Nüshu, or “women's script,” has the distinction of being the world's only known gender-specific script. It is a script transmitted only by women within the Shangjiangxu region of Jiangyong County, Hunan Province, China. Shangjiangxu is located in southern Hunan, near the border with Guangxi Province. Intersected by the Xiao River and crisscrossed by water channels, the region is known for the production of rice, taro, sugarcane, ginger, and tobacco. Steep limestone ridges mark the northern boundary and to the south are located the homelands of the indigenous people, a non-Chinese minority group called the Yao.
The Shangjiangxu region was settled by Chinese migrants a thousand years ago and the area became gradually sinicized. As in other regions of China before 1949, foot-binding and concubinage were practiced. Women engaged in the production of textiles within their homes. The traditional kinship structure was patrilineal, marriage was exogamous, and women had few property rights. Nonetheless, some features of the original Yao culture remained in Shangjiangxu, including the custom of sworn sisterhoods formed in adolescence and continued throughout life, festivals and rituals for women only, elaborate gatherings with girl friends and women relatives before departure on marriage, and delayed residence in the groom's home after marriage. These customs, known to other parts of south China, intensified bonds between women and provided consolation in a patriarchal society.
The Characteristics of Nüshu.
Nüshu consists of a phonetic syllabary based on the local speech of the upper Jiangyong area. The graphs are written using delicate, slanted strokes, including arcs, curves, and dots not known in the regular square-shaped Chinese script. The oblique strokes seem reflective of the embroidery patterns of the area. The graphs are used predominantly for their sound rather than their sense, in sharp contrast to Chinese script, which uses graphs primarily to convey meaning rather than sound. As with calligraphers of Chinese script, nüshu writers aimed to create a pleasing aesthetic effect. Local men, however, regarded the script as “mosquito writing” and showed little interest in it. Women called Chinese script “men's script” (nanshu). It is easier to learn nüshu than Chinese script, which requires mastery of thousands of characters for literacy. Nüshu practitioners would generally command a knowledge of from five hundred to seven hundred graphs. A dictionary of nüshu compiled by a local ethnographer lists eighteen hundred separate graphs, but many of these are alternative forms.
Nüshu was written with a bamboo brush on paper, fans, handkerchiefs, or cloth, or with simpler tools such as a pointed wooden stick using charcoal diluted in water. Nüshu graphs were commonly embroidered onto handkerchiefs and belts. Girls learned how to write from older women and female relatives. Nüshu compositions were almost invariably composed in verse of a regular seven syllables to a line. The receiver recited it out aloud in a melodious way. The use of rhythm, rhyme, and a high degree of formulicity in the repertoire facilitated comprehension by the recipient.
The Origin of Nüshu.
The origin of nüshu is much disputed. A local legend attributes the creation of nüshu to an eleventh-century woman from Jiangyong who was sent away to become a concubine of the emperor. Unhappy with her life in the palace and longing to write letters home, she invented a secret script that could be read only by those who knew her native dialect. This legend, unknown in the historical record, reflects a local understanding that the script was devised by women in order to communicate with other women.
Some scholars have suggested that the script derives from ancient forms of Chinese script predating the unification of the script in the third century b.c.e. Others claim that it derives from the script formerly used by male ritual specialists in Yao culture. From this point of view, village women in Jiangyong availed themselves of scripts invented by men. The most convincing explanation, however, is that nüshu was derived from Chinese characters, especially the cursive handwritten form of Chinese script, but refined by women for their own purposes. Women users expanded the potential, already present in the popular use of cursive script, to substitute a complex graph for a simpler one with the same sound. In this way they gradually converted an ideographic script into a phonetic one. The perceived need to keep their own script apart from regular Chinese script would thus account for the oblique shape of the graphs and their unusual strokes. The large number of variants would be due to the lack of standardization of the script as it was transmitted over the generations and to subtle differences in the local speech between villages. Although women of Jiangyong were generally illiterate in regular Chinese script, a few women did acquire literacy during the late imperial period. Nüshu probably originated from their attempts to create a distinctive script of their own.
It is difficult to identify the earliest use of the script. Nüshu items were commonly cremated with their owners at death. Anecdotal evidence points to the use of the script throughout the nineteenth century and possibly earlier although the extant corpus of nüshu dates from the mid-nineteenth centuryThe Nüshu Corpus.
Nüshu writings comprise a rich corpus of materials. Wedding congratulations called “The Third Day of Marriage” (sanzhaoshu), composed in nüshu by the bride's sworn sisters and female relatives, were bound in cloth-covered booklets and decorated with paper cuts. These were offered on the third day after the wedding, when the bride paid a visit to her natal home. Other common subgenres include invitations to become a sworn sister and formal responses; letters to sworn sisters after marriage; lyrical poems; epic and narrative poems; folk songs; and riddles. Prayers written in nüshu on fans were left at the shrines to the goddess Gupo and the revered Tan sisters. The purposes of these rituals were to placate the souls of young women who died before marriage, to pray for good fortune in marriage, to have a son, or to escape bad karma and be reborn as a man. Items from the classical tradition were translated into nüshu, including instructions about female behavior called the Women's Classic and famous poems of the Tang period. Autobiographical poems by older women concentrated on the hardships of the woman's life, mistreatment by husband and mother-in-law, family sickness, death, poverty, and war, including the tribulations of the Japanese occupation.
Much of the nüshu corpus derives from the oral culture and rituals of the region, and items were recited during women's embroidery sessions in the upper rooms of their homes or at women's festivals. Much of the content focuses on women's sorrow, particularly at parting from home on marriage—“Once I lived in the upper chambers of my home / Now I weep tears, a knife cuts my heart”—or parting from sworn sisters—“We two made our promise in Women's Script / Wherever we go, we go together / Whatever we do, we do together.”
Nüshu provided a rich means of self-expression for women who were otherwise illiterate and marginalized in a Confucian society. The script was used to strengthen bonds of sisterhood between young women and to demonstrate their talent and artistic skill. Nüshu proved less effective as a way to maintain sisterhood bonds between women after marriage, because the women now lived in different villages and transmission of letters was difficult. After the 1950s, nüshu was only rarely transmitted to the next generation. In 2004 the last living practitioner from among the older generation ( Yang Huanyi , b.1909) passed away. Some younger women have acquired the script under the very different conditions of life in the People's Republic, and Chinese scholars hold regular forums to promote the study of nüshu. After years of suppression and neglect, nüshu now has a firm niche in the regional culture of the area. The script features in the tourist industry of Jiangyong, where one can learn nüshu for a fee at a local village school. The traditional functions of nüshu may have passed away, but scholars, local ethnologists, and the tourist industry struggle to “save” the script for future generations.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. © 2008
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