Nüshu souvenirs
Nüshu souvenirs
Dear friends:
Hello, everyone! Welcome to Jiangyong Yao Township as guests. As I mentioned earlier, Jiangyong is a magical land with abundant local specialties, and Jiangyong's "Three Fragrances" are their representative. In Jiangyong, besides these specialties, today I would also like to introduce to you an even more extraordinary specialty of Yao Township—Nüshu and its souvenirs.
When you first hear of Nüshu souvenirs, you will surely find it strange—what is Nüshu? Perhaps it is a kind of women's book—is it really necessary to give it a special introduction? In fact, once you understand the truth about it, you will not think it is making a fuss over nothing. To say it is a kind of women's book is not too far off—it is indeed a script used exclusively by women, and it is the only female script discovered by humankind to date, a precious ancient cultural heritage of the Chinese nation.
In the Yao Township of Hunan, there is a particularly rare cultural phenomenon: in Jiangyong and its neighboring Daoxian, Jianghua, and parts of Guangxi, there is a peculiar script that only the Yao women here can write, and which spreads and is passed down mysteriously among women, called "Nüshu." With this script—unique in the world—they record private matters that only they can read and understand.
Nüshu is an ancient and mysterious script. In the 1980s, Nüshu was discovered by scholars in Jiangyong Yao Township, stunning the world and attracting the attention of scholars worldwide. But to this day, no scholar has been able to determine the era of its origin. This female script, called "the wondrous script of southern Chu" by experts, is not pictographic and crude like Dongba script; instead, it records the local dialect by representing sound rather than meaning. Nüshu resembles seal script yet is not seal script, similar to oracle bone script. The characters are delicate and graceful, with peculiar forms, elegant and refined, having only five types of strokes: dot, circle, slant, and vertical. Its form is slanted, written in long diamond shapes, with fine, flowing strokes, free and smooth. The characters are lower on the left and higher on the right, without square or upright forms; the appearance is italic, similar to the Chinese character "多." The writing format of Nüshu is the same as ancient Chinese thread-bound books: margins above and below, text running from top to bottom, lines from right to left, with no punctuation, no paragraph divisions, written in one continuous flow. One character reads as one sound; a single isolated character—even an elderly Nüshu woman cannot say its specific meaning. Only when combined with other characters and read in a local Yao dialect can its meaning be determined. Nüshu has roughly 2,000 characters and can be widely used in daily life. It has many variant forms—an extra stroke or a missing stroke does not matter, as long as the basic shape is maintained; therefore, many characters share the same form but differ in meaning. Nüshu is characterized by being entirely poetic and can be chanted in the local dialect. Its content mostly consists of ballads expressing women's suffering and heartfelt feelings.
Nüshu has no printed publications; instead, it is written with a brush on fine handwritten booklets, fan surfaces, cloth handkerchiefs, and paper slips, or embroidered on handkerchiefs, silk scarves, and clothing, or woven into floral ribbons. What is written on paper is called "paper writing," on cloth handkerchiefs "handkerchief writing," on fan surfaces "fan writing," and what is embroidered on cloth handkerchiefs is called "embroidered characters." Whether poetry, prose, or letters, the writing format is the same as our familiar vertical writing, and the resulting books are in thread-bound format, vertically typeset, handwritten. The visual impression is of a slanted and slender typeface in a diamond framework, somewhat resembling mosquitoes or ants, which the locals call "mosquito-leg characters" or "ant characters."
Compared with other ancient scripts, Nüshu has four major unique features: First, it is passed down and used only among women, transmitted from old to young, mother to daughter, generation after generation; second, it records the local dialect and is read and sung in the local dialect; third, its character forms are peculiar, in long diamond shapes, with a style of oracle bone and bronze inscription yet completely different; fourth, when a person dies, the writing disappears—there are no artifacts for verification. The nearly 200,000 characters of Nüshu works collected so far are overwhelmingly in song form, with carriers in four major categories: paper, books, fans, and cloth. Regardless of the carrier, great attention is paid to formal beauty. For example, those written on paper are mostly decorated with patterns at the four corners; those written on paper fans are mostly illustrated with flower-and-bird designs; those woven or embroidered on handkerchiefs, floral ribbons, and clothing are exquisite needlework handicrafts.
