Nüshu: China’s Women’s Only Language

Figure 1: Nüshu script (Source: CPA Mediat Pte Ltd/Alamy)

For this closing post of March, of which all posts have been dedicated to Women (in appreciation of Women’s History Month), I want to discuss an aspect of China’s language and culture that you may not be aware of: Nüshu.  This language is technically extinct (as it no longer has any native speakers) but is being revitalized through active participation by various Chinese women, under the sponsorship of the Chinese government.  This post will address the history, purpose, and cultural significance of the Nüshu language.

 

Nüshu translates in Chinese to “women’s script”.  It is just that-a written and possibly previously spoken language that was created and exclusively used by women in the Hunan province of China.  It is believed to have started in the AD 900 and eventually peaked in use between 1644-1911 (during the Qing Dynasty).  It was created by women for the purpose of discussing topics that they were forbidden to discuss openly, allowing them the freedom to express their thoughts without fear of repercussions.  It was used largely among illiterate women, and it was taught and passed down from mother to daughter.  It was also used among close knit groups of women who called themselves “sworn sisters”, a fictive kin network where three to four women swore allegiance to each other and provided support in both good and bad times.    

 

Nüshu is a phonetic script that is read from right to left (a common characteristic of many Asian languages).  It is written with sharp bamboo sticks, typically on paper for letters and journals and on fans, but it was also widely embroidered on clothing, belts, and handkerchiefs.  The script is an elongated style with curved, thin strokes.  The script is so fine in detail that it is often referred to as “mosquito writing,” a designation used to characterize the stylized script. 

 

Women would use this script to communicate in secret amongst themselves, speaking about topics, such as domestic troubles or financial woes, that were considered taboo to discuss among others (or even within families).  This script was therefore an outlet for women to express themselves freely in times when they were otherwise not allowed to.  Women also used Nüshu to compose their own autobiographies or have their daughters compose them on their behalf.  These writings, unfortunately, were often buried with the decedent and are not available to this day.  There are, however, some early artifacts with Nüshu script present on them, which allows scholars the opportunity to study the length of time Nüshu was used.

 

Nüshu was unknown outside of the Hunan province until the mid-1900s.  This was when Zhou Shuoyi learned about the language through an aunt who moved to a village where Nüshu was widely used.  He began studying it, but his work was halted when the Cultural Revolution of China occurred in the 1960s.  At that time the new leadership banned his studies, as well as destroyed his work.  They also destroyed much of the early evidence of Nüshu due to its ties and representations of Imperial Chinese culture. 

 

Despite these efforts, Nüshu remained in existence among a few women, allowing it to be rediscovered by Cathy Silber in 1986.  She began studying the language, as well as brought world wide attention to it.  Between her and Shuoyi’s efforts the language has begun to be revitalized.  In the early 2000s the Chinese government sponsored and opened a series of museums and schools to teach Nüshu to interested individuals, who are largely women.  This effort may very well have saved the language since the last native speaker passed away a few years later (as did Shuoyi).  Today the language is being studied and passed on through a new generation of Nüshu users, and hopefully the revitalization movement will lead to a new renaissance of Nüshu use throughout China.

 

Works Cited

Endangered Alphabets Project. "Nushu." 2018. Atlas of Endangered Alphabets. Electronic. 15 December 2020.

Lofthouse, Andrew. "Nüshu: China's Secret Female-Only Language." 1 October 2020. BBC. Electronic. 15 December 2020.

Xiaorong, Chen. "Nüshu: from tears to sunshine." 2018. The UNESCO Courier. Electronic. 15 December 2020.

