Her back healed, and now disguised as a man, Fa Mu Lan forms an army of her own rather than fight in anyone else's. Becoming the rallying point for her family, her village, and, eventually, the whole country, she leads her army into battle, fighting for justice and overthrowing the corrupt and morally depraved. Although she remains disguised as a man throughout her crusades, her husband recognizes her, and together they conceive a child. She hides her pregnancy by altering her armor to allow for the increased girth of her waist, and when the child is born, her husband takes it home to his family.
After overthrowing the country's evil emperor and slaying the corrupt baron who had terrorized Fa Mu Lan's village for years, the woman warrior returns to her village to fulfill her filial duties to her husband's family. She declares to his parents, "Now my public duties are finished. . . . I will stay with you, doing farmwork and housework, and giving you more sons." She has also fulfilled her filial duties to her own parents: During her absence, she did not neglect them, but rather ensured that her "mother and father and the entire clan would be living happily on the money [she] had sent them." With these words, Fa Mu Lan, the perfect woman warrior, embraces her traditionally female Chinese moral obligations.
Kingston abruptly concludes Fa Mu Lan's story with an ironic proclamation: "My American life has been such a disappointment." Having encouraged us to believe that it is possible for a woman of Chinese descent to gain respect and success, she reveals a sense of betrayal in her mother's talk-stories. She tries to please her mother by modeling herself after Fa Mu Lan, who, she acknowledges, is "the swordswoman who drives me," but when she announces that she earned "straight A's" in school, her mother, instead of praising her daughter, undermines her success by reminding her of "a girl who saved her village." Again, as in "No Name Woman," Kingston finds herself confused by the messages in yet another of Brave Orchid's talk-stories. Recalling her sense of confusion, Kingston writes, "I could not figure out what was my village. And it was important that I do something big and fine, or else my parents would sell me when we made our way back to China." To Kingston, who views getting straight A's as something her parents should be proud of, her mother seems to put impossible and confusing demands on her.
