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Secret female language is preserved by a man
Deep in the south of China's Hunan province, in a rural village just beyond the steeps of lush, green mountains, lives a small, elderly man who is the keeper of an ancient, enigmatic language used only by women.
Behind him, on the walls of Zhou's cramped living room, are scrolls he has written in a mysterious script consisting of characters made up of soft dots and simple, elegant strokes.
How Zhou came to know Nushu, the language Chinese linguists believe is the only script in the world exclusively used by women, is a serendipity of two separate but intermingling fates.
In the 1920s, Zhou's aunt was married off to a young man in a neighbouring village. With her she took the family etiquette book -- which for centuries had taught Zhou brides proper and becoming manners in front of their new husbands and in-laws.
The women in the aunt's new family were Nushu speakers and, pleased with the book, they translated it from Chinese. On subsequent visits home, the aunt showed the language to her mother and father and the then-12-year-old Zhou.
"I thought the characters were beautiful," Zhou recalled, his breathing wheezy with his 79 years.
Zhou began officially researching the language at the Jiangyong Cultural Bureau in 1954. But like so many Chinese of his generation, his life was changed forever by Mao Zedong's 1960s Cultural Revolution, when communist fervour boiled over into mindless witch hunts and collective violence.
"I was labeled a 'rightist' because of the research I had done on the language," Zhou said with a humourless chuckle.
"They burned all of my research files and I was sent to the labor camp and wasn't released until 1979, after spending 21 years there."
At that time, ruling communist party leaders were intent on erasing the country's history to build an entirely "new China" with no connection to its feudal past or traditions.
Nushu was deemed feudal and anyone associated with the language was denounced.
Nobody dared to use or learn the language and women who could speak and write Nushu broke with tradition, failing to pass it on to their daughters and sisters, Zhou said.
Further contributing to the language's demise was its reduced usefulness as more women began to receive formal education following the civil war victory in 1949.
Six weeks ago the death of Yang Huanyi -- the lone survivor of a generation of women who were bequeathed by their mothers and sisters the centuries-old Nushu lexicon -- marked the passing of a cultural phenomenon.
For years, Yang, who was in her 90s, was the last native speaker of the language once used among women in the mountainous, rural areas of central and southern China.
Nushu, which means women's script in Chinese, is believed to have originated in secluded Jiangyong and the surrounding area of villages that make up the county. It is also found in southern Guangxi province, its border only 50 kilometres (31 miles) from Zhou's hometown.
Scholarly estimates on the age of the script range from 150 to 2,000 years. Exclusively female scripts have appeared in Japan and Korea but were eventually integrated into the main language. Curiously Nushu never was, said Zhao Liming, an expert at Tsinghua University. Whatever Nushu's origins, it is certain that the fairer sex -- then bound to a life of inequality in feudal China -- used it to secretly share hopes and fears, grief and happiness, without provoking men's misgivings. Because the words are usually sung and not spoken, women were able to secretly exchange news and gossip. They also inscribed their poems and stories on scrolls and traditional bamboo books and by embroidering handkerchiefs. Most of the Nushu songs, like the one hanging on Zhou's wall bemoan the unfairness and suffering of women's lives. Today few original examples of Nushu art exist as most were buried or burned with their owners as tradition then mandated. Others were lost in the turbulence of the 1960s. In 1981, Zhou wrote an article about Nushu, effectively re-introducing the language to China and succeeding in garnering national attention from students and academics in China, Italy, France, Germany and the United States. Last year he published Nushu's first dictionary, which includes some 1,800 characters, and in nearby Shangjiangxu village some 30 girls now take informal classes. "Men are allowed to go to the school, but there just aren't any men going," Zhou said wryly.
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