 

Something Old, Something Blue: Evidence of Women Scribes in Medieval Europe

Figure 1: Lapis lazuli particles present in Medieval woman's teeth (Source: C. Warriner)

 

Religion was of particular importance throughout Europe during the Medieval period.  Only the most trusted among the devout Church members were employed in composing and illustrating religious texts. Several of these texts have survived to modern day, and they are closely guarded for preservation purposes and studied to gain insights into religious ideals and culture of the Medieval period.  It is well known that Church scribes most often did not sign their work (as that would be a sign of pride, one of the seven deadly sins), but a handful of scribes did.  Of the signatures the majority are attributed to men, and while there were some that were penned by women most scholars assumed that scribe work was almost exclusively a trade for men.  There is, however, growing evidence that shows that women were just as commonly employed as men for such pursuits, and an archaeological study published in 2019 further adds a new dimension to this evidence.  This blog post will discuss this study and what it demonstrates not only about female scribes but advances in archaeological study.

 

In 2011 two women archaeologists began a study on an anonymous woman interred in a women’s monastery cemetery located in Dalheim, Germany.  Aside from the historical and archaeological contexts of the cemetery the archaeologists also confirmed the individual’s sex through osteological and genetic analyses, thereby using multiple lines of evidence to confirm that she was indeed a woman.  The archaeologists initially set out to study the tartar, the yellow substance on teeth left by food residues that hardens into plaque, and plaque, solidified tartar, to answer a series of questions pertaining to life among Medieval nuns, but upon initial examination of the tartar Anita Radini, principal author of the study, was shocked to see blue (Figure 1).  Blue is typically not a color found naturally in tartar and plaque residue, so she felt compelled to investigate the matter further.

 

This avenue of inquiry led to a new area of study, one that has expanded our knowledge of Medieval scribes and dental anthropology methods.  Ultimately, after much investigation, it was determined that the blue particles in the tartar and plaque were from lapis lazuli.  Lapis lazuli was mined in Afghanistan (one of the two countries in the world where it can be mined, with the other being Chile), and it was used exclusively by the most skilled scribes and illustrators because of its cultural value and steep monetary costs.  The team reached out to various other scholars to determine how and why the lapis lazuli particles got into the woman’s mouth, and it was study coauthor, Alison Beach, who identified its origins back to Medieval scribes.  Her work is focused in the role of women scribes in the Medieval period, and her work was instrumental in supporting the conclusion that the lapis lazuli was the result of the woman being employed as a scribe.  The team critically examined and ruled out other possibilities for how and why the lapis lazuli was present in the woman’s mouth, but they could not rule out the scribe hypothesis.  It appears that while she worked she licked her brush, thereby getting the lapis lazuli particles in her mouth and eventually trapped in her tartar and plaque deposits.

 

This is one interesting part of this study, however.  The presence of natural minerals in tartar and plaque also opens up new realms of study within the field of dental anthropology.  Previously such studies of tartar and plaque were used to understand diets and bacteria in the past, but now with the presence of hard minerals in such substance the possibility of understanding past people’s occupations is now open for investigation.  This study, however, is so far one of the first to pursue this line of inquiry.

 

Ultimately, this team made up of mostly women scholars and scientists confirmed the presence of women scribes in the Medieval period.  This contribution expands the historical knowledge of the past, showing that women were not passive but active agents in the creation and dissemination of culture and religion.  This team also identified a new area of study within archaeological and bioarchaeological research, which will allow future investigators more options in understanding the past.

 

Bibliography

Katz, B. (2019, January 10). Blue Pigments in Medieval Woman’s Teeth Suggest She Was a Highly Skilled Artist. Smithsonian Magazine.

Radini, A., Tromp, M., Beach, A., Tong, E., Speller, C., McCormick, C., . . . Warinner, C. (2019). Medieval women’s early involvement in manuscript production suggested by lapis lazuli identification in dental calculus. Science Advances.

Zhang, S. (2019, January 9). Why a Medieval Woman Had Lapis Lazuli Hidden in Her Teeth. The Atlantic.

 

 

Brag on the Rag: The Anthropology of Menstruation

Photo Source: Sarah Ainslie

 

There has been a great deal of anthropological study of gender and all aspects related to gender.  One such area that has been widely studied is menstruation, which has been and can be understood through all four subfields of anthropology.  This blog post is going to take a singular subfield perspective by examining the sociocultural aspects of menstruation.

