Everything about Nushu totally explained
Nü Shu, is a
syllabary writing system that was used exclusively among
women in
Jiangyong County in
Hunan province of southern
China . At present no one living learned Nü Shu from her mother or sworn sisters, though there are a few scholars who learned it from the last of the women who did. After
Yang Yueqing made a documentary about Nü Shu, the
government of the People's Republic of China started to popularize the effort to preserve this rare writing system, and some younger women are beginning to learn it.
Nü Shu works
A large number of the Nü Shu works were "third day missives" (三朝书, ). They were cloth bound booklets created by "sworn sisters" (结拜姊妹, ) and mothers and given to their counterpart "sworn sisters" or daughters upon their marriage. They wrote down songs in Nü Shu, which were delivered on the third day after the young woman's marriage. This way, they expressed their hopes for the happiness of the young woman who had left the village to be married and their sorrow for being parted from her .
Other works, including poems and lyrics, were handwoven into belts and straps, or embroidered onto everyday items and clothing.
Current situation
Yang Huanyi, an inhabitant of Hunan province and the last person proficient in this writing system, died on
September 23,
2004 at the age of 98.
The language and locale have attracted foreign investment with money from
Hong Kong building up infrastructure at possible tourist sites and a
$209,000 grant from the
Ford Foundation to build a Nü Shu museum scheduled to open in
2007. However, with the line of transmission now broken, there are fears that the features of the script are being distorted by the effort of marketing it for the tourist industry.
Lisa See describes the use of Nü Shu among 19th century women in her novel
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005).
Nü Shu is currently under proposal for encoding in
Unicode, in the
Supplementary Multilingual Plane, with 385 basic characters from U+1B000 to U+1B180, and 64
allographs from U+1B181 to U+1B1C1.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Nushu'.
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