The greatest characteristic of Nüshu is that it is poetic—it is not read but sung. Here is a passage of Nüshu translated by Yang Huanyi, the 98-year-old last surviving transmitter of Nüshu, which shows that it is indeed entirely poetic.
"Taking up my brush to write a letter, I tell my sorrows, telling how pitiful my life has been;
I was born a girl of the New House, married to nearby Dongkou Village..."
The old woman touched those mysterious characters with her soul, chanting in cadences as if telling of the joys and sorrows of an unknown world, her dim eyes gradually lighting up with brilliance. Yang Huanyi was the only surviving woman who grew up with Nüshu throughout her life. Her passing will mean the disappearance of the tradition among local women of using Nüshu—this unique way of sharing feelings, chatting about daily life, and exchanging life experiences.
Nüshu is a treasure in China's cultural treasury. It is unique not only in China but in the whole world, because it is an exclusive script, so its use and transmission are also special. For thousands of years, it has been circulated and used only among women, passed from woman to woman but not to men, transmitted from mother to daughter generation after generation, or taught by sworn sisters. No one ever intended to pass on to the males in the family the "scripture from heaven" learned from grandmother in childhood. In the early years after Liberation, when local women used the "scripture from heaven" to communicate, the workers sent to the countryside mistook it for some kind of "code" and banned its use for a time.
How did Nüshu come into being? Why does it circulate only in Shangjiangxu Township of Jiangyong County and within a radius of less than a hundred li around it, and why is it used only by women? About this, historical records are silent, genealogies and steles do not mention it; its transmission was entirely through family teaching and personal instruction, passed down through generations. No one knows how many years it has been transmitted, nor was it known to the outside world. In the 1931 printed Survey Notes of Various Counties in Hunan, in the "Huashan" entry, Nüshu was briefly mentioned as a script "resembling Mongolian." The preface to the Yao Wen Ge collected in the National Museum of Chinese History also records: "In 1945, Mr. He Xiaonan brought a sheet of Yao script, saying it was reading material for Yao women... 574 characters in all, with elegant handwriting and neat lines, unknown whose daughter's hand it came from. Unfortunately, not a single character could be recognized, and its sounds and meanings could not be explained." Even the famous master of Chinese studies, Mr. Ji Xianlin, upon hearing of Nüshu, felt it was "something never heard of, never seen before." For this reason, Guinness World Records Ltd. announced in Frankfurt in 2003 that Chinese Nüshu is the world's most gender-conscious script, and specially issued a Guinness World Record certificate for it.
What is hard to understand is this: in a country like China—where men are superior and women inferior, and where Confucian culture centered on male authority is the mainstream—there nevertheless exists a script exclusive to women, forming a unique female culture. This must be called a mystery! To this day, the origin of Nüshu remains a mystery, full of mysterious color. At the "Jiangyong Nüshu International Symposium," experts and scholars from the United States, Germany, Australia, and all over the country held heated discussions. So far, nearly 20 monographs and more than 150 papers have been published at home and abroad on this unique surviving women's script in the world.
