Gendered Words

Gendered Words
Gendered Words
Sentiments and Expression in Changing
Rural China
fei-wen liu
1
1
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Liu, Fei-wen.
Gendered words : sentiments and expression in changing rural China / Fei-wen Liu.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978–0–19–021040–3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Language and sex—China. 2. Chinese
language—Sex differences. 3. Chinese language—Terms and phrases. 4. Chinese language—
Foreign elements. 5. Grammar, Comparative and general—Gender. 6. Figures of speech.
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To those who stand strong, maintain their integrity,
hold tight to an optimistic mindset in the face of life’s
challenges, and share stories to inspire one another.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
CHAPTER 1 Discovery and Encounter 1

CHAPTER 2 Text and Practice 17
CHAPTER 3 Tang Baozhen: I Sing and Therefore I Am and
Become 44
CHAPTER 4 He Yanxin: Calling and Recalling the Sentiments
of Nüshu 77
CHAPTER 5 Hu Xinkui: Child Bride, Party Cadre,
Housewife 132
CHAPTER 6 Hu Meiyue: Crossroads of Tradition
and Modernity 169
CHAPTER 7 Conclusions: Subjectivity, Expression
and Prospects 202
Appendix 1 Widowhood in Local Gazetteers 215

Appendix 2 Literacy, Gender, and Class 217
Appendix 3 Dialogic Lamentation with the Bride 221
Glossary 223
References 231
Index 243
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
D oing fieldwork is a journey of adventure, full of challenges and surprising

pleasures. It is a grand opportunity to explore different ways of life and the
complexity of mindsets, to wonder at the nuance of human emotions, one’s
own resilience and optimism in the face of life’s ordeals, and above all, to enjoy
the embrace of love and friendships. The love and friendship I received in the
field have inspired me and bolstered my efforts to continue unearthing the
social, political, cultural, and historical implications of nüshu as an endangered
cultural heritage in contemporary society.
Thanks to Yang Renli 楊仁里, the then-director of the Nationality Commit-
tee of Jiangyong, who helped me settle in the spare house of the head of
Heyuan Village, He Wenxiang 何文祥, an arrangement that spared me from
being supervised by an official representative or cadre as I conducted inter-
views in the village. This not only granted me freedom in directing my own
research; it also allowed me to establish trust and rapport with local women. I
believe that it was my destiny to meet He Yanxin and Wu Longyu, who became
my sworn sisters during my 1993 fieldwork. Yanxin and Longyu uncondition-
ally supported me in every way they could, emotionally and academically. Al-
though Jiangyong has undergone nothing less than a sea change in the last
twenty years, they assure me that I always have a home there.
Enjoying the close friendship and assistance of Zhou Gongming and Tan
Yuting all these years has also been a treat. They often accompanied me on
trips between villages for field interviews and then helped me transcribe them.
No matter how bored they might be during interviews, they patiently kept me
company—“to help and protect,” they said. I still marvel at my great good for-
tune in getting to know them. I am also greatly indebted to all the women who
were willing to have conversations with me and even share their stories. The
varied life histories and writings I was able to discover, read, and contemplate
fascinated me and moved me deeply. Of course, without pioneering colleagues
who led the way on research into Chinese “women’s script,” I would never have
ix
got access to works by Hu Cizhu, Gao Yinxian, Yi Nianhua, and their now
anonymous predecessors.
This work has also benefited from the constructive advice and comments
of many teachers, colleagues, and friends. I especially owe a debt of gratitude
to Susan Wadley (my forever mentor), Marwyn Samuels, Michael Freedman,
Deborah Pellow, Norman Kutcher, and Ann Gold in the United States, whose
advice and support helped me become a professional scholar; Tang Xiaofeng
唐曉峰, Guo Zhan 郭旃, He Jiejun 何介鈞, Yuan Jiarong 袁家榮, Gong Ting
宮婷, and Chen Feng 陳峰 from mainland China, without whom my 1992–93
fieldwork in Jiangyong would not have been possible; and Huang Shu-min
黃樹民, Huang Ying-kuei 黃應貴, Chu Ruey-ling 朱瑞玲, Ho Tsui-ping
何翠萍, Heidi Fung 馮涵棣, Teri J. Silvio, Guo Pei-yi 郭佩宜, Lu Hsin-chun
呂心純, Peng Jen-yu 彭仁郁, Kuo Yu-i 郭昱沂, Hsieh Chia-kuen 謝嘉錕, Chou
Chen 周震, Yu Chuan-chiang 余雋江, Grace Ho 何鳳儀, and Joanna Chou
周玲嬌 in Taiwan, who have not only provided me with their insights but also
prodded me to advance further. Last but not the least, I wish to acknowledge
my Buddhist Master Lee Sun-Don 李善單, who has instructed me to always
watch for the phenomena beyond phenomena, to look for kindness and inspi-
ration in all existence, whether it be suffering or blessing.
A project of this nature, lasting now for more than two decades, could not
have been accomplished without the generous support of funding agencies:
Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Syracuse University,
Harvard-Yenching Institute at Harvard University, Taiwan’s National Science
Council, and my home institution, the Institute of Ethnology at Academia
Sinica In Taiwan. With their support, I was able to conduct fieldwork on an
almost yearly basis and work with a number of research assistants: Chao
Yu-shen 趙育伸, Ye Yi-ling 葉怡伶, Yang Huan-hong 楊煥鴻, Chen Jing-fang
陳靜芳, Liu Ying-ying 劉盈盈, and many others.
Parts of this book have appeared previously in the following publications:
“The Confrontation between Fidelity and Fertility: Nüshu, Nüge and Peasant
Women’s Conceptions of Widowhood in Jiangyong County, Hunan Province,
China,” Journal of Asian Studies 60(4):1051–1084; “From Being to Becoming:
Nüshu and Sentiments in a Chinese Rural Community,” American Ethnologist
31(3):422–439; “Literacy, Gender, and Class: Nüshu and Sisterhood Communi-
ties in Southern Rural Hunan,” Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in Early and
Imperial China 6(2):241–282; “Narrative, Genre, and Contextuality: The Nüshu-
Transcribed Liang-Zhu Ballad in Rural South China,” Asian Ethnology
69(2):241–264; “Text, Practice, and Life Narrative: Bridal Lamentation and a
Daughter’s Filial Piety in Changing Rural China,” Modern China 37(5):498–527;
“Expressive Depths: Dialogic Performance of Bridal Lamentation in Rural
South China,” Journal of American Folklore 125(496):204–225. All this material
has been revised for this book. I am also grateful for the permission granted by
the Yuan-Dao Guanyin Temple and the Museum of the Institute of Ethnology
at Academia Sinica in Taiwan for using the images of their nüshu collections.
| Acknowledgments
x
The manuscript of this book benefited from the attention of my copy editor,
Terre Fisher, who polished my English and offered comments on how to en-
hance the poetic quality of my nüshu translations. I am also most grateful to
my editor Hallie Stebbins at Oxford University Press, who gave me extra time
while I was in deep mourning for my mother to complete the manuscript.
I am grateful to my parents, my in-laws, and my brother and sister for their
love and support, morally and financially, through the years. No words can ad-
equately express my appreciation for the everlasting companionship of my
husband, Wei-zen, throughout this entire journey. He not only accompanied
me on many of my field trips; he has always been the first reader of whatever I
have written. He knows how to bring out the best in me and yet challenges me
constantly to transcend myself—to think more comprehensively, more
humanistically.
I am truly wealthy and deeply blessed.
Acknowledgments | xi
Gendered Words
CHAPTER 1 Discovery and Encounter
How many beautiful women die sad;

How many of them shed tears throughout their lives?
Women have been suppressed for so long,
And yet no one takes pity on them.
They can only rely on nüshu [women’s script],
Using nüshu to relate all in detail, starting from the beginning.
We read nüshu
Not for power, not for fame,
But because we suffer.
We need nüshu to lament our grievances and our bitterness. (Gong
1991:246–247)
多少紅顏薄命死 / 多少終身血淚流 / 女人過去受壓迫 / 世間並無疼惜人
只有女書做得好 / 一二從頭寫分明 / 新華女子讀女書 / 不為當官不為名
只為女人受盡苦 / 要憑女書訴苦情
when i read these lines for the first time, I was deeply moved and also
amazed. I was moved by women’s urge and determination to write and their
protest at the fact that “no one takes pity on them.” I was amazed because this
forceful accusation came from a woman of the peasant class, who, like most
women born in traditional China, was denied access to education. Since she
did not know official Chinese hanzi 漢字 characters, she wrote instead using a
script of local women’s own invention, a script that men could not understand,
called nüshu 女書 ‘women’s writing’. Nüshu was developed and circulated
among women in Jiangyong 江永 County of Hunan Province, a Confucian,
androcentric rural community in South China. For centuries, Jiangyong
women have used nüshu to write sisterhood letters, wedding missives, worship
verses, biographical laments, folk stories, and other narratives in verse form.
This female-specific writing system has allowed rural women to forge social
ties beyond kinship, to share self-reflective commentaries on society, and to
express their frustration at circumstances they have no choice but to accept.
Through nüshu, the women of Jiangyong celebrate the female virtues of
diligence, resilience, and perseverance, and they expand one another’s life-
worlds as they read the stories of others.
Its female-specificity has brought nüshu the reputation of being women’s
“secret” writing—a weapon of empowerment, if not resistance. But this is a
misunderstanding, or at best wishful thinking on the part of those who sym-
pathize at women’s structured subordination within patriarchal Chinese
social systems. The fact is that, in rural Jiangyong, nüshu was widely visible—
and also audible, because though its texts are written, nüshu must be pre-
sented by chanting or singing. This combination of singing and writing, on
the one hand, provides a heuristic contrast with the local women’s singing
tradition, called nüge 女歌 ‘women’s songs’; quite possibly nüshu was devel-
oped from this longstanding song heritage. On the other hand, its sung aspect
opened nüshu to those who were unversed in the women’s script, including
men. Even so, men paid scant attention to women’s sung performances; they
made no effort either to hold back the circulation of nüshu texts or to become
literate in the script and understand what their women had to say. As a result,
sadly, nüshu stands as evidence of women’s failure to gain recognition from
men. Not a single entry on this distinctive women’s script appears in the male-
controlled historical works such as local gazetteers. The centuries-old script
thus remained unknown to the outside world up to the 1980s, just as it was
fading away.
Nüshu’s lack of recognition can be attributed to three interrelated cultural
values embedded in China’s mainstream historiographical tradition: an andro-
centric gender ideology, a morally oriented definition of personhood, and the
marginalization of sung performance. Within this tradition, women’s “inner
quarters” (Ebrey 1993) were deemed inappropriate for the public gaze unless
what went on there somehow either exemplified or jeopardized social mores.
A woman’s life, for example, was recorded in Jiangyong’s historical gazetteers
only when it demonstrated some act of martyrdom or the virtue of chastity.
Nüshu was not intended for moral proclamation but instead was a genre dedi-
cated to “lamenting one’s misery” (su kelian 訴可憐 or su kuqing 訴苦情, liter-
ally ‘lamenting grievance’ and ‘bitterness’), as is plainly stated in the verse that
opens this chapter. Such lamentations were often amplified and brought to the
fore in sung performance, instead of being tempered or curbed. Singing, with
its overt expression of emotion, has long been “excluded from the forum of
poetry and gone unmentioned by scholars and men of letters.”1 Nüshu, a peas-
ant women’s lamentation-driven sung expression, was accordingly dismissed
by Chinese scholar officials as trivial and vulgar, and any “feminist messages”
(Radner 1993) encoded in centuries-old nüshu remained concealed and
obscured.
1
This view goes back some centuries: Here the Ming literary critic Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 (1574–1645)
notes it in the preface to his collection Mountain Songs (Shan’ge 山歌).
| Gendered Words
2
Still, the very qualities that meant nüshu was dismissed (along with its yet-to-
be-decoded feminist messages) are what makes this tradition significant to con-
temporary scholarship, especially the fields of gender studies, the anthropology
of emotions, literature and performance, and last but not the least, Chinese
studies. What drove these women to write, what did they pursue by writing, and
to what ends were their sentimental discourses aimed? How did they define
themselves as a collective social self and as dignified individuals? How does
nüshu provide agency to subjects who have been silenced by history? Also per-
tinent but currently unexplored, what are the expressive limits of nüshu, or, put
another way, what are the pitfalls of relying only on nüshu to reconstruct wom-
en’s lifeworlds? Finally, with nüshu now on the verge of extinction, how has the
politics of salvaging this cultural heritage molded its poetics in contemporary
society? All these questions look toward the cultural depths of nüshu practices,
and the sense and sensibilities of peasant women that I explore in this book.
Discovering Nüshu
The discovery of nüshu was entirely unexpected. In 1982 a junior Chinese

scholar, Gong Zhebing 宮哲兵, arrived in Jianghua 江華 County to conduct
research on local minorities. There, he was told by a male cadre (Communist
Party official) about a women’s script that his deceased maternal aunt, who had
lived in Jiangyong, the county next to Jianghua, had known and used. In-
trigued, Gong immediately went to Jiangyong. But his investigation did not go
smoothly at first because Jiangyong’s younger generations had not learned the
script, and even the older ones had almost forgotten how to use it, for they had
not practiced it since the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when nüshu was
condemned as a “witch’s script.” Finally, with the aid of Zhou Shuoyi 周碩沂
(1926–2006), a cadre retired from the Jiangyong Cultural Bureau, Gong found
a piece of blue cloth inscribed with nüshu. It contained the biographical lament
of a peasant woman named He Xijing 何西靜 of Baishui 白水 Village. But
Xijing was not the writer of the piece; it was in fact written by a woman from
another village, Hu Cizhu 胡慈珠 (c. 1905–1976, hereafter Cizhu) of Getan
葛覃 Village (Gong 1991).
Cizhu had been dead for several years, so the problem became how to find
other women who could write nüshu. Following leads provided by Cizhu’s
daughter, Gong Zhebing and Zhou Shuoyi located their first informant, Gao
Yinxian 高銀仙 (1902–1990, hereafter Gao) in Puwei 浦尾 Village, and
through Gao’s social network, they met Yi Nianhua 義年華 (1907–1991, here-
after Yi) in Tongkou 桐口 Village. Their discovery soon attracted national and
international attention, and many scholars arrived in Jiangyong to take a
deeper look. In the 1980s, these included Zhao Liming 趙麗明, Xie Zhimin
謝志民 (1933–2010), Chen Qiguang 陳其光, William Chiang, and Cathy
Silber. I myself joined the line of nüshu researchers in Jiangyong when I ar-
rived there in the early 1990s.
discovery and encounter | 3

Jiangyong
Situated near the borders of Hunan, Guangxi, and Guangdong, Jiangyong has
long been a marginal region in Chinese history; this partially explains why
nüshu as a hanzi-heterology could continue to be practiced there and remain
unknown to the culture at large. Surrounded by mountain ranges nearly 2,000
meters high, Jiangyong sits between two macroregions: the Yangzi River
region (to which upper Jiangyong is connected via its tributary the Xiaoshui
瀟水) and the Pearl River region (to which lower Jiangyong is connected via the
Taoshui 桃水). Ethnically, Jiangyong may also be seen as a boundary zone
where Han 漢 Chinese and members of the Yao 瑤 nationality both reside. A
mass migration of Han Chinese from the north entered the Hunan region
during the seventh century c.e., which led to the Sinicization of the indigenous
Yao inhabitants. The Yao were then recognized as two types: unsinicized
groups living in the mountains and in lower Jiangyong, and the Sinicized
groups living together with the immigrant Han in upper Jiangyong.2 Upper
Jiangyong, especially the area along the Xiaoshui, is where nüshu circulated
and is the geographic locus of this research, including the townships of
Shangjiangxu 上江墟, Chengguan 城關 (the county seat, also called Xiaopu
瀟浦), Huangjialing 黃甲嶺, and Tongshanling 銅山嶺 Farm, together with a
few villages adjacent to Jiangyong but belonging to the jurisdiction of Dao 道
County, such as Tianguangdong 田廣洞 Village.
Communities in upper Jiangyong were structured after the Han Confucian
patriarchal complex, characterized by patrilineality, patrilocal village exogamy,
and a village-based agrarian economy. Under this androcentric social structure,
gender relations were regulated according to the sancong 三從 ‘thrice-following’
doctrine, in which a woman has no autonomy because her social identity, legal
status, and economic entitlements are all derived from men—namely, her father,
husband, and sons. In this setting, women were defined as “inner” or “domes-
tic” persons, and largely proscribed from the “outer” or “public” domains
reserved for males. This also meant that women did not need to take on subsis-
tence responsibilities such as working in the fields and cultivating rice, except in
extremely poor families. Since footbinding was prevalent in the area, unmarried
girls in particular spent most of their time doing needlework with peers in the
upstairs chamber of a house; in Jiangyong girls were referred to as ‘upstairs girls’
(loushang nü 樓上女). While doing needlework, they not only discussed the
colors and patterns of their handicrafts, they also sang nüshu or nüge. As this is
described in one local gazetteer, “By singing, they rid themselves of physical fa-
tigue and maintain high spirits” (Yongming xianzhi 1846, 3:9).
2
Han people and the unsinicized Yao differed in two major ways. Economically, the Han practiced
intensive agricultural cultivation, while the Yao in Jiangyong adopted a slash-and-burn subsistence
strategy together with hunting and gathering. In terms of social structure, while Confucian
patrilineal and patriarchal principles dominated the Han cultural configuration, the gender hierarchy
was much more relaxed and women in general enjoyed more power and authority in Yao society
(Jiangyong xianzhi 1995).
| Gendered Words
4
While Confucian agrarian androcentrism anchored Jiangyong’s social
structure, Yao cultural practices were pervasive in villagers’ daily lives. These
included the worship of panhu 盤瓠 (a giant gourd), participating in ritual sis-
terhood (or sworn sisterhood), weaving cotton straps, and engaging in singing
traditions. The practice of delaying patrilocal residence, known as buluofujia
不落夫家 ‘not falling into the husband’s house’, whereby a married woman
does not move into her husband’s household until she is about to deliver her
first baby, may also be Yao in origin.3
Through interaction with Han culture, some Yao practices were trans-
formed to align more closely with Confucian patriarchal principles, especially
the gender ideologies. Buluofujia, for example, did not forbid Yao women from
taking lovers before moving into their husbands’ homes, but among Sinicized
Yao such extramarital relationships were never allowed. The singing tradition
is another example. Yao are well known for singing shan’ge 山歌 ‘mountain
songs’, through which young people flirt with the opposite sex or find partners.
But in upper Jiangyong, where arranged marriage was the norm, women were
not supposed to perform this genre because it violated female decency. Influ-
enced by Confucian teachings that women should be reserved and restrained,
Sinicized Yao and Han Chinese women in upper Jiangyong enjoyed instead
the singing traditions of nüshu and nüge. They could sing nüshu and nüge to
lament or entertain themselves, but never for flirting.
After Liberation in 1949, the new marriage law and socio-economic reforms
negated the authority of certain traditions. For instance, concubinage, bond-
servants, and the landlord class were abolished; restrictions on village and sur-
name exogamy were also relaxed, so it was no longer taboo for a woman to
marry to a fellow villager. In the past two decades, the village economy and
social formation have undergone considerable further changes. Many adoles-
cents and young couples now leave home for jobs in coastal cities, and only the
elderly and children remain in the village. Moreover, since gender interactions
between young people are now acceptable, romantic love has become more
popular than the traditional practice of arranged marriage. The practice of bu-
luofujia has also gradually faded away since the 1990s. What remains persis-
tent in rural Jiangyong is the dominance of patrilineality, patrilocality, and the
sancong doctrine with its associated ideology of son preference.
Doing Fieldwork in China
As a Taiwanese anthropologist who pursued a Ph.D. in the United States, I took

my first trip to China in 1992, not long after the cultural, economic, and political
exchanges between Taiwan and China had resumed. Communications across
3
Buluofujia was also practiced in parts of Fujian and Guangdong provinces (Friedman 2006; Hu
Pu’an 1986; Lin 1964; Siu 1990; Stockard 1989). See Yip (1999) for an excellent review and
comparative analysis of the buluofujia practices of Han Chinese and other ethnic groups.

the Taiwan Strait had been cut off since 1949 as a result of political antagonism
between Taiwan’s Kuomintang Party and China’s Communist Party. It was not
until after martial law had been lifted by the Kuomintang in 1987 that Taiwan-
ese visits to China became possible. Some traveled to China as tourists or to do
business, while others (especially those who had followed Chiang Kai-shek’s
troops to Taiwan around 1949) returned to visit family—parents, wives, and
children—for the first time in 40 years. There were also visits to engage in po-
litical dialogue and social observation. Suddenly, communications between
Taiwan and mainland China had heated up. It was in this period that I first
went to China to undertake fieldwork in Jiangyong.
Back then, Jiangyong was still a ‘not-open county’ (wei kaifang xian 未開放縣),
which meant that foreigners, Taiwanese included, were not allowed to stay there
overnight unless they had permission from military, cultural, and police bureau-
cracies at the county, regional or municipal (a county’s supervising unit), and
provincial levels. The first time I applied, I was given permission to stay for only
three months, in part because of my Taiwanese identity and in part because of my
intention to do long-term fieldwork instead of making a short-term family visit.
With Taiwanese-Chinese communications just reopened and many regulations
unclear, most people preferred to act conservatively. When, a couple of months
later, I applied for a second visit, I was lucky enough to get a nine-month permit.
In light of these constraints, my first Jiangyong fieldwork was divided into two
phases: a preliminary investigation (from November to December 1992), in the
course of which I conducted interviews with local officials and traveled between
villages to get a sense of the place, and a long-term field residence from April to
December 1993.
First Encounter
When I arrived in Jiangyong in November 1992, it had been exactly ten years
since nüshu had been discovered and made known to the outside world. By the
time of my arrival, the key nüshu women identified by scholars in the 1980s,
mainly Gao and Yi, had already passed away. Just as the world was about to
mourn the extinction of nüshu, another nüshu woman, Yang Huanyi 陽煥宜
(1909–2004, hereafter Huanyi), turned up in 1991. Although already in her
eighties, Huanyi seemed spirited and grew more so every time I met her. Even
though her hands shook while writing, she thought and spoke clearly. Her
cleverness can be seen in the way she quickly learned to interact with scholars.
For instance, I once asked her, “Do you have any sworn sisters?”
She answered, “Ma55 nəŋ35.”
Ma55 nəŋ35, literally ‘no’ in Jiangyong’s native dialect, can be easily under-
stood as “No, I don’t have any,” and that was what I thought at first. But in an-
other interview I was informed that she indeed had three sworn sisters. Why
then would she give me a “no” answer? After reviewing the tapes and thinking
through the contexts of our conversations, I realized that when she said “ma55
nəŋ35,” it did not mean “No, I don’t have sworn sisters,” but rather, “No, they no
| Gendered Words
6
longer live in the world.” And she answered this way because according to her
experience, whenever she told the interviewers that she had sworn sisters, she
would always be asked further, “Where are they?” For scholars, “Do you have
sworn sisters?” and “Where are they?” are two separate questions, but from
Huanyi’s point of view, they are one, a question about her sworn sisters. Her
“ma55 nəŋ35” was therefore not only an answer to the inquiry I had asked, but
also a response to the question yet to be posed. Being the sole living nüshu
practitioner in those days, she had been asked similar questions so many times
that she knew what to expect and how to respond, and gradually she had devel-
oped a formula for interacting in an interview context. This has posed a seri-
ous challenge to scholars trying to gain new insights from her.
Considering that Huanyi was the only known woman who could still read
and write nüshu, I had expected to center research during my 1992–1993 field-
work on her. But I did not. During the preliminary research visit, I came to re-
alize that the most challenging task confronting me was not breaking down
Huanyi’s “habitual” way of interacting with scholars, but figuring out how to
offset the limitations of relying on her as my sole informant. To get a more com-
prehensive picture of how nüshu molds and represents women’s thoughts and
feelings, I understood clearly that I had to extend my research focus from the
written nüshu to its affiliated singing tradition, nüge. The shared sung character
of written nüshu and oral nüge indicated that women unversed in the “women’s
script” could still get access to its texts by listening. Indeed, many elderly women
in Jiangyong reported that they had been exposed to nüshu from childhood by
observing its performance. Some had even participated in producing nüshu
texts, even if they did not personally commit their stories to paper. These wom-
en’s experiences and recollections became invaluable resources in the recon-
struction of nüshu as an expressive culture and social practice. Tang Baozhen
唐寶珍 (c. 1912–1999, hereafter Tang) is perhaps the best example of this. Tang
herself had never learned the nüshu script, but she could “read” nüshu letters
written by her sworn sister Cizhu with the help of another sworn sister, Gao.
Gao had also transcribed Tang’s biographical lament into nüshu.
I should point out, with great appreciation, that even though Huanyi did not
become the focus of my research, my early interactions with her were quite
educational in that she set me to rethinking how best to conduct interviews in
the field. One issue, of course, was how to most effectively phrase my ques-
tions (Briggs 1986). Kirin Narayan (1995:255–256) has helpfully described her
field experience: Asking about “the meaning” of constituent symbols always
met with no response; however, reframing the question as “What is happening
here?” would evoke a long interpretation. My later experiences also showed
that a general question such as “What would people do under the such-and-
such circumstances?” always received an answer like “I don’t know” or “There’s
no rule for that” (mei guiding 沒規定). But when I reframed the question as
“What would you do,” the responses became quite expansive.
In addition to modes of inquiry, another crucial factor is how to nurture a
relationship, craft a comfort zone, and win trust from informants (Weiss 1994),

so they are willing to “relate all in detail, starting from the beginning,” which is
also what Jiangyong women write nüshu for, as is described in the opening cita-
tion of this book. Trust must be built on two foundations: attitude and interac-
tion. My failure or lack of ability to engage with Huanyi, for example, was very
much related to my utilitarian and overly rational mindset. Growing up with an
urban and intellectual background, I have a tendency to speed up my interac-
tions with people. Chen Qiguang, a nüshu linguist from Beijing who had ob-
served me conduct interviews with Huanyi, reminded me that the way I asked
questions was “too rushed and aggressive” (not fitting in the tempo of peasants’
daily lives) and “too logical” (always asking for causes and effects). In the real
world, people do not necessarily act because they fully understand the rationale
of the action taken; they act in a certain way just because it is “habitus” (Bour-
dieu 1977) or “everyday practice” (de Certeau 1984). The logical questions I
asked may have been important to my conceptual framework or to my academic
audiences, but they may not have been relevant to my informants’ day-to-day
existence. And this is where residential fieldwork is critically important: It pro-
vides the opportunity to learn the local people’s patterns of life, to interact with
them, and to win their trust.
Taking Up Residence at Heyuan Village

