Hua Mulan
Sources

The Ballad of Mulan was first transcribed in the Musical Records of Old and New, a compilation of books and songs by the monk Zhijiang in the Southern Chen dynasty in the 6th century. The earliest extant text of the poem comes from an 11th- or 12th-century anthology known as the Music Bureau Collection, whose author, Guo Maoqian, explicitly mentions the Musical Records of Old and New as his source for the poem. As a ballad, the lines do not necessarily have equal numbers of syllables. The poem consists of 31 couplets and is mostly composed of five-character phrases, with a few extending to seven or nine.

An adaptation by playwright Xu Wei (d. 1593) dramatized the tale as "The Female Mulan" or, more fully, "The Heroine Mulan Goes to War in Her Father's Place", in two acts. Later, the character of Mulan was incorporated into the Romance of Sui and Tang, a novel written by Chu Renhuo (褚人獲).

Over time, the story of Mulan rose in popularity as a folk tale among the Chinese people.
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