Accompanying Nüshu is the unique social life and customs of local women. Nüshu bears deep traces of matrilineal society; it is the social and cultural background sedimented behind the script. Jiangyong is located at the border of Hunan, Guangxi, and Guangdong. Local marriage customs have quite completely preserved the elaborate rites of the old Han feudal marriage customs, with the practice of "parents' orders and matchmakers' words," yet they are also influenced by the southern ethnic minorities, especially the Yao concept of valuing women over men. Women return to their natal homes three days after marriage and only formally reside in the husband's home after becoming pregnant and giving birth. This ancient marriage custom objectively allowed local newlywed young women to freely enjoy their maiden time for a long period after marriage, playing with girls from the same village, singing and practicing needlework. Local women generally do not work in the fields; they excel in needlework and also in women's songs and Nüshu. They can use Nüshu to record events, correspond, write biographies, and conduct sacrifices. Local women regularly attend the Goddess Temple fairs to pray for divine protection and to exchange and sing Nüshu together. On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month and the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, local unmarried girls and newly married women still living in their natal homes bring their best-written Nüshu, their finest embroidery, and food to the home of a girl in the village who is to be married that year; if there is no such girl in the village, they go to the home of the youngest newlywed. This is called "dou niu" (ox fighting). Hence the "Ox Fighting Festival" is also called "Daughters' Festival" or "Girls' Festival." During the sixth and seventh lunar months, when it is hottest of the year, young women invite each other to gather, choosing a cool and comfortable home to spin and embroider together, using Nüshu as a medium to read and compose poetry. Locals call this season the "Women's Cooling Festival." Huashan Temple in Jiangyong County is the center of Nüshu activities. Every year on the tenth day of the fifth lunar month, they gather here, holding handkerchiefs and paper fans inscribed with Nüshu, singing loudly in praise of Gupo Niangniang, the female deity in their hearts. This mysterious, ancient, and peculiar female culture is an indispensable spiritual nourishment in their lives. Unlike traditional Chinese women who keep their bitterness bottled up inside, they pour it out through Nüshu; sisters comfort each other, help each other, and get through difficulties together.
Historically, among women—especially young girls—in Jiangyong and surrounding areas, there has been a custom passed down since ancient times: forming "laotong" (same-sex companions). Regardless of surname differences, generation rank, age, or marital status, as long as they share mutual affection and rapport, they can become sworn sisters. Both families would specially write letters and hold a sworn-sister ceremony. Typically there were seven, called the "Seven Sisters." Once they became sworn sisters, they would be lifelong friends, exchanging letters via Nüshu from time to time to communicate feelings. Sworn sisters often gathered to do needlework or spin and weave; while working, they would read from paper fans. Because forming "laotong" directly reflected one's character, intelligence, and morals, whether one could form more "laotong" directly affected one's social status; there was even a saying that one who could not form "laotong" would never be able to marry. This made literacy in Nüshu the representative image of a female "intellectual" in the minds of local women. When a good sister married, they would give the bride a Nüshu booklet made by their own hands, filled with the sisters' best wishes and sisterly affection. They would also sing Nüshu at the pre-wedding "song hall crying marriage." At the bride's wedding ceremony, a "Three Mornings Book" written in Nüshu would be given as a dowry gift and read aloud publicly. The bride's dowry gift—the "Three Mornings Book"—thus became the proud "face" displayed by the groom's family in the main hall on the wedding day. This shows the sacred status of Nüshu in local women's lives.
In the old days, many talented local women used this "mosquito-shaped script" that men could not read to communicate their hearts and pour out their feelings, embroidering, carving, stamping, and writing it on paper fans, handkerchiefs, and needlework, recording marriage and family, needlework art, cultural entertainment, customs and habits, religious beliefs, moral sentiments, and hidden grievances and private feelings, as well as compiling Chinese songbooks. This systematically reflected the joys and sorrows of women in this region. They used Nüshu to compose songs and create works, so Nüshu works are almost all poetry, mainly seven-character verses, with a few five-character verses, generally written on fine xuan paper, fan surfaces, and cloth handkerchiefs. Nüshu works can be widely used for women's marriage, sworn sisterhood, sacrifices, and mourning. They can also be used to record major historical events, such as "The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Passes Through Yongming" and "Song of Liberation." Chinese folk tales such as "The Xiao Family Daughter" and "The Tale of Three Aunts" were also translated by them into songbooks. Most of the protagonists in the stories told in Nüshu are heroines or virtuous women.
