In The Ballad Of Mulan, an ancient folk-song written sometime between 386 and 535 AD, a young Chinese woman, Hua Mulan, disguises herself as a man in order to take her father's place after he was conscripted into the army.

Mulan is a legendary figure in Chinese history, with her story included in anthologies of books, songs, and wood-cut prints throughout several dynasties. For those in the western world, her story is most famously depicted in the 1998 animated Disney film.

In the original song, after a decade at war, Mulan eventually returns home a hero. It's only then that she reveals to her male comrades that she is, in fact, a woman.

"The he-hare's feet go hop and skip,
The she-hare's eyes are muddled and fuddled.
Two hares running side by side close to the ground,
How can they tell if I am he or she?" the ballad concludes.

It's perhaps no surprise, then, that Hua Mulan has served as inspiration for generations of women football players across Asia.

So much so that, over 40 years ago, 'Mulan' became the official name of the Chinese Taipei women's national team; chosen to pay homage to the ancient heroine whose ambition to represent her family and fight for what she believed in saw her shatter the gendered expectations of her day.

"For me, when we were kids watching Mulan, she wanted to do things that boys could do, so why couldn't females do it?", Michelle Pao, a veteran midfielder in the Chinese Taipei national team, tells ABC Sport.

"I think it's very representative of what the female football culture in Taiwan has gone through. Back in the day, it wasn't widely accepted even just to exercise for women.

Pao is currently in camp with Chinese Taipei, otherwise known as Taiwan, in New Zealand, where they are one of ten teams (and just two from Asia) vying for the last three spots in the 2023 Women's World Cup.

It's the first time many of these smaller and emerging football nations, including Papua New Guinea, Haiti, Panama, Senegal, and Paraguay (among others), have reached the intercontinental play-off stage for a World Cup.

But not Chinese Taipei.

For them, this is one of many steps they've been taking back into their own past; attempting to return to their own former glories and recapture the spirit that made them one of the most formidable nations in the women's game.

The rise and fall of an Asian giant

Like women's football all over the world, the game in Chinese Taipei has been a story of struggle and perseverance; of overcoming multiple barriers and, sometimes, outright hostility in order to participate in something that brought their lives joy, connection, and meaning.

It was in that spirit that Chinese Taipei became one of the unheralded giants of Asian women's football from the late 1970s to the late 1990s.

After the Mulan were formed in the mid-1970s, Chinese Taipei went on to become three-time Asian Cup champions between 1977 and 1981, and finished no lower than fourth in the continental championship all the way up to 1999. 

"They were very well-respected around the world at that time," Pao says.

"I've heard stories and heard the history of those teams in the past, and talked with past coaches who were on those teams before.

"It's like what it is now for some teams at the top, like the USA or Swedish teams. Whoever's up there, it's different; you respect them."

Due to its dominance, Chinese Taipei was one of just three Asian nations to qualify for the first-ever Women's World Cup in 1991, joining Japan and hosts China.

They finished third in their four-team group after defeating Nigeria 2-0 on the final match day, and made it through to the quarter-final where they lost to eventual winners USA, finishing 8th overall.

Chinese Taipei didn't just compete in major women's football tournaments, though. In fact, the team is arguably the reason the Women's World Cup exists at all.

In 1978, the Chinese Taipei federation organised the first Women's World Invitational Tournament, known as the Chunghua Cup. It took place every three years and brought together many of the women's game's earliest pioneers — including teams from Australia, New Zealand, West Germany, France, Norway, and the USA — until folding in 1987.

According to historian Barbara Cox, the opening ceremonies were particularly dazzling, with millions of New Taiwan dollars spent on thousands of performers and a giant banner display in one of the stadiums, with school-children holding different coloured cards that spelled out messages to the teams marching in.

Striker Chou Tai-ying (nicknamed "Magic Feet") was so impressive in the 1987 edition that she was signed by the German club side, SSG Bergisch Gladbach, who was sent there to compete against her. She won two championships with them before moving to Japan, where she was the league's top scorer for Suzuyo Shimizu Ladies in 1989.

Decades on, that same ancient spirit of rebelliousness lives on, with Chinese Taipei's national women's league — where majority of the current team play club football — known as the Mulan Football League.

However, spirit does not always lead to success, and as women's football around the world began to take its first big breaths, Chinese Taipei began to fall behind.

"During the 1990s, we were doing pretty good during all the international tournaments, but after that, we started to deteriorate," head coach Shih-Kai Yen said.

"We didn't get into any championships of international tournaments again.

"During this 20 or 30 years, we have been trying to reach the international stage again. In 20 years, this [play-off] is the closest we've got to the World Cup. We wish that we can make it this time."

In order to capture their past, Chinese Taipei women's football is looking towards its future. The last decade has been spent slowly developing a more robust youth national team system, programs in schools, as well as the country's domestic league, which currently has six teams.

Bit by bit, financial support from the government trickles in (though they prefer to invest in bigger codes like basketball, baseball, and badminton), with football facilities gradually being built across the island, while the tide of public support is gently turning in their favour as the women's team makes its way back up the Asian pecking-order.

However, football is still not a full-time profession in the country, and only a handful of national team players, like Pao, who grew up in the USA, have made a career out of it by playing overseas.

Players are desperate for more investment, particularly at club level, so they no longer have to balance work or study; so that, as Mulan did, they don't have to live their lives with dual identities.

What's in a name?

The story of Mulan, and its historical use as an emblem for the Chinese Taipei women's national team, is symbolic for another reason.

In addition to its gender politics, it is also a reminder of the deeply entangled histories of Chinese Taipei and China.

While the main island of Chinese Taipei has been inhabited by indigenous people for at least 5,000 years, it — like many islands throughout the north-west Pacific — has experienced multiple occupations by more powerful nations over the centuries, particularly Portugal, Holland, China and Japan.

This tug-of-war has occurred in the football world, too. In 1974, China successfully petitioned the Asian Football Confederation to ban Chinese Taipei from competing in international competitions if they continued to use the name "Republic of China", which they were known by following the fallout from the Chinese Civil War in 1949.