#feibo girl

[prohibitionprincesses]

Feibo Girl

Shanghai, China

For much of China, the phrase “Roaring Twenties” may have a less jovial meaning. While the U.S. is in the middle of its Jazz Age, China is in the middle of its Warlord Era. The end of the Qing Dynasty has seen China is split into waring fractions called cliques, with those living in the country suffering the worst violence. It’s an especially dangerous time to be a woman.

Fortunately, the Fa family lives in Shanghai, where the wars usually aren’t as close, and women’s rights are blossoming. Heavy with Western influence, the neon-lit city is “the cosmopolitan Paris of the East.” It’s an even blend of old and new. Ancient-looking ships sail past modern skyscrapers, and pedestrians push wooden carts next to buses and trollies. [Link] It’s a good thing the women of Shanghai have more opportunities, because the warlords impose high taxes on their people, and ill veteran Fa Zhou can no longer work. His wife brings in some money sewing trendy qipaos, but it’s not enough to cover necessities and the warlord’s taxes. So Mulan takes it upon herself to save her family from financial ruin.

She first tries getting a job at a cabaret called the Lucky Cricket. Her mother and grandmother help give her the makeover needed to transform Mulan into a winking Feibo Girl—a Chinese flapper. Then, hesitantly, Mulan bobs her hair using a long, sharp family heirloom. But despite her best efforts, Mulan’s clumsiness clashes with the cabaret owner’s inability to listen, resulting in a show that entertains everybody for all the wrong reasons. While the patrons laugh wildly and snark that the performer is “on fire,” the literally inflamed owner loudly fires Mulan.

Ashamed, Mulan sits in the family’s garden, deep in thought. Near an opened window, Grandma belts out to American jazz on the radio. Grandma’s dance session is interrupted by an announcement from Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, a political and military leader seeking to reunite China and put an end to the warlords. He is recruiting soldiers for what he calls “the Northern Expedition.” Mulan—athletic, strategic, crafty, and often mistaken for a boy—perks at the announcement.

Ling, Yao, and Chien Po giggle behind their fans as Zongchang boasts of his supposedly enormous masculinity. Meanwhile, Mulan and Shang quietly move to free the captured Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. Along the way, they rescue another prisoner, from Zongchang’s kitchen; the Dog Meat General’s name has several possible meanings, but he does indeed enjoy certain canine dishes. Mulan saves an energetic pup from the butcher, and names him Little Brother. Though not the brightest pooch in the word, Little Brother sniffs out Sun Yat-Sen’s holding cell.

Since Mulan has already been bobbing her hair and binding her breasts per Western flapper fashion, all she really needs is a fake name. She enlists in the National Revolution Army under the alias “Ping.” Joining her are a tiny dragon sent by her ancestors, and the mascot from the Lucky Cricket. Training with both swords and machine guns, “Ping” initially causes some mayhem (thanks in no small part to pranks from her comrades). But by the time the troop boards the train out to their first battle, Ping is one of the most promising recruits Captain Li Shang has ever seen.

Control of the railways is crucial to the warlords’ power, and most battles are fought near tracks. While squeezed onto the train and speeding through the country, the soldiers’ songs about girls worth fighting for are punctuated with harrowing scenes of massacred villages. They pull to a stop at a town that’s been burned to the ground, where Li Shang’s father lies among the dead. This is not the work of just any warlord. This was the infamous “Dog-Meat General,” Zhang Zongchang. A particularly ruthless and incompetent ruler, Zongchang is the most feared of China’s warlords. Mulan’s ingenuity leads to the troop’s first major victory, when she creates an avalanche that buries Dog-Meat’s most important railroad—with most of his troops still onboard.

While in the infirmary, Mulan’s true sex is revealed. At first, Shang and the other men don’t know how to feel. But it turns out that a woman may be exactly what they need in their next move against Zongchang. The Dog-Meat General has a harem of 30-50 women, who are assigned numbers because he can’t remember their names. And he forgets their numbers. The guy is just asking for this infiltration. Mulan’s experience at the Lucky Cricket cabaret is now inviable. She drills the men on how to dress and act like attractive ladies, and the operation is soon underway.

Back at the harem, it’s time for the next phase of the plan. This requires the drag-queens to take out some guards, which means another distraction is needed. Luckily, the Dog-Meat General also fancies himself a poet. Mushu and the cricket take over the job of distracting him, by claiming to be his new typists.  Cri-Kee hops from ink to paper, taking down what the Dog Meat General dictates, while Mushu observes. The finished poem reads:

You tell me to do this,

"Poem about bastards" by Zhang Zongchang[b]

He tells me to do that.

You're all bastards,

Go fuck your mother.

Instead of applause, this poem is followed by an explosion of fireworks detonating all around his military base. Mulan has finally destroyed Zongchang’s army beyond salvaging. The Dog-Meat General himself is killed by an officer avenging his father; Li Shang blows his smoking pistol with satisfaction. Shang follows Mulan back to Shanghai, where they begin a new life together in a unified China.

AN: This picture came out looking very similar to the design that Jacquelynn Harris gave Mulan in her Disney flapper series. I assume this is because we both based the outfit on Mulan’s matchmaker attire, and her hair on actress Anna May Wong. The background border is clipart.

On the story: In the old version of my Disney flapper series, I set all the stories in the U.S. Someone suggested that I look at non-Western fashion from the era, and I dismissed the idea, ignorantly assuming that the Roaring Twenties only happened in the West. This time around, I decided to check if anything interesting was happening in China in the 1920s…and wow, what a rabbit hole! So many things fit so perfectly with Disney’s version of Mulan, especially with that bizarre Zongchang character. I’d never personally create an Asian villain with “dog meat” in his name, but the Dog-Meat General is one of those “can’t make this sh-t up” historical figures. Of course I took liberties with how the history actually played out, as Disney often does; but all of the personal traits described, from the numbered harem to the literal dog meat to that poem, were real. And yes, he was killed by an officer avenging a relative. 

To anyone so inclined, here are a couple of incredible time-capsul videos from China in around this time period. 

Up the Wangpoo River to Shanghai (1920s) 

A video with sound and color from 1929