Nü Shu A Women’s Writing System

By Kristen Skipper

What is Nü Shu ?

Where did Nü Shu occur?

Why did Nü Shu occur?

Sworn Sisterhoods and Old Sames

Nü Shu Language Structure

Nü Shu Themes

Preserving Nü Shu

Nü Shu is: Women's Script, as it is known to its practitioners

Used by peasant women in remote villages in Jiang Yong county, Hunan province in China

A phonetic script quite distinct from Chinese character script

A written version of the local spoken dialect

Photo - Xinhua News Agency

Source of Nü Shu

Hunan Province湖南省

Jiang Yong Prefecture江永県

Why Did Nü Shu Develop?

Narrowness of a woman’s life

Strength of sworn sisterhoods

Foot binding

Need for self-expression

Lack of male objection

NüShu, Sworn Sisterhood,and Old Sames

Sworn sisterhoods: Seven girls sworn after foot binding (around 10 years old) Remained united until the first girl married then sisterhood was dissolved

Old Sames: Two girls with seven matching characteristicsLife-long bond

Kristen Skipper collection

The design of the houses in Jiang Yong (unlike Han houses) encouraged women to gather and socialize.

Photo by Orie Endo

Historical Origins of Nu Shu

Predates the oracle-bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty (16th -11th century BC). Official writing of the Yi (ancient name for tribes in the east of China)

Remnant of a 4,000-year-old language stamped out elsewhere by the first emperor of China, Qin Shihuang.

A concubine of an emperor of the Song dynasty (960-1279), who embroidered the secret script on handkerchiefs to write to sisters and friends outside the court.

Recent researchers consider NüShu a result of a hybrid Yao-Han culture.

Main Theories:

Photo by Orie Endo

Surfaced during the 1960’s

Cultural Revolution buried it

Chinese Intellectual interest revived in the 1980’s

Chinese Government support for the past decade

Nü Shu’s Emergence in National Consciousness

Miss Tian 1921 – Kristen Skipper collection

Nü Shu Structure Nü Shu has between 1,800 and 2,500 characters, each representing a syllable of the local dialect.

Written top to bottom, right to left

One character per sound – the character for father “fu” is the same as the character for woman “fu”.

The character wang (king) also represents other “wang”-sounding words such as “garden” or “whole”.

Photo by Orie Endo

Phonetic rather than logographic

Nü Shu is linguistically significant for its simplification of the Chinese writing system

Nü Shu Structure

Photo by Orie Endo

The passage roughly translates as "They taught her to apply makeup and comb her hair; on her head she was wearing pearls that are shining magnificently; she is sitting like Guanyin (a Buddhist goddess) out of a Buddhist shrine".

There are obvious similarities between Nü Shu and Mandarin characters.

Most works use rhyming, seven-syllable lines

Expressions of independence and frustration with men

Sorrow at the loneliness of married life

Stories in which female characters had active roles and won victories through piety and fortitude.

Nü Shu Content

San Chao Shu were decorated in ink or paper cutouts

Both sides of the first three pages would be filled with songs written for the bride leaving the village

The rest were left blank for the bride to write on.

Nü Shu Content

Wedding 1922 – Kristen Skipper collection

Outside and inside of a three-day missive To help ease the sting of the separation, the bride’s mother and sworn sisters made a cloth bound book, known as a "Third Day Book“ which contained messages for the bride in Nü Shu language.

San Chao Shu 三朝書 Third Day Book

"Now we sit together because our feelings are disturbed by the imminent marriage of one of our sworn sisters and we must write the third-day book. We cherish the days when we are together and hate losing one of our sisters. After she gets married it will be difficult to meet her so we worry that she will be lonely. For a woman, marriage means losing everything, including her family and her sworn sisters."

Photo by Orie Endo

Nü Shu Study and Preservation

Just over 300 pieces of authentic Nü Shu have been uncovered

Bronze coin from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851-1864), with a Nü Shu inscription on the back that reads “All women on earth are one family.”

Yang Huanyi was the oldest living Nü Shu writer when she died in 2004 at age ninety-six.

Photo by Orie Endo

Tombstones for Ms. Gao Yin-xian (1902- 1990), one on the left is written in Nü Shu , one on the right is written in Hanzi (Pu Wei village)

Photo by Orie Endo

Nü Shu - Fact and Fiction

Nü Shu us the only women-only language in the world.

Similar female scripts have arisen in other cultures such as Japan and Korea.

Nü Shu women were only rarely literate in Chinese script.

Nü Shu is a “secret, forbidden language”

Men knew about Nü Shu , but found it beneath their notice.

The structure of Nü Shu characters indicates that its origins were Chinese-character based.

Nü Shu was “rediscovered” in the 1980’s

Nü Shu was used continuously since its creation, albeit by an extremely small group.

Pu Mei - Nü Shu Culture Village

In 2004, the Chinese Government built this school and museum in Pumei. Here village girls and women are taught Nü Shu and produce modern handicraft decorated with the ancient writing system.

Photos Copyright Orie Endo

You can witness Hunan Province’s Nü Shu cultural preservation efforts by visiting Pu Mei.

How a Secret-But-Not-So-Secret Code Let Women in China Share HardshipsVoice of America's Program about the English Language16 August 2005 World of Nu Shu by Orie Endohttp://homepage3.nifty.com/nushu/home.htm Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignNews and Reviews vol. 4, no. 3 Spring 2001 Women’s Conceptions of Widowhood in Jiang Yong County, Hunan Province, China by Fei Wen LiuJournal of Asian Studies 60 No. 4, Nov. 2001 The re-invention of a Chinese Language By Jon Watts Crossing Gender Boundaries in China: Nüshu Narratives by Anne E. McLaren Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context Issue 1, September 1998 Heroines of Jiangyong: Chinese Narrative Ballads in Women's ScriptTranslated by Wilt L. Idema. 2009. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Reviewed by Katherine Dimmery, Indiana University

Bibliography

Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the Stateby Christina Gilmartin, Gail Hershatter, Lisa Rofel, Tyrene White Female-Specific Language to be RevealedMarch 15, 2004www.chinaview.cn CCTV - A Room of One’s Own: Woman’s Script 04-05-2005 Article - A Language by Women, for Womenhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4356095/ Hu Mei Yue Teaches Nu Shu in Pumei Village in South Central China by Edward Coty, The Washington PostFeb. 24, 2004 Visual Sourcebook on Chinese Civilization http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/contents.htm Holding Up Half the Sky By Jie Tao, Bijun Zheng, Shirley L. Mow April 1, 2004Article - The Women’s Script of Jiangyong: An Invention of Chinese Women by Zhao Liming

Bibliography