 

Menstruation is the process in which a woman releases blood and other uterine materials once a month.  Occurring at puberty and ending at menopause menstruation is a key part of a woman’s identity in many cultures.  There are various ways that menstruation has been examined through the sociocultural anthropological lens, and the majority of early study often focused on the negative views, specifically the taboos against menstruation.  There is, indeed, quite a bit of mysticism associated with menstruation and menstrual blood.  In many cultures, including our own American and Westernized cultures, menstruation is viewed as a poisonous, dangerous, and disruptive time.  Cultural ideals connect menstrual blood with being able to poison or castrate men, thereby leading to taboos against sexual intercourse during menstruation.  Menstruation is also associated with lunacy, hysteria, and insanity in women, and any strong emotional response in women is often linked to menstruation (e.g., Donald Trump’s disparaging menstrual-inspired statements against Megyn Kelley during the 2016 Presidential Debates).  Women have also been sequestered and isolated during menstruation because of their power and ability to harm men and disrupt everyday life.

 

The negative views of menstruation are quite commonplace in the anthropological literature.  They remain appropriately at the center of many human rights discussions today since girls and women are unfairly taken out of society due to their inability to secure and use appropriate menstrual products.  This leads to a net loss of income and educational attainment for girls, women, and their families, particularly harming single girls and women with families most.  Many anthropologists and human rights advocates are using their platforms to call out these injustices and advocate on behalf of girls and women in the form of receiving necessary menstrual products, as well as driving down the monetary costs and stigma surrounding menstruation.

 

There is, however, another side to menstruation that is more recently being touched on by anthropologists: how menstruation is celebrated across cultures.  Anthropologists have noticed a trend where more positive views of menstruation occur where and when menstruation is not as frequent, a result of longer periods of breastfeeding and/or more frequent pregnancies.  As a result menstruation is viewed favorably and associated with women’s power.  Women as child bearers are viewed as a link between the supernatural realms between the living and the dead, resulting in women being elevated in status.

 

There are various examples of how menstrual huts, often viewed as a means of removing girls and women from society, are actually places of sisterhood and bonding among women.  Several cultural groups use menstrual huts as places where women can relax as they are not expected to work or cater to their husband’s needs (often times the only time they get to do so).  Others use menstrual huts as places to educate girls about sex, pregnancy, conception, and child birth.  Ultimately, there is also the situation that as women’s menstrual cycles link up and they menstruate at or about the same time they gather together in the menstrual huts to reconnect with each other, create and foster friendships, and more. 

 

Also, girls who have their first menstruation are often celebrated in various cultural groups.  This event is seen as a natural rite of initiation, marking a girl transitioning to womanhood.  Various cultural groups celebrate this transition with complex rituals and community celebrations.  This trend has begun to take shape here in the US with the growing “period parties” trend, which are parties tied to a girl’s first period.

 

Ultimately, the anthropological perspectives of menstruation show that this is a natural phenomenon that happens among women across the globe, but that the cultural perspectives, rituals, views, beliefs, and more all vary.  There are definitely challenges that have and continue to exist for women, challenges specifically related to menstruation, but there are also victories and ways that this process is used to uplift rather than degrade women.  Through the anthropological lens we can gain a better understanding of menstruation and what it means to be human.

 

Works Cited

Brink, Susan. "Some Cultures Treat Menstruation With Respect." NPR 11 August 2015. Electronic.

Gil, Natalie. "This Is What Periods Look Like For Women Around The World." 12 April 2019. Refinery29. Electronic. 14 December 2020.

Hoskins, Janet. "Blood Mysteries: Beyond Menstruation as Pollution." Ethnology (2002): 299-301. Print.

Martin, Wednesday. "Menstruation: The View from Anthropology." Psychology Today 5 August 2013. Electronic.

Power, Camilla. "If the body isn't sacred, nothing is: why menstrual taboos matter ." The Guardian 11 February 2017. Electronic.