In this presentation, I will compare and examine the American Disney animated film “Mulan” (1998) and the Japanese historical novel “Fly, Wind, Across the Vast Expanse [Kaze yo, Banri wo Kakeyo]” (1991) by Yoshiki Tanaka, both of which are bold adaptations of the ancient Chinese poem “The Ballad of Mulan,” focusing on the heroine’s cross-dressing and gender transgression from the following perspectives.

“The Ballad of Mulan,” composed of just over 300 Chinese characters, tells the story of a young girl named Mulan, who, in place of her elderly father, disguises herself as a man to join the army, achieves great military success as a soldier, and then returns home to resume her female identity. In both “Mulan” and “Fly, Wind, Across the Vast Expanse,” this setting of Mulan disguising herself as a man to serve in the army and achieving great military success, as depicted in “The Ballad of Mulan,” is retained. However, there are differences in how the heroine’s cross-dressing and gender transgression are portrayed. For example, in Disney’s “Mulan,” Mulan is discovered to be a woman during her service and is expelled from the army, but when the kingdom faces a crisis, she rises up in the form of a woman to confront the nation’s enemies and save the country. In contrast, in “Fly, Wind, Across the Vast Expanse,” Mulan’s female identity is not revealed until the scene of her return home, and her subsequent activities as a woman are not depicted. This presentation will compare and examine the characterizations and portrayals of Mulan in “Mulan” and “Fly, Wind, Across the Vast Expanse,” clarifying the relationship between Mulan’s cross-dressing and gender transgression and empowerment in each work, and the significance of Mulan's female identity being revealed within the context of the works.

Additionally, to achieve the above objectives, it is effective to compare the animated film Mulan with the manga adaptations of Tanaka’s “Fly, Wind, Across the Vast Expanse.” Inspired by the release of the animated film “Mulan,” the shoujo manga [girls’ manga] adaptation of “Fly, Wind, Across the Vast Expanse” by Mari Akino, titled “Fly, Wind, Across the Vast Expanse: The Legend of Hua Mulan [Kaze yo, Banri wo Kakeyo: Ka Mokuran Monogatari]” (1999), was published. Seventeen years later, another shoujo manga adaptation of Tanaka’s novel by Eri Motomura, titled “Fly, Wind, Across the Vast Expanse [Kaze yo, Banri wo Kakeyo]” (4 volumes: 2016-2018), was published. These two shoujo manga works focus on the inner thoughts of the protagonist Mulan, which were not given much emphasis in Tanaka’s novel due to its focus on historical circumstances. The manga artists made unique changes to cater to a young female audience, reconstructing the story as that of a cross-dressing warrior girl, Mulan. This presentation will also compare the animated film “Mulan” with the two aforementioned shoujo manga works to further elucidate how the motif of a girl disguising herself as a man to serve in the army, inherited from “The Ballad of Mulan,” functions in the realization of the heroine’s gender transgression, empowerment, and self-realization.

Disney’s Mulan is inspired by the Chinese legend, The Ballad of Mulan. In contrast to the Chinese version, Disney puts an emphasis on Mulan’s individual values by challenging her subordinate gender role in a patriarchal society. In Mulan I (1998), Mulan is depicted as a self-reliant person, who successfully transforms herself from an anonymous countrywoman into a national hero in a male-dominated world. On the other hand, there might be a danger for her to become a radical individual or an egocentric person, who ignores the values of others. In its sequel Mulan II (2005), Disney does not underscore Mulan’s individualism. Instead, it depicts her as an open-minded female, who accepts opposite views from others. In a deep sense, Disney neutralizes Mulan’s possible tendency to radical individualism by drawing from the Chinese concept of “harmony”. In this way, Disney successfully shapes Mulan into an excellent female who embodies both the Western conception of female independence and the Confucian ideal of a virtuous female with altruistic concerns for others.

