Author Megan Eaves talks to a Nushu professional within the metropolis of Changsha for a lesson in scripted solidarity, forward of a brand new Intrepid expertise in 2026.
When Li Ailian was a toddler rising up in a distant a part of southern China, she typically watched the ladies in her household stitching and writing. They embroidered with blue, white and purple threads within the doorframes and wrote on coarse fabric utilizing stick-like pens dipped in black soot. They have been utilizing a particular script that slanted upwards and appeared nothing like the fashionable Mandarin language. These mysterious, sideways characters planted a seed of deep curiosity in her younger thoughts.
On the time, Li didn’t but know that the marks painted by her kinfolk have been Nushu (pronounced nyoo-shoo) – the one recognized script on the planet created solely by ladies, for girls. These stitches and inked symbols have been a part of a centuries-old custom that quietly preserved ladies’s voices in a society that in any other case silenced them.
What’s Nushu?
The Nushu script developed in Li’s house area of Jiangyong: a rural, mountainous county in Hunan province within the south of China. Although ladies had colloquially spoken the native dialect, Jiangyong Tuhua, for generations, they have been denied entry to formal schooling or writing.
On account of these historic limitations, Nushu script is believed to have developed as a simplification of historic Chinese language characters as early because the thirteenth century, although its roots could stretch way back to the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE).
Not like commonplace Chinese language writing (Hanzi), which is logographic (the place an emblem represents a complete phrase or significant unit of language), Nushu is phonetic, with every slender, rhomboid character representing a syllable.
It was written from prime to backside and proper to left, most frequently on paper or fabric, but additionally, as Li first skilled as a toddler, it was generally embroidered onto handkerchiefs, followers and belts. The identify ‘Nushu’ is a Mandarin phrase that actually interprets as ‘ladies’s writing’.
As a result of it was developed secretly, as an act of defiance, and males couldn’t learn it, Nushu turned a non-public language of female friendship and emotion. Girls exchanged letters, poems and songs expressing love, grief and solidarity.
‘It was a coded medium of communication amongst ladies – a software to confide their innermost emotions and specific their feelings,’ Li explains. In her phrases, it capabilities like an ‘encyclopedia of ladies’s lives… documenting their emotional experiences and carrying their hopes and goals.’
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Discovering her calling
Li’s fascination with the intersection between feminine empowerment and conventional Chinese language tradition deepened as she grew up. ‘After I was accepted into college, my father supplied me a present [of my choosing],’ she remembers. She requested for a cheongsam (conventional Chinese language gown) impressed by the Soong sisters, three influential ladies who performed vital roles in Twentieth-century Chinese language politics by means of their marriages to the highly effective leaders, H. H. Kung, Solar Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek.
‘It was a really costly merchandise costing 100 yuan, which was greater than my father’s month-to-month wage on the time,’ says Li. ‘He finally granted my want.’
After graduating, Li spent greater than a decade working in cultural journalism, studying to inform the tales behind China’s heritage. However Nushu continued to talk to her. Years later, dwelling within the metropolis of Changsha, parenthood served as a catalyst for Li to reevaluate her life.
A turning level got here when she met He Jinghua, a guardian of Nushu and an formally designated nationwide heir underneath China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage programme. That’s when she determined to observe her coronary heart and dedicate her life to ladies’s tradition.
‘He’s profound dedication and keenness for Nushu deeply moved me,’ Li says. ‘I formally turned her apprentice and started a number of years of systematic research in Nushu calligraphy.’
Beneath He’s steering, she progressed from practising fundamental strokes to writing full compositions, and discovered the historical past of Nushu, understanding its deeper cultural significance. Via this coaching, Li Ailian turned considered one of solely a handful of dwelling practitioners who can fluently write Nushu script at the moment.
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Nushu’s fashionable revival
Nushu was recognised as a part of China’s Nationwide Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2006. Preservation programmes in Jiangyong now embrace museums, college programs and digital archives. In response to Li, ‘We’re actively selling the combination of Nushu into fashionable life by means of publishing books, organising exhibitions, and creating cultural and artistic merchandise.’
Nonetheless, fewer than 100 folks can learn and write it fluently. However extra learners are creating an curiosity, Li says, particularly youthful ladies and some males in universities, cultural establishments and heritage programmes.
Traditionally, Nushu was a ladies’s area alone, however Li believes its classes are common: ‘The ability of Nushu lies in its position in shaping the feminine spirit,’ she explains. ‘It teaches ladies self-respect, self-confidence and self-reliance.’
From a up to date viewpoint, she feels that the language carries quiet feminist significance. ‘Whereas it was not a feminist motion within the fashionable sense, its essence lay in ladies developing identification and emotional-support networks inside restricted social areas… a type of quiet resistance and solidarity.’
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Carrying the thread ahead
Li’s favorite Nushu works seize each tenderness and defiance; she is especially keen on works often called ‘Third Day Letters’. These are historically cloth-bound booklets written by a bride’s feminine mates and kinfolk, given to her on the third day after her marriage ceremony. This can be a core a part of the Nushu literary custom, which Li says embodies the deep bond and care amongst ladies.
Li additionally cites the Track of Nushu as a traditional work that expresses ladies’s resistance in opposition to destiny and their profound craving for freedom. Lower than 300 characters lengthy, this poem-song is a lady’s lament of her circumstances and her period, studying: ‘Who says ladies are ineffective? Girls have at all times held up half the sky.’
On Intrepid’s new Southern China Highlights: Hong Kong to Shanghai tour, travellers have an opportunity to go to the Nushu cultural heritage centre within the metropolis of Changsha, the place you’ll meet the dwelling grasp, Li Ailian, study concerning the language and even strive your hand at writing the script your self.
‘Nushu is excess of a writing system; it’s a important vessel for girls’s tradition and spirit,’ says Li. Preserving it’s important for honouring the historic voices of ladies and guaranteeing their legacy continues.’ Travellers on this itinerary change into a part of that by studying firsthand concerning the script’s significance and carrying that legacy again house with them.
Li’s hope is that the script is not going to solely be preserved as cultural heritage but additionally be built-in into fashionable life, serving as a bridge that connects previous and future. Every stroke of ink or sew of thread is imbued with centuries of ladies’s resilience, and a language as soon as written and embroidered privately has begun to talk proudly to the world.
Grasp the artwork of Nushu on Intrepid’s Southern China Highlights: Hong Kong to Shanghai journey and discover out what else is new for 2026 with The Items – a group of recent journeys and experiences to encourage a 12 months of journey.Â
Picture credit: images in Nushu’s fashionable revival gallery by Jessie Yingying Gong.
