One day in the 1960s, an old woman fainted in a rural Chinese train station. When police searched her belongings in an effort to identify her, they came across papers with what looked to be a secret code written on them. This being the height of the Cultural Revolution, the woman was arrested and detained on suspicion of being a spy. The scholars who came to decipher the code realized almost at once that this was not something related to international intrigue. Rather, it was a written language used solely by women and it had been kept a “secret” from men for a thousand years. Those scholars were promptly sent to labor camp.

This secret script is called Nushu, literally meaning women’s writing. Its exact origin is unknown, but has thought to have begun in the tenth century, and is often attributed to a royal concubine in the Song Dynasty (920-1279), named Hu Yuxiu. It is said that she was chosen because of her intelligence, but was completely ignored by the emperor. In her loneliness, she devised a way to write home secretly to her family about her suffering. Her letter sets the tone for most nushu writings, to share of the pains and sufferings of the life as a woman in feudal China. This is aptly expressed in the Song of Female Writing:

For all our live we suffer and bend,
No one has showed us any sympathy.
Only through female writing
Can our pain come out from the beginning.

Nushu was distributed only within southern China, in southeastern Hunan province, in an area roughly 1000 square miles. The remote region is very fertile and surrounded by mountains. It is home to two ethnic groups who have enjoyed peaceful coexistence: the indigenous Yao who dwell in the mountains, and the Han who live in the lowlands. With the colonization of the area in the sixth century by the Han peoples, there was a cultural fusion of customs and traditions. Of the common practices, divisions of labor were very clear: male members of the family tended to the fields, while the female members were confined to the home to perform the domestic duties. In fact, a bride often returned to her natal village, until the birth of her first child when she would be removed permanently. During this time, she would occasionally visit her husband.

Other shared customs included “age-mate” relationships, creating sworn sisterhoods and brotherhoods. These relationships were based not only on proximity, but also upon auspicious astrology, numerology and even matching the size and shape of the young “sisters” feet. They would go to festivals together, and were often closer to one another than to their blood-related sisters.

Nushu is inexorably linked with foot binding. It is thought that as early as the Han dynasty (25 AD), women were binding their feet. Its origins, like nushu, are also unknown, but it is believed that this practice also came from the imperial courts. The long-established tradition dictated that foot binding begin between the third and fourth years of a daughter’s life. It was an excruciating process in which the bones of the toes and foot were broken and remolded into the shape of a “golden lily,” ideally no longer than three inches long.

Before marriage, the sworn sisters would meet at one of the sister’s homes, in a private space that excluded men, in the sewing room (often located upstairs). They would sing, tell stories, embroider and sew. They worked harmoniously together by sharing, everything from patterns and cloth, to looms and embroidery thread. It was in these sisterhoods that the young women grew up together, initially offering support to one another during foot binding, but later learning the domestic ways of life and nushu from their mothers or aunts.

In feudal China, women were thought of as a monetary nuisance to their families, thus disposable. Foot binding worked to isolate women be taking away their mobility. They were also forbidden from attending school, so were vastly illiterate. The standard written Chinese language is logographic, which means characters used represent a word or part of a word. There exist roughly 50,000 Chinese characters which have a bold, block-like quality to them. Nushu, on the other hand, is a syllabic representation of the local dialect, not dissimilar to English. Scholars have identified between 1000 and 1500 nushu “characters” or sounds. Nushu is marked by its thin, wispy, rhombic and delicate stokes.

Young women first learned simple nursery rhymes and songs, and then would learn how to form the written words in the songs. From this rudimentary beginning, women would slowly advance to a point where they would improvise on known songs and then on to express their thoughts through verse or writing of original songs.

To prevent their nushu from falling into the hands of men, these Chinese women would embroider their thoughts and messages onto handkerchiefs, weave them into clothing, and paint them onto paper fans that they would send by female messenger to their sworn sisters and families in other villages. A nushu letter that had been delivered, read or even touched by a man was considered to be vulgar and improper.

At the funeral of a woman literate in nushu, her sworn sisters were responsible to burn all of her written words and the items containing nushu that she had received during her lifetime. This not only protected the script but was also said to send the words to her in her afterlife to keep her entertained, comforted and serve as a reminder of those who had loved her in her previous life.

Another nushu tradition was if a sworn sister was to marry, one of her other sworn sisters was to make a san zhao shu (letter after three days) to be delivered three days after the ceremony. In it, well wishes for a long, happy marriage, comments on her virtues and reprimands for breaking her “sisterhood” vows were written. These letters became a treasured part of the bride’s dowry offering solace once she had left her natal village. The life that awaited her at her husband and in-laws’ home was hard and difficult. Frequently, mother-in-laws would work their new daughters to the bone, while teasing and bullying them incessantly. Even when the woman gave the family children, they would often be sickly. Many children died at an early age. If this was not hard enough, these women would no longer be able to sing, and work with their sworn sisters. Many would be prohibited from attending festivals with them as well. It can be assumed that origin of nushu came from the overwhelming desire to express their feelings to one another and find and way to communicate despite the distances.

This secret script was known, used and passed down only by and among women for centuries until the mid-twentieth century. Since the Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s, women now have deserved respect and standing in China, the opportunity for formal education. While some may dispute these successes, there is no longer the need for nushu. The last known inheritress of women’s writing died in 2004. None of her children or grandchildren learned the language. Since her death and the impeding globalization of China’s rich culture, the archive keepers in Hunan province backed by government authorities, have stepped up their efforts to preserve this hundreds of years old tradition.

Tags: calligraphy, chinese cultural revolution, embroidery, foot binding, fuedal china, golden lily, han, Hu Yuxiu, hunan province, secret women's writing, song dynasty, yao