Mulan’s relationship with her mama, Hua Lǐ and her baba Hua Zhou has changed as she grew older - but it’s impossible to explain one without the other.  So this will be about both of her parents.  More under the cut because it’s pretty long.

Though both parents doted on their only surviving child, it was to her baba that little Mulan most often ran with her stories or troubles.  Hua Zhou was very indulgent with his daughter, deferring to Lǐ to scold Mulan when she did not act as a polite young girl should - if only because he sensed that scolding Mulan himself would alter the balance of their very close relationship.

As she’s matured, Mulan’s relationship with her father is still an affectionate one, where childish jokes can still fetch a teenager’s reminiscent smile.  But she has also become closer to her mama, who is a natural source of help, support, and especially empathy and solidarity for a young woman reaching marriage age; and it’s easier for Mulan to confide in her mother about certain things.

Lǐ struggles with her daughter in that - while she considers Mulan’s personality sweet and appealing in its own right - Mulan is outspoken, haphazard and doesn’t dissemble her emotions.  Whereas Lǐ, wanting to teach her daughter how to defer to a husband, wishes Mulan would be more soft-spoken, cautious and stable (though Mulan’s sturdiness, determination, and experience with farm work make her as ideal for the wife of a working farmer, as for a well-to-do one like Fa Zhou).  Lǐ’s lessons of responsibility for Mulan - from weaving and mending, to feeding the livestock and helping with crops - have gone well, though the young woman still tries occasionally to find clever shortcuts for her chores.  But the intricacies of chá wén huà or of playing a ruǎn were lost on Mulan.

Similarly, it has occurred to Zhou that the outspokenness and energetic boldness that were charming in a little girl will not serve Mulan as well when it comes to finding her a husband.  He has some conscious guilt that he ought to have been firmer with her but also, stubbornly, seems to be surprised that Mulan acts just as she always has.  As a loving father, Zhou wants his daughter to be taken care of - but he fails to take full responsibility for being too lenient.  This is why one moment, he can assure his coltish daughter that she is only a late bloomer, despite his disappointment that she has not impressed the matchmaker; the next, he can scold her in public for speaking out of turn; and hours later, she has the gumption to speak out again at the dinner table - where Zhou tells her it’s time she learned her place.