Hua Mulan’s Home Town, 11/04/2011
by Jing Liu ~ December 3rd, 2011. Filed under: Experience, Life.Thanks to Wuhan Library’s arrangement, we left skyscrapers and heavy traffic behind us, drove into a village–Da Yu Wan (大余湾）. The retired library head, Mr. Yu, in Huangpi, Hubei Province, entertained us proudly with his own rhymes about his and Mulan’s hometown. It’s a well-known historical place with a mountain, a river and a lake all named after Mulan. On the top of the Mulan Mountain, stands Mulan’s shrine. People around the world come here to worship this legendary figure. Besides Mulan, many people from this village became scholars, goverment officials in different dynasties or regimes. 
Mr. Yu showed us dozens of residents from Ming and Qing. They are all connected, and we could walk through different households for the entire block. From Mr’s Yu’s talks and poems, I could sense the influence of Mulan. He refused all the rewards and retired to his hometown just like Mulan did a thousand years ago. He volunteered on restoring his village to previous settings from his childhood memory.
Mr. Yu stands in front of the Ming Dynasty walls.
On the way, we saw some constructions and old ponds cleanning. Some new paint covered the slogans of cultural revoluation period. I came at the right time, still got to see the marks left by time and the wars in the past 600 years.
Our group caught attention of villagers. This 86 year-old invited us for tea, and told us that young people are quite cosmopolitan nowadays. Lots of them are working in cities and even in the US or Japan. I stopped and sat by this lonely old man, listened to his stories.
December 13th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
One of my greatest regrets after my father passing away is that I do not have a chance to know the past from him.