. Mulan spent 12 years in army. Fighting ar the border is even hard for many men, let alone a girl such as Mulan because she had to conceal her identity while fighting against the enemy together with her partner. But Hua Mulan finally completed her mission, and returned home with victory 12 years later. In view of her exploits on the battlefield, the ruler of Northern Wei offered Mulan a high official position, but she refused it.

Hua Mulan, for her braveness and purity, has been highly respeceted as a filial daughter by Chinese for hundreds of years. In 1998, her story was adapted into an animated cartoon by Disney in the United States, to the acclaim of viewers young and old.