In 2019, American-Chinese actress Liu Yifei, who played the titular role in Disney’s live-action version of Mulan, expressed her support for Hong Kong’s police during their crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, tweeting:

“I support Hong Kong’s police, you can beat me up now. What a shame for Hong Kong.”

Hong Kong social and political activist Agnes Chow, along with Joshua Wong and Nathan Law, founded the pro-democracy political organisation Demosisto in 2016, but her political activism began even earlier at the age of 15, when she began a prominent face of the youth movement pushing back against communist China’s increasing encroachment of Hong Kong’s Basic Law.

One play-pretends to be a heroine, while the other understands what sacrifice is in order to save “family and country.”

Who, then, is the real Mulan?

With arrests and a security law, who is left to fight for democracy in Hong Kong?