After visiting several villages and consulting with local officials, I settled in the
Heyuan 河淵 Village, a 300-household village situated on the border of north-
eastern Jiangyong (Figure 1). I chose this place mainly because it was the vil-
lage nearest to where Huanyi lived at Tongshanling Farm. Staying in Heyuan
would make it a convenient one-hour walk to visit her whenever necessary.
Heyuan is administered by Tongshanling Farm; from the Farm I could ride
the twice-a-day bus for about forty minutes into the Jiangyong county seat. In
social and economic terms, however, Heyuan is an integral part of Shangji-
angxu Township, nüshu’s main circulation area. The town of Shangjiangxu, a
one-hour walk away, is also the site of the periodic market where Heyuan vil-
lagers sell their agricultural produce and make purchases. Some women told
me that before the 1949 Liberation, they could purchase nüshu products there,
such as handkerchiefs inscribed with the nüshu script.
An official arranged for me to move into a spare house owned by the Heyuan
village head and dine with his family on a regular basis. This was a perfect ar-
rangement. First of all, it spared me the hassle of food preparation, which was
time-consuming since thatch and charcoal are the main cooking fuels in
villages, even nowadays. Electricity became available in the early 1990s, making
Heyuan quite advanced in comparison with other Shangjiangxu villages, and
it was said that Heyuan girls preferred to marry Heyuan young men to con-
tinue enjoying the benefit of electricity.4 Nonetheless, since electricity was
4
Such a marrying-in practice, however, would have violated two major taboos of traditional
Jiangyong: village endogamy and surname endogamy (in Heyuan, 99 percent of the population are
surnamed He 何).
| Gendered Words
8
figure 1 Street view in the village of Heyuan in Jiangyong County, Hunan Province,
China (1992).
new, the power supply was unstable and too weak to cook a meal efficiently; it
took almost a half hour to boil a regular kettle of water. So I was extremely
happy with this dining arrangement.
Living by myself in a separate house was also a great advantage, since it
allowed me to enjoy a level of privacy that would have been impossible had I

lived with other villagers under the same roof. For instance, I had the auton-
omy to close the door whenever I needed, say, to avoid unnecessary interrup-
tions as interviews were underway. Villagers left their doors wide open unless
no one was around; I was probably the only exception. But I needed a private
space where I could encourage my informants to talk about their true senti-
ments and secrets they did not want to share with other villagers.
This house where women shared those secrets did not differ much from the
other houses in the village; it was just smaller in scale. Most of Heyuan’s old
houses (some more than a century old) were two-story structures. The second
floor used to be where the unmarried girls lived, and there might also be parti-
tions for storage; the ground floor contained the main hall plus a kitchen and
bedrooms. In comparison, my house was relatively new, built just ten years
earlier and unfurnished until I moved in. My host prepared for me a bed, a
desk, a bench, and two wooden racks to which I added boards to make shelves
where I could put my storage trunks and all kinds of other belongings. To
make the space more comfortable for conducting interviews, I got a second set
of furniture—a three-by-three-foot table along with four chairs—from a neigh-
bor. At this table, I wrote up field notes, conversed with village women, and
listened to their songs and stories.
Even though I enjoyed having a private space, my privacy was actually
quite limited. Since I was the first outsider to live in the village, my house was
essentially a tourist center for the first few weeks. When my door was open,
people would naturally flock in and stand around talking to me or just sit
there doing nothing. If my door was closed, which to me meant “no interrup-
tions,” people would still knock and ask to come in. If I asked, “What about?”
they often smiled at me and replied, “Nothing.” I knew they were just curious
about the outside world, wondering what people in the United States were
like, how Taiwanese lived, and so on. Sometimes they came by for trivial rea-
sons. For example, one teenaged girl dropped in just because she had never
seen a college student write—the village had no college graduates until the
mid-1990s.
The villagers were extremely gracious and hospitable: Their constant visits
gave me plenty of chances to chat with them and get a sense of their daily lives.
More importantly, their company made my rural expedition endurable as I
struggled to bear flea bites in the summer and the howling wind that merci-
lessly whipped through the house from the upstairs windows in winter. They
granted me the luxury of friendships I would never have imagined to be so
touching and long-lasting, especially the friendship of my sworn sisters.
Becoming Sworn Sisters

Settling in Heyuan turned out to be the most important decision of my entire
fieldwork stint. There I made a sworn sisterhood pact with two village women,
and this pact is the major reason I continue to explore the depth and breadth
of nüshu as a transforming, and likely endangered, cultural heritage.
| Gendered Words
10
Declaring sworn sisterhood, called jiebai 結拜 ‘making a tie’, has long been
a distinctive cultural practice in Jiangyong. A woman born in the 1910s told
me, “My father felt shamed because I made no jiebai relationships in my girl-
hood.” A young girl working in the local gazetteer office had also advised me,
“If you want a deep understanding of Jiangyong, you should study our jiebai
practices.”5 During my 1993 residence, a number of women did propose
making such a fictive kin tie with me. To avoid complicating my interactions
with the villagers, I usually evaded those requests. There was only one excep-
tion, and that was the jiebai pact I made with He Yanxin 何豔新 (born 1939,
hereafter Yanxin) and Wu Longyu 吳龍玉 (born 1943, hereafter Longyu).
Longyu is an honest, docile, traditional peasant woman, who works dili-
gently and loves to sing. By contrast, Yanxin is unorthodox: She is perhaps the
only woman in her generation who received an education equivalent to junior
high school. Moreover, in addition to knowing nüge, as a child she had learned
nüshu from her maternal grandmother, although she once told me, “I have
forgotten it all.” During my 1993 Heyuan fieldwork, Longyu was my most in-
spiring informant, but Yanxin was my indispensable research consultant,
thanks to her personal intelligence and her range of educational experiences,
both modern and traditional.
Both Longyu and Yanxin came to my place often; before that point the two
of them had not been particularly close. Yanxin was naughty sometimes and
liked to tease, and Longyu, optimistic and straightforward in personality, never
minded Yanxin’s making fun of her and always responded with a smile. Over
time, we three developed a tacit understanding and a certain attachment to
each other. One day when only the three of us were in my room, Longyu turned
to Yanxin and said, “How about we three make a sworn sisterhood?” Yanxin
responded, “She is from the city; she probably would not like to establish a sis-
terhood tie with us.” On hearing this exchange, how could I say no? Besides, I
was truly fond of them, and so we three became jiebai sisters. At that time, I
never expected Yanxin would play such a crucial role in my research career and
also in the entire field of nüshu scholarship.
I wrapped up my Heyuan fieldwork at the end of 1993 and returned to the
United States to write my dissertation. During the writing-up period, I learned
some surprising news: My sworn sister Yanxin was cited in People’s Daily as
“a nüshu transmitter nurtured in a natural setting” (overseas edition, Nov. 12,
1994, p. 9). I was shocked, and moreover puzzled. Yes, Yanxin had told me
that she could read and write nüshu, but that was when she was just a child.
And now, not even a year after I had left Jiangyong, she was revealed as a
nüshu practitioner. What had happened? I knew that Yanxin would never lie
to me, but then again, why would she conceal from me her nüshu knowledge?
5
Sworn sibling ties were also common among men in Jiangyong. Chiang (1995) reports the
possibility of cross-gender sibling bonds, but my informants said that they had never heard of any
such relationships in their lifetimes.

What drove her to write nüshu again, after she had put away her pen for thirty
years? I couldn’t wait to get back to the field and interrogate her about the
truth.
From Nüshu and Nüge to Life Narratives
In 2000, seven years after my initial fieldwork, I returned to Jiangyong to

begin a series of follow-up research visits. In contrast to my intensive fieldwork
at Heyuan Village in 1993, I now traveled between villages to get a broader un-
derstanding of the meanings of nüshu and nüge—textual, contextual, and per-
formative. I had become especially interested in the potential gaps or tensions
between textual construction and lived reality, between singing and writing,
between the voices and the medium that carries them. As my knowledge ex-
panded, I came to realize that each one, nüshu and nüge, has its distinctive
“expressive niches” (Liu 2003, 2010b)—or, to use Bakhtin’s (1990) terminol-
ogy, an “excess of seeing,” which allows women to articulate certain perspec-
tives, to express certain sentiments, and to comment on the society in which
they live in a certain way. But nüshu and nüge also have expressive limits; that
is, each also has certain “leaks,” to borrow Briggs and Bauman’s (1992) concept
from their analysis of genre. In other words, some voices will be expressed via
nüshu, some articulated only in nüge, and some others may go beyond the ex-
pressive horizons of either. This encouraged me to take into account women’s
life narratives as “a window onto personal configurations of history and cul-
ture” (Blackman 1991:58). Also, as an anthropologist, I cannot avoid contem-
plating where nüshu as an endangered cultural heritage is headed: Should it be
salvaged, transformed, or just allowed to pass into history? All these questions
have required me to greatly expand my investigation by conducting more inter-
views with women from diverse backgrounds, including the nüshu writers
emerging since the late 1990s, distinguished nüge performers, and ordinary
Jiangyong villagers, and at the same time to keep an eye on the changing socio-
cultural configurations in Jiangyong.
Of course, my previously established acquaintances continue to be a focus
of my investigations, especially Yanxin, my sworn sister. Having previously
worked with me as a research consultant, Yanxin has now become one of the
key subjects in my research. Our sisterhood and friendship are reinforced by
our ongoing interaction, although we have arguments occasionally, just like
regular sisters. In addition to living with Yanxin in Heyuan in 2005, I also fol-
lowed her to Beijing for several weeks when she visited her son there in 2009,
and to Tokyo when she was invited by Seijo University to demonstrate nüshu
in 2011. The contexts of my interactions with her have also multiplied from
casual chatting, participant observation, and in-depth interviews, to video pro-
duction. In 2010, I led a six-member crew to Jiangyong to shoot a documentary
film. One year later, I brought Yanxin to Taiwan to participate in the first inter-
national nüshu seminar, at which this documentary entitled Nüshu huisheng
| Gendered Words
12
女書•回生 (Calling and recalling: The sentiments of nüshu), made to honor
Yanxin and her nüshu predecessors, was previewed.
In addition to Yanxin, another new nüshu writer has emerged. He Jinghua
何靜華 (born 1939) as a young child had no interest in nüshu or nüge at all; she
considered the songs little more than noise. But her mother told her, “You’ll
love them when you’re my age.” Forty years later, this turned out to be true. In
1996 when her 28-year-old son died, Jinghua, then aged 57, could not stop
grieving; she cried day and night. She eventually decided to write nüshu, the
genre designated for lamenting, to work through her melancholy and pain,
even though, by that time, she had better command of Chinese hanzi than of
the nüshu script. She told me, “I had to write nüshu or otherwise I could not
hold myself together.”6
Bumping into Hu Meiyue 胡美月 (hereafter Meiyue) was another pleasant
surprise. Born in 1963, Meiyue was raised with a Communist education, so she
became acquainted with nüshu mainly through her Grandma Gao. As a child
she had followed her grandmother to different villages to visit sworn sisters.
Observing how these elderly women shared laughter and tears via nüshu,
Meiyue developed a special feeling for it and picked up a bit. In the 1980s,
when her grandmother was identified as the first nüshu informant and worked
closely with nüshu scholars, Meiyue got the rare first-hand experience of ob-
serving scholars doing research on the practice. Her engagement with nüshu
was interrupted in 1987, when she had to go live in her husband’s village,
Xiawan 夏灣. From then on she was occupied with household chores and
childcare responsibilities, and she retreated from the nüshu network. I met
with her during a research visit to Xiawan in 2000. When I asked if she could
write some sample nüshu for me, she hesitated at first but eventually agreed.
While writing, she said with a smile of embarrassment, “You see, I haven’t
written nüshu for such a long time, my hands are shaking.” At that time, I had
no idea that within only a couple of years Meiyue would become the represen-
tative of a whole new generation of nüshu practitioners.
But as new faces have come forward, old friends have sadly left us. Tang,
the sworn sister of Meiyue’s grandma, of whom I was quite fond, died in ill-
ness and poverty a year before my return visit, before I could pay her back for
her contributions to nüshu scholarship. Huanyi also passed away in her nine-
ties, in 2004. Another woman, Lu Runchi 盧潤池, reported by the Japanese
scholar Orie Endō (1995, 1996) to be a nüshu writer, also died before I had a
chance to meet her. In another case, I went to interview a woman living in
Huangjialing Township, allegedly one of the authors of a very popular nüge
concerning how women suffered during the Sino-Japanese War, but she was
so badly afflicted with dementia that she could not answer any of my ques-
tions. All these losses put me on alert: I had to quickly locate any remaining
6
See Luo (2003) and Liu (2014) for He Jinghua’s nüshu works.

nüshu and nüge practitioners if I wished to reconstruct traditional Jiangyong
women’s expressive culture before it disappears.
Happily, by traveling between the villages of Shangjiangxu, Chengguan,
and Huangjialing Township, I was able to make many new friends, including
those who had no particular knowledge of nüshu and nüge, such as Hu Xinkui
呼新奎 (1934–2012). These women have graciously introduced me into their
lifeworlds. Some of their life experiences echo what has been already textual-
ized in nüshu and nüge; some, however, go beyond the older themes and in-
clude new challenges such as poverty, divorce, husband-wife tensions, and
sister-brother bonds, as well as women’s stamina, optimism, political careers,
and glorious success. These women’s life accounts and lived experiences may
not all be addressed in the following discussions, but they certainly constitute
the bedrock of my overall understanding of Jiangyong women. They have
sharpened my sensitivity to women’s ways of seeing and expressing them-
selves, and they have fostered my efforts to unearth the social, political, cul-
tural, and historical implications of nüshu as an endangered cultural heritage
in contemporary society.
Research Subjects
Based on my 20 years of fieldwork in Jiangyong since 1992, the following anal-

ysis considers nüshu in conjunction with nüge, complemented by a life narra-
tive approach, to unfold peasant women’s lifeworlds in a changing rural China.
Those lifeworlds constitute a summation of shifting realities that engage voice
(sentiment and perspective), expression/performance, and practice. Using life
narrative as an intertextual reference, I demonstrate how nüshu and nüge as
social text embody and nurture women’s collective consciousness, individual
identities, multi-positioned perspectives, moral pursuits, and hopes and fanta-
sies. With an eye on expression and performance, I explore how peasant
women as writing subjects inscribe their experienced and imagined realities,
and how those who could not read the nüshu script nonetheless entered the
nüshu arena as nüge singers or participants. Informed by a sense of urgency in
the face of an endangered cultural heritage, I reconstruct and demonstrate
how nüshu and nüge as practice constitute both a reflexive and a reformational
social field wherein women articulate their feelings about life, present com-
mentaries on society, share life stories to expand the horizon of their world-
views, and probe beneath the surface of their existence in search of new inspi-
ration in their process of becoming.
Whether as text, performance, or practice, what invigorates nüshu and nüge is
the subject who writes, performs, and participates. To highlight subjectivity in-
stead of theme, this entire book will center on persons; it is anchored in the life
histories of four women, each representative in her own distinct way, and their
practice of nüshu and nüge. The first is Tang, a talented nüge singer and sworn
sister of the noted nüshu writers Cizhu, Gao, and Yi, whose sisterhood networks
| Gendered Words
14
and nüshu writings have inspired and substantiated current scholarship. Tang
shows us the traditional nüge singing world and nüshu-associated social praxis:
the establishment of sworn sisterhood, the performance of wedding missives,
the composition of biographical laments, and the worship of deified spinsters.
Next is Yanxin, my sworn sister and the last traditionally trained nüshu prac-
titioner. She leads us on a tortuous nüshu journey. Having learned the script
and repertoire from her maternal grandmother in childhood, she stopped
using it at her grandmother’s death in 1960, purposefully concealing her pro-
ficiency from nüshu scholars, including me, even after we had become sworn
sisters. For some reason, she revealed her nüshu identity a year after I had
left Heyuan, and since then she has become the most prolific nüshu writer to
date. Her experiences—learning, retreating, and resuming—illuminate how
the emotions attached to this practice are perceptional, engaging, and
transformative.
The third is Xinkui, an uneducated child bride, who was promoted to be a
local director of Women’s Affairs after the 1949 Liberation, out of recognition
for her having suffered oppression in the old society. But the post-Liberation
new marriage law also permitted her husband to divorce her in the late 1950s
for apparent infertility and lack of romance, as well as her concern for the well-
being of her only brother, a concern that preoccupied her to the detriment of
her own marriage. She remarried in the 1960s and retired from active political
life after she had children. Since her husband was an active and honest party
cadre, she had to work extremely hard and explore every possible means to
earn sufficient income to handle the great number of guests (cadres and peas-
ants) who came calling. In this she succeeded, but at the cost of neglecting to
closely guide her children, two of whom became addicted to gambling. Xinkui’s
life story shows how an ordinary village woman participated in nüshu and nüge,
and how her personal life changed along with the transformation of China’s
countryside.
Finally, there is Meiyue, who has dedicated herself to glorifying the nüshu
heritage since the 2000s. Meiyue grew up observing her Grandma Gao prac-
tice nüshu with her sworn sisters in the 1960s and 1970s, and she watched as
nüshu scholars conducted research in the 1980s. Meiyue’s efforts and struggles
to become a respected nüshu transmitter highlight the pitfalls of practicing a
disappearing cultural form in modern society.
Born in different historical epochs—the 1910s, 1930s, and 1960s—these
women’s life trajectories foreground various aspects of China’s changing social
milieu over the past century: from traditional female orphan life, child-bride
practices, concubinage, village exogamy, and family-based agrarian system, to
the new marriage law, land reform, commune system, collectivization of pro-
duction, romantic love, and new social phenomena such as working as “float-
ing labor” in coastal China. Their diverse experiences illuminate not only the
dilemmas any village woman in changing rural China may encounter, but also
the intelligence, resilience, and virtues with which they cope with these vari-
ous challenges and make their mark in the world.

Before moving on to these life histories, I will first briefly introduce the
practice of nüshu in conjunction with nüge in rural Jiangyong and the theoret-
ical implications of this tradition’s combination of writing and singing. While
nüshu and nüge reveal how women express themselves, they also open a new
vista along which we can explore how gender is addressed in epistemology and
historiography, and why members of a certain social class use marginalized
forms of expression to negotiate with the dominant social structure. Moreover,
as a convergence of women’s vocalizations—their sorrow and grief, as well as
their honor and pride—nüshu and nüge register women’s sense and sensibili-
ties, their determination to tackle life’s ordeals, and the wisdom it takes for
them to live in the world.
| Gendered Words
16
CHAPTER 2 Text and Practice
On a stool, squarely square,

I sit in the house and spin cotton yarn.
As I spin the thread I sing a song;
Mom complains that I’m a chatterbox.1
一張凳子四四方 / 坐在廳屋紡棉花 / 紡一根來唱頭歌 / 毑娘嫌我嘴巴多
Girls usually do spinning and weaving with their female neighbors,

and they compare craftsmanship. While holding spindles in their right
hands and reeling the cotton threads with the left, they compete with one
another by singing. It’s a shame that no one has made a painting of this,
as Jin Dongxin did, for the world to see (Yongming xianzhi 1907, 11:7).2
女子紡棉每約鄰為伴相較巧拙，右手搖紡車，左手牽棉如絲，口中則歌聲競
作，惜無人仿金冬心繅車圖以傳世耳。
In the area south to the Five Ridges, on the eve of her wedding a bride will
be dressed formally and seated in the ancestral court, accompanied by girl
companions on both sides. They sing in chorus, expressing deep emotions
and sincere regard in their sad lyrics. (Lingwai daida 嶺外代答, vol 4.)
嶺南嫁女之夕，新人盛飾廟坐，女伴亦盛飾夾輔之，迭相歌和，含情淒惋，
各致殷勤。
singing was an integral part of women’s daily lives in traditional Jiangyong.

Women might sing songs at work or at play, as the local gazetteer and folk
song cited above indicate. Singing was also an indispensable element of
1
Sung by Wu Longyu and recorded in December 1993.
2
Jin Dongxin is the alias of Jin Nong 金農 (1687–1764), a famous painter and calligrapher of the
Qing dynasty, known as the leader of the Yangzhou Eight Eccentrics (Yangzhou baguai 揚州八怪).
One of his representative works is a painting of an old woman and a young lady engaged in reeling
and spinning.
certain rituals, especially weddings, a tradition that prevailed from the twelfth
century, as described here in Lingwai daida by Zhou Qufei 周去非 when he took
office in Guilin 桂林, about 120 miles from Jiangyong. The so-called Five Ridges
(Wuling 五嶺) comprises the regions of Guangdong, Guangxi, and southern
Hunan, including Jiangyong. What makes Jiangyong unique is that while some
of the songs there were performed nüge, some had to be written down in nüshu.
In Jiangyong, nüshu pieces were often referred to as nüshu songs (nüshu ge
女書歌), mainly because of their sung performance. In fact, singing this reper-
toire was the first step toward becoming nüshu literate. One learned to sing a
piece first and then matched the sounds with the written graphs; once a girl
had mastered the ability to read nüshu texts, it was easier to learn how to write
the script. To advance from singing to reading and eventually to writing was
not an easy task, since there was no formal training; women usually learned
singing and writing from senior kinswomen, from peers when doing needle-
work together, or during the singing sessions around a wedding, as in Zhou
Qufei’s description cited above. As a result, only a few would reach full literacy,
while some could only read, and many others were limited to singing the
nüshu stories. Nonetheless, these varying competencies did not separate rural
women into different social groups; they could all learn of one another’s
thoughts and feelings by listening. Singing facilitated not only the learning
process but also the dissemination of nüshu: It opened the genre to those who
had no former acquaintance with the “women’s script.”
The singing of nüshu was called duzhi dushan 讀紙讀扇 ‘chanting the paper,
chanting the fan’ or du pashu 讀帕書 ‘chanting the handkerchief’, because
most nüshu texts were committed to loose paper, fans, or handkerchiefs. In
addition to writing, nüshu could be used as a decorative pattern woven into the
cotton strips used as belts, called huadai 花帶. These were all female-oriented
practices in which men rarely took part. One educated senior villager born in
the 1920s, for example, reported that when he was a child he often saw his
mother sit with other kinswomen outside the house while they chanted nüshu
together, but he never bothered to ask what they were singing about because
“it was women’s stuff.” “Women’s stuff” is in fact the most common remark I
heard about nüshu from men, whether official cadres or villagers. Some even
sniffed at nüshu and nüge chanting activities as nonsensical murmuring “yi-a
yi-a”; and some spoke of them in a pejorative or sarcastic tone, “Nüshu? It’s
useless. What can women do with those pieces?”
From men’s perspective, nüshu may be useless, for it had no impact on the
existing male-dominated social order. But for traditional Jiangyong women,
nüshu and nüge were more than meaningful: They structured women’s self-
image, configured women’s social life, and gave voice to their existence. They
were social texts whereby women conveyed their personal lived experiences
and social formation, and gave voice to their emotions and moral aspirations.
They were also a practice by which women articulated their subjectivity, en-
gaged with one another intersubjectively, and transformed their vulnerable
state of being into a strengthened and inspiring becoming.
| Gendered Words
18
Nüshu, Nüge, and Women’s Lifeworlds
In the course of a rural woman’s life, there were at least six domains where
nüshu and nüge played a part. These are sworn sisterhood, wedding perfor-
mance, biographical laments, worship verses, narratives, and transcriptions of
male-authored literature.
Sworn Sisterhood
Becoming sworn sisters, or jiebai, is a distinctive local custom even nowadays.
In the traditional rural context, where women were defined as “inner persons”
who rarely traveled, nüshu allowed women to communicate and forge social
networks beyond kinship organizations and across villages. A cross-village
jiebai tie was usually established through an intermediary, a matron who was
affiliated with both parties. After the intermediary’s introduction, one of the
candidates would write to request swearing sisterhood. A nüshu of this type
might open as follows:
Flying bats and peaches of good fortune festoon the surface of the fan;
My coarse words will at first disturb the phoenix.
In May, during Duanwu [the Dragon Boat Festival],
I write to request leave to approach the dragon gate.
I am from a lower family, unable to measure up to you,
A person of broad reading, who knows the rites and righteousness.
飛鼠福桃站扇上 / 粗字先來驚動鳳 / 五月時來送端午 / 依我求恩上龍門
我是低門難比你 / 你是書高禮義人
“Flying bats” and “peaches of good fortune” both refer to the nüshu graphs.
Yang Ximei 楊喜梅 (born 1907) of Daluxia 大路下 Village, who recited this
nüshu for me from memory in 1993, explained that a nüshu letter initiating a
sisterhood relationship usually included two elements: praise (here, referring
to the prospective jiebai as a phoenix) and a proposal to meet during an upcom-
ing festival. Interestingly, Yang Ximei herself could not read nüshu graphs, but
she knew this piece because “You just listened to others singing and you
learned.”
Occasionally, a jiebai proposal arrived with gifts. The following nüshu, writ-
ten on red paper, was given to me by a Jianghe 江河 villager in 2000 and is
now preserved in the Museum of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica,
Taiwan (Figure 2):
Fate grants us a chance to form a pact of friendship,
As the golden chicken faces the phoenix.
Intelligent gentle lady of the jade tower,
Are you willing to make this tie? . . .
This writing is casual and the gift is worth little,
But they represent my greeting and affection.
I have nothing to give
text and practice | 19

But a pack of tea snacks.
To become bosom friends,
A thousand gifts will be exchanged.
I hope you don’t mind . . .
Won’t mind becoming friends with me.
有緣儂結義 / 金雞對鳳凰 / 玉樓賢君女 / 結為真不真 ...
便文禮輕薄 / 點心恭賀情 / 我沒別項到 / 一包清送茶
知友交過誼 / 千般行禮來 / 望芳不嫌棄 .../ 不嫌跟我交
A jiebai proposal might sometimes be respectfully turned down, especially

when one’s family finances could not sustain regular gift exchanges between
the two jiebai—for instance, to celebrate the birthday of the jiebai’s parent or the
marriage of a sibling. In this case, she would write to beg pardon: “I hope my
sister can forgive me . . . / If my family were better off / We could become a pair
of mandarin ducks, chattering in a tree side by side” 只望姊娘請諒大 ... /
若是我家好歡樂 / 一對鴛鴦共樹啼 (Zhao 1992:417).
If a proposal were accepted, a common response would be like that in the
following text:
I write a coarse response to your noble family,
A letter incomparable to my bosom friend’s initial missive.
A few days ago, I received your letter,
And learned of an intention matching that of my own heart. . . .
If we had made this tie earlier,
We would already be in a relationship that no one could surpass. (Gong 1991:258)
粗書回文到貴府 / 難比知心先奉來 / 前朝接下姑娘意 / 開看聽言本合心 ...
設若早前結下義 / 同憑知心賽過人
Wedding Performance
Both nüshu and nüge played significant roles in traditional Jiangyong wed-
dings. In this rite of passage, the bride performed bridal laments, called kuge
哭歌 ‘crying songs’, to express her sadness at leaving her natal family. The
lyrics to kuge were improvised depending on the subject of the lament. A typi-
cal bride’s lament to her parents, for example, often contained the sentiments
of sorrow, grief, and protest at the separation that resulted from patrilocality, as
in the following:
When your sons are grown they will pay you back,
But when daughters grow up, they won’t.
Daughters are like wild birds in the deep mountains,
They fly off when full-fledged.3
養大嬌兒有天好 / 養大紅花沒毑恩 / 女像深山野獸鳥 / 養得毛長各自飛
3
Sung by Tang Nianzhi and recorded in October 2002.
| Gendered Words
20
figure 2 Hanzi transliteration of a nüshu sisterhood letter from Jianghe Village
(Courtesy of Museum of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan).

