Ba

Ba, Mulan’s father, is an offstage presence whose words and remembered care help shape her understanding of courage, family honor, and endurance. Mulan recalls him not only as a teller of battle stories but as the person who once helped her repair a broken shrine statue and taught her to keep going. During her struggle at sea, that lesson becomes a practical source of resolve; later, her hope for Xiu’s future is also expressed in terms of bringing honor to their family.

Identity and Background

The story presents Ba through Mulan’s memories rather than through a scene of his own. He belongs to the close-knit family life Mulan has left behind: tea shared at home, Ma preparing breakfast, and Xiu’s hair being combed. His presence in these recollections is both familial and instructive. The battle stories he told around the tea table give him a place in Mulan’s imaginative world of warriors, while his actions in a childhood memory show him guiding her through a small, concrete failure.

The evidence does not describe Ba’s life beyond these memories or establish what he is doing during Mulan’s journey. It does show how firmly he remains part of her inner life. When she remembers her family, she thinks of Ba alongside Ma and Xiu, within a portrait of home made up of repeated acts of care and shared time. His significance emerges from that combination: he is a father in the intimacy of daily life and a source of principles Mulan carries beyond it.

Home and Family Memory

While aboard the boat, Mulan drinks tea from Lu Ting-Pin’s gourd and finds herself thinking of her family, frozen in their faraway home. The remembered tea at home brings Ba’s stories of great battles into the scene. Around that image are details of family routine: Ma waiting to fry breakfast dough until Mulan returns so it will be fresh and crispy, and Mulan combing Xiu’s silky hair. These memories make home vivid through particular gestures rather than through a general longing for safety.

The contrast matters. On the water, Mulan is separated from the people whose company once gathered around a familiar table; the boat and the surrounding sea offer no equivalent domestic security. Ba’s remembered stories connect that former family setting to the danger Mulan now faces, but they do not turn him into a companion physically present on the voyage. The encouragement she draws from him comes instead through what he once said and what she understands those words to mean.

Lessons of Honor and Perseverance

Ba’s clearest lesson appears in Mulan’s memory of trying to glue the village shrine statue back together. She had been ashamed and tearful, and Ba helped her hold the broken pieces as he reminded her, “Your job is to bring honor to your family,” and, “Every day, you must rise up and continue.” The advice joins family responsibility to persistence. Its setting is a damaged object and a child’s distress; the lesson does not demand that Mulan avoid failure, but that she resume her effort.

That memory returns after the sea creature has been mortally wounded, when Mulan’s arms are failing and she is close to losing her grip on the gourd. As the boat and waves have battered her, Ba’s words repeat in her mind: “Rise up and continue.” She whispers, “I’m trying, Ba,” making the remembered instruction feel like an address to the father who is absent from the immediate danger. The lesson has not made the ordeal easy; it gives her a reason to tighten her arms around the gourd and keep holding on.

Mulan’s Model of Courage

Lu Ting-Pin urges Mulan to endure, telling her, “You are a mighty warrior,” and reminding her that she helped slay the sea creature. Mulan answers that she only helped, but begins to smile slightly. Her response connects the praise to Ba: she thinks that Ba was a mighty warrior and that she should try to be like him. The passage thus presents her courage not as a quality she claims confidently, but as an effort to live up to a model she associates with her father.

Ba’s remembered authority and Lu Ting-Pin’s immediate encouragement play different roles. Ba’s counsel comes from a past family moment and offers a durable rule for continuing; Lu Ting-Pin speaks while Mulan is physically at the edge of exhaustion. Together, they help shift her from feeling unable to go on toward renewed effort. Mulan remains modest about her contribution, yet she acts again, and the earlier lesson acquires force in the present.

Family Honor and Legacy

Near the end of the story, Mulan asks whether everything will be all right now that the White Fox is gone and Xiu will live. She imagines Xiu growing up, saving the Emperor, and bringing honor to their family. The statement shows family honor continuing as a value in Mulan’s hopes for her sister. It also recalls Ba’s lesson, though the text presents this as Mulan’s expectation for Xiu, not as a prediction spoken by Ba.

Ba’s narrative role is therefore concentrated but recurring: he anchors Mulan’s memories of home, teaches her a language of responsibility and perseverance, and supplies the personal example through which she recognizes courage. The advice first offered while helping a tearful child with broken shrine pieces returns amid a life-threatening struggle at sea. By carrying that lesson forward, Mulan turns a remembered family teaching into action of her own.