In “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram,” one of the essays published in Film Form, a compilation edited and translated by Jay Leyda, Eisenstein argues: “Cinematography is, first and foremost, montage” (1949, 28). This conception of cinema is clarified in “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form,” another essay in the book, where the filmmaker offers the reader a crucial definition: “In my opinion, […] montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots” (1949, 49). Based on a comparative approach, the Brazilian literary critic Modesto Carone analyzes Eisenstein’s concept in Metaphor and Montage (Metáfora e Montagem: Um Estudo sobre a Poesia de Georg Trakl). Carone observes that the idea is also mobilized by Eisenstein to reflect upon other forms of art, including literature (1974, 104), and evaluates how the dynamics involved in the creation of a new meaning via montage – according to Eisenstein, “a value of another dimension, another degree” (1949, 30) – might be compared to the metaphorical process. Revisiting issues related to montage theory and comparative aesthetics, the presentation will address key aspects of Eisenstein’s theoretical writings in order to reassess the symmetry between montage and metaphor proposed by the Brazilian critic.

Bibliography

Carone, Modesto. Metáfora e Montagem: Um Estudo sobre a Poesia de Georg Trakl. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1974.

Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. Edited and translated by Jay Leyda. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1949.

The paper examines the literary and visual narratives of the lasting traumatic aftermath of China’s Tangshan Earthquake in Sinophone Canadian writer Zhang Ling’s newly translated novel Aftershock as well as its film and television adaptations. The heroine Xiaodeng has been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder since the earthquake, when she and her twin brother were buried under the two ends of a cement slab; saving one would lead to the death of the other. The mother’s decision to save the son devastates Xiaodeng. She has been tormented by a sense of abandonment and loss of trust. Taking readers’ criticism of the novel’s equivocal ending as an entry point, this paper comparatively analyzes the representation of psychological trauma on earthquake survivors through the lens of forgiveness and reconciliation.

The novel refrains from delivering the healing comfort of familial reconciliation. The visible trauma of abandonment and the invisible trauma of sexual molestation make forgiveness difficult, betraying the patrilineal tradition in Chinese society that keeps women in an inferior position. The gendered position occupied by Xiaodeng as the victim of various traumas is subsumed under a unified national discourse in cinematic adaptation. By foregrounding shared suffering and humanity in the face of natural disasters, the film interpellates Xiaodeng into the collective Chinese community and facilitates the reconciliation process. Based on both fiction and film, the TV series delivers an ambivalent message with forgiveness constantly delayed and memories questioned, revealing the enduring tension between individual experience and collective construction in the representation of trauma.

Rivers have long served as both vital natural resources and profound cultural symbols, shaping the contours of human civilization across time and space. In both British Victorian literature and Chinese modern and contemporary fiction, rivers emerge not merely as geographical features, but as rich imaginative sites where historical memory, emotional sensibility, and cultural values converge. This thesis undertakes a comparative study of river imagery in these two literary traditions, seeking to uncover the ways in which rivers are endowed with divergent meanings shaped by distinct cultural contexts, historical experiences, and literary aesthetics.

Drawing on close textual analysis and existing scholarship, the study observes that while river imagery in Victorian British literature often reflects a tension between the celebration of nature and a critique of industrial modernity, Chinese literary representations of rivers are more deeply embedded in historical trauma, national sentiment, and collective identity. British authors tend to engage with the river as a site of introspective reflection and ecological longing, whereas Chinese writers portray rivers as carriers of cultural inheritance, as well as symbols of displacement and loss during periods of war and social upheaval. This contrast reveals a subtle yet significant difference in literary orientation: a more individualized, even metaphysical engagement with nature in British texts, and a socially inflected, historically grounded river consciousness in Chinese works.

Through a comparative reading of selected texts, the thesis examines how river imagery articulates the evolving relationship between humans and the natural world, and how it encodes broader cultural attitudes toward modernity, memory, and belonging. In doing so, the study illuminates the shared concerns and differing emphases that characterize Chinese and British literary traditions, and reflects on how ecological awareness is shaped by both local experience and transhistorical imagination. Ultimately, this project aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of river writing as a cross-cultural literary phenomenon, as well as to the ongoing conversation between comparative literature and environmental humanities.