By contrast, when a lament was directed at younger cousins, nieces, and neph-
ews, the bride then had to demonstrate an understanding of her admonitory
responsibilities—for instance, “I ask my younger brother not to go gambling /
There is no promise in the gambling house” 請弟不站賭錢場 / 賭錢場上無天地,
or “The household won’t be prosperous if a man is not diligent / The trousseau
won’t be full if a woman does not work hard” 男不勤儉家不富 / 女不勤儉箱不滿.
When directed toward general friends or distant relatives, the tone changes to one
of courtesy and euphemism. For example, the bride may compliment a man’s lit-
eracy (an indication of power), as in “You don’t need to seek help with writing / Nor
with reading” 上也不求人寫字 / 下也不求看字人, or a woman’s dowry (symbolic
of a supportive family), as in “Sister, your room is replete with everything / Even a
gold-lacquered washbasin and a silver stand” 姊的房中樣樣有 / 金漆盆子銀水架.
While the bride performed laments targeting her natal family or relatives,
the bride’s peer group would be invited to participate either as ‘seat-taking
girls’ (zuowei nü 坐位女), who ritually sat beside the bride at wedding ban-
quets, or as ‘singing girls’ (changge nü 唱歌女), whose responsibility was to
sing during a series of sessions at the wedding, called ‘the singing court’ or
getang 歌堂 (also known as ‘the seated singing court’ zuo getang 坐歌堂).
There were four major singing sessions in traditional Jiangyong: a ‘sad
house’ (chouwu 愁屋) held on the third day before the wedding, which initi-
ated the entire series of wedding rituals; a ‘minor singing court’ (xiao getang
小歌堂) held two days out; a ‘major singing court’ (da getang 大歌堂) held the
day before; and an ‘overnight party’ (guoye 過夜) on the eve of the wedding
day. The singing during the overnight party was freestyle, and all the bride’s
natal relatives, both men and women, married or unmarried, were supposed
to stay overnight in the lineage hall for this event. The songs sung in the
other three sessions were formulaic ritual melodies with fixed lyrics and
tunes; they were performed by the singing girls and in chorus. For example,
when the bride entered the lineage hall and was about to ascend her seat for
the banquet of the da getang rite, the singing girls sang the following to honor
her arrival:
The handkerchief carried by the bride for this seat-ascending ritual is one and a
half feet long,
Long enough to surround elder sisters on four sides.
The elder sisters know plenty of songs and they should lead the singing.
They shouldn’t let the younger ones take their place.
For if they begin with an over-high pitch, people may not listen;
If they start too low, people cannot hear.
The younger sisters are like baby birds that just came out of the mountains,
Who haven’t yet learned to flap their wings and chirp.4
上位手巾尺五長 / 圍過四邊大姊娘 / 大姊有歌製出唱 / 不給妹娘起歌聲
起得高時人不聽 / 起得低時人不聞 / 初步出山嫩陽鳥 / 不會拍翅不會啼
4
Sung by He Yanxin and recorded in November 1993.
| Gendered Words
22
Both bridal laments and ritual songs are part of the nüge genre. The wedding
nüshu, called sanzhaoshu 三朝書 ‘third-day book’, was prepared by the bride’s
natal family and sent to her affinal village on the third day after the wedding.
The following is a sanzhaoshu collected from Fengtian 鳳田 Village in 1992:
I sit quietly alone here and write this book;
I write these informal words as my regards to you.
These are words from the second aunt,
Writing to my niece.
I write to congratulate your noble family,
Which has been joyfully celebrating these three days.
Now that my niece has fallen into your home to live;
She is sure to become better and better.
靜坐人門做書本 / 念想閑言看察身 / 我是細姨算點意 / 來會外甥女一人
恭賀高門萬般好 / 鬧熱盈盈到三朝 / 孫落繡房你邊住 / 是望高陞勝過人
While sending congratulations, this sanzhaoshu also admonishes the bride

to behave properly in her new home:
Your temperament should not be like when you lived with your own parents;
You now have to put aside personal feelings and treat your in-laws with smiles.
Listen to what I have to say here: Follow the rites and protocols;
Be amicable and lenient toward others;
Don’t be mad and grieve in your mind all the time—
All women face all these same things.
不比毑門的情性 / 捨歡笑眉待好親 / 聽我真言跟禮做 / 放點歡心寬待人
不曰時時在心萎 / 齊度女人盡似般
After conveying these compliments and warnings, the sanzhaoshu sender

was then free to take center stage and lament her own situation:
I myself have something to grieve about and lament:
I’m a widow faced with endless difficulties.
My husband died and can no longer care for me,
Leaving me alone to cope with thousands of life’s challenges.
Even mentioning this, I just want to cry;
Cry about my hard lot. . . .
I can think of no way out of these miseries;
I feel nothing but sad.
On this third-day, therefore, I write—I hope you won’t mind my doing so—
Write to lament my miseries and find release from my perturbation.
可虧我身亦可恨 / 寡婦空房急盡多 / 夫死陰朝不疼我 / 放下千行給我操
口說述聲就好哭 / 是儂命輕盡請全 .../ 冷想可憐無出氣 / 全沒開心盡有愁
三朝寫言多倚過 / 一述可憐便解焦
Biographical Laments
Another key form of self-lamentation, in addition to sanzhaoshu, was the more
predominant type of expression, the biographical ballad. Cizhu, for example,

wrote an autobiographical nüshu when she lost her husband and son in her
early thirties:
I, Cizhu, write on this folding fan,
To lament my grievances.
I grieve, first of all, about having no father.
Second, I grieve that my fate is inferior to others’;
Third, I grieve that I did not cultivate enough goodness in my previous life—
All of these will be written on this fan and disseminated to all sides.
I was born after my father’s death to a mother
Who preserved a widowed life and brought me up, an inferior. . . .
If I had been a boy,
My mother would have had someone to count on in her aging years. . . .
My mother raised me for twelve years,
Then she died. . . .
I must have done something evil in a previous life,
Otherwise, why should I get no breaks in this life?
慈珠寫書摺扇上 / 訴我可憐落扇中 / 一氣我爺沒世上 / 二氣命中不如人
三氣前生我沒份 / 寫在扇中傳四邊 / 娘守空房隔天女 / 守到如今不如人 . . .
好不女兒度做崽 / 養大嬌兒有終身 . . . / 毑娘養我十二歲 / 再復毑娘又落陰 . . .
得知前世積了惡 / 今世十分無路行
Marriage might have brought Cizhu’s misery to an end, but it did not:
When I was twenty, I married into his household,
A family with no worries. . . .
We, husband and wife, were together for five years,
Then we had a boy—I was so happy.
When the husband and wife get along very well,
The water tastes sweet even if the family is poor. . . .
But who ever expected that Heaven would have no pity:
My husband got sick and failed to survive. . . .
I would have been with my husband ten years,
When my son, too, died at the age of five.
Before the sadness at losing my husband was over,
I suffered the knife-slash of pain over the loss of my son.
I cried for my husband, and I cried for my son
And that was how I spent the days. ( Jiangyong xianzhi 1995:639–643)
年剛二十到他府 / 一家盈盈沒點憂 . . . / 夫妻同陪上五載 / 生下嬌兒心自歡
夫妻本是感情好 / 縱然家苦水亦甜 . . . / 誰知給來天不疼 / 丈夫得病命難存 . . .
將來陪夫十年滿 / 我兒五歲不知天 / 夫死陰司氣不了 / 我兒落陰刀割腸
哭聲夫來哭聲子 / 哭子哭夫過時辰
Here Cizhu used nüshu to relieve her frustration, but not every woman
was capable of expressing emotions in “women’s script.” Others might ask a
nüshu expert to write a biography on their behalf; Yi, for instance, wrote
more than a dozen biographical nüshu at other women’s request. Some
| Gendered Words
24
women composed only nüge but not nüshu. Wang Gangzhen’s 王剛珍
(1913–2003) story provides an example of this. When Gangzhen was just
eight years old, her aunt composed a nüge for her to chant, to make public
the heinous treatment she received at her stepmother’s hands. This experi-
ence inspired Gangzhen to compose her own lament later in life, when
her husband went missing after being conscripted into the army in the
1930s. In this biographical nüge, she first laments the difficulties of being a
quasi-widow:
For those who have husbands, their lands are watered.
I have no husband; my rice seedlings have withered. . . .
I get up early in the morning to pull weeds;
I spread lime over the fields in the afternoon before it gets too late.
Taking up the bamboo dung-scoop, in tears I go out to work.
I walk along the street with tears flying.
Tears run like rain,
Drenching my clothes. . . .
A single bird flies into the sky, not seeing where its partner is;
I have a husband in the army, but don’t know when he will return.
人的有夫井水到 / 是我無夫乾死禾 . . . / 早晨起來去扯稗 / 下午灑灰遲不遲
挑起畚箕哭著出 / 走在路上眼淚飛 / 眼淚流起似雨下 / 衣襟抹得水淋淋 . . .
獨鳥飛天不見面 / 我夫當兵不見歸
Gangzhen’s misery as a quasi-widow partly resulted from the indifference of

her in-laws, who provided her no assistance:
The in-laws are hard-hearted, they don’t look out for me,
Leaving their daughter-in-law lonely and cold,
Like a bird in the remote mountains,
Day and night, nothing but alone.
心粗父母不顧我 / 隨我媳婦冷孤淒 / 好比深山嶺上鳥 / 時時日日冷孤淒
Desperate to escape her plight, Gangzhen went to seek advice from a spirit
medium. When she was told that her husband was no longer alive, and since
her only child had just recently died, she decided to remarry. Her decision met
with no objection from her in-laws; in fact, they were quite happy with Gang-
zhen’s move, for then they could procure the compensation called fenli qian
分離錢 ‘separation money’ from her new husband:
Receiving 2,200 dollars from my remarriage,
They used it to buy food and land at the end of the year.
With four acres of land purchased, and
With food to eat and money to play around with, they are happy.5
收我兩千二百塊 / 年終擺出買糧田 / 買得糧田有四畝 / 有吃有嫖心又歡
5
Sung by Wang Gangzhen and recorded in October 2000.

As shown in Gangzhen’s case, a biographical ballad is not only an account
of personal suffering; it could also be a forceful accusation aimed at those who
did the injustice. But of course, lamentation or accusation is action after the
fact. To prevent misfortune from happening in the first place, one needs pro-
tection from higher powers, and this is how Jiangyong women developed an-
other realm of nüshu practice: writing prayers to ask for blessing.
Worship Verses
Jiangyong women wrote nüshu prayers to the female deities of two specific
temples. Gupo (姑婆 ‘spinster’) was the resident deity in the temple known as
Huashanmiao 花山廟, also referred to as Gupo Temple, which was located in
central Jiangyong; and Niangniang (娘娘 ‘madam’) was the deity worshipped
in Longyantang 龍眼塘, also called Niangniang Temple, in Dao County, adja-
cent to Jiangyong. Both temples were renowned for their efficacy in helping
women have sons, but their powers were not limited to that. The following is
a nüshu prayer regarding a missing husband:
Today, I sit peacefully in my room,
Writing a letter to Goddess Gupo,
Asking for Gupo’s blessing,
Blessing me with my husband’s return.
My husband, named Tang Youyi,
Went to Guangxi three years ago,
And never came back—
I have no idea where he is.
今日安然空房坐 / 修書奉到姑婆神 / 奉請姑婆來保佑 / 保佑夫君轉回家
我夫名叫唐有義 / 三年之前走廣西 / 走到廣西不回轉 / 不知身落哪一方
To continue, this woman lamented about difficulties she faced during her hus-
band’s absence:
I was abandoned to keep a bare house and
Take care of my son and two daughters.
With no one to help me work the fields,
I have to do every job myself.
My husband owed money when he left and
I became responsible for clearing the debt.
But this is a poor family, how could I pay it off?
Keeping up with compounding interest made it even harder.
Having no other recourse,
I sold two parcels of ancestral land.
But that was still not enough.
So I sold one half of the house to redeem the debt.
Since then, the family’s situation has become ever more desperate.
Now, we suffer from hunger at least half the year.
Tonight, we may have something to eat,
| Gendered Words
26
But we don’t know where our breakfast will come from.
Besides, the children get sick from time to time,
And I have no money to take them to the doctor. . . .
When will such a life be over? . . .
I go sleepless, perturbed the whole night through.
拋下我來空房守 / 又有一兒兩朵花 / 田地功夫沒人做 / 各樣事情我獨當
我夫去時借了帳 / 又要我來填歸清 / 家中寒苦填不起 / 利上加利更加難
因為填帳無計較 / 賣了祖宗兩處田 / 田地賣了亦不夠 / 再賣房屋一半邊
自此家中更加苦 / 半年饑飽含恨深 / 今日夜黑吃了夜 / 不知朝米在哪方
兒女有時又得病 / 沒得銀錢請醫師 .../ 如此人世幾時了... / 透夜不眠透夜焦
Petitioning the higher powers seems to be her last resort:

I thereby write to make a plea—
A plea to Gupo: Please show your power and efficacy.
Please consider my request because of my honesty, integrity, and
The fact that I have never been ungrateful to others.
If I did something wrong in my previous life,
Please request leniency in the court of the Jade Emperor on my behalf.
I pray that my husband comes back as soon as possible;
Then I will serve you with chicken and lamb.6
始我修書來許願 / 奉請姑婆顯神靈 / 念其我家心道好 / 不得虧心待別人
若是前世積了惡 / 玉帝台前請諒寬 / 保佑夫君早回轉 / 殺雞殺羊待神靈
These four types of nüshu and nüge—the sisterhood letter, wedding perfor-
mances, biographical lament, and worship verse—were mostly composed for
the protagonist’s own sake. But sometimes women also wrote about others
using a story form, and this is the fifth type of literature often seen in this
practice.
Narratives
When women witnessed some extraordinary event that touched their hearts,
whether it concerned a woman’s notorious behavior or a noble act, they might
compose narratives to criticize or otherwise comment on the event. One very
popular narrative, for example, describes the tragedy of an eighteen-year-old
girl who was forced into marriage with a three-year-old husband:
An eighteen-year-old girl, a three-year-old boy:
She washed his feet and put him to bed in the evening,
But was awakened by his cries for breast-feeding during the night.
“But I am your wife, not your mom!”
十八歲女三歲郎 / 夜間洗腳抱上床 / 睡到半夜要奶吃 / 我是夫妻不是娘
Unable to endure her toddler husband, the bride, at a girlfriend’s instigation,

threw the boy down a well. The boy’s body was eventually found, and the bride
6
This text was provided by Zhou Shuoyi in 1993; see also Zhao (1992:530–532).

was brought to court and sentenced to death. Just before her execution, she
wrote a letter home:
First I write to my mother,
Asking her not to expect her daughter’s homecoming.
Second, I write to my brother,
Asking him to prepare the dowry [for a younger sister].
Third, I write to my sister-in-law,
Asking her to serve well my mother at home.
Fourth, I write to my younger brother,
Asking him to study hard in the academy.
Fifth is a message to my younger sister,
Wishing her to be assigned a good husband.
Do not be like your elder sister—
For a good woman will not detest the shortcomings of her husband.7
一筆寫信搭娘曰 / 教娘不要望女回 / 二筆寫信搭哥曰 / 叫哥樓中備嫁妝
三筆寫信搭嫂曰 / 叫嫂在家服侍娘 / 四筆寫信搭弟曰 / 叫弟用心進學堂
五筆寫信搭妹曰 / 叫妹樓中選好郎 / 不似前頭大姊樣 / 好女不嫌夫主醜
The above story concerns a particular woman’s life, but sometimes a narra-
tive might pertain to women’s common fate or factors in the broader social
milieu, such as warfare. The following is a ballad about enforced conscription
during the Sino-Japanese War of the 1930s and 1940s:
I sit alone in my room thinking of nothing
But how the world suffers.
In China we have Chiang Kai-shek,
Who fights against the Japanese without mercy.
The Japanese devils have big plans.
They ride in airplanes, flying all over the sky.
These planes are really something.
They bomb the provinces, prefectures, and counties.
The superiors thus send out the order
That every county and township must carry out conscription.
They recruit new solders,
Who turn into veterans three years later.
The young men of twenty-five or twenty-six are the best qualified;
Those of thirty-three years old are also conscripted.
Those who fit the qualifications are all taken away,
Making the civilians uneasy.
If families have three children, one of them is conscripted.
If they have four, a pair is enlisted.
From eighteen years old to forty-five,
How many are left at home?
Discounting the casualties of the army,
7
Sung by Tang Baozhen and recorded in November 1993; see also Zhao (1992:512–514).
| Gendered Words
28
Bones, white as the frost, pile up on the roads.
The strong men are all gone,
Only the elderly and children remain at home. . . .
It is now year 28 of the Republic.
When will the world regain peace and serenity?8
靜坐娘房無思想 / 思想世間好可憐 / 中國出個蔣介石 / 打起日本不留情
日本鬼子計策大 / 坐起飛機滿天遊 / 想起飛機真厲害 / 省州縣府盡炸平
又是上方下命令 / 各保區縣來抽兵 / 抽起新兵去訓練 / 訓練三年成老兵
年齡合格二五六 / 再抽一朝三十三 / 以符年齡盡抽到 / 抽起百姓不安然
家有三兒抽一子 / 家有四兒抽一雙 / 十八抽到四十五 / 還有家中幾多人
當兵之人全不算 / 路上枯骨白如霜 / 身富力強盡去了 / 留歸老幼在家中…
今年民國二十八 / 幾時天收定太平
This was a popular nüshu and nüge—so popular that many elderly men can
also sing it. A woman born in 1918, Mo Yuexing 莫月形 (married from Huangji-
aling to Shangjiangxu Township), told me she composed this conscription
song in collaboration with her sworn sister in 1939, when they saw so many
villagers being forced to join the army. They were singing this song one day,
and a male guest of the family overheard it and found the nüge meaningful,
“So he wrote it down in the hanzi script,” said Mo Yuexing. Another woman,
Yang Xixi 楊細細 of Huangjialing, also claimed to have composed the song
with her sworn sisters. She maintained that the song was later written as a
nüshu piece by Yi when she visited her relatives in the village where Yang Xixi
resided (Endō 2005). Quite possibly, as these things go, these two sisterhood
groups did not actually create this song but only adapted an existing popular
nüge. Nonetheless, their accounts throw light on how various versions of a
song could develop, and they also suggest how oral nüge became transcribed.
This brings us to the last, but not least, domain where nüshu historically played
an important cultural role: as a transcription tool.
Transcriptions of Male-Authored Literature

In addition to authoring their own works, Jiangyong women took advantage of
nüshu to transcribe stories they were fond of, such as men’s hanzi-written nar-
rative ballads, a genre known as changben 唱本 ‘song book’. Changben ballads
were traditionally performed by amateur male performers of the village during
winter months when all the harvest work has been completed. The pieces were
often long and thus challenging to memorize and recite. Nüshu transcription
was a tool that allowed women to offset memory loss and enjoy at their own
convenience the stories that featured women’s virtues, hopes for justice, and
fantasies of imagined lives (Idema 1999, 2009; Liu 2010a, 2010b; Liu and Hu
1994; McLaren 1996). One of the most popular ballads is a tragic romance con-
cerning a young girl named Zhu Yingtai 祝英台, who decides to study in an
academy despite her father’s objection: “Only boys are allowed to enter the
8
Sung by Mo Yuexing and recorded in October 2000.

academy / When have women ever been allowed to enter school?” 只有男子入
書院 / 哪有女兒進學堂 (Gong 1991:102). But Yingtai successfully persuades
her father with the following reasoning:
The Bodhisattva Guanyin of the South Sea was originally a woman;
She recited the sutras in the Buddha hall all day long.
Emperor Zetian was born a woman;
She majestically managed the empire and ruled across rivers and mountains.
Now Squire Zhu of E’mei has a daughter;
She wishes to go to Hangzhou and enter school. (Gong 1991:102)
南海觀音原是女 / 長日念經坐佛堂 / 則天皇帝一女身 / 總管山河實威風
峨嵋祝公生一女 / 願到杭州進入學堂
In the course of her studies in Hangzhou, Yingtai, disguised as a young man,

befriends a classmate named Liang Shanbo 梁山伯, who does not discover
Yingtai’s gender, even though he has shared a room with her for three years.
When Shanbo finally discovers that Yingtai is in fact a girl, he asks his mother
to propose a marriage, but it is too late: Yingtai has been promised by her
family to someone else. Unable to marry his beloved, Shanbo dies of a broken
heart. To demonstrate her corresponding love and loyalty, Yingtai visits Shan-
bo’s tomb on her wedding day and prays to him:
“Dear Brother Liang!
If your spirit has the power, please open the grave.
So that we may become a couple on the Yellow Springs road.”
Before she had finished speaking, there came a loud noise,
The tomb opened up, split up the middle.
Yingtai rushed forward and leaped into the grave. (Gong 1991:118)
叫聲哥哥梁大郎 / 有靈有神開墳墓 / 黃泉路上結成雙 / 言之未了一聲響
只見墳台折兩廂 / 英台急忙墳中入
All the bystanders tried to rescue Yingtai from the tomb, but when they dug it
open, they found only a pair of mandarin ducks, which flew away into the sky.
Could they be the spirits of Yingtai and Shanbo? This ballad leaves room for its
audiences to savor and imagine.
A Genre for “Lamenting One’s Miseries”
Of the six types of texts described above, three must be presented in written
nüshu: sisterhood letters, sanzhaoshu wedding literature, and prayers. The bridal
laments and wedding ritual songs, by contrast, are strictly oral. Biographical
laments, narratives, and folk ballads can be presented either as written nüshu
or oral nüge. Note, however, that the classification of nüshu and nüge into differ-
ent types (sisterhood letter, biography, prayer, etc.) is a scholarly invention.9
9
Note, for example, epistolary nüshu are not necessarily written among members of sister groups,
see Liu (2004b).
| Gendered Words
30
For many local women, they are all the same: songs to be sung, whatever the
lyrics or stories are about. Yang Sansan 楊三三 (born 1938) of Haotang 浩塘
Village is such a song lover. Able to sing hundreds of songs, Yang Sansan never
worries about what a song actually means, she just enjoys the fun of singing it.
As she puts it, “The more you sing, the more you feel happy.” As one popular
nüge says, “I sing a song to relieve my affliction” 唱個歌子解心煩. “Affliction”
here speaks to the reverse side of singing—affliction and its release—and this is
exactly what nüshu is all about.
Indeed, if you ask what nüshu is, local women always answer su kelian ‘la-
menting one’s miseries’. Even the wedding genre, sanzhaoshu, which is sup-
posed to be celebratory and congratulatory, has room for lamentation. Kelian
in this sense can be seen as the “hypercognized” (Levy 1984) emotion of Ji-
angyong women and the generic affect of nüshu. This generic affect is explic-
itly highlighted when we consider how the same event may be narrated differ-
ently in nüshu and nanshu 男書 ‘men’s writing’, a term nüshu women used to
refer to official hanzi character texts. “The tiger incident” provides a useful
example.
“The tiger incident” was a real-life event, a story about a man whose wife
and daughter sacrificed their lives to save his when they were attacked by a
tiger. In the local gazetteer, Yongming xianzhi 永明縣志 (Yongming was the
traditional name for Jiangyong before 1955) published in 1846 (vol. 11:3), the
wife and the daughter are listed as martyred women, as shown below:
Zhang 張 and Li 李 were the wife and daughter of Li Shi’an 李世安, a Huang-
gangling villager in the Fourth District. Shi’an was accompanied by his wife [and
daughter] on their way home from harvesting rice. At Fengchuiyan, a tiger
sprang out and grabbed Shi’an. His wife Zhang took her stick and pounded on
the tiger in wild fury. The tiger dropped Shi’an and turned to snatch Zhang and
then killed her. The daughter then used her stick to beat the tiger again and
again, but she was carried off. Shi’an survived. This incident took place during
the Qianlong 乾隆 era [1736–1796].
Accompanying the main text are comments by the gazetteer’s editor, printed in
small script:
Alas! How much strength could the women muster?

