All right.
Mulan discourse is all over my TL, so a thread on qi and witches and ...stuff.

First off, the reality:

Qi is something every living being has.
Every living being.
Including your dog or cat or that ant.
That's why in some wuxia novels, you have drained pets.

If you're alive, you have qi.
Plants have qi.
If you get into the Taoist way of thinking, the heavens, earth, stars, and wind have a form of qi.

This is why in xianxia novels, they sometimes talk about soaking up the essence of the sun and moon instead of eating.

In qigong classes, you learn that your qi extends a little beyond your body.
This would probably be your aura, folks.
Anyway. You can wield qi, to a certain extent, because qigong is all about using your will to sorta move it along your channels and meridians.
Think leylines.

Moving into wuxia-xianxia territory - qi can be deployed as a shield, or shot out like little qi arrows, or you can slap someone from across the room.

In more realistic martial arts stuff, I've seen masters punch out flames & break (thin) panels of wood before physical contact.

In most traditional wuxia, there's the inner discipline, which usually pertains to qi, and the outer discipline, which is stuff like training so you have impenetrable skin.

Wuxia being what it is, I'm not going to judge anyone for how they use what's pretty much MAGIC.

So it's a little debatable if a grandmaster punches out a flame or cracks a really thin panel of wood with their qi or if it's "I'm punching at the speed of light" (hyperbole) with associated kinetic movement and pressures.

Either way, this is something anyone can train to do.

Moving on to "witches".

I was going to do a thread on the three gu and six po a while back, so I guess this was my prompt.

三姑六婆 or "the three aunties and six grannies" is a common phrase used to describe, essentially, "the peanut gallery" or "the gossipy neighbors".

The thing is, 三姑六婆 is a derogatory phrase used to describe "a group of women", but it also describes some positions women held back in the day.

The three 姑 were

尼姑 - Buddhist nuns
道姑 - Taoist nuns
卦姑 - what I think is the equivalent of modern day astrologers.

The six 婆:

牙婆: headhunters / women who bought and sold people
媒婆: matchmakers
師婆: this would be your Chinese equivalent of witches
虔婆: brothel madams
藥婆: medicine women
穩婆: midwives

Partly it's misogyny why 三姑六婆 is derogatory.
Again, these were all professions held exclusively by women.

But partly also because there was a lot of room for abuse in these professions.

Selling people? Brothel madams? Medicine women? Witches?

The explanation I saw for why 三姑六婆 is shorthand for "awful nosy gossips" is not just because "women are gossips, it is misogynistically known" but also because often these women were allowed into people's homes while men wouldn't be.
So they had access.

But moving onto "師婆“ and the question of "witches".

Considering the tradition of shamanism in many tribes, I'm actually grateful they called it "witches" in Mulan 2020 rather than "shaman" because honestly we don't need to give the tribes more crap.

師婆 were known for exorcisms, allowing ghosts to possess them in exchange for info (so like mediums), writing out 符咒 or spells/hexes, and as oracles to the gods.

So...like witches.
Except with different tools and correspondences.

Much in the vein of "women have always fought" + "I don't know how you managed to fuck this up so totally considering the origin of Mulan came from a culture where women were often warriors", it's important to recognize other areas where women have held agency.
Even if despised.