Many Nüshu works use entirely realistic techniques to narrate and lament their own circumstances—ambitions higher than the sky, fate thinner than paper—and the sorrowful situations in which many beautiful hopes turned to bubbles in the darkness, and they invoke deities from folk legend to help them turn misfortune into fortune. The protagonists of these works are not only strong-willed "superwomen" who assert their personalities and strongly demand equality with men, but they also extremely detest and despise the fame and wealth that men crave. The owners of Nüshu wrote out and sang out their pain of being oppressed and discriminated against, allowing their souls—repressed and distorted in the real world—a trace of relief and release. Nüshu has transformed from a mere script into a weapon for women to fight against fate and has become their spiritual sustenance. The "Three Obediences and Four Virtues" that regulated and bound women were once a worldwide tendency, but the influence of Confucian ethics and morality is greatly weakened in Nüshu.
Nüshu is the best companion of women here, a warm lamp in women's lives, and an encyclopedia for studying women's culture. It records their days and nights, their partings and reunions, joys and sorrows. When they are about to leave this world, their only concern is Nüshu, and it must accompany them to the next world. As a hidden private possession of women, there is a rule in the Nüshu circulation area: whenever a woman passes away, her favorite Nüshu works—whether paper writing, handkerchief writing, or fan writing—must all be burned to ashes, so that the owner still has Nüshu as company in the underworld. Therefore, these items bearing Nüshu were often burned with the deceased—mostly cremated or buried as funerary objects—and very few complete Nüshu works have been preserved for posterity.
A marginal culture, even with precious and unique cultural memories, has now lost its vivid life. A wonderful flower of human civilization seems to be slowly turning away, and people heave rather heavy sighs at Nüshu's situation. Jiangyong Nüshu, this unique cultural "fossil," is a magical cultural phenomenon in human history with ancient roots and broad ramifications—a rare notational syllabic script in the world, worthy of being called a treasure of world culture, providing extremely rich information for humanity to solve the mysteries of its own existence. As a rare historical and cultural relic, it has inestimable value for the study of ancient philology, linguistics, history, archaeology, cultural anthropology, ethnic cultural history, women's studies, folklore, folk literature, and philosophy. Fortunately, Jiangyong Nüshu was selected in 2002 for China's first batch of "Chinese Archives and Documents Heritage List," which is part of the "Memory of the World" program initiated by UNESCO.
In research on the character forms of Nüshu, people were astonished to discover that "totem worship," which had appeared only in prehistoric human cultures such as ancient Egyptian script, Mayan culture, and oracle bone script, shows clear traces in Nüshu character forms. In Nüshu, there are characters formed in the shape of a bird's body or parts of a bird's body. These characters were evidently created in the age of bird totem worship. Only under the guidance of the primitive thinking of bird totem worship could a series of Nüshu characters appear—using a bird-head shape to denote a human head, a bird-body shape to denote a human body, and a shape of two parallel birds to denote a ruler, and so on. This bears a striking resemblance to the evolution in oracle bone script where the Chinese character for "head" is pictographic of a person's head, the character for "body" is pictographic of a person's torso, and one person holding a brush plus one mouth is pictographic of the character "jun" (ruler). Does this phenomenon—the oracle bone script system worshiping humans while Nüshu worships birds—mean that the theory that the oracle bone script culture is the mainstay of Chinese language and writing may be overturned by the astonishing discovery of Nüshu, thereby forming a northern and southern division of ancient Chinese culture along the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins? The greatest possible representative of the latter is the founding ethnic group of the Wu and Yue kingdoms, which once dominated the Central Plains in the Spring and Autumn period—the ancient Yue people, who were never seen to have created or used their own ethnic script in any record. China's bird totem culture has a long history, continuing from the Hemudu culture, Majiabang culture, and Songze culture—representing the prehistoric culture of the ancient Yue people—all the way through the Spring and Autumn and Han periods. Most unearthed artifacts show traces of "bird totem worship." Even thousands of years later, beneath the character "王" (king) carved on the sword worn by King Goujian of Yue, there are also two birds depicted.
By coincidence, in the Shangjiangxu area of Jiangyong, the first day of the second lunar month is the local "Vermilion Bird Festival" (the vermilion bird being the phoenix). Every household makes ciba cakes with black pear leaves mixed with glutinous rice flour, neighbors exchange gifts, and the cakes are placed on small bamboo sticks and stuck throughout the fields for the birds to eat, called "vermilion bird ciba." The people here all love to keep birds, and every year on the first day of the second lunar month they hold a bird fair, competing to see whose bird is the best. This seems by no means a coincidence.