Their wooden sticks were hardly lances or spears.
Even so, the wife, with her true heart and sincere soul, still fought and died for
her husband;
The daughter, to fulfill her daughterly responsibility, sacrificed herself for her
mother. . . .
Ah, how extraordinary are their spirits, this mother and daughter of the Fourth
District.
Who says that contemporaries cannot compare with figures of old?
嗟爾裙釵幾許力 / 竹杖況復非戈戟 / 婦代夫死婦心甘 / 女殉母死女事畢 . . .
節哉四區此母女 / 誰道今人不如古

Here the wife and daughter are exalted for their moral achievement; their ex-
traordinary behavior fully manifested the Confucian ethical code of filiality and
wife-to-husband loyalty. This moral and ethical orientation contrasts sharply
with the emphasis found in the nüshu version.
The nüshu begins by showing how nüshu fit into women’s social life:
Thanks to my natal family’s good will,
They invite me home every June. . . .
I’m so happy to return to my mother’s side . . . ,
I sit together with other kinswomen and we make small talk, adding to my pleasure.
To pass the time we pick out nüshu and read.
They ask me to write one.
So now I have written none other than
The story of two ladies of the past.
搭附外家真有意 / 年年六月接女歸 . . . / 回到娘邊多歡喜 . . . / 坐齊細說更加歡
沒事拿起女書讀 / 大儕要我寫一篇 / 我今不寫其他事 / 只講當年兩女娘
This is followed by the tiger incident, set up by a portrayal of an ordinary Ji-

angyong peasant family:
Under Sage Mountain there is a place called Huanggangling,
Where lived a man named Li Shi’an.
Shi’an was matched with a good wife, surnamed Zhang.
The husband and wife were good companions and cared for each other. . . .
Working hard in all seasons,
Neither well-fed nor starving, they lived on. . . .
It was year 60 of the former reign [that is, 1795];
In July, the day of Beginning Autumn, [the weather grew] hot and hotter.
There was too much harvest work to be done in the field,
So mother and daughter went along to help.
The three worked and worked until sunset;
Though sweating and fatigued, they did not complain.
Four baskets of the newly harvested crop were put together;
Hefted by the couple onto their shoulders, they were about to head home.
The daughter carried two bundles of rice straw,
Walking behind her parents.
She hoped to get home as soon as possible,
To wash up and change her clothes,
To have a quick supper and take an early rest,
To enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep.
聖人山下黃岡嶺 / 有個世安姓李人 / 配著賢妻張氏女 / 夫婦同陪兩相親…
一年四季多勞煉 / 不飢不飽過時光 . . . / 正是前朝六十載 / 七月立秋熱難當
田中割禾忙不了 / 張氏娘女也來幫 / 三人忙到日落嶺 / 雖曰苦了也心甘
兩擔新穀收拾好 / 夫妻挑起便回鄉 / 女兒挑起一擔稿 / 也在爺娘後面跟
一心只想早進屋 / 洗淨身體換衣裳 / 加早吃夜好休息 / 安安然然睡一場
| Gendered Words
32
The tranquility of this family’s life, however, quickly evaporates:
Who would have expected, as they descended to the foot of the hill,
That they would be confronted by a tiger bounding out of the woods?
With an earth-shaking roar,
The tiger stretched its four legs to pounce,
Jumping three zhang [about three meters],
It knocked Shi’an to the ground.
This gave Zhang a terrible shock.
In a great rage,
She immediately set down her load,
Pulled out the pole and began striking.
The tiger, being struck,
Dropped Shi’an and turned around to confront Zhang.
It grabbed Zhang in its paws and then
Bit her shoulder and
Tore into her head.
Seeing this, the daughter had no idea how to react
But crying and screaming, with a broken heart.
She too put down her straw bundles,
Took out her carrying pole, and moved forward
Toward the tiger, striking at it wildly, uncontrollably,
One stroke after another.
Struck and hurt,
The tiger dropped Zhang and retargeted its attack.
The daughter fought the tiger with every bit of her strength,
But she was too young and too frail to persist.
Eventually, the tiger took her in its mouth,
And dragged her off into the mountain wilderness.
誰知走到嶺根腳 / 遇著老虎出山林 / 大喊一聲天頭動 / 四腳騰雲跳過來
一跳就是三丈遠 / 捉倒世安地埃塵 / 嚇起張氏一大怵 / 當場急起怒沖天
丟了肩上穀一擔 / 舉起擔扁打過來 / 老虎挨他一棍打 / 放下世安便轉身
轉身對起張氏女 / 兩腳捉起就咬人 / 一口咬在膊頭上 / 半邊腦鼓被口吞
女兒望起無主意 / 又哭又喊又傷心 / 放下一擔粘禾稿 / 取出擔扁趕過來
對起老虎就亂打 / 棍棍打著老虎身 / 打得老虎痛難忍 / 丟了張氏又轉身
女兒拼命與虎鬥 / 可惜年輕力弱了 / 終歸還是被虎咬 / 咬起女兒上山林
Although the main plot is essentially the same in both the gazetteer and
nüshu versions, the narrative points of view are different: the first completely
that of Shi’an, or even the omniscient narrator of the gazetteer, but shifting
markedly to Zhang and the daughter in the nüshu version. Whereas the gazet-
teer only describes Zhang’s “wild fury” and the tiger’s panic, the nüshu is filled
with emotional descriptors and an acknowledgment of human vulnerability—
shock, rage, indecision, uncontrollability, and a broken heart. Later in the story,
even Shi’an is shown reacting to his loss:

At the time, Shi’an could only stare in horror;
He saw his wife killed,
Watched his daughter being taken away.
He wished he could have gone to retrieve her but he couldn’t.
All he could do was hold Zhang’s body and cry,
His tears covered his face.
當時世安大開眼 / 望見妻子命歸陰 / 又見女兒被咬走 / 想要去趕不能行
只是抱起張氏哭 / 眼淚盡頭不見天
The sharpest divergence between the two versions occurs at the story’s conclu-
sion, where the nüshu ends on a critical rather than laudatory note:
The county magistrate learned of this event,
And wrote an obituary to commemorate these two women.
But what use is an obituary?
One would rather enjoy the loving regard of one’s kinswomen.10
此事縣官知道了 / 寫篇祭文祭女娘 / 一篇祭文有何用 / 不如姑孫疼惜聲
“What use is an obituary?” is clearly a shot aimed at the local gazetteer’s

moral-oriented discourse. But for women, it is more meaningful to be cher-
ished (here, gaining “loving regard” or tengxi sheng 疼惜聲) from one’s female
kin. The claim that dismisses the obituary succinctly speaks to what nüshu is
and is for: a means to lament and to evoke empathic understanding from
fellow village women, natal and affinal (Liu 2004a). Empathic understanding
gives existence to a “community of sentiment” (Appadurai 1990), which helps
women realize the dignity of their existence and through which their sense of
vulnerability and invisibility is counterbalanced and hopefully transformed.
Origins and History
How and when nüshu developed into a genre of lamenting remains a mystery.
However, one piece, allegedly written sometime in the eleventh or twelfth cen-
tury by Hu Yuxiu 胡玉秀 (also known as Hu Xiuying 胡秀英), the earliest his-
torical female figure recorded in nüshu literature, may provide some clues. Hu
Yuxiu of Jingtian 荊田 Village was sent to the Imperial Palace to become a
concubine to the Song Emperor Huizong 徽宗 (reigned 1082–1135). After living
as an imperial concubine for seven years, she wrote a letter to her family:
Sitting in the Imperial Palace, I write.

My tears are flowing even before I begin.
I’m Hu Yuxiu from Jingtian Village.
Writing a letter home,
To my parents, to whom I wish good health.
10
This text was provided by Zhou Shuoyi in 1993; see also Zhou Shuoyi (1995) for his acquisition of
this nüshu work and see Gong (1991:60–65) for the whole text.
| Gendered Words
34
I first thank them for their grace and, second, send my regards.
Also I inquire after my aunts, cousins, and sisters,
Wishing you all peace and harmony.
Not hearing from you for so long, and
Deeply missing all of you,
I write to pay my regards,
Write to tell everything from the beginning.
靜坐皇宮把筆提 / 未曾修書淚先垂 / 我是荊田胡玉秀 / 修書一本轉回家
搭附爺娘剛強在 / 一謝養恩二請安 / 也有姑孫各姊妹 / 一家大小可安然
因為耐久無音信 / 各位親情想念深 / 所我修書來看察 / 一二從頭訴原因
In this nüshu, Hu Yuxiu recalls how she became an imperial concubine, not
because of her beauty but thanks to her literary talent:
My family enjoyed good standing,

Was able to employ a tutor for my younger brother, and
I sat alongside to study with him,
Studying literature day and night. . . .
At age sixteen, my younger brother took the imperial civil service examination,
Through which he won an official position in the central court.
Thinking highly of my brother,
The emperor asked him who else was in his hometown.
My brother shouldn’t have rushed to mention,
Mention that he had a sister who had unsurpassed literary talent, even better
than his own. . . .
So the Emperor dispatched an order,
To fetch me to the palace to be a companion to his majesty.
搭附家中多豪富 / 請個先生教弟郎 / 我也旁邊跟起讀 / 不分日夜念文章 . . .
弟郎十六去過考 / 得做高官入朝中 / 因為皇上看得起 / 問曰家中有哪人
不該弟郎心腹急 / 說出家中有姊娘 / 又說姊娘才學好 / 滿腹文章勝弟郎 . . .
一道聖旨差人到 / 要我入朝伴君王
Life in palace, however, proved solitary and miserable:

It was supposed to be good to live in the imperial court,
Like an ordinary person entering a fairyland. . . .
Everyone said that I now enjoyed wealth and nobility;
Who would ever guess that my youth would be ruined. . . .
I have been in the palace these seven years;
Yet only three nights did I accompany his majesty.
Other than that, I do nothing.
In the palace, my mind has never been settled.
I would rather stay in my embroidering chamber at home,
Where I could see my family every day,
Where I would find consolation whenever I was distressed,
Where my sisters and friends would cheer me up.
Even with no siblings to keep me company,

I could pass the time doing needlework.
Even if the house is as cold as snow,
The palace is ten times colder.
When will this life be over?
When will I just die from distress?
去到朝中本是好 / 可比塵人入仙堂 . . . / 個個說我多富貴 / 誰知害我百年春 . . .
來到朝中七年滿 / 只與君王三夜眠 / 除此之外沒事做 / 身在皇宮心不安
不如在家繡房坐 / 朝朝得見骨肉親 / 遇起憂愁有人勸 / 又有姊妹開得心
若是沒人來做伴 / 插花繡畫過時光 / 將言家中冷如雪 / 皇宮比雪冷十分
如此人世幾時了 / 幾時氣死我終身
To prevent this tragedy, Hu Yuxiu wrote home to advise her family:

Unable to think of a way out,
I hereby write a letter home,
Write to lament to my family,
Write to ask them to keep in mind what I have suffered: . . .
If you have a daughter as beautiful as a flower,
Never marry her into the palace.
What misery it is!
Better to drown her in the Yangzi River.11
想來想去真無路 / 始我修書轉回家 / 修書訴出親人聽 / 將我可憐記在心 . . .
家中若有紅花女 / 千萬不嫁入朝中 / 嫁到朝中多苦楚 / 不如投石入長江
Lonely and distressed, Hu Yuxiu wrote to relieve her frustration and melan-
choly, but her status as the emperor’s concubine presented a problem. She had
to evade the palace censorship system and so created nüshu as a means of get-
ting around the court censors. Her attempt succeeded, thanks to two major
linguistic characteristics of nüshu in relation to official hanzi. The first is its
morphology. Nüshu characters are formed in a rhomboid shape characterized
by oblique lines and arcs, quite different from the square form of Chinese
graphs. For example, the word ‘field’ is 田 in hanzi but in nüshu script.
Second, while hanzi is a semantics-based ideographic system, nüshu is pho-
netic; that is, a nüshu graph can be seen as a syllable that represents a sound
(Chen 1992, 1995; Chiang 1995).12 In the nüshu system, therefore, one can use
homophones to represent diverse meanings. In Hu Yuxiu’s home letter, for
example, the nüshu graph was used to represent the words ‘palace’ (gong 宮),
‘writing’ (zhang 章), ‘amid’ (zhong 中), ‘over’ (zhong 終), and ‘river’ (jiang 江)
11
This nüshu was provided by He Yanxin in November 2004; see also Gong (1991:60–65).
12
In addition to the predominant rule that one nüshu word (as a syllable) represents one sound but
can carry multiple meanings (yizi yiyin duoyi 一字一音多義), Chen Qiguang (1995) highlights
another three formational rules of nüshu: (1) yizi duoxing 一字多形, one word can be written with
different graphs; (2) yiyin duozi 一音多字, one syllable can be written as different graphs; and (3) yizi
duoyin 一字多音, one word may represent multiple sounds. William Chiang (1995:51–55), however,
summarizes the nüshu linguistic rules in a slightly different way: (1) sound borrowing, in which a
graph may represent a syllable which resembles the original syllable represented by the graph; and
(2) semantic borrowing, in which a graph may represent a word whose meaning resembles the
original meaning represented by the graph.
| Gendered Words
36
because they are all pronounced tɕiaŋ44 in her hometown dialect, referred to
generically as tuhua 土話 ‘native tongue’.13 In addition to the tuhua that is
spoken in rural Jiangyong, the official spoken language in the Jiangyong locale
is ‘Southwest official dialect’ (xi’nan guanhua 西南官話), a regional dialect used
in the Hunan, Guangxi, and Sichuan areas.
This eleventh-century legend of Hu Yuxiu, though melancholy and beauti-
ful, is not fully supported by historical documents. The local gazetteers (e.g.,
Yongming xianzhi 1846, vol. 4) do mention the emperor’s appreciation of Hu
Yuxiu’s distinguished talents and his bestowal of an endowed study hall (Yushu
lou 御書樓) upon her, but there is nothing about her being recruited as an im-
perial concubine, and still nothing about her invention of the nüshu script. The
earliest historical notice of nüshu found to date appears in Notes on the Investi-
gation of Each Hunan County (Hunan ge xian diaocha biji 湖南各縣調查筆記),
edited by Zeng Jiwu and published in 1931. In this document, nüshu is intro-
duced with reference to a local temple, the Huashanmiao: “Every May, many
village women come to worship. They bring fans with them and sing to-
gether. . . . These fans are inscribed with a tiny fly-head-like script (yingtou xizi
蠅頭細字) that no man can read” (Zeng Jiwu 1931:99). However, exactly what
these women sang about is not mentioned. The first official document that
lists a piece of nüshu writing is Jiangyong xian jiefang shinian zhi 江永縣解放十
年志 (Ten-year history of Jiangyong since Liberation), a manuscript prepared and
compiled in 1959 by Zhou Shuoyi.
Zhou Shuoyi was an important figure in the development of nüshu scholar-
ship. He was the one who helped Gong Zhebing locate the first nüshu piece in
1982. He was also the first local male elite member to have learned nüshu in
the 1950s. It was he who entered the first official record about nüshu in the Ji-
angyong gazetteer.
Zhou’s interest in nüshu started with a female ancestor six generations ear-
lier, Pu Bixian 蒲碧仙 (1796–1850), a famous literate gentry lady of the time. Pu
had written a work entitled Xunnüci 訓女詞 (Precepts for Daughters) in which
she reminisced about how her mother had taught her to be a gentle lady known
for her needlework and the female virtue of diligence. She wrote this text to
honor her mother, and also to transmit her teachings to her daughter. The Xun-
nüci later became the standard admonitory text given to daughters of the Zhou
family as they married out. And it was through marriage that Xunnüci was dis-
seminated from Yunshan 允山 Township, Zhou’s hometown, to the nüshu
circles of Shangjiangxu, where the work’s original five-word hanzi verses were
transformed into seven-word nüshu lines. This connection made Zhou, a male
cadre, feel especially attached to the “women’s script” (Zhou Shuoyi 1995).
In the 1950s, when Zhou worked in the Jiangyong Cultural Bureau and was
assigned to compile local cultural history, he paid special attention to nüshu. In
the process of collecting data from the villages, he became acquainted with
Cizhu. “Cizhu was very gracious and friendly, and she wrote nüshu very well,
13
See Huang (1993) for Jiangyong local dialect.

so I asked if she could teach me. She did, with a great deal of enthusiasm,”
Zhou recalled. This acquaintance, together with his family history, inspired
Zhou to include in his gazetteer manuscript a nüshu work—and that is the
verse cited at the opening of this book, a nüshu authored by Cizhu. Zhou’s pro-
motion of nüshu, unfortunately, was soon put to an end by ensuing political
campaigns, in which Zhou was labeled a “rightist“ bourgeois. It was not until
the 1980s, as China’s political atmosphere liberalized, that nüshu was rediscov-
ered and attracted academic attention at home and abroad. Had Zhou’s en-
deavor not been interrupted, more clues to nüshu’s history would surely have
been uncovered and preserved.
Owing to the lack of historical records on the script, many controversies
around nüshu’s origins remain unsettled. Some suggest that nüshu evolved
from women’s weaving and embroidery traditions (Zhao 1995a, 1995b); some
others have denied it a female genesis and suggested that nüshu was originally
used by the Yao for purposes of political dissent (Chen 1995; Tang 1995). Some
describe nüshu as the residue of an ancient script as old as the nearly three-
thousand-year-old jiaguwen 甲骨文 (bone and tortoiseshell inscriptions), or as
part of the ancient Yue 越 culture that flourished in southeast China (Li Qingfu
2009, 2010; Xie 1991a, 1991b, 1991c). Many others, however, believe that nüshu
was derived from hanzi, not the other way around (Chen 1992; Chiang 1991;
Zhao 1995a, 1995b).
There is very little in the form of direct evidence to support any of these theo-
ries, largely because we lack not only historical documentation but also nüshu
originals. Many nüshu were destroyed during the turmoil of the Sino-Japanese
War in the 1930s and 1940s and during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976;
many were burned or buried following the deaths of their owners. One recent
discovery of a nüshu artifact is a coin stamped with a motto in nüshu script:
‘Women of the world are a family of sisters’ (tianxia funü / jiemei yijia
天下婦女 / 姊妹一家). This coin has been claimed to have been made during
the Taiping Rebellion of the mid-nineteenth century, but there is no way to cor-
roborate this, mainly because the graph for ‘women’ (婦 fu) was inscribed as ,
which is not seen in any other nüshu writing.14 As for my own field study, I can
trace the use of nüshu back only 150 years or so on the basis of oral history; many
of the elderly women I spoke with recalled the popularity of nüshu among
women of their grandmothers’ or great-grandmothers’ generation. One of the
pieces in my collection of nüshu wedding literature is marked with the date
‘Third year of the Republic’ (i.e., 1914), which strongly suggests that nüshu was in
circulation at least from the late nineteenth century.15
14
For a detailed discussion on this nüshu coin, see Endō (2003) and Li and Xu (2003).
15
This piece is different from the regular sanzhaoshu in that it contains not only nüshu writing, but
also some Chinese classical poems written in hanzi. It is hard to tell whether the nüshu and the
Chinese poems were written by the same person or by someone else, say, the spouse or the son of
the nüshu owner. Also, we cannot be sure whether the date inscribed represents when the nüshu was
written or when the official-script poems were added, if they were written by a different person. If
the latter is the case, then quite possibly the date of this piece should be pushed back a few decades,
since most sanzhaoshu were transmitted to the succeeding generations.
| Gendered Words
38
The Demise and Revival of Nüshu and Nüge
The nüshu and nüge traditions began to fade out of fashion as a result of social
changes brought about by the Communist Liberation in 1949. On the one
hand, the introduction of formal female education replaced the social function
of nüshu; official hanzi is not dialect- or gender-circumscribed and therefore
serve better for communication nationally. On the other hand, the collectiviza-
tion of production practiced from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, which re-
quired women to work in the fields and outside the home, deprived women of
the free time in which they had been able to learn nüshu and nüge. One woman
born in 1910 commented, “During that period, women, whether married or
unmarried, had to chugong 出工 (go out and work) to earn their food; where
would we find the time to sing?” Furthermore, with the simplification of wed-
ding rituals, young girls ceased to perform in the singing courts and therefore
lost that opportunity to learn songs from the senior generations. Nowadays,
only women over 60 years old have knowledge of women’s traditional songs.
The new generations, by contrast, find nüshu and nüge ‘unpleasant to the ears’
(hen nanting 很難聽) or ‘very noisy’ (hen chao 很吵); they prefer instead the
popular songs they learn from radio or television.
The discovery of nüshu in the 1980s has led to a short-term revival of some
traditional practices associated with nüge, such as bridal lamentation. How-
ever, local people’s interest in nüshu—whether learning the script or promot-
ing it as tourist attraction—did not really take hold until the early 2000s, when
local officials finally acknowledged nüshu to be a valuable form of cultural her-
itage. The government’s efforts included establishing a nüshu museum in
2002, institutionalizing the official qualification of nüshu chuanren 女書傳人
‘nüshu transmitters’ in 2003, and promoting nüshu as one of UNESCO’s intan-
gible cultural heritage forms in the late 2000s. Nüshu is no longer a “weapon
of the weak” (Scott 1985) among Jiangyong women, but rather an emblem of
local pride and an item on the local political agenda.
Nüshu Scholarship
Since its “discovery” in 1982, more than ten books and hundreds of essays have
been published on nüshu. In these publications, three research trends can be
identified. The most predominant is the conceptualization of nüshu as a writ-
ten script, with research interests centering on nüshu’s linguistic attributes,
historical origins (especially in relation to official hanzi, Yao ethnicity, and an-
cient Yue culture), and compilations of nüshu dictionaries (e.g., Chen 2006;
Gong and Tang 2007; Xie and Xie 2009; Zhao et al. 2006; Zhou Shuoyi
2002). In addition to the linguistic approach, many scholars are also interested
in exploring nüshu as a body of literature, and they have made efforts to collect
as many texts as possible and to publish nüshu anthologies (e.g., Gong 1991;
Xie, ed. 1991; Zhao 1992, 2004, 2005). Last, and least weighty, is concern over

how to preserve nüshu as a disappearing cultural heritage (e.g., Endō and
Huang 2005; Gong and Li 2003).
Although nüshu is an element of rural women’s expressive culture, most
researchers, mainland scholars most tellingly, do not see it as fertile ground for
reconstructing women’s voices and life histories. There has been little interest
in using it to explore how rural women survived through the transitions of the
early Republican era and Communist Liberation from 1949 to 1978, with their
series of political, social, and economic reforms and movements. This is a
large and notable gap in modern Chinese history, which has only recently been
addressed in Hershatter (2011). The nüshu academic circle has also neglected
the complex relationship between written nüshu and oral nüge, a situation that
arose from the early scholarship. In the process of collecting material, oral
nüge, such as bridal laments, were simply lumped in with written nüshu be-
cause the songs provided convenient content that could be rendered in nüshu
graphs. This approach has benefited the salvaging of the nüshu script, but at a
cost. By transcribing nüge into nüshu, we acquire more examples of the “wom-
en’s script,” but we have also lost track of the “expressive niches” (Liu 2010a,
2010b) of oral performance that the women who are illiterate in nüshu have
long relied on.
This book is an attempt to fill in these gaps, clarify misrepresentations,
bring the true face of nüshu to the public, and also restore it to history. I build
from an anthropological investigation that asks how women, as writing sub-
jects and singing protagonists, have practiced nüshu and nüge, to unpack the
complexities and dynamics of rural women’s lifeworlds—lifeworlds that
engage their collective consciousness, individual subjectivities, life decisions,
and coping strategies. By conceptualizing nüshu and nüge distinctly as textual
construction and performance, I hope to tease out just how Jiangyong women
inscribed a nüshu world that cannot be conflated with the orally performed
nüge, and vice versa. Nüshu and nüge each has its unique expressive horizon—
its strengths and limits in defining and confining the voices expressed—and
this has spurred me to incorporate women’s life narratives into my nüshu and
nüge research. By this I hope to acquire a more comprehensive understanding
of women’s changing perspectives over their lifetimes and to recognize more
fully their socially structured and multi-positioned selves.
Writing Subject, Singing Protagonist
Starting in the late 1980s, a new research orientation emerged in sinology that
investigated Chinese women as writing subjects, whether in the form of per-
sonal communication, literary composition, or painting. Dorothy Ko’s (1994)
Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century
China (1994), Hu Siao-chen’s 胡曉真 (1994) Literary Tanci: A Woman’s Tradi-
tion of the Narrative in Verse, and Susan Mann’s (1997) Precious Records: Women
in China’s Long Eighteenth Century are some of the best examples of this trend.
| Gendered Words
40
In this research, women, though restricted by male-dominant social institu-
tions and mainstream cultural values, could still craft a literary space of their
own where they articulated female points of view, asserted female autonomy,
expanded their female social networks, and made manifest the value of female
talent (e.g., Chang and Saussy 2000; Fong 2008; Fong and Widmer 2010; Hu
Siao-chen 2003; Hu Wenkai 1985; Idema and Grant 2004; Ko 1994; Mann
1997; Widmer 1989; Widmer and Chang 1997). Here women did not just play
the social roles designated for them (daughter, wife, and mother) under the
sancong doctrine; they also occupied many “subject positions” (Zito and Barlow
1994:9) as writer, reader, consumer, traveler, teacher, literary critic, and so on.
These social roles and subject positions intersect and are negotiated, exerting
centripetal-centrifugal forces that expand a woman’s lifeworlds. Women there-
fore are not just part of the broader social system, but are able to formulate
their own culture and develop within distinct group identities, depending on
how they define their subjective positions. Nüshu and nüge represent a partic-
ular regional distinction that developed in rural Jiangyong.
Within the expressive culture of nüshu, Jiangyong women could expand
their social interactions beyond village and kinship confines by becoming
sworn sisters and sending sanzhaoshu as a wedding gift to a bride’s affinal vil-
lage. From the tips of their writing brushes, women inscribed their own
“herstory”—whether it was an account about oneself or other narratives—to
create their own female discourses. Nüshu furthermore gave women access to
the spirit realm via the form of worship verses. It also connected its practitio-
ners to the mainstream social world as they transcribed and enjoyed at their
leisure hanzi-composed folk ballads. As a women’s textual construction and
social practice, nüshu provides a new resource for comparative analysis. With
reference to the male hanzi system, nüshu allows us to understand how peas-
ant women perceive and present the world distinctly in terms of historiogra-
phy and epistemology. When juxtaposed with the writing worlds of elite female
groups, nüshu can provide insight into how Chinese women who share a sim-
ilar position in the social structure are diverse across social classes in terms of
their perspectives and forms of performance.
As performance, nüshu can also be seen as tangential to the nüge tradition
because of its capacity to be sung. In contrast to nüshu, which has recently
gained entry to scholarly circles, nüge remains a long-neglected tradition,
largely because of its oral and folkloric quality and supposed lack of literary
sophistication. Only in the 1920s and 1930s did it gain some attention among
indigenous scholars, not because they wanted to elicit the worldviews of mar-
ginal social groups such as the peasant class, but because employing folklore
to rally national pride was a viable response to the threats of external imperial-
ism and colonialism. This folklore movement was disrupted by ensuing de-
cades of upheaval, especially the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Its revival in
the 1980s again came with a certain political appeal, though one slightly differ-
ent from before. This time it was meant to show majority Han people’s respect
for minority cultures in hopes of prompting a sense of solidarity among all

