NYU-Shu (女书, "female writing»)

NYU-Shu (女书, "female writing") is recognized as the only writing system in the world that was created and used exclusively by women. It originated among peasant women living in the Xiao river valley, which crosses Jiangyong County in Hunan province, and whose culture is characterized by a combination of Yao and Han elements.

Written signs of NYU-Shu originate from Chinese characters, but instead of square outlines, they acquire filamentous oblique lines of diamond shape. Adapted to the local dialect, the signs consist of four main elements: point and vertical, oblique, and arcuate lines.
In Imperial China, the education of women was ignored, literacy was very low, few of them knew Nan-Shu — "male writing", that is, Chinese writing. The exact time of the appearance of NYU-Shu is unknown, many simplifications of hieroglyphs used in NYU-Shu appeared during the song and yuan dynasties (XIII—XIV centuries). Probably, this writing reached its peak in the second half of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).

Many monuments to nu-Shu were destroyed in the 1930s when China was occupied by the Japanese, as well as by the hongweibin during the Cultural revolution; women who used it were persecuted. The researcher of this writing, Zhou Shoi, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for his academic interest in nu-Shu.
The girls were taught Nui-Shu by their mothers and sisters, and when they learned, they exchanged letters. Most often, NYU-Shu was used to write seven — or, less often, five-syllable poems. Traditional literary forms-autobiographies, letters, prayers, folk songs, fairy tales. The inscription was usually turned into part of the ornament.

After the 1949 revolution, literacy became available to women, and the need for the use of NYU-Shu disappeared. During the Cultural revolution, thousands of NYU-Shu monuments were destroyed. After Yang Yueqing created a documentary about the nu-Shu, the Chinese government began to encourage the study and preservation of this ancient script.

The first artifact that testifies to the existence of nu-Shu is a bronze coin found in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province. It was minted in the era of the Heavenly state of great prosperity (1851-1864). It is an insurgent state, famous for carrying out important social reforms and adopting, to a certain extent, a policy of gender equality. The coin is engraved with an inscription of eight characters NYU-Shu, which means " All women living under this sky belong to the same family."
According to Zhao Liming, a Professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University, Nui-Shu is not just writing, but a whole traditional Chinese female culture. She was like a sunbeam, making women's lives warmer and more pleasant. "NYU-Shu allowed women to Express themselves and fight male chauvinism," says Leeming. Leeming explains that it was customary for women to gather together, embroider and sing songs written in NYU-Shu. Indeed, NYU-Shu texts are found both on paper and on fans, as well as on embroideries on clothes, handkerchiefs and belts. "Every jiangyong woman wrote her own biography," Zhao Liming continues. "And who could not write, appealed to literate women. So, daughters wrote biographies of their mothers after their death."
"The content of the works of NYU-Shu was inspired by the daily lives of women: wedding, family, social communication, jokes, songs, riddles. They constitute a substantial body of texts about folk traditions and are of great value for research conducted in linguistics, etymology, archaeology, anthropology and other fields of Humanities and social studies, " explains Zhao Liming, who has studied nu-Shu for thirty years.
"Women used their own writing to share their innermost, comfort each other, tell about their misfortunes or Express admiration, and thus created their own little Paradise for the soul," explains Zhao Liming. "Tianguang (heavenly light) is a word that often POPs up in their works. It gave them courage and helped them through difficulties and to move the test. They continued to strive for sunlight even when their eyes were clouded with tears."
On September 20, 2004, the death of the centenarian Yang Huani, one of the most famous writers and the last of the guardians of the Nui Shu culture, ushered in a new era – post-Nui Shu.

With her death, the threat of NYU-Shu's disappearance and the need to preserve it drew particular attention from the local authorities. Thus, in 2002, NYU-Shu was listed in the national register of documentary heritage of China. Since 2003, classes have been organized in Jiangyong County to teach women the culture of Nui Shu. And in 2006, the State Council listed nu-Shu as the state intangible cultural heritage of China.