Quiet communication

One evening in 2021,22-year-old Rosie was scrolling through short videos to seek inspiration for her art designs.

Suddenly, a song in an unfamiliar language played through her headphones. She could not understand the lyrics but found herself moved to tears.

Back in 1993, Feng Jingsan, who collects cultural items, stumbled upon a bronze coin dating to the 19th century in an antique market. The coin was engraved with eight unusual, willow leaf-shaped characters, whose meaning he could not make out.

Their shared curiosity led both Rosie and Feng to discover an extraordinary language — nyushu, the world's only gender-specific script of its kind, created by and for women. The unique writing system can be traced to Puwei island of Jiangyong county, Central China's Hunan province.

Rosie, who goes by her artistic name, eventually learned that the song she heard was about a woman confiding in friends about the struggles of marriage and family life.

Feng, meanwhile, deciphered the coin's inscription as: "All women under the sun are sisters".

Though the exact origins of nyushu are unclear, several villages in Jiangyong, among the Han and Yao ethnic communities, are recognized as being crucial to its preservation and development.

Historically, literacy in China was largely reserved for men and women were often denied access to formal education. Women who were formally educated typically came from the urban elite.

The content of nyushu works are mainly drawn from women's everyday lives — marriage, family, social interactions, anecdotes, songs and riddles. Through a set of codes that were incomprehensible to men, the special language allowed many women to communicate freely, sharing their innermost feelings through songs, poetry and secret letters to one another.

As modernization swept across China and more women were able to access education, the relevance of nyushu dwindled.

When nyushu began to garner more attention in the early 1980s, with only two elderly women could be found to write it proficiently, the script teetered on the brink of obscurity.

The death of centenarian Yang Huanyi in 2004 marked the start of a post-nyushu era. Yang was considered the last of the nyushu users raised amid its cultural backdrop, practicing it in daily life.

But the script's decline also drew attention across various fields. Nyushu workshops in Jiangyong sparked renewed interest, introducing more people to the cultural treasure. In 2006, the State Council listed nyushu as national intangible cultural heritage. A nyushu museum was established on Puwei island in May 2002, further preserving it for future generations.

Nyushu is now finding new resonance among a generation of young women. Through exhibitions, field trips and community building, they are breathing new life into the unique language and transforming it from a cultural relic into a vibrant symbol of modern female expression.

Reviving language

Two years ago, Rosie met Hu Xin, now 36, who helped promote nyushu at the museum in Puwei. Hu is the youngest designated inheritor of the script, following support from the authorities to help preserve it. In 2000, Hu, her mother and her sisters attended evening classes to learn nyushu. Hu subsequently became a guide at the museum.

"When I started working at the museum 15 years ago, nyushu was so niche that even many local women didn't know about it," Hu recalled, noting how challenging it was to learn the language from scratch.

She had to memorize two to three characters each day from a dictionary compiled by researchers before the last native users died.

Hu's favorite line in nyushu poetry is, "Men are said to have great ambition, but women are just as excellent."

She said she believes the revival of nyushu is deeply tied to the idea of "women's empowerment", championed by young women like Rosie.

When Rosie was preparing for her degree exhibition at the Cambridge School of Art under the UK's Anglia Ruskin University, her desire to delve deeper into nyushu and bring it into contemporary art led her to Puwei island for field research.

"Setting foot on the rich land of Jiangyong, I finally understood why so many nyushu songs celebrate nature," Rosie said.