ethnicities. To get beyond these nationalist and ethnic agendas, this book will
investigate nüge together with nüshu from the women’s points of view.
Points of view, it should be noted, are at play not only in text but also in per-
formance, which involves the performer (as author or animator), hearer (lis-
tening or overhearing), and audience (collective or dispersed) (Barber 1997;
Goffman 1981; Irvine 1996). After all, no text can ever simply exist by itself; it
is in performance that a text becomes enlivened and develops along its dialogic
potential, whether it is a dialogue with an immediate person, with an existing
utterance, or with an imaginary “superaddressee” (Bakhtin 1984, 1986;
Vološinov 1986). A dialogic scope, situating a text within an open, intertextu-
ally linked matrix, encourages us to investigate the social formations, power,
and authority that go beyond immediate interactions (Bauman 2005) and to
track the diverse paths along which meanings associated with a text multiply,
detour, traverse, settle, or aim toward some end (Liu 2004a). More impor-
tantly, it brings subjectivity to the study of women’s oral tradition—that is,
their feelings, perceptions, endeavors, struggles, and aspirations. To highlight
women’s subjectivity, I turn to women’s life narratives as an intertextual refer-
ence that allows me to identify and weave together the dialogically linked
threads into a web of meaning and to acknowledge how nüshu and nüge reflect
and structure Jiangyong women’s lived existence.
Life Narratives
Both nüshu and nüge are presented in verse form, including rhyming and lines
of equal length. It thus requires a certain competence, or some personal talent,
to create persuasive, forceful, and poetic works (e.g., Bauman 1977; Block 1975;
Hymes 1981). In addition, some nüshu and nüge are produced for ritual pur-
poses (e.g., the jiebai sisterhood letter, sanzhaoshu wedding literature, or bridal
lamentations), and therefore have their own generic requirements. For exam-
ple, the successful bridal lamentation not only articulates the bride’s sadness at
leaving home but also demonstrates her ability to console those who suffer and
give advice to those junior to her. These generic expressions provide a conven-
ient framework for improvisation; at the same time, however, they are con-
straining in that they define not only what should be expressed but also what
should not be (Liu 2010a). That is, not all women will be equally adept at com-
posing nüshu and nüge, and some voices may not be heard within these forms’
expressive horizon. And this is where peasant women’s life narratives come in:
They allow us to hear the voices beyond nüshu and nüge.
The life narrative or life history approach was once a conceptual embarrass-
ment to anthropology as a result of its literary orientation and lack of scientific
rigor (Crapanzano 1984). In line with Michel Foucault’s (1980) expositions
about power, however, it has become a meaningful genre for “empowering and
giving voice to those who have been regarded as silent or suppressed” (Black-
man 1991:57), whether an illiterate working woman (Pruitt 1967), a household
| Gendered Words
42
servant (Buechler and Buechler 1981), a spirit partner (Crapanzano 1980), a
hunter-gatherer in a savannah environment (Shostak 1981), or rural women
under Communist revolution (Hershatter 2011). As a data-collection method,
the life history provides an exceptional resource for uncovering the percep-
tions and experiences of the ordinary person, “whose ‘silence’ often reflects
our own dependence on the written word and our inability to cope with such
an enormous and complicated ‘data base’” (Geiger 1986:335). As a theoretical
topic, the life history helps to unfold a person’s experience in the world; it is
also an account that may reflect that experience only partially and that some-
times involves disguise, distortion, hyperbole, and memory lapse (Ochs and
Capps 1996, 2001; Runyan 1986). To offset these kinds of slippage, I will rely
on multiple life stories to capture a broader view of women’s multifaceted lived
experiences.
Four women’s life narratives will be used to unpack the historical and cul-
tural contexts of Jiangyong, wherein nüshu and nüge were practiced and in-
formed different stages in women’s life cycles. While Tang Baozhen represents
the majority of Jiangyong women who did not learn nüshu but could still par-
ticipate in the nüshu world by singing nüge, Hu Xinkui as a child bride shows
how people of the poor social classes who were deprived of the luxury of enjoy-
ing nüshu and nüge lived their lives in changing rural China. He Yanxin, the
last living traditionally trained practitioner, shares with us her experiences
learning nüshu and her complex feelings toward it as a genre for “lamenting
one’s misery.” And finally, Hu Meiyue reflects on what it means to be a “nüshu
transmitter” of the new generation. Altogether, these women’s life accounts
and experiences illuminate the roles of nüshu and nüge in a traditional setting
and encourage us to think about where nüshu, as an endangered cultural her-
itage, might be headed.

CHAPTER 3 Tang Baozhen: I Sing and Therefore
I Am and Become
“liu xiansheng 劉先生!” a woman was calling from outside the house.
Xiansheng used to be a respectful term of address for a teacher or scholar,
but nowadays it refers almost exclusively to men, essentially meaning ‘mister’
or ‘sir’. I wondered who was calling me xiansheng in its classical connotation.
Almost simultaneously, I heard another voice raised, this time familiar:
“Little Liu, open the door!” It was Yanxin, my sworn sister and boon compan-
ion of my 1993 fieldwork in Heyuan Village. “Little Liu” (Xiao Liu 小劉) was
the name most villagers called me, as opposed to “Aunty Liu” (Liu A’yi 劉阿姨),
the form of address used by young girls or children.
Opening the door, I saw a dignified elderly woman standing next to Yanxin.
When we were introduced, I greeted my guest with pleased surprise. She was
Tang Baozhen (Figure 3), a sworn sister of the famous nüshu writers Hu Cizhu
and Gao Yinxian. Those three and four others had sworn sisterhood in the
1960s, calling themselves the Seven Sisters. Many of the biographical laments
and sisterhood letters scholars had acquired when nüshu was first discovered
in the 1980s had been penned by Cizhu and Gao, together with Yi Nianhua. Yi
was not one of the Seven Sisters, but she had made a separate sisterhood pact
with Cizhu.1 Of the Seven Sisters, Tang said, “I am the least literate (zuibutong
最不通) in nüshu.” Nonetheless, Tang had composed her own biographical
nüge, which Gao, the eldest of the group, had transcribed into nüshu. Also with
Gao’s help, Tang had exchanged letters with Cizhu, who died six years before
nüshu gained celebrity among academics.
It was mid-November of 1993 when Tang and I were first introduced. She
came from Puwei Village to help with wedding preparations for her grand-
daughter in Heyuan; most weddings in the villages took place during the
winter season, after the harvest when the food supply was most bountiful.
When she heard about a scholar doing nüshu research in the village, she im-
mediately asked for an introduction. Before bringing her to me, Yanxin
1
According to Silber (1995:139), Yi listed herself as one of the Seven Sisters, but Tang told me that Yi
was added to the group after one member of the Seven Sisters had died, on the basis of Yi’s existing
sisterhood tie with Cizhu.
figure 3 Tang Baozhen (center), He Yanxin (right), and the author (1993).
informed her that there would be no payment for singing.2 Tang replied, “With
or without, I’ll sing anyway. I just love to sing.”
Tang’s unexpected call reminded me that in fact I had gone to visit her
earlier, back in 1992. That was also in November, when I had first arrived in
Jiangyong. I had made a trip to Puwei to visit Gao’s family and to get a sense
of her “nüshu chamber,” located on the second story of the family home,
where Gao used a stool as her table and sat by the window to compose nüshu.
Tang, Gao’s sworn sister, also lived in Puwei, but I was unable to see her that
time; she was out “visiting relatives,” I was told by a neighbor. My interpreter
Zhou Shuoyi explained that this was only a polite excuse. The truth was, Tang
had gone to the rice fields to glean grain. Now a year later, I finally got to meet
her in person. Noticing her tiny bound feet, I could not but wonder: How
could such a fragile old lady in her eighties manage to bend down in a rice
field to gather fallen grain? What had happened that she had to lead such a
hard life?
From the day we met, Tang came to my place almost every afternoon. Some-
times I interviewed her alone; sometimes we were joined by other Heyuan
women, and these sessions always resulted in lively discussions and often had
an air of competition. Sasa 四四 (1919–1995), for example, liked to compete
with Tang over who had better knowledge of nüshu and nüge. With Tang’s
2
Since nüshu anthologies started being published, disputes and conflicts have periodically erupted
between the families of nüshu writers and scholars working with them regarding the payment/
reward issue.
tang baozhen: i sing and therefore i am and become | 45

participation, I found my fieldwork becoming more fun and inspirational;
many of my insights about nüshu and nüge were prompted during Tang’s inter-
actions with the Heyuan villagers. Tang had an active mind and was unusually
articulate. In addition, she had an exceptionally good memory; she was per-
haps the most knowledgeable singer I had ever met. But what I admired most
about Tang was her optimistic personality. The more I learned about her diffi-
cult life, the more I was amazed at how she could hold such a positive attitude
and rarely complain. “Does singing nüge play a part in shaping her pleasant
personality?” I wondered.
Now, some twenty years later, my memories of her remain vivid; I can still
hear her energetic voice and passionate singing. The time I spent with Tang
was short, only twenty days or so, but the quality of that experience was beyond
description. I am profoundly grateful for her open heart and her enthusiasm
in instructing me, without asking for any reward. Setting aside my personal
feeling toward her, I feel obliged to write about her because she was an incred-
ibly valuable informant in the reconstruction of the disappearing nüshu
heritage—both text and practice—and yet her contributions in this regard
had never been recognized. This is probably because Tang could only sing
nüge but could not read or write nüshu, whereas most scholars have been inter-
ested in nüshu mainly as a system and tradition of women’s writing. As Tang
recalled, “Back then, they [the scholars] were not interested in singing at all;
they only asked me to embroider the nüshu graphs on handkerchiefs.” In the
scholarly nüshu circles, Tang had been considered at most a companion to
other nüshu writers, mainly Gao and Yi, and never a principal interviewee on
her own account. However, after a few interviews with her, I found Tang ex-
tremely resourceful in helping me contextualize the practice and deepen our
understanding of how nüshu together with nüge structured and gave voice to
women’s existence.
Tang advised me that the singing of nüshu has brought women, both literate
and non-literate, into a social group, instead of segregating them. Her life story
illuminates how a woman who was unable to read/write nüshu could still so-
cially partake in the nüshu world via nüge: She could find some relief from her
misery by composing a nüshu/nüge biography, and she could give and receive
moral support from other women through the nüshu-prompted sisterhood
networks. She also provided insights into how women wrote nüshu prayers to
solicit blessing from the divine powers. In addition, although Tang did not her-
self own a nüshu wedding missive, the sanzhaoshu, she provided rare insights
about its contextual embeddedness and pointed to how women give voice, not
only in words but also by performance, to forms of expression that simultane-
ously echo and critique the mainstream social system. When framed within a
comparative scope, Tang’s experiences and narratives of nüshu/nüge praxis,
furthermore, offer fresh perspectives with regard to gender and class dynam-
ics. Key foci of comparison here include the male-elite discourses of widow-
hood presented in Jiangyong historical gazetteers and the writing world of
gentry-class women in late imperial China.
| Gendered Words
46
Composing Biographical Nüge
Tang was a very outspoken woman. The first time we met, just as she came
into my room and before we had engaged in the usual small talk, she spotted
my copy of Anthology of Chinese Nüshu (Zhongguo nüshu jicheng 中國女書集成;
Zhao 1992), a volume given to me by one of its editors, Chen Qiguang. She
immediately remarked, “You know, the nüshu in that book under the name of
Gao Yinxian are mostly mine—I sang and she wrote.” To prove it, on the spot
she launched into a narrative ballad entitled Flower-Selling Girl (Maihua nü
賣花女), a story about a virtuous wife who supports her family by selling
paper-cut flowers in the street and is abducted by a man of wealth and power
because of her beauty. In defense of her honor and chastity, the flower-selling
girl fiercely resists him and dies doing so. Out of mercy, she is sent back by
Yama, king of the nether world, so that she can seek justice and reunite with
her family. This is a very long story, containing more than 700 seven-word
lines. I was impressed by Tang’s recitation of the entire piece.3
But before I could express my admiration, Tang eagerly continued, “There
is one nüshu about me in this book as well.” This is her autobiographical nüge:
Sitting alone in an empty room, I think of nothing
But writing this piece to lament my miseries.
I used to be my parents’ noble flower,
But now I’m inferior to everyone.
My parents have seven children;
Five of them my younger brothers, and one my younger sister.
Who ever imagined the family fortune would be so bad—
Not one of my five brothers survives.
靜坐空房無思想 / 自己修書訴可憐 / 以前度花多為貴 / 到此如今不如人
父母所生人七個 / 五個弟郎妹一個 / 得知家門祖水醜 / 五個弟郎沒一個
Born around 1912, Tang had six siblings but only one had survived by the time
(at age 19) she left her natal village, Xiawan, and married into Zhujiawan 朱家灣,
in accordance with the practice of patrilocal village exogamy referred to as chux-
iang 出鄉 ‘leaving one’s village’ in nüshu and nüge. A few years later, this surviving
brother also died, making Tang a woman with no natal family. That meant that if
some misfortune befell her in her marital context, she would have no place to
return to. This was indeed one of the predicaments Tang would later confront.
Tang’s marriage brought her two daughters and one son, but all failed to
survive childhood. Even worse, Tang’s husband was forced to join the army
during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and never returned:
Three years after I married into his family,
But had no close relations with other kin,
3
See Gong (1991:128–159) and Zhao (1992:775–799) for the nüshu text and McLaren (1996) for
comparative literature analysis.

I gave birth to a son, who did not stay with me for long.
And then I had a daughter. . . .
It’s a shame his old father passed away;
And it vexed me when my husband was conscripted.
My husband served in the army far away.
He must have died elsewhere, for he never returned.
I wailed for the loss of my son and my daughter;
I was mad that my husband would never come back.
I sat in the room and wept the whole night,
I wept for my son and my husband, and that’s how I spent the time.
身到他房三年滿 / 姑舅幾個亦不親 / 見個金坨不陪我 / 再見紅花女一人 ...
不該他爺落陰府 / 再氣丈夫去當兵 / 丈夫當兵到遠府 / 身死別州不回程
又哭子來又氣女 / 又氣丈夫沒回程 / 身坐房前透夜哭 / 哭崽哭夫過時辰
With neither a husband nor a child, Tang thought about adopting a son, a
custom called guofang 過房 ‘to transfer from another house’, from her hus-
band’s only brother:
I have no brother of my own parents;
With no path in any direction, what can I rely on?
I thus asked my [husband’s] younger brother to give me his son.
With someone to follow in my husband’s line, I’d be happy.
The uncles and cousins were called to witness, and to cosign the contract,
Relatives and in-laws all arrived.
But for some reason,
My younger brother changed his mind.
爺娘又沒親兄弟 / 四路無門倚哪個 / 始得弟郎撥個崽 / 填起夫名我心歡
喊起叔侄立過紙 / 六親九眷盡來啦 / 不知弟郎哪樣想 / 再復弟郎變了心
This brother changed his mind due to his wife’s objection: At that time they
had only one son, and she was afraid she could not bear another. Unable to
procure a son, Tang adopted a girl instead, but not to eventually bring in a son-
in-law who would continue her husband’s descent line, since matrilocal mar-
riage was not allowed in rural Jiangyong before the Communist Liberation.
She did so only because “I needed a companion.”
But even with the company of a daughter, Tang still felt insecure: “I was like
a young girl who could easily become the target of a bully.” Tang’s concern was
not without foundation. A quasi-widow named Zhuyi, born in the 1910s, whose
husband had also been conscripted in the army and never returned, was ab-
ducted on her way home and was forced to become the wife of her abductor. In
Jiangyong, the cruel reality was that a widow, outside her affinal and natal do-
mains, was like an untitled object, seen as available to be claimed or possessed.
Overwhelmed by fear at her vulnerability, Tang decided to xingguibu 行歸步 ‘to
walk somewhere else to find a home’, namely by remarriage:
Sitting in the hall and thinking,
Thinking of what I have suffered,
| Gendered Words
48
I decided to leave behind the field and the land,
Leaving behind the house and the hall,
And get remarried.
I married into the family Wang in hopes of improving myself.
身坐廳堂自思想 / 思想我身真可憐 / 擱了大田共大地 / 擱了大屋共大廳
始我起身行歸步 / 來到姓王帶貴吾
Tang, at age 35, took the original dowry provided by her natal family and four
eggs prepared by her former affines to her new home at Baishui Village. In the
remarriage context, a gift of four eggs, symbolizing reproduction, represented
the blessing and consent of the concerned woman’s former affines. Ironically,
although a woman had to get permission to remarry from her husband’s
family, she had no right to be married from there, since it was not where she
belonged. Nor could she be remarried from her natal village because, as one
villager remarked, “Your parents married you once, how could they marry you
twice?” A widow therefore could be remarried only from an open space, such
as a periodic market or a remote temple—a circumstance that brutally speaks
to women’s social liminality.
Tang’s first marriage was arranged by her parents; the second was her own
choice, through the introduction of a matchmaker. From the second marriage
in Baishui, Tang gave birth to her only surviving birth child, a daughter. There
she lived a peaceful life for 14 years, and then her husband died. Tang once
again faced the choice of leaving (remarriage) or staying (widowhood), as she
relates in her nüge biography:
Coming to the Wang family, I bore a daughter.
Altogether I’d had two sons and two daughters, how jolly.
Who ever expected that the world would change,
Ruining the family, leaving us impoverished.
Before I could fully relate the miseries I had suffered,
I wept once again, at the loss of my husband.
I must not have done much good in my past lifetimes;
That’s why I suffer in this life. . . .
I thought about remarriage—
But what a difficult choice to make.
來到王門養個女 / 兩兒兩花鬧熱遙 / 誰知世情有變動 / 搞得家中家又貧
將身可憐說不盡 / 再哭丈夫去落朝 / 前世不修前世報 / 得知今世好不全 . . .
心中想起行歸步 / 亦是十分一字難
Tang explained, “At that time, I had three qiantouzai 前頭仔 (stepchildren),
two sons and one daughter. They were all nice to me. But it was during the
collectivization period in the late 1950s, and the family was too poor.” With her
survival seriously threatened, in 1960, at age 49, Tang took her daughter with
her into a third marriage, into the Hu family of Puwei Village:
By not cultivating goodness in past lifetimes, I now have endless misery,
Suffering alone all sorts of difficulties.

Even during my fourteen years in the family Hu,
Still the miseries I experienced can never be fully told.
Despite this, thanks to my husband, my daughter has grown and married.
It’s a shame my husband is no longer in this world.
前世不修訴不盡 / 只我獨個賤盡多 / 來到胡家十四載 / 亦是可憐說不完
搭附丈夫周全女 / 不該丈夫沒世傳
Tang felt gratitude for her third husband’s efforts to raise her daughter be-
cause not every man would treat his stepdaughter so well—after all, a girl con-
tributing nothing to the family subsistence or descent line meant only extra
expenditure. Yi, for example, wrote one nüshu biography about a woman
named He Chunse 何春色, who was sent to her betrothed family as a child
bride at the age of 12 because her stepfather refused to raise her (Zhao
1992:309–313).4
In this biographical nüshu, Tang not only mourned her husband but also
lamented her wretchedness as an elderly widow:
Now in my seventies,
I still have to work in the field.
It’s easy to grow weeds on the land;
It’s difficult [to grow grain] without water.
I think of hanging myself to end my life,
But it seems that my life is not over yet,
If King Yama does not choose me, and
If his guards do not come to take my life.
I have no say at all as far as my life is concerned,
A life now in its seventies.5
七十有餘猶小可 / 田地功夫亦要當 / 地中有草容易得 / 田中沒水十分難
又想將身自縊死 / 又氣命中不盡頭 / 閻王不勾我的簿 / 小鬼不取我的身
命中不由口中曰 / 七十有餘正終身
It was during this period—the third time she had been widowed—that Tang
came up with the idea of writing about herself. “I felt so miserable, and I
wished people to know what I had suffered.” But Tang didn’t know nüshu, so
she asked help from her sworn sister Gao, who also lived in Puwei Village and
could write. With Gao’s transcription, Tang’s oral nüge was turned into a writ-
ten nüshu piece.
It is interesting to note that Tang’s autobiography was composed in the
winter of 1974, when she was still in her sixties. Quite possibly the ending part
was added in the 1980s, when she and Gao were asked by scholars to write
down all the nüshu they had composed or learned before. Over the ten years
since her third husband died, a number of things had occurred that made Tang
4
Sometimes a daughter might be left behind when her mother remarried and was then married by
her father’s family. For example, Juyin 菊陰, also described by Yi (Zhao 1992:298–301), was sent off
by her paternal grandmother to be a child bride at age seven.
5
Sung by Tang and recorded in November 1993 (see also Zhao 1992:370–372).
| Gendered Words
50
feel even more miserable. First and foremost was the subsistence issue. Tang
was too old to work in the rice fields, so she asked her stepsons to help. These
sons agreed to work Tang’s land, which could produce about 900 kilograms of
grain, but they were willing to provide Tang with only 100 to 200 kilograms,
roughly one-third of her annual subsistence needs. This was why Tang had to
glean grain from the fields. “By doing this, I can get an extra 100 to 150 kilo-
grams, for daily consumption or for selling at the periodic market to earn some
cash,” she explained.
In addition to the subsistence issue, Tang’s relations with her daughters-in-
law were contentious. “My elder daughter-in-law was nicer; she said I could go
pick vegetables in her garden. But the junior one warned me that if I did this
in hers she would report it as stealing.” She added, “In one quarrel, my second
daughter-in-law even handed me pesticide and wanted me to drink it.” That
quarrel had been about hosting guests. Tang’s elder sister-in-law’s natal family
came to visit. Tang proposed that she would host the guests for the lunch, and
her junior daughter-in-law handled the dinner, but the daughter-in-law in-
sisted on doing it the other way around. Why? Because whoever took care of
dinner had to prepare breakfast for the guests the next day, therefore costing
extra. Tang explained that this junior daughter-in-law had been complaining
since day one. “She held a grudge that I didn’t give her the 18 pieces of cloth I
was supposed to offer at her wedding as a mother-in-law, even though I had
told her that I just wasn’t able to.” In another incident, this daughter-in-law
struck Tang because she thought she had spanked her daughter (Tang’s grand-
daughter). Tang sighed, “My three husbands were all nice to me; they never
beat me. And now see how I am treated.” Perhaps this is why Tang thought of
“hanging myself to end my life,” as expressed in her biographical nüge.
If time could be turned back, would Tang have made different choices at
certain points of her life? For example, had she ever considered zhaolang 招郎
‘marrying in a son-in-law’ so that her own daughter would stay to take care of
her in her old age? (Zhaolang has become acceptable since Communist Liber-
ation in 1949.) Tang answered in the negative: “Only people without a son
[stepsons included] could resort to zhaolang. If I did that, I would be ridiculed.
And I myself would have felt embarrassed.” How about marrying her daughter
to someone in the village? In this case, with village endogamy no longer pro-
hibited after Liberation, her daughter could have stayed close by. Tang an-
swered, “Yes, this should have been an option. But my daughter disagreed. She
said, ‘A daughter will develop a better relation with her mother if she is mar-
ried out.’” As to relying on the sons of her second husband, Tang said, “Al-
though they are good kids and have been nice to me, I have no call to go back
and live there.” Indeed, remarriage to another man meant cutting the ties with
her former husband in kinship and economic terms. This is why in traditional
Jiangyong a woman with sons hardly ever remarried—a decision driven not so
much by the moral demands of chastity as it is often presented in male-written
official gazetteers, but rather by pragmatic concerns (see Appendix 1 for “Wid-
owhood in Local Gazetteers”).

Fortunately, when Tang had no good options and no kin to count on, she
had a last resort: her sworn sisters. Tang’s Seven Sisters gave her compan-
ionship, moral support, and consolation at the most vulnerable points of
her life.
Swearing Sisterhood
Sworn sisterhood (jiebai) has long been a distinctive local custom in Ji-
angyong. Tang, who had a total of 15 sworn sisters over the course of her life,
classified Jiangyong female jiebai relationships into three categories: general
jiebai, laotong 老同 ‘old same’, and xingke 行客 ‘traveling guest’.6 The general
jiebai category was the most inclusive, with no specific qualifications required
for membership. The laotong relationship, also called tongnian 同年 ‘same
age’ or laogeng 老庚 ‘same year’, was formed between people of the same age,
preferably with the same date of birth. Xingke was the most restrictive cate-
gory; girls were not allowed to have more than one xingke bond at a time. The
literal meaning of ke 客, ‘guest’, suggests that xingke relationships were per-
haps originally made between villages. In Jiangyong, daughters-in-law were
also referred to as ‘female guests’ (nüke 女客), since they came from outside
the village.
Sworn sisterhoods in Jiangyong were made for various reasons, including
economic cooperation. One typical example of this was Huanyi’s jiebai, which
she established with three co-villagers in childhood. In addition to daily inter-
actions, their major tie was the establishment of a “mutual fund” consisting of
small individual contributions—say, 25 kilograms of grain from each member.
This was during the period before 1950 when Chinese survived on a single
yearly harvest. During times of food shortages, usually in June and July, a jiebai
cooperative would lend out collected grain and earn interest on it. Income was
not distributed until all members of the jiebai had married. According to
Huanyi, “That was also when the sworn sisterhood was dissolved.”
A second, no doubt more popular, reason for establishing jiebai relation-
ships was companionship. Usually assembling in the upstairs room of a house,
sworn sisters sang songs while making shoes, weaving belts, and discussing
colors and patterns for their handicrafts. Many jiebai also regularly spent their
nights in these rooms.7 Yanxin, for example, slept with other girls in just such
an arrangement from the age of ten until she married, but ate all her meals
at home.
6
It seems as though every nüshu scholar has a unique scheme for categorizing jiebai relations. Some
(e.g., Chiang 1995; Silber 1994) make distinctions between general jiebai and laotong, while others
(e.g., Zhao 1995b, chapter 3) do not. Interestingly, none of them has ever identified xingke in their
published works, probably because while both general jiebai and laotong relations are still practiced
among the younger generations, xingke jiebai is not.
7
The meeting/sleeping place was in the home of one jiebai member, in contrast to the separate
“girls’ houses” that were sometimes built for such gatherings in the Pearl River delta (see Watson
1994).
| Gendered Words
52
Sometimes, when jiebai was established across villages, an intermediary
was required, since Jiangyong girls were rarely given permission to travel out-
side their village compounds. The intermediary was usually a matron who
could travel with relative freedom between her affinal and natal villages. If she
saw an ideal match in these two villages, she would propose a jiebai relation-
ship to the families. As to the condition of an “ideal match,” it depended on the
degree of similarity between prospective candidates. Parameters included age
(ideally with the same birthdate), height, appearance, foot size, talent, birth
order, and familial social and economic standing. The underlying rationale
was that the two parties should mirror each other. A girl with unusual features
or lacking notable talent might have trouble finding a jiebai sister. Cathy Silber
(1994: 51) has described one case in which a girl with a pockmarked face and
big feet was rejected as a sworn sister. The reason was obvious: Having a jiebai
with mediocre qualities meant that you, too, were mediocre.8
Tang’s Seven Sisters cohort belongs to the general type, with no restrictions
on the age or number of its members. But the sisters did share one common
characteristic: They were all more or less literate in nüshu, with Tang being
“the least literate.” According to local custom, when a sisterhood pact was
made, a nüshu piece might be composed to honor its formation. I still remem-
ber that in 1993, when I became sworn sisters with Yanxin and Longyu, Longyu
proposed that we three should collaboratively compose a song to celebrate our
relationship, “for this is an old tradition.” Tang’s Seven Sisters group was no
different. As Tang recounted, “There is one nüshu describing us Seven
Sisters.”
Tang’s Seven Sisters pact was forged around 1964 at the wedding banquet
of Cizhu’s grandson, but their sisterhood nüshu was written at a later gather-
ing. It was inscribed by Cizhu, who ranked fourth, on behalf of them all.9 In
this nüshu, the second sister, named Yueying 月英 (1905–1980), was men-
tioned first, for it was written on the occasion of her birthday:
Bringing my brush to a fine point, I write on the handkerchiefs,
Handkerchiefs sent to the noble family of my elder sister. . . .
Today is the seventieth birthday of the elder sister,10
But I have brought nothing to celebrate.
The twelfth of March is her birthday;
Many friends and relatives come to visit.
We ask the elder sister to take the upper seat and accept our congratulations:
The whole family is happy and without care.
掭筆寫書帕子上 / 奉到姊娘貴府上…/ 今天姊娘七十歲 / 我沒禮情去交生
三月十二上交生 / 親戚朋友盡來了 / 請正姊娘升一位 / 一家歡喜沒憂愁
8
Another reason for rejecting jiebai proposals was the report in 1919 of an incidence of rape by a
jiebai sister’s older brother and schoolmates (Silber 1994:51–52).
9
Yi said that she had taken a part in writing this nüshu with Cizhu, but she did not sign the text
because she had no money to give as a gift, and so she was too ashamed (Silber 1995:140).
10
It should be her sixtieth birthday.

Cizhu then wrote about how they forged sworn sisterhood:
The twenty-fourth of October last winter,

We went to her noble house.
We stayed there several days;
And shared small talk, on and on.
We talked even in bed at night,
With each and every word cheering our hearts. . . .
We swore sisterhood not when we were young,
But in our sixties and seventies.
We were not afraid that people would laugh at us;
We were only angry that we had waited so late.
去年十月二四冬天節 / 幾個行遊到貴家 / 來到貴家住幾天 / 細說細言個解個
夜間上床細言說 / 句句問來美言心…/ 心情年輕不結義 / 六十有餘七十春
不怕四邊來取笑 / 只氣好日結義遲
Following on this, Cizhu named every member of the Seven Sisters, one by
one. Note, however, that they are all identified by their natal or affinal sur-
names, instead of using their full names—a typical representation of women’s
“namelessness” (Watson 1986) in traditional China:
The second sister was born of a prosperous family,

And married into a family of wealth.
She need worry about nothing at all;
She is only angry that her husband has died.
Although he is gone, there are three sons
Whose literary talents and martial arts are envied by people all around. . . .
As to the elder sister, she is surnamed Gao,
And was married into the family Hu.
The third sister is surnamed Lu,
And she comes from the same village as some of us.
The fourth is surnamed Hu;
She married into the family Yi. . . .
The seventh is a daughter of the Tang family;
She is related to us as kin and friend.
二姊出身紅門女 / 落入人家有紅門 / 又沒別項的支出 / 只氣丈夫早落橋
丈夫落橋三個子 / 文武皆全羨四邊 . . . / 大姊出身姓高女 / 落入人家是姓胡
三姊出身姓盧女 / 大儕姓盧同一村 / 四姊出身姓胡女 / 落在人家姓義人 . . .
七姊出身姓唐女 / 一又一親二又朋
In conclusion was a wish that this Seven Sisters cohort would last forever:
We three and four surnames swore sisterhood,

Like beautiful flowers and trees brought to blossom in the same garden,
Like the meeting of rivers from thousands of miles apart,
And also like birds that have flown ten thousand miles to rest on the same tree
and chirp together.
| Gendered Words
54
As a bridge constructed over a long river will be walked across over a lifetime,
This sworn sisterhood of we seven will go on and last forever and ever.11
三姓四姓來結義 / 好樹如花來共園 / 千里如湖來共水 / 萬里百鳥共樹啼
長江架橋行一世 / 七個長行義不休
Tang related many beautiful memories of how the Seven Sisters had hap-
pily visited one another: “Whenever we got together, we sang all the time, and
other village women might also come join us.” Of course, sworn sisters share
not only weal but also woe. If a jiebai member became sick, the rest would send
nutritious food to help with her recovery. When someone confronted certain
misfortunes, the others would pay a visit or write to console her. The letters
sent between Cizhu and Tang represent one such exchange.
Sisterhood Letters: Consolation and Commiseration
When Tang’s third husband died, she did not send an obituary to her sister-
hood members. Nonetheless, a couple of months later, she received a nüshu
condolence written on a handkerchief from her sworn sister Cizhu:
Bringing my brush to a fine point, I write with two streams of tears flowing,
I can’t wait to write to comfort my sister.
Your husband has been dead for several months;
I, however, was unable to return there to pay my condolences.
It’s my negligence, no excuse;
Please pardon with my thoughtlessness.
When your husband died, you didn’t let me know.
It has been several months from now.
I don’t blame you for distancing me,
For everything is now up to his sons and you have no say.
掭筆寫書雙流淚 / 急跨回家勸妹娘 / 你夫落橋幾個月 / 不得回程疼惜聲
就是有心成沒意 / 見得心粗不慮其 / 夫死之死不報我 / 幾個月中不耐煩
不怪妹娘隔疏我 / 由子主張妹無權
Cizhu then explained why this nüshu letter had arrived so late: Her hands had
been aching since July of the previous year, which made it difficult to write.
This May she had even lost consciousness for an entire day and nearly died.
Now having returned to health, she wrote to invite Tang to spend the upcom-
ing Moon Festival with her:
Your husband fell into the nether world in February;
I do not write until nearly the Moon Festival of August.
Even if you don’t blame me,
I know I’ve no excuse—my regards arrive too late.
This nüshu was sung by Tang and recorded in November 1993. The original nüshu accompanied its
11
recipient Lu Yueying into her grave (Silber 1995:140).

Now I write, first of all, to send my condolences, and
Second, to invite my younger sister to visit over the Moon Festival,
To stay at my house for a few days,
To share our closest feelings and liberate our hearts.
Each word of my advice here is true.
My reasonable younger sister, please listen to me:
Don’t complain that you didn’t have enough time with your husband;
That is predestined when we are born.
Moreover, the daughter you bore with your former husband
Was raised by this husband.
Now she is grown,
She is also married and become worthy. . . .
Don’t be angry that your husband is no longer alive;
He lived into his sixties.
He died also with no worries at all,
For all his children have married.
你夫二月落陰府 / 八月中秋來勸言 / 就是妹娘不怪我 / 我亦自知禮來遲
一唄修書來勸你 / 二接妹娘過中秋 / 到我家中住幾日 / 細說細言解開心
句句實言來勸你 / 知理妹娘聽言章 / 不氣丈夫緣分淺 / 落地三聲注定來
前夫不完女一個 / 原配二夫顧大啦 / 養到如今成長大 / 交卻出鄉多抵錢 . . .
不氣丈夫壽已過 / 六十有餘正終身 / 夫死陰橋免得慮 / 子女個個交全啦
Continuing, Cizhu admonished Tang to take good care of her health:

For three hundred sixty days a year,
For four seasons and eight periods, do not miss a meal.
Make sure to have three or four meals every day. . . .
Don’t spend your day without a sense of time.
Your husband has reluctantly left you;
That’s his fate.
It’s not like we can use money to redeem his life.
If we could, no matter how far away he has gone, we would do it.
We would rather spend the money,
If we could bring him to life, even for just three or five years.
People marry young and in old age become true companions;
They can consult with each other from time to time.
We can be angry if the seedling dies before it’s grown,
But we shouldn’t get mad about facing difficulties in our old age.
Your husband is gone,
But still you have sons and grandchildren to rely on.
You have three daughters and two sons;
You have also grandchildren all around.
Let me advise my younger sister to take the large view.
Don’t be so worried all the time.
As your older sister I haven’t given you comfort until now,
Because my health did not allow me to return [to see you].
| Gendered Words
56
After all, we are not living in the same village
Where we could sit together and cheer each other up any time.
一年三百六十日 / 四時八節不丟空 / 一日三餐四頓到 . . . / 不要盲黑過時光
丈夫落橋難捨你 / 已是命終盡了頭 / 好不將錢贖得命 / 講到天頭要贖歸
丟了錢銀儂不要 / 贖夫回生三五年 / 少時夫妻老來伴 / 一常千般有商量
只氣粘禾包胎旱 / 不氣終身老來難 / 丈夫已是分離去 / 看子望孫過時辰
三朵紅花兩個崽 / 孫子外甥滿堂紅 / 勸聲妹娘自想遠 / 不曰時時急在心
姊勸你愁有刻數 / 身體不強難回家 / 好不同村同屋住 / 時刻坐攏個解個
To conclude, Cizhu lamented her own miseries—a typical element in sister-

hood correspondence as well as in other types of nüshu:
After giving advice to my younger sister,

Let the older sister talk about her own situation.
I have a husband to keep me company in my old age, and
We get by pretty well.
Neighbors are envious of my good life,
And that’s what I’m known for.
For the time being, I live uneventfully enough in this place,
Not really great, but not bad either.
I have a son and a daughter,
Even though one son may seem too few.
Thanks to blessings from Heaven,
My son and daughter have grown up.
They both have a fairly good fate,
Enjoying altogether three sons and one daughter.
I have no worries over the issue of my children.
I’m only angry about my own situation,
That when I need to go home to express my grievances,
I have no brother in my natal village. . . .
When I need to return home to relieve my anxiousness,
I hope I might stay with you,
Because we are sworn sisters—
And also cousins.
When I return to my natal village three to five times a year,
I can count on you, my sworn sister, who is also my relative.
If you just grieve on your own, you cannot find relief.
That’s why I write to console you and cheer you up.
My reasons are numerous and can never be fully related,
But so are the miseries of one’s life.12
勸聲妹娘將完了 / 再講姊娘一段情 / 明色夫妻同陪老 / 幾樣幾般的就場
四邊妒我好過日 / 得些名聲傳四圍 / 眼前在他平平過 / 又不高來又不低
生下一兒花一朵 / 就是金佗單薄啦 / 只靠上天來保祐 / 一兒一花養成林
12
Sung by Tang and recorded in November 1993; see also Gong (1991:222-227).

兒女兩個命勻稱 / 大齊三兒一朵花 / 子女上頭沒顧慮 / 氣我將身好可憐
非常回家無出氣 / 又沒爺娘親弟兄 . . . / 心焦心煩我回府 / 到妹家中去安身
依其結交幾姊妹 / 依其出身大姑娘 / 一年回家三五轉 / 一又依親二依朋
冷思冷想無出氣 / 回想勸言來開心 / 理有千層說不盡 / 命有萬般的可憐
Cizhu describes Tang as her sworn sister and relative because she had mar-
ried out from where Tang now lived. Her misery at “hav[ing] no brother” was
also Tang’s, whose situation was actually even worse, since Tang had neither
son nor husband. And Cizhu could understand Tang’s pain and solitude be-
cause she had been in a similar situation: She too had lost her son and first
husband, as described in her biographical nüshu quoted in chapter 2. By writ-
ing this condolence letter, Cizhu in effect created an occasion in which she
could ease Tang’s sense of suffering by replacing it with warm sisterhood and
moral support.
Although Tang could not write herself, with Gao’s help she nonetheless
composed a reply:
Putting aside my worries, I write to return your noble courtesy.
My sister wrote to console me with all her heart.
It’s my inferior fate, my bad “eight characters and five elements” [i.e., fate]
That makes my elder sister worry on my behalf.
My elder sister, who knows the rites, cares for me:
She cares for me—one who did not cultivate goodness in my previous life.
People who did not cultivate goodness have one source of worry;
I, however, have a hundred sources of anxiety.
I used to be a cherished noble flower [i.e., daughter],
But now I am inferior to everyone.
丟開憂愁回貴禮 / 姊唄一心來勸我 / 唯我五行醜八字 / 顧慮姊娘多慮心
知禮姊娘知疼惜 / 是我前生修不全 / 人修不全一路氣 / 我修不全百路焦
想我度花多為貴 / 到此如今不如人
After this courteous opening, Tang laments losing family members at differ-
ent stages of her life. Her misfortunes began with her natal family:
As the eldest children of my parents,
I had five brothers and one sister.
My grandfather died at age 81, and
The whole family was angry about losing him.
Three years after he died—
Who knows what went on in the nether world—
My youngest uncle’s son and daughter
Both died.
And then my three brothers and one sister were gone as well. . . .
But it was not finished,
My third brother left us, too.
How miserable I was,
With only one brother to send me to his [her husband’s] village. . . .
| Gendered Words
58
Seven or eight years after I left my natal village,
My fifth brother also died.
I hated that my own parents were getting old, and
No one would worship them after they joined the ancestral line.
As for myself, returning home there was no one to relieve my perturbation—
Thinking of this, I hate the sun in the east and the sky in the west.
父母所生我為大 / 五個弟郎妹一人 / 郎公終身八十一 / 一家團圓氣不休
葬下公公三年滿 / 不知地中是如何 / 滿叔一兒花一朵 / 連死陰司兩個人
三個弟郎一個妹 / 連死陰司四個人 . . . / 連死四人氣沒完 / 第三弟郎又落陰
想我出鄉可憐盡 / 一個弟郎送出鄉 . . . / 出鄉七年上八載 / 第五弟郎又落陰
又恨爺娘年來到 / 後日歸先冷孤魂 / 想我回家無出氣 / 東恨日頭西恨天
Misfortune followed her to her affinal home:

Eight or nine years after I was in his place,
His father died.
Two months after he left us,
I began worrying about my husband, who was neither able nor virtuous.
I didn’t know what he was thinking:
He squandered the family property and ignored household affairs.
My son and daughter were ill,
But he did not care.
Those two children died,
Only because they didn’t get treatment in time.
And then the world was in turmoil;
My husband was forced to join the army.
He served in the army far away.
He must have died elsewhere, for he never returned.
I don’t know how he died,
And have no idea where his bones are.
Several months after my husband joined the army,
My little daughter died.
Thinking about my whole life then, I feel wretched:
I was just like a solitary bird in the deep mountains.
到他八年上九載 / 他家公公又落陰 / 爺死陰司幾個月 / 又氣丈夫不賢良
到底我夫那樣想 / 亂用家財不理家 / 一兒一花身有病 / 只是敗家不顧兒
兒女兩個盡死了 / 不得修診悔來遲 / 先的事情不明靜 / 壓迫我夫去當兵
丈夫當兵到遠府 / 身死別州不回程 / 不知我夫哪樣死 / 不知骨頭在哪方
丈夫當兵幾個月 / 再復小花又落橋 / 想我終身真難氣 / 可比深山孤鳥形.
Continuing, Tang explains why she remarried twice:

My husband’s younger brother was considerate;
He originally agreed that his son should fill my husband’s descent line.
But because my sister-in-law had a different idea,
He changed his mind, which caused me great perturbation.
Sleepless I worried the whole night.

So out of fear that my old age would become difficult,
I remarried,
Remarried into the Wang family. . . .
Three years later,
I gave birth to a daughter. . . .
After I had lived with my husband fourteen years,
He died of an illness.
Although I had two stepsons,
The family was too poor to survive.
So I remarried again,
Coming to the family Hu.
I hoped that Hu would improve my lot,
Who knew that it would amount to frost falling on snow.
Having lived with my husband for fourteen years,
He died—and I bore him no heirs.
Left in a lonely house, how can I not feel frustrated?
And to whom can I turn?
本是弟郎知情理 / 養孫填歸夫的名 / 不知妹娘哪樣想 / 再復不給心亂溶
透夜不眠透夜想 / 只怕終身老來難 / 不得不已行歸步 / 使我起身到王門 . . .
我到王家三年滿 / 見個紅花亦抵錢 . . . / 將來憑夫十四載 / 得病沈重命歸陰
雖然前頭兩個仔 / 家中貧寒未安身 / 再想將來行歸步 / 使得來到胡家村
只望胡家帶貴我 / 不知雪上更加霜 / 如今憑夫十四載 / 又是落陰沒世傳
拋下空房真難氣 / 千般可憐倚誰人
After finishing her litany of suffering, Tang sends congratulations to Cizhu on

her upcoming birthday:
Today I write in reply to your noble family;
I write also to celebrate your birthday.
The present is slight.
But still, please sit upright,
And accept my bow and my best wishes for good fortune and longevity,
That you should enjoy a houseful of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
I envy my elder sister, who has cultivated good fortune,
Who is a person of superior fate in the world.
今日回書到貴府 / 二則便文賀交生 / 薄禮輕輕來恭賀 / 請正姊娘一位身
叩謝姊娘多福壽 / 孫曾外甥滿堂紅 / 只慕姊娘修福到 / 世上一個上命人
Tang goes on to respond to Cizhu’s lament at having no brothers left in her

natal village:
You said that you have no brothers when you return home.
But let me advise my sister to take the large view.
Don’t be angry about it,
For cousins are comparable to blood siblings.
The aunts, cousins, and nieces here are all very nice.
Please do come home more often to help relieve my affliction.
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We can sit together and chat;
Each and every confidence between us will soothe my heart.
When I visited your noble family, I found my perturbation released—
That is what our sworn sisterhood for. (Gong 1991:228–235)
你說回家無兄弟 / 我勸姊娘自想開 / 莫氣回家無兄弟 / 堂兄堂弟對親生
孫曾伯娘個個好 / 久久回家解我愁 / 幾個坐攏細言說 / 句句真言安我心
來在貴家出得氣 / 始邀結交姊妹行
The correspondence between Tang and Cizhu illustrates how a sisterhood
letter may be used not only for consolation but also as a vehicle for commisera-
tion. Moreover, it testifies to the power of literacy, which allowed women to
traverse geographical boundaries and communicate across villages.
Note, however, that Tang’s case expresses only partial truth. Another aspect
of women’s reality—a contradictory discourse—can be seen in the type of
nüshu performed around weddings, which often conveyed a strong sense of
uncertainty regarding the future of jiebai bonds. As one sanzhaoshu pleads,
“Now you are in his family. Please keep in mind / That our relationship should
remain as before”人家要慮著 / 照歸在以前 (see Box for the sidebar “Sanzha-
oshu from a Bride’s Jiebai”). In another we see: “We shall not cut off our written
relations because of marrying out / But how many of us can succeed in
this?” 不曰出鄉隔書誼 / 起看望來有幾多.13 Considering how significant sis-
terhoods were to women like Tang because they created a social and emotional
space where they might anchor their unsettled selves, concern over the disrup-
tion of precious jiebai ties is understandable. But if nüshu could offset the geo-
graphical distance imposed by village exogamy, how would such concerns
arise unless there existed certain structural obstacles to its practice?
SANZHAOSHU FROM A BRIDE’S JIEBAI
A wedding is supposed to be a celebratory event and an occasion for congratula-

tions, but the nüshu presented at wedding ceremonies also allow women to me-
morialize the sisterhood that will be lost forever, as shown in this sanzhaoshu I
procured from Heyuan Village in 1993:
I am writing this book through tears,

A book sent to you on the third day. . . .
Since the day before yesterday, after you left,
My heart has never settled but remains perturbed. . . .
How can we not be angry—
We won’t be happy if not together! . . .
We declared sworn sisterhood three or four years ago,
Since then, we have shared each other’s affection and thoughts.
13
Excerpted from the sanzhaoshu I acquired from Fengtian Village.

That is why I am upset now,
Because my good sworn sister won’t be with me any longer.
My mind is as cold as water.
I am unable to do anything,
But just think of you, all the time,
As if you were here before me.
In these three days,
There is only me, sitting in the empty upstairs,
Pitiful and without companionship,
Because you are not with me.
I am indeed upset:
We are now both married, and our sisterhood will come to an end. . . .
Though I married earlier than you,
I was not so frustrated,
Because I knew I could return to my natal village to have someone help
dissolve my worries;
I could sit upstairs,
And be together with you as before. . . .
We have been sworn sisters for four years, and
We have never had a cross word for each other.
[Today,] I am sleepless the whole night, just sobbing.
I can’t accept the fact that we have to be separated.
The sisterhood we have built will soon disappear,
Just like a sinking boat,
Just like the cloud-covered moon, dim and dull—
Why hasn’t Heaven heard my cries . . . ?
I’m sad, and nothing but upset,
As a fish dies, with its eyes wide open. . . .
Now you are like me,
And our girlhood days, the upstairs life, are finished.
It has been three days since you left the village.
May I ask you,
My dear lady, are you angry
That we have become two separate birds?
We used to be a pair, never apart,
A pair that respected and appreciated each other,
A pair that did embroidery side by side,
A pair happy about their sisterhood match.
Now, pitifully, all this has become history.
That is why my tears flow the whole night through. . . .
This letter, though weightless, bears my words to you,
As I would come to you. . . .
We are cousins who pledged sworn sisterhood,
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62
But I left earlier. . . .
Now you are in his family. Please keep in mind
That our relationship should remain as before.
The more I think, the more my tears flow.
I sob, alone and cold.
The stars are not many; the moon is not bright;
I’m under a sky covered with black clouds.
Come what may, I must put everything aside and write;
Write this letter as our testimony for the ages.
淚流記書本 / 奉來瞧三朝… / 前朝你放下 / 不安心亂溶…
問芳恨不恨 / 沒陪就不歡… / 結交三四載 / 同情本合心
為我多愁哭 / 好恩沒日陪 / 是儂如水冷 / 千般做不攏
時刻想驚世 / 眉頭已眼前 / 三朝請起姊 / 將身坐空樓
可憐無相伴 / 看來世沒邊 / 我今傷心氣 / 好恩兩位完…
我先離開義 / 望情有日歡 / 得吾少氣路 / 回陽有解焦
放歸高樓坐 / 雙雙對伴遙…/ 結交四年滿 / 亂言沒一聲
透夜不眠哭 / 拆開不服為 / 忙忙盡休誼 / 船邊裡面沈
雲遮月不亮 / 怪天亦不聞…/ 可憐東西氣 / 魚死眼不瞇
得儂同一路 / 樓中女日完 / 出鄉三朝滿 / 我來借問聲
姑娘你可恨 / 我們孤鳥身 / 一雙不拆陣 / 好情人重人
同園繡花色 / 成行對義歡 / 如今可憐盡 / 夜間雙淚流…
薄文傳聲信 / 奉來相會身…/ 姑孫相陪義 / 好恩我先離…
人家要慮著 / 照歸在以前 / 痛想眼淚落 / 獨自冷哭愁
星行月不亮 / 烏中雲下行 / 也要擱開做 / 書本記千年
Structural Impingements
Tang’s epistolary exchange with Cizhu presents a picture of how nüshu helped
maintain women’s social networks. However, it ignores the fact that Tang’s
cohort is atypical because it was established in its members’ old age, whereas
most jiebai bonds in traditional Jiangyong were made among girls. As Tang
herself admitted, “Indeed, I had never seen any case of a sisterhood pact
forged by married women before.” This explains why the nüshu honoring their
sorority included the statement, “We are not afraid that people may laugh at us
/ We are only angry that we have waited so late.” For sworn sisterhoods made
before marriage, in large part they failed to survive once their members had
married out, despite the reach of written nüshu. This contrasts sharply with
the writing worlds of Jiangnan gentry women in late imperial China, who
were able to use their literacy to sustain and expand their social networks even
after marriage (see Appendix 2 for “Literacy, Gender, and Class”). This differ-
ence speaks to distinct contextual constraints on the writing of peasant
women.

