Nüshu : China's secret female-only language

[NonnyMouse1337]

Long article but a lovely read.

www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200930-nshu-chinas-secret-female-only-language

Throughout history, women in rural Hunan Province used a coded script to express their most intimate thoughts to one another. Today, this once-“dead” language is making a comeback.

That's rather lovely. Thank you.

I'm glad efforts are being made to preserve it.

The script was passed down from peasant mothers to their daughters and practiced among sisters and friends in feudal-society China during a time when women, whose feet were often bound, were denied educational opportunities.

Remarkably, for hundreds or possibly even thousands of years, this unspoken script remained unknown outside of Jiangyong, and it was only learned of by the outside world in the 1980s.

Nüshu provided a way for women to cope with domestic and social hardships and helped to maintain bonds with friends in different villages. Convivial words of friendship and happiness were embroidered in Nüshu on handkerchiefs, headscarves, fans or cotton belts and exchanged.

I'm looking at this as part of my PhD research 😀

@ImaSababa

I'm looking at this as part of my PhD research 😀

Oh wow that's amazing! Will you be able to share some of your thoughts on it with us?

thank you for linking to this, it's lovely

That's really incredible. However, weirdly, I'm not too sure how I feel about it all being made public (or a man being the one to translate it). It somehow feels disrespectful and a bit of a slap in the face at the women who wanted it to be theirs.

I'm probably wrong of course - I love the idea of it. It was almost their Mumsnet.

That's amazing!

And lucky you ImaSababa, getting to study it I'd love to hear more.

OMG I recently read about bound feet in China --
truly barbaric

@Oxyiz

That's really incredible. However, weirdly, I'm not too sure how I feel about it all being made public (or a man being the one to translate it). It somehow feels disrespectful and a bit of a slap in the face at the women who wanted it to be theirs.

I felt the same - very torn. Especially if older pieces are read - almost like reading someone's private letters.

@Straven123

OMG I recently read about bound feet in China -- truly barbaric

You should read Wild Swans - it's an amazing book.

I first heard of nu shu in the novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Good book, although the footbinding scenes are not for the squeamish.

@DreadPirateLuna

I first heard of nu shu in the novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Good book, although the footbinding scenes are not for the squeamish.

That is an excellent book - but very harrowing in so many ways. I read it years ago and have never forgotten it.

I’ve read about this before and you have reminded me. Thank you. A lovely piece of women’s history.

@ImaSababa

I'm looking at this as part of my PhD research 😀

That's fascinating.

I felt the same - very torn. Especially if older pieces are read - almost like reading someone's private letters.

I don't know... is it disrespectful to read Ann Frank's diary? (or Samuel Pepys diary, for that matter...)

Their language was secret so that they could protect each others while they were alive, but now it's all become part of History. They're safe, no one can hurt them anymore...
And women's "secret history" is a perspective we rarely hear about! So I find this quite exciting, personally (although it should obviously be done respectfully)

This (the problem of respect towards people who are long dead) reminds me of a female Egyptian mummy that I saw once in a museum in England. Her body was mostly covered with a sheet, out of decency, and it came with a text asking how should we balance respect for people who lived long ago, with the desire to learn more about their lives. It explained the circumstances in which the body had been excavated and brought to the UK (back when mummy unwrapping was a "fashionable" past time...), and asked whether such mummies should be buried back, or displayed, and how. It was tactfully done, I think.

When my gran was dying she made it very clear she didn't want anyone reading the letters between her and grandad. They were private and personal. Is this different? I can see both sides but fascinating as it is I feel it is too close to when they were alive. Worse still is that men can see and understand them (or the translations). I gave no doubt there are things that they didn't mind other women catching sight of but would not have written if they thought men would ever see it.

I actually have always felt weird about Anne Frank's diary - she was a teenage girl writing about her crushes and feelings and her dad published her most private thoughts for the whole world to read. It might have been out of grief and a desire to remember and commemorate, but it's still something she never gave permission for.

Not sure about Pepys, partly because I vaguely think of his diaries being more self-aggrandizing or written as though someone would read them, but maybe that's nonsense and he wouldn't have liked it either. (Its been so long I can barely remember them!)

I do think there's something in the "men opening up women's private lives for everyone to see" that will always make me uncomfortable.

I agree with Pepys - I always feel he wrote them imagining they would be read. He wasn't exactly modest!

Pepys was never modest I think he would be thrilled!

Interesting conversation about private versus public, as in most parts of the world women have belonged to the private world of home and hearth and our passage through this world is only recorded when we do things that are more commonly associated with the world of men or when people examine private life.

It's strange but my instinctual reaction is that I don't want men to read this. I mean they developed a whole separate bloody language to have some privacy from them.

I actually have always felt weird about Anne Frank's diary - she was a teenage girl writing about her crushes and feelings and her dad published her most private thoughts for the whole world to read. It might have been out of grief and a desire to remember and commemorate, but it's still something she never gave permission for.

Anne edited her diaries after she heard a radio broadcast urging people to keep journals during the war. And she said very explicitly that she wanted to be a writer, to "live on after my death".

Of course, she hoped to live a long life and write lots of books. It's tragic that her diary is the only way she can "live on", but I think she'd prefer that she had at least made her mark in some way.

Fascinating.

The Good Women of China by Ninran is a great book.

Sorry - Xinran.