A centuries-old secret script called nüshu is empowering young Chinese women

BEIJING (AP) — Chen Yulu never thought her home province of Hunan had any culture that she would be proud of, much less become an ambassador of.

But these days, the 23-year-old is a self-proclaimed ambassador of nüshu, a script once known only to a small number of women in the south China.

It started as a writing practiced in secrecy by women who were barred from formal education in Chinese. Now, young people like Chen are spreading nüshu beyond the women’s quarters of houses in Hunan’s rural Jiangyong, the county whose distinct dialect serves as the script’s verbal component.

Today, nüshu can be found in independent bookstores across the country, subway ads, craft fair booths, tattoos, art and even everyday items like hair clips.

Nüshu was created by women from a small village in Jiangyong, in the southern province where Mao Zedong was born, but there’s little consensus on when it originated. Scholars estimate the script is at least several centuries old, from when reading and writing were deemed male-only activities. So the women developed their own script to communicate with each other.

The script is slight with gently curving characters, written with a diagonal slant that takes up much less space than boxy modern Chinese with its harsh angles.

“You won’t allow me to go to school. Okay, I get it. So what’s my way out? I’ll find ways to educate myself,” said Xu Yan, 55, the author of a textbook on nüshu.

Women lived under the control of either their parents or their husband, using nüshu, sometimes called “script of tears,” in secret to record their sorrows: unhappy marriages, family conflicts, and longing for sisters and daughters who married and could not return in the restrictive society.

Xu is also the founder of