In rural Jiangyong, several constraints or structural impingements shaped
the practice of nüshu in relation to jiebai relationships. The most crucial factor
was local gender ideologies, which were manifested at three levels: resistance
to such relationships by a woman’s spouse, the opposition of local elites, and a
woman’s self-censorship. Tang had told me a rather romantic story that sheds
light on the concerns of husbands:
One day, a man visited his friend in another village. While there, he overheard
some girls talking about how they should sustain their xingke sisterhood. . . . The
man knew that one of the girls was his fiancée, so he quickly composed a poem
while standing outside the house:
A xingke will never be as intimate as I will be.

A husband-wife bond will last for as long as sixty years.
One night between a husband and wife equals a friendship of one hundred days.
Two nights between a husband and wife equals ocean-deep love.
行客不應行我好 / 行我夫妻六十年 / 一日夫妻百日恩 / 兩夜夫妻海樣深
Not knowing the man’s identity, the girls asked, ‘Who is that?’
He answered, “I’m the one who will sit with you and sleep with you, who will
share water with you and pair with you.”14
Mocking the frailty of sisterhood ties, this man seemed to be confident in the
strength of marital unity. Other men, however, were outright suspicious of in-
timate sisterhood interactions. One account published in the local gazetteer
reveals opinionated local leaders’ mistrust of xingke relations:
Xingke are together day and night, discussing needlework and embroidery, with
nothing else to worry them. Their useful youths are thus thoughtlessly wasted;
and meanwhile possible shameful events may occur. The regulations of every
lineage should include this practice as something to be corrected. (Yongming
xianzhi 1907, 11:15–16)
The editors did not elaborate on just what “shameful events” might take
place, but referred readers to an article entitled “Xingke ji” 行客記 (Notes on
xingke), written by a local male elite. Unfortunately, no copy of that article has
survived, but another text entitled “Nüren xingke shi” 女人行客詩 (A poem of
female xingke) may hint at its flavor. This poem was written in hanzi and in-
cluded in the sanzhaoshu booklet that contains the nüshu cited in the sidebar.
Judging from the term nüren ‘woman’ in the title (a marker that the subject is
a gender different from one’s own), this text seems likely to have been a man’s
composition. I suspect it was copied into the sanzhaoshu booklet by either the
husband or the son of this nüshu’s owner. It states:
Aggrieved at the mercilessness of the in-laws,
Girls in the world are longing for love.
14
Sung by Tang and recorded in November 1993.
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64
Picture a gentle lady in her chamber longing for her beloved;
A blush on her face, she has trouble finding words.
Cunningly chosen gentle lines indicate that she has no companion,
Shrugging the shoulders with an ingratiating smile, she asks for someone else.
In the daytime, they are sisters whose affection none can compete with.
At night, they surpass husband and wife on the wedding night.
怨恨翁姑心不慈 / 世間女子巧相思 / 身居樓內思君子 / 面帶羞顏難出詞
詭說溫言無呂伴 / 脅肩諂笑欲他人 / 晝同姊妹情何篤 / 夜勝夫妻婚娶時
Could the “husband and wife on the wedding night” imply a lesbian partner-
ship? When asked, Tang immediately gave three consecutive “Nos!” Of course,
Tang’s response does not rule out the possibility of a lesbian partnership, but
it suggests that if such a partnership existed, it would not be locally accepted.
Intending to prevent such liaisons from challenging existing marital bonds is
perhaps what motivated the gazetteer’s editors to make such a public appeal
for lineage or clan regulation.
Along with the men’s distrust, the call to cut back on sisterhood communi-
cations came from the sworn sisters themselves. When one of them married
and settled in her husband’s village, the others might well have felt embar-
rassed to call upon her, since it meant encountering a strange man, their sworn
sister’s husband. What might cause this sort of embarrassment is suggested
by a nüge Sasa sang when she was competing with Tang to show who had
better command of the repertoire:
A white paper fan, [a story] inscribed thereon.
According to propriety, you should not come around and inspect my study.
Did you come to see the study or to see me?
It’s fine even if you came to watch me read. . . .
During the day, the three of us sit together on the same bench.
At night, the three of us sleep in the same room.
Lady, my wife’s same-age sworn sister, if you are afraid of ghosts,
You can even sleep between us.15
白紙扇紙扇上 / 理上不該巡書房 / 一看書房二看我 / 看我讀書也無妨…
白天三個同凳坐 / 晚上三個共間房 / 同年姑娘你怕鬼 / 睡到中間也無妨
“You can even sleep between us” was apparently a joke—but a joke like this
could never be taken lightly, whether a woman was single or married, because
it could damage her reputation and ruin her life. The nüge continues: “A
woman will be ruined if the joke is believed to be true” (玩笑成真害女人). In
the minds of many women, avoiding such gossip meant severely curbing jiebai
interactions once sworn sisters had been married out.
In addition to gender ideologies, another critical factor limiting nüshu com-
munication, and jiebai relationships as a corollary, was the message distribution
network. With transmission relying on a network of casual deliveries whenever
15
Sung by Sasa and recorded in November 1993.

someone had a specific reason to visit another village, whether a nüshu message
could be delivered depended on geographical proximity or a traveler’s willing-
ness to go a little bit out of his or her way. Huanyi recalled that, as a married
woman, she maintained contact with only one of her three sworn sisters, not
out of favoritism but because she and that one happened to marry into the same
village. Another member of this jiebai sorority was as nüshu literate as Huanyi,
but that did not guarantee their continued correspondence, because they also
needed a messenger and distribution channels to stay in contact.
Given the constraints of gender regulation, which restricted interactions be-
tween women and men who were not husband and wife, an ideal nüshu mes-
senger was of course female. However, married women left their affinal com-
munities only when returning to their natal homes on certain limited occasions;
chances were that they could not stop and deliver nüshu messages to anyone
who did not live in either their affinal or natal village. A practical solution was
to ask kinsmen to deliver nüshu messages, since they were free to move about
and occasionally did business at periodic markets. At those markets—the
center of an economic network comprising several villages—they could trans-
fer the nüshu letters to someone who could drop the message at the right desti-
nation. The restriction here, however, was that jiebai sisters needed to live in
the same economic network for their messages to be exchanged.
For Tang’s Seven Sisters, having access to the same distribution network
made their sorority sustainable. Their jiebai was made at a wedding party, and
being invited to the same occasion suggests that they were already affiliated in
kinship, affinal, or geographic terms. As mentioned above, Cizhu was born
and raised in the village of Tang’s third husband, and Tang and Gao lived in the
same village. In addition, the Seven Sisters all lived in villages that took part in
the same periodic market in Shangjiangxu Township. In sum, they had a ready
communication network and did not need to work one out ad hoc.
Before marriage, members of a regular cross-village jiebai group could
always rely on their jiebai intermediary to deliver messages for them. After
marriage, however, village exogamy affected their sorority in ways that were
situational and beyond their control. One nüshu captures it perfectly:
“Women are like willows along the river / The yellow [flood] waters push
them around” 好比河邊楊柳樹 / 黃水到河推動身 (Xie ed. 1991:81). Recog-
nizing their lack of control, yet determined to push back, Jiangyong women
created a special domain in the nüshu wedding genre, the sanzhaoshu. With
sanzhaoshu, they converted the spatial reach of literacy into a time capsule—
a vessel in which they sealed their sisterhood in history and in memory
(as shown in the sidebar). On the other hand, they extended nüshu’s social
function: While memorializing their disappearing girlhood network, they
proactively created a new one for the bride in her affinal context. More
interestingly—and this point is thanks to Tang’s illumination—while senti-
ments of commemoration or reminiscence were preserved in the words, the
construction of the yet-to-be-established network was enacted in the perfor-
mance of the sanzhaoshu.
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66
Sanzhaoshu: Text and Performance
Sanzhaoshu is a wedding missive prepared by the bride’s natal family or jiebai

sisters and presented to her affines as part of the wedding celebration
(Figure 4). As a ritual presentation, sanzhaoshu developed its own formulaic
structure and expression, and some common characteristics can be identified:
(1) sorrow at the impending separation as a result of patrilocality, (2) introduc-
tion of the bride’s familial circumstances, (3) congratulatory and respectful re-
gards to the bride’s in-laws, (4) best wishes and admonitions to the bride, and
(5) lamentation over the bride’s or the sender’s personal sufferings. Just which
element would be emphasized or downplayed depended on the sanzhaoshu
sender’s relationship with the bride. The sanzhaoshu offered in the sidebar, for
example, was prepared by the bride’s sworn sister; it features memories of the
good old days and a wish to perpetuate their existing jiebai ties. The following
piece, written on behalf of the bride’s older sister, presents a rather different
perspective:
With a red pen, I write this missive,
Writing to his noble family in a distant village.
On the third day, I write as if I have come to visit,
To visit my sister who will become better in her [new] gracious household.
This is a letter from your third elder sister,
Who writes to greet my blood sister in his house.
The day before yesterday, after sending you off in a rush,
We, mother and daughters, cried desperately, but you couldn’t hear.
Parting on the road, how could we bear it,
To watch the wedding sedan travel like the wind to his noble household?
With tears falling in streams like pearls,
I couldn’t see where my younger sister had gone.
朱筆落言書本上 / 奉到遠方玉良門 / 三朝行文來看察 / 妹在繡房步步高
我是三姊寫信到 / 相會連襟在人門 / 前朝忙忙送出你 / 幾母哭焦你不聞
路中分離真難捨 / 花轎如風到貴門 / 眼淚行行流珠哭 / 不見妹娘在哪方
Following the sorrow at separation comes the introduction of the bride her-
self, manifested not in terms of her personal talents, but in an account of her
family or a particular hardship, such as having no brothers, which was usually
a bride’s regret, for it meant that her parents would be left unattended after all
her sisters got married:
Our parents had five children,
But the younger boy and the elder girl died. . . .
I must not have done much good in my previous life,
Otherwise, how could I have not even one brother in this world. . . .
If we were born sons,
We could then sustain our parents’ surname.
But we three are all daughters—useless,

Not qualified to enter our names in our father’s genealogy.
Our parents become older and older,
With no son, who can they depend on?
父母所生五個義 / 姊共弟郎沒世間 / 是儂無功修不到 / 跟毑可憐無弟兄 . . .
可以儂身男兒子 / 長大成人毑有聲 / 三朵紅花無此用 / 虧毑操心不填名
父母年高年來老 / 房中無兒倚哪個
Next, the sender pays her respects to the bride’s in-laws:

We know the gifts we prepared are not complete,
And cannot compare with many others.
So please pardon with us, my dear in-laws,
And be lenient.
My sister will now stay in your family forever;
We know she will only improve and become superior to others.
A girl who at home did not enjoy advantages
Will now be bettered in your gracious household.
Perhaps her upbringing does not live up to your expectations,
If that is so, please teach her patiently.
自知不得制全色 / 嫁妝不齊出面花 / 親家娘您請諒大 / 命薄入門望緊包
妹娘長春在你府 / 望曰千般勝過人 / 樓中本情命輕女 / 落入繡房高十分
就是難望你情理 / 沒得禮情慢慢教
figure 4 The nüshu wedding missive, called sanzhaoshu ‘third-day book’.
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68
As older sister to the bride, this sanzhaoshu sender also took the opportunity
to admonish the bride about how to comport herself in her new home:
In this book, I have other things to say,
To advise my younger sister on this third day.
Don’t be upset at being married out so young;
It is the emperor’s rule that women have to leave their villages.
Women are like swallows:
They fly their own way when full-fledged.
We move to live in separate houses, leaving our parents alone—
Thinking about it all through the night, we know that it shouldn’t be that way.
But listen to me:
You are young and not mature enough;
So stay calm when in his gracious household,
Put aside your worries, and serve his family according to the social rites. (Zhao
1992:77–79)
書本提言幾般說 / 三朝勸聲妹聽言 / 不氣年低到他府 / 皇帝制來要出鄉
儂是可比燕鳥樣 / 剛好毛長各自飛 / 各住分房放冷毑 / 透夜想來理不該
口曰勸言我亦惜 / 年紀輕輕不老成 / 身坐繡房要恬靜 / 撥開抑鬱禮事他
Admonition was certainly an important element of sanzhaoshu, especially

when it was given by the bride’s close family members or senior relatives.
Here, the sanzhaoshu sender advises the bride from multiple angles to accept
Confucian-androcentric practices: gender (being married out), social mandate
(emperor’s rule), family honor (serving the husband’s family according to the
social rites), and personal cultivation (staying calm). Such an admonitory ori-
entation creates the impression that sanzhaoshu is no more than a vehicle for
perpetuating and reinforcing patriarchal ideologies, and this has been a big
disappointment for those who wish to locate women’s resistant voices in a
female-specific expressive channel. What has not yet been discovered, how-
ever, is a corresponding and subversive subtext—a subtext located not in the
written text but in its performance.
As Tang explained, sanzhaoshu was performed as part of the formal celebra-
tion held at the groom’s family home on the third day of the wedding, called he
sanzhao 賀三朝 ‘celebration on the third day’. This ritual entailed the bride’s
natal family sending gifts to the groom’s family. And “third-day” is the key to
decoding the subtext of sanzhaoshu.
As they are elsewhere, weddings for Jiangyong women are a rite of passage
involving disintegration and reintegration. While bridal lamentation and the
rituals of singing courts were meant to detach the bride socially and emotion-
ally from her natal context, a series of ceremonies held in the groom’s village
established the bride in her new positions as wife and daughter-in-law. Her
status as a wife was initiated by the meeting ceremony of bride and groom,
called jiaobei 交杯 ‘linked cups’, in which the bride, inside the nuptial chamber,
and the groom, from the outside, had to collaboratively work off a slipknot of
the threads that linked the drinking cups held by each. Not until the slipknot

was pulled loose was the groom allowed to enter the chamber to see his wife.
In traditional China, where arranged marriage was the norm, the jiaobei cere-
mony was the first time the new couple met face to face. After jiaobei, the bride
remained in the room while the groom joined the wedding banquet.
When the banquet was over, about nine o’clock, a reception ritual called
saicha 塞茶 ‘pouring tea’ was held. The bride poured tea to welcome the visi-
tors, mostly the groom’s peers and other male villagers, since women usually
would not attend such a late-night party. The bride had arrived at the village
wearing a wedding cap with strings of beads hanging to cover her face, and
she did not participate in the wedding banquet, so the saicha ceremony was
the first time she showed herself and acted publicly as a partner of her
husband.
This did not conclude the wedding rituals, though. Marriage in traditional
China was about not just creating a new family but, more importantly, perpetu-
ating an old one. The jiaobei and saicha established the bride’s position as a
wife; she now needed to perform a ceremony called baijiatang 拜家堂—bowing
to her husband’s parents and relatives—to formalize her position as a daughter-
in-law in the groom’s lineage. To establish her lineage membership, she per-
formed the bowing ritual not in the groom’s household but in the lineage an-
cestral hall, which meant that her right to be worshipped as an ancestor was
also secured. If a person has no ancestral association, according to Chinese
cosmology, she or he becomes a ghost after death. While a man’s ancestral
right is ascribed, a woman acquires hers through marriage, because she has no
ancestral role in her natal home. Marriage in this sense is a rite of passage that
transforms a woman’s sense of existence not only physically and socially but
also spiritually. That is why marriage for a woman in nüshu is referred to as
wan 完 ‘consummated or complete’, jiaoquan 交全 or jiaoque 交卻 ‘completed
transfer’—that is, concluding a woman’s search for her ultimate destination as
a social being in this world and a potential ancestor in the other world. It is
therefore only after the rite of baijiatang that the bride’s natal family will send
their wedding congratulations to the bride at the groom’s village; and one of
those gifts was the sanzhaoshu.
From the male point of view, the bride was now ritually and socially united
with the groom and integrated into his three concentric circles of relationship:
kinship/household, social (groom’s peers), and spiritual (ancestral). The whole
process seems complete and thorough. From a female standpoint, however, it
was not. Still to be established was the bride’s support network in the groom’s
village: her affinal female relations and villagers, with whom she would inter-
act most in the future. This is where sanzhaoshu came in. The sanzhaoshu
performance presented an occasion for creating those crucial, if traditionally
invisible, links.
Tang recounted, “When the celebration procession from the bride’s side ar-
rived, the groom’s family would send someone to call around the village, ‘Kan
sanzhao luo 看三朝囉 (Let’s go see the sanzhao!)’.” Many villagers—senior,
junior, married and unmarried, mainly women—then gathered at the groom’s
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house to see the display of wedding gifts and make judgment on the handi-
crafts of the bride’s peers. “If there was a sanzhaoshu, those who knew nüshu
would eagerly pick it up and read. They would sing it aloud.” And the audi-
ences were very engaged: “When they heard sad stories, they shed tears.”
Through the public performance of sanzhaoshu, beholders of the third-day cel-
ebration, specifically members of the bride’s affinal community, came to know
the bride as an individual and as like them. From stories transcribed in the
sanzhaoshu, though these differed from one case to the next, they refreshed
memories from their own past, reflected on women’s common fate, and ex-
panded their worldview by listening to the life challenges of others (either the
bride’s or those of the sanzhaoshu sender): separation, sisterhood disrupted,
irretrievable carefree girlhood days, leaving parents unattended, being submis-
sive, lacking male patronage (being widowed or sonless), and so on. With their
own histories and current subordination projected onto the bride’s sanzha-
oshu, a collective female identity was forged. The bride was no longer an alien
outsider, but someone who could be related to and sympathized with, and thus
a connection unrepresented in mainstream wedding rituals was established
between the new bride and her affinal female villagers.
Note, however, that to ensure that the connectedness was successfully con-
structed, there was one more condition: “Anyone could read and sing the san-
zhaoshu except the bride,” Tang reminded me. “If she did, people would laugh
at her.” There was even a song that mocked such a bride:
At the center of the room,
There is one picking hot peppers in the garden.
In the room there is one showing off,
One who is reading paper and fan on the occasion of sanzhao.16
房一個中央 / 進園摘辣椒 / 房一個伸見 / 三朝念紙扇
Since she was the recipient of the sanzhaoshu, why should the bride not per-
form it? The answer is not difficult to imagine: If the sanzhaoshu were chanted
by the bride, attention would be diverted from “What about the bride?” to
“How about her performance?” She would become a target to be judged and
evaluated, for instance, on her singing ability, vocal quality, nüshu literacy, and
the like. This would only highlight the new bride’s otherness among her affinal
women villagers. However, if the sanzhaoshu—textually inscribing women’s
collective destiny through presentation of the bride’s personal story—were
chanted by a third person in public, the individual differences among women
would then dissipate into a “community of sentiment” (Appadurai 1990), and
“resonance” (Wikan 1992) would be established. A bride’s support community
then could begin to take shape.
A series of wedding rituals, together with sanzhaoshu, established the new
bride’s social links/identities/status in her affinal village. Her next challenge
16

was to produce offspring to secure her position as a mother, rather than merely
as a wife or daughter-in-law. Son-bearing, however, was sometimes a matter
beyond human control, and it was in this regard that nüshu became a medium
to carry women’s petitions and prayers to the supernatural world.
From Social to Supernatural
Jiangyong has two temples where local women came to worship with nüshu:
Huashanmiao in central Jiangyong and Longyantang in Dao County, where
Gupo and Niangniang, respectively, are enshrined. Despite having different
names and different locations, both temples developed from the same legend
regarding two spinster sisters. The two sisters, on their way to take lunch to
their father, who was plowing a field, saw beautiful flowers in a grotto. They
stopped to pick the flowers and became immortals. A temple was erected there
to enshrine their transformation, and many miraculous incidents occurred at
that place afterward.
Among the miracles was a story Tang told me about a male broom vendor.
The vendor saw a young girl struggling to carry a basket full of red shoes, and
he went over and helped her. Out of gratitude, the girl invited the man home,
prepared a feast for him, and asked him to stay overnight. When he woke up
the next morning, he found himself not in the extravagant house he had visited
the night before, but in a remote field. Needless to say, he saw no young lady.
“This young lady was apparently not a real person but a ghost—a very, very
powerful one,” Tang concluded.
It was stories such as this that attracted pilgrims. People usually visited on
the annual temple festival days: February 1 for Longyantang and May 10 for
Huashanmiao. Since these were festivals, not everyone came to make wishes.
Tang commented, “Girls had no worries—only women did—so they went
there basically for the excursion.” Tang had first visited Longyantang at age 11,
then for three consecutive years, walking eight kilometers or so from her
natal village of Xiawan. Some women traveled by sedan chair, but most of
them went on foot. Even though they had bound feet at that time (they are
unbound now), no one complained about the difficulty of walking a round
trip of between two and five hours. In fact, even 60 or 70 years later, as we
talked about it, I could still feel the women’s excitement. As young girls, their
living domain was largely confined to their villages, and the pilgrimage was a
rare group outing, which they undertook with sisters, neighbors, aunts, and
others.
For married women, however, a pilgrimage tour to the spinster temple was
more utilitarian than entertainment. They went to supplicate, asking espe-
cially to bear a son or seeking aid when their situation had for some reason
become desperate. Some would write their supplications in nüshu, chant them
before the spinster deities, and then place them on the altar; any such nüshu
could be taken home by other pilgrims. The pilgrims, of course, were not only
| Gendered Words
72
females; men came as well, to pray for wealth and health. When making peti-
tions, some also requested an oracle. Tang explained, “There was a bamboo
container with many bamboo slips in it. You shook it to let three slips drop out;
these were combined to make a matching number. There was an oracle book
where you checked to see what it meant—say, you would be rich or be healed.
If you could not read, then someone would interpret the oracle for you—there
were many such persons present. And you could take the oracle slip home if
you liked.”
“For each oracle, one had to pay about 120 yang [a denomination of currency
used in the early Republican era],” Tang remembered. As for taking the nüshu
home, Sasa said it involved a fee, but Tang insisted that “it was free and you
didn’t have to return it.” Tang recalled that once when she visited Longyantang
with other girl friends, they took home a nüshu fan. She was not sure who
eventually kept this nüshu, but she was able to recite some of what was written
on the fan:
The sisters in Longyantang are highly efficacious;
They are fortunate persons, and many people come to pay tribute with incense.
Every February, people come for a visit.
See how jolly it is!
The sisters in Longyantang are highly efficacious,
Pilgrims come from Yongming and Dao counties.
In front is the dragon-like water;
Behind is phoenix-shaped dragon [mountain]. . . .
Please show me your efficacy.
On February 1, I come to pray for a son.
I am a daughter of Lingling District,
Married into the Chen family,
Living in the village called Tianguangdong,
And I have given birth to a daughter.
This year, I come again.
Please listen to my supplication:
Now I have had a red-flower daughter;
Please grant my heart’s desire in the coming year.17
龍眼塘娘本是顯 / 孝敬香煙是福人 / 年年二月來一轉 / 起眼望來鬧熱多
龍眼塘娘本是顯 / 道縣永明來進香 / 面前來龍像春水 / 背底來龍像鳳形. . .
為了我身為我動 / 二月初一求兒郎 / 我父出身零陵女 / 落入人家是姓陳
一叫村名田廣洞 / 養個女兒一位身 / 年年二月來一轉 / 一二述請聽我音
今日得個紅花女 / 再後來年要好心
Tang explained that if a wish was not granted, one had to write a nüshu to
report to the sisters and make a new petition. If it was granted, the recipient
had to return the favor by visiting the temple with another nüshu, along with a
17