As a unique system of Yao female script symbols, Nüshu is a script contemporaneous with—or even more ancient than—oracle bone script. Otherwise, why does Nüshu contain a large number of oracle bone script vestiges? The character forms of Nüshu are primitive yet elegant; its chanting tones are simple yet distant. Its circulation area and preservation methods are extremely unique. What connection does it have with the chanting of Chu ci? What spatial qualities do Nüshu's lines possess, and what relationship does it have with primitive art?
As a rich folk cultural phenomenon, Nüshu undoubtedly formed on an extremely special and complex cultural soil. The area has Han and Yao living together, with Chu customs and Yao practices interwoven; in ancient times it was a battleground of Chu and Yue cultures, with foreign culture and indigenous culture alternating. To this day, among local residents, not only do the Chinese dialects spoken retain an ancient Yue linguistic "substratum," but in traditional customs and habits there also remain obvious Yue practices, Chu customs, and Ba customs. Moreover, part of the local dialect recorded in Nüshu is the same as the "morphemes, words, and grammatical structures" of the ancient Baiyue language preserved in the Zhuang-Dong language family. Therefore, it may be a remnant and evolution of ancient Baiyue script, Chu script, or Ba script—especially a remnant and evolution of ancient Baiyue script. The composition of Nüshu characters can almost all be found in the brocade patterns of the various ethnic groups descended from the Baiyue. Yao brocade is woven with varying numbers of symbols and patterns of this peculiar script, and their forms and structures and meanings show obvious consistency with traditional Nüshu characters—they are the patterned form of written Nüshu on woven fabrics. Based on the large number of Nüshu characters similar to unearthed carved symbols and painted pottery patterns, some believe that the time and space of its origin can be traced back to the Yangshao culture of the Neolithic Age and that it was formed after Qin Shi Huang unified Chinese writing. Others, based on the similarity between Nüshu characters and the basic strokes and character-formation methods of primitive ancient Yi script, believe it was the official script of the era of Emperor Shun. Based on the obvious presence of oracle bone and bronze inscription loan characters in the Nüshu vocabulary, some also believe it is a variant of Shang dynasty ancient writing closely related to oracle bone script. Some scholars hold that pictographic and ideographic characters are the earliest cultural phenomena produced in writing systems and are a direct reflection of the living environment and social culture of the script's creators. Based on the body-tattooing customs, "stilt-style" dwelling architecture, rice-cultivation culture, and bird totem culture reflected in the composition of Nüshu pictographic and ideographic characters, they conclude that modern Nüshu is a remnant and evolution of ancient Yue script.
As a unique cultural relic of humanity, Nüshu offers the world a string of unfathomable riddles, a fog that has not yet been dispelled. In any case, this peculiar humanistic phenomenon is always closely related to the unique female social culture of the southern Hunan area. "Not residing in the husband's home" —this marriage form from the transitional period between pairing marriage and monogamy—reflects matrilineal society's tenacious resistance to patrilineal society. The formation of this "female society," isolated from male society on the one hand yet particularly active internally on the other, provided rich soil for the breeding and growth of the "female code."
"Climbing the tree to pick flowers, choose the largest; descending the tree to betroth a daughter, choose an official's family. Marrying into an official's family brings many official matters; marrying into a commoner's family brings many common matters..." This seven-character poem with neat rhyme and catchy rhythm roughly speaks of the happy times enjoyed as a maiden in the natal home, consistent with the local custom since ancient times of valuing daughters and pampering them in the boudoir and of late marriage. Listening to the melodious, lingering Nüshu singing, the gurgling sound of the Xiao River, and the rustling of bamboo leaves in the evening breeze, one's thoughts become distant and profound. A vivid scroll of ancient women's daily life thus slowly unfolds...
Having visited this far, I wonder how you feel?!