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Nü Shu (女书 pinyin: nǚ shū), literally
translated as "Women's writing", is a writing system that was used exclusively among women in Jian-yong county in Hunan province of southern China.
Unlike the standard written Chinese, which is logographic (each character representing a word or part of a word), Nü Shu is roughly
phonetic, with each of its approximately 700 characters representing a syllable.
Although some Nü Shu characters appear to have been derived from standard Chinese characters, most are unrelated.
In ancient Hunan, women were discouraged from
learning Nan Shu-"man's writing", i.e. Chinese
written language; Nü Shu was therefore invented and used secretly, carefully guarded from men. Often, the characters were
disguised as decorative marks or as part of artwork. Although Nü Shu has existed for centuries, it was not known to most of the
world until recently, due to the intense secrecy regarding the language.
Before the Cultural Revolution, it was customary to burn
Nü Shu books during the author's funeral to comfort her in the next world. During the Cultural revolution, thousands of Nü Shu
manuscripts were destroyed, partly due to the fear of secret languages and partly due to the mission (of Red Guards) to destroy old cultures. As a result, few Nü Shu manuscripts survived.
After the Chinese Revolution, literacy spread among women, and Nü Shu fell into disuse. At present only a handful of old women
are capable of reading it. After Yang
Yueqing made a documentary about it, the PRC government started to popularize the effort
to preserve this rare writing system.
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