sacrifice (e.g., a chicken and pig) or some presents (e.g., clothes and red shoes).
Sometimes, a reception would be offered in addition; a wooden image of one
of the sisters (usually the elder) would be brought to the worshipper’s village
for a few days. On the day of the reception, “The ‘ghost’ had to ride in a sedan.
She wore a coronet and shawl, dressed just like a bride”; Tang occasionally
used the term “ghost” to refer to the sister Niangniang.
Indeed, the reception rite was very similar to a regular wedding ceremony.
In addition to the image’s being carried in a sedan chair and wearing bridal
dress, firecrackers would be set off when it arrived at the village. Inside the
house, the host had to make the bed with a specially prepared comforter, imi-
tating the wedding ritual of puchuang 鋪床 ‘spreading the bedding’. The host
had to arrange for someone to serve Niangniang, cooling her with a fan in
summer, or, in winter, warming her bed. Moreover, like a typical wedding
night, Niangniang must be accompanied, not by a man, but by a “clean girl,” a
girl who was not menstruating. For outsiders, it may seem bizarre to stay with
a “ghost” overnight, but Tang said, “No one would turn down such an invita-
tion, since it was regarded as an honor.” This just entailed the girl’s staying the
night in the same room with Niangniang; after all, the line between this world
and the other world had to be maintained. Note also that the Niangniang that
was brought to the village was a wooden statue, not her immortal body, for the
two spinsters’ bodies had allegedly been stolen long ago by people from neigh-
boring Guanyang 灌陽 County, a measure they took to implore the sisters for
rain rather than for human fertility.
It is interesting that requests about reproduction were made to spinsters
when marriage was the only legitimate context for getting pregnant. The in-
compatibility of spinsterhood and fertility was obviously noted by local people.
Perhaps that is why the reception ceremony, offered in thanks for the divine
blessing of a son, was conducted as a wedding simulation. By conferring mar-
ried status on the unmarried deities, this incompatibility was thereby can-
celled. The simulation, on the one hand, proclaimed how women’s reproduc-
tion was proper only in marriage; on the other, it reinforced the notion that
women must get married, and moreover, they must marry outside their home
villages. This explains why, when the sisters’ bodies were taken away from Ji-
angyong, people in their hometown did not make an effort to get them back.
When the theft first occurred, the villagers did want to recover them, but the
spinsters appeared in a dream to their own parents and instructed them, “If a
mountain is not slashed and burned, the soil will not be fertile / If a daughter
does not leave her village, she will not become valuable” 火不燒山地不肥 /
女不離鄉女不貴. Even as an immortal, a woman was still subject to the rule of
village exogamy.
According to local gazetteer (Yongming xianzhi 1846), legends about these
spinsters emerged as early as the Tang dynasty (618–907). Yet when and why
they became identified with reproduction is unknown. We can be sure that
the creation of female deities to minister to the production of male offspring
signifies how agnates are conceived by the local people. At a certain stage of
| Gendered Words
74
Tang’s life, she desperately needed a son, especially during her second mar-
riage (1947–1960) around the Liberation of 1949. But she did not go to sup-
plicate, partly because the prevailing political ideology considered such reli-
gious practices “feudalist poison,” and partly because Longyantang and
Huashanmiao were torn down in the late 1950s as part of the economic mo-
bilization that employed all available resources (such as the wooden struc-
ture of temples) as fuel for iron smelting. Therefore, even if making a peti-
tion to the spinster deities had occurred to her, it would only have been
wishful thinking.
Conclusions
Tang’s life experiences and extensive knowledge of local practices provide us

with a unique window on how nüshu, together with nüge, gave meaning to
women’s vulnerable existence. They show how that vulnerable being was trans-
formed into becoming through expression along three operational axes. The
first is a self-reflective expression, manifested not only in the genre of biography
but also in sisterhood letters and performed sanzhaoshu. Tang’s loss of family
members, natal and affinal, and her difficulty in adopting a son, for example,
were described in her biographical nüshu/nüge and sisterhood letter to Cizhu.
In addition to being self-reflective, such articulation is also aimed toward
others and is therefore dialogic in nature, whether it involves making one’s suf-
fering known, or giving consolation/admonition for the sake of seeking moral
support in the social world, or pleading for blessings from the spirit realm.
Tang composed her biography because she wanted people to know what she
had suffered, and Cizhu wrote to console Tang because she knew Tang was at
the most vulnerable point of her life. The wedding missive, the sanzhaoshu,
was specially designed to be presented in public and performed to effect the
greatest benefit on behalf of its recipient. Finally, those who could not find sup-
port in the human world could still make supplication at the temples of
Huashanmiao and Longyantang and thereby gain some hope.
Third, nüshu/nüge expression has a transformational aspect, as it turns lived
experience into history, sets up a yet-to-be-established future, and extends
social interaction beyond geographical confines. This is particularly obvious in
nüshu, thanks to its written nature. It enabled women to make sworn sister-
hood across villages, even though it also inscribed their frustrations about sus-
taining such networks after they were married. The performance of sanzha-
oshu became a social field where women acknowledged the overarching power
of the patriarchal social structure and still managed to create new support net-
works. In addition to building connectedness between a bride and her affinal
community, nüshu/nüge praxis leveled a critique of the structural negligence of
women’s social world.
Although Tang had never learned to write, she could sing a great number of
nüge. Even Yanxin, who was always present during my interviews with Tang,

was puzzled by this: “Tang Baozhen leads such a hard life; how can she feel
like singing so much?” Tang, it seems, found singing nüshu and nüge liberat-
ing: it helped transpose her misery into something transcendental. Yanxin,
however, represents a different type. She was taught nüshu and loved to sing as
a child, but as an adult she tries to distance herself from it, “because in nüshu
there is so much pain: so many miseries and heart-breaking stories.” Its potent
emotions drove Yanxin away from nüshu, but it was also emotions that brought
her back to it, as we will see in the next chapter.
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76
CHAPTER 4 He Yanxin: Calling and Recalling
the Sentiments of Nüshu
knock! knock! knock! someone anxiously called out, “Little Liu, open the
door! Open the door!” From her voice, I could tell it was Sasa.
It was June and a hot summer. The heat had nearly lulled me into a nap
when Sasa’s sudden call awakened me. “Something serious must be happen-
ing,” I said to myself.
On opening the door, I found Sasa, a 74-year-old woman with bound feet,
standing there with her cane. Her face was flushed with anger, and pinched
between her fingers she held a crumpled piece of red paper. She wailed, “You
look down on me! You despise me!”
*****
A couple of days earlier, a Heyuan Village woman in her sixties, Yuping

玉萍, had told me that she could bring several women together at her house to
sing, and this would give me a chance to record and videotape them. Yuping
was the key figure in making Heyuan known as a nüshu village. Early in the
winter of 1991, she had bumped into a woman from Beijing in the Shangji-
angxu periodic market who asked if she knew anyone who could write nüshu.
Yuping answered, “Why don’t you come with me and let’s find out together?” It
was thanks to Yuping’s enthusiasm that Zhao Liming became the first nüshu
scholar to call on this remote village and there found then 82-year-old Yang
Huanyi. Huanyi had lived in Heyuan, but she had followed her son to Tong-
shanling Farm, about an hour’s walk away, in the 1960s. During the 1991 visit,
Yuping had organized a singing session for Zhao; now she proposed to dupli-
cate the same performance for me, but on one condition: I had to pay a certain
honorarium to those who agreed to sing. She emphasized that this had been the
practice among the other nüshu scholars. I agreed and was quite excited, for I
had not yet seen women sing together and interact as a group. And since my
husband had come along with me, he could help videotape the entire session.
That morning, six or seven elderly women, ranging in age from the fifties to
seventies, gathered at Yuping’s house. Everyone sang happily—the songs included
tea-leaf-picking ditties, ceremonial wedding songs, and sisterhood laments—and
everyone participated, except one woman who reclined on the folding couch, ap-
parently taking a nap. That was Sasa. I could imagine why she did so. Reported to
be nüshu literate by Zhao Liming, even though that literacy was limited to writing
her own name, Sasa had long been a focus of interviews whenever scholars visited
Heyuan. She was also the one specialists asked for when anyone needed to pur-
chase a “nüshu belt,” a long cotton strap woven with nüshu characters. All these
forms of attention made her believe that she was a key informant, second only to
Huanyi, and therefore she was reluctant to sing with the other village women be-
cause it would seem to undermine her standing.
It was fine with me if she only wanted to observe and not participate, but
her “observation” presented a problem. Should I pay her as well? If I did, would
it be unfair to the other performers? If I did not, would that embarrass her?
After consulting with my dialect tutor, a security guard serving in the county
government who happened to come home that day and attend the singing ses-
sion, I decided to give Sasa money, but only half of what the others got. Since
the money had to be wrapped in red paper according to local custom, I sup-
posed that no one would notice the difference. I thought I did a fairly good job:
My reasoning was considerate and just.
But things did not go as expected. The singing session adjourned at noon
and I had just returned from lunch, and now here was Sasa standing in front
of me, infuriated: “You despise me! You do me an injustice. . . . How come I
was paid less?”
Under her grilling, I became upset. Didn’t she realize I should not have to pay
her because she did nothing at all? But rationally I knew she had come because
she saw things from a logic different than my capitalistic rationale (i.e., you get
compensated for what you do). To her thinking, her very presence represented
crucial support for me and therefore deserved corresponding respect, and yet
what she received in return was discrimination and humiliation before her
fellow villagers. But how could I explain to her and make her understand my
point of view, especially when she was in such an emotional state? All I could do
was give her the “face” (dignity) she had come for. My husband’s presence pro-
vided a convenient excuse: “Oh, it must have been my husband’s negligence. You
see he wears glasses. His poor eyesight must have caused him to pick the wrong
bill.” After my repeated apology and making up the deficiency, Sasa finally
cracked a smile. Seeing her anger appeased, I asked a 12-year-old girl named
Meili 美麗, who had observed all this from the sidelines, to escort her home.
When Sasa finally left, I found myself soaked with perspiration. Noting my
condition, a middle-aged woman who happened to be standing near my door
handed me a straw fan. As I thanked her for her consideration, I noticed strange
smile with a hint of sarcasm in her eyes, as if saying, “Now I see!” This threw me
into an ocean of frustration and embarrassment. I felt terrible because this
woman had just taught me nüge the night before, and I hadn’t shown her any
special appreciation. And now she knew that I actually paid the others! What
would she think of me, never mind the other villagers? More fundamentally, was
paying for information the kind of relationship I wished to establish with the
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78
villagers? I was in despair. I thought that my fieldwork was doomed because I had
already ruined my rapport with the villagers at this early stage of my research.
The next day, as I anticipated, the whole village knew about the event. The
village head, my host, was very unhappy about my “paycheck” policy: “You
shouldn’t give money to any woman. No one has done this before. You have
corrupted our village morals.”
What an accusation! I defended myself: “But Yuping said that it was a
custom; last time when the nüshu scholar visited. . . .”
The village head interrupted, “No scholar has ever paid anything. Last time
it was the village’s public fund that was used to buy food and candies to treat
those who sang.”
At this point, another woman standing nearby heard our conversation and
cut in pridefully, “Almost every woman of my age in the village can sing; who
says that we sing for pay? We are not maichang de 賣唱的 [entertainers]; we do
not earn our living by singing.1 Little Liu, if you want to learn songs, I will sing
to you every afternoon whenever I get a few free moments. For absolutely no
pay! Not even a cent!”
The woman who proudly interjected herself was Yanxin (Figure 5). It was
she who had kindly handed me her straw fan and had been teaching me nüge
the night before. The Sasa incident turned out to be the critical moment of my
fieldwork, since it brought Yanxin toward me.
figure 5 The last traditionally trained nüshu literate, He Yanxin (2010, Courtesy of
Chou Chen).
1
Maichang de, those who sang to entertain others, were considered “base people” in traditional
China.
he yanxin: calling and recalling the sentiments of nüshu | 79

Yanxin lived just two doors down. Her offer to “sing to you every afternoon”
quickly calmed my turbulent thoughts, but I failed to fully register the proviso
“whenever I get a few free moments.”
A village woman has a very tight schedule, from washing clothes to cooking
meals, raising pigs, and helping with agricultural tasks. Yanxin’s family had
eight members. The eldest daughter worked in Guangdong, three younger
children were still in school, and the two elder sons helped her husband with
rice cultivation. All the household chores fell onto Yanxin’s shoulders. Under
this heavy workload, there was no time for Yanxin to sing, which was why she
had never showed up in my “studio” before then.
The villagers who did regularly show up at my house were a group of pre-
teens like Meili, about to graduate from primary school. They were eager to
learn about the world outside Jiangyong, and I was their best source in this
regard. Similarly, I relied on them to provide information concerning village
life; they were also my field assistants when the elder women came to my place
to sing.
Singing had been an integral part of women’s lives before Liberation in
1949. In addition to entertaining themselves (e.g., singing to reduce fatigue
while doing needlework together), singing was also a way to ameliorate life’s
miseries. For women of the elder generation, each nüshu/nüge reminded them
of a certain phase in their life histories. These memories were deeply im-
printed in their minds. As such singing became outdated, they took comfort in
anyone who was willing to listen to their reminiscing about the past—and a
nüshu/nüge researcher was a ready candidate. That was why many elder women
took the initiative to gather at my place to sing and chat.
Whenever the visiting women finished a song, I usually worked on the tran-
scription and discussed with them relevant cultural practices before moving
on. The girls, I had hoped, would help as I translated the dialect-based
nüshu/nüge into official hanzi graphs, but after a few trials, I found that this
was beyond their ability. Having received a modern communist education,
they had almost no knowledge of the classical and metaphoric expressions
used in nüshu and nüge. One old lady, Xiangfu 箱福, for example, had sung the
narrative ballad Lady Luo (Luoshi nü 羅氏女) for me, and it took us an entire
morning to figure out that the term tɕioŋ44ɕioŋ42 (in Jiangyong dialect) was
jingcheng 京城, a classical term for shoudu 首都 ‘capital’. Xiangfu finally lost
patience. She turned to one of the girls, Meili, and told her, “Go home and ask
your mother. She knows [this song].”
The next day Meili did indeed bring me a hanzi version of Lady Luo that her
mother, Yanxin, had written out:
The leaves of southernwood in the field are eighteen;
The youngest girl remained at home for eighteen years.
Eighteen years ago her father married her off;
She wore silver and gold and left her father’s house.
The first three days there was a red silk canopy;
On the fourth day her husband left for an official post.
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蒿葉在田十八葉 / 幼女在家十八年 / 十八年前父嫁女 / 銀金衣帶出父門
去到三朝紅羅帳 / 去到四朝夫做官
When I saw the transcript, I was surprised and excited: a woman with such
excellent knowledge living two doors away! To secure her assistance, my husband,
who was still in Heyuan at that time, paid a visit to the head of Yanxin’s household,
her husband, Degui 德貴. He said to Degui, “I will be leaving Heyuan in two days.
May I ask Yanxin to come over and help Little Liu as often as she can?”
This persuasion worked beautifully. As Yanxin told me many years later,
“Degui said to me: ‘Little Liu was here all by herself. You should go help her. . . .
Go! Go help her. I saw many women go to her place and sing. You go as well.’”
Yanxin replied, “Don’t you know how much work I have to do? How will
singing be possible? What if I can’t finish my work?”
“Never mind, just come home in time to cook the meals. The rest should be
fine,” said Degui.
After Degui’s agreement, Yanxin came to my place almost every afternoon. She
became my best partner in the field. When we two were alone, despite the de-
cades of age difference between us, we talked about all sorts of topics. Whenever
I had visitors, Yanxin was an invaluable help. Any difficulties I might encounter
transcribing nüshu or nüge would be resolved once she showed up. Nurtured in
the traditional female expressive culture (she learned nüshu/nüge from her grand-
mother), the mainstream Confucian classics (she studied hanzi with her grandfa-
ther), and modern Communist education (junior high school), Yanxin was the
ideal intermediary between the village women and a researcher from outside.
Longyu was another frequent visitor. Because of the communion that devel-
oped from our constant interaction, we three, at Longyu’s suggestion, swore
sisterhood in 1993. As sworn sisters, we were supposed to talk about all aspects
of our lives; moreover, since I saw Yanxin on an almost daily basis, I had great
confidence that I knew her well. I never imagined that she would conceal her
full nüshu proficiency from me, her sworn sister, who was after all working on
nüshu research! Why would she do that? What happened that caused her to
revisit her nüshu identity? Her experience—learning nüshu, concealing the
extent of her knowledge, and then resuming active writing—illuminates what
nüshu has meant to Jiangyong women socially, cognitively, morally, and
sentimentally.
Growing Up
Yanxin was born in 1939, when her mother was 28 years old. Yanxin’s mother
had married from Tianguangdong Village to Heyuan when she was 17 years
old. Tianguangdong and Heyuan, about an hour’s walk apart, belong to Dao
and Jiangyong counties, respectively.
“My mother bore two boys before me, but neither of my brothers survived.
When I was one and one-half years old, my father passed away. I became my
mother’s only child,” said Yanxin.

Yanxin’s father did not die of natural causes; he was murdered. It was the
New Year, and some villagers from Tianguangdong had come to Heyuan to
gamble. A conflict erupted with one Heyuan landlord, and Yanxin’s father
came forward to speak for the Tianguangdong folks because Tianguangdong
was his wife’s natal village. The landlord became so angry at this that he ac-
cused Yanxin’s father of stealing “public grain,” the grain used to worship lin-
eage ancestors. Yanxin’s father was sent to the town court for trial, but was
killed on the way.
To avoid further harassment by the landlord, Yanxin’s mother, now a widow
at age 30, immediately took Yanxin back to Tianguangdong, and there she
spent her widowhood. Yanxin was raised in the loving care of her maternal
grandparents.
Yanxin’s maternal grandparents came from good families. Her maternal
grandfather, whom Yanxin called waigong 外公 ‘external grandpa’ (hereafter
Grandpa), was from a gentry family. “He helped many villagers write legal
pleadings,” said Yanxin. Her Grandma, Yang Canxian 楊燦仙 (c.1876–1960),
whom Yanxin called waipo 外婆 ‘external grandma’ (hereafter Grandma), was
the daughter of a doctor in Chaoshui 潮水 Village in Shangjiangxu. “She
learned official hanzi with her brother from the family-employed tutor before
she was married; she could write nüshu as well,” said Yanxin.
At that time, becoming sworn sisters and writing wedding missives were
closely associated with nüshu. Yanxin remembers “female guests” visiting. “I
asked Grandma if they were relatives, and she said, ‘They are sisters.’” Two of
these female guests were highly admired nüshu writers in rural Jiangyong: He
Yunzhu 何韻竹 (married from Heyuan to Daluxia Village) and Yi Zaozao 義早早
(married from Tangxia 棠下 to Xingfu 興福 Village). As I traveled between vil-
lages, I had heard informants mention their names. One woman born in the
early 1930s who had married from Heyuan to Tianguangdong still remembers:
“Whenever the third aunt [He Yunzhu] came, we young girls followed her up and
down, no matter where she went. She did beautiful embroidery, paper cutouts,
and many other female handicrafts.”
Yanxin’s Grandma Yang Canxian was also a famous nüshu writer in the
local community. “Many villagers came to ask Grandma to write sanzhaoshu
on their behalf. . . . These women were from Zhujiawan, Longtian 龍田, Jinji-
ang 錦江, and the like. Those who requested a sanzhaoshu would prepare a
hongbao 紅包 [red envelope] for Grandma.”
Hongbao is an honorarium wrapped in red paper. Before Liberation, the
money used was mostly coins with a hole in the center, through which they
could be strung together. Little Yanxin found the coin strings fun to play with
and stole a few. When Grandma discovered her hongbao was shrinking, she
asked, “Did you take some of this from me?”
Yanxin asked in return, “What do you want it for?”
“To buy things,” Grandma answered patiently.
“Oh! It can bring us something else?” Yanxin was only seven years old and
had no idea what money was for.
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Grandma then said to her, “Don’t you ever steal it. If you want something,
just let me know and I’ll get it for you.”
In addition to the hongbao story, Yanxin also liked to tell about stealing her
Grandma’s embroidered shoes. “Grandma’s feet were so beautiful, so short,”
Yanxin used her thumb and index finger to show their length, only about three
inches. One day, Grandma said, “Girl, how about washing out shoes for
Grandma?” Yanxin answered, “All right, but let me pick the pair I like.” Yanxin
chose a pair, washed them, and put them on the roof to dry. When they were
completely dry, she hid one away and reported, “Grandma, one is missing.
A mouse must have dragged it away.” Grandma did not believe her, but Yanxin
insisted, “Otherwise who would take it? I don’t need it; it’s too small for me.”
Indeed, Yanxin took the shoe not to wear but to use as a mitt for picking spiny
chestnuts—and a single shoe would do.
Grandma’s shoes were too small for her little granddaughter because the old
woman had bound feet. At the mention of footbinding, Yanxin raised her voice,
as if she were relating something funny: “You know, I had bound feet for a while.
Grandma did it for me when I was seven. She unbound my feet only when I took
a bath, and bound them with stitches afterwards. She tightened my feet even
while I slept. My feet were so painful, hot and burning. I cried and cried, day after
day. I even went to Grandpa to plead for mercy, ‘Grandpa, Grandma is bad; she
has my feet bound.’” Unable to bear Yanxin’s suffering, Grandma eventually re-
lented: “Never mind, the times are different now.” Yanxin’s feet were thus set free.
Other than those footbinding days, Yanxin’s life in Tianguangdong was
quite carefree. Her main playmate was a girl about her age who lived next door,
the daughter of a landlord. Seeing them playing together all the time, the wife
of the landlord proposed a laotong sworn sisterhood between her daughter and
Yanxin. As one form of jiebai ties, laotong emphasized the value of sameness,
such as same age, similar appearance, and the like. Yanxin’s laotong was a land-
lord’s daughter who wore gold rings and bracelets, and Yanxin had nothing, so
the mother of her laotong bought Yanxin a silver ring. But Yanxin refused to
take it. She said to Grandma, “I don’t want the white [i.e., silver] one; I want a
yellow [gold] one.” Yanxin could not know the value of gold and silver; she just
reasoned, “If my laotong is wearing yellow, why is mine white?” Yanxin’s grand-
parents truly adored her and did indeed buy her a “yellow” ring.
Wearing cheongsam was another example. “My laotong wears a silk cheong-
sam every day, how come mine is handmade cotton cloth?” Grandma answered
Yanxin, “If you really want to wear those, I’ll buy two for you.” A cheongsam is
a tight-fitting dress that constricts one’s movement, but Yanxin still “wore it
when kicking balls, and running here and there. . . . It was made of silk, soft
and comfortable. I didn’t find it binding at all.”
In addition to her laotong, Yanxin’s other playmate was her uncle, who had been
born after Yanxin’s mother was married out. He was only five years older than
Yanxin, and as a young boy his responsibility was to take care of the cow, leading it
out to graze in the field. Once their charges were out grazing, young cowherders
were completely free. They spent their time singing songs, especially “mountain

songs” (the so-called shan’ge), which were meant for flirting with the opposite sex.
These were songs women in Jiangyong were forbidden to sing, but Yanxin never
cared about the rules. She once went out herding with her uncle and found the
ditties they sang so playful and fun to learn that, after they got home, she was still
humming them. Grandma grew very angry and reprimanded her son, “How could
you take advantage of Yanxin. She is your niece! How can you sing this to [flirt
with] her?” The boy defended himself, “But I didn’t mean it like that. It was her
own idea to learn it.” The next day Yanxin followed her uncle to the cow pasture
again and insisted on learning the rest of the song. Her uncle said, “Aren’t you
afraid of Grandma’s scolding?” Yanxin said, “I’m not, and don’t you be!”
“I was very naughty then; I was also very bold,” said Yanxin. In 1944, when
the Japanese invaded Jiangyong, all the villagers packed up rice, pots, and
clothes to take refuge in the mountains. Yanxin’s mother was no exception, but
in her haste, she could not find her daughter and finally had to flee without her.
Yanxin did not know where her mother was, so she held other villager’s hands
and fled with them. But she was so little, “I couldn’t walk that much,” and even-
tually she was left behind. Not knowing where else to go, Yanxin ran back to
the village alone. “I was not afraid of those Japanese.” She witnessed how the
Japanese soldiers destroyed the village: “They killed our chickens; they took
money and clothes, whatever.” Many girls, even pregnant women, were re-
ported to have been raped and then killed by the Japanese soldiers, but Yanxin
survived, probably because she was only five.
Learning Nüshu from Grandma
From the time she was a little girl, Yanxin was fond of singing. “When Grandma
was cooking, I helped her make a fire and she taught me to sing. At that time
I was only five or six years old.”
Yanxin’s feelings about nüshu were more complex. The first thing she no-
ticed was that whenever Grandma wrote nüshu, especially the sanzhaoshu, she
shed tears. Yanxin asked, “Grandma, why are you crying? What makes you so
sad?”
Grandma pointed at the text she was writing and said, “Some people are
faced with terrible misfortunes, and nüshu is for those miserable people.”
“Am I one of those?” Yanxin asked.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
Grandma told Yanxin, “You have neither father nor brother, so you are one
of the most miserable of people in this world.”
“Then how come I can’t write nüshu?”
“You are still little. I’ll teach you when you’re older.”
Yanxin was eight when Grandma said to her, “Girl, let me teach you nüshu.”
Yanxin’s Grandpa also wanted to teach her Chinese official hanzi. “But I didn’t
like learning either one; I just wanted to play outside,” said Yanxin.
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To induce her granddaughter to learn nüshu, Grandma came up with an idea:
Grandma wrote a nüshu song on my palm saying, “When you play outside, you
take a stick and practice writing on the ground.” I did. I looked at the graphs on
my palm and drew them in the dirt—even though I couldn’t read what I drew.
After I got back home, Grandma would teach me to sing the song. In less than a
half hour, I learned it.
Yanxin could learn a song a day. These songs were all short, songs for little
girls, such as this one:
Little girl, little dress,
I pick flowers by the road and put them in two rows [in my hair].
People call me flower-wearing sister;
Age eighteen is the perfect time to wear flowers.2
小小女子小衣裳 / 路上摘花插兩行 / 個個叫我插花姊 / 十八插花正是時
As a little girl, Yanxin found the nüshu script ugly, but its chanting style,
called tuoyin 拖音 (portamento, sliding the pitch from one note to another),
was musical. “It made me happy,” Yanxin recalled. “When Grandma’s female
guests [sworn sisters] visited, they brought nüshu with them and sang together.
The sound of their chorus was just like the humming of bees—very, very pleas-
ant to the ear.”
The songs Grandma sang in chorus with her sworn sisters were mostly
narrative ballads such as Zhu Yingtai, Lady Luo, The Third Daughter (Sangu ji
三姑記), and Lady Zhang (Zhangshi nü 張氏女, also known as Flower-Selling
Girl), which were originally written in official hanzi script. Grandma took
those hanzi stