ABSTRACT
These are the words that lead into the opening credits of Yue-Qing Yang's film, Nu Shu: A Hidden Language of Women in China. Completed as an independent production, the film celebrates the unique language system created and used exclusively by Chinese women in Hunan province. For several centuries, and perhaps even a millennium, these women in southern China communicated with each other in a script that only they could understand. This "secret" script was called Nu Shu. "Nu" means "women," and "shu" means "writing" – thus "women's writing." Nu Shu was revolutionary on a number of levels. As a language, Nu Shu represented a completely new system: it was syllabic, whereas Chinese (Nan Shu, or men's writing) was pictographic. Nu Shu also signified the revolution of women against male dominance, and of the Southern Yao people against the Northern Confucian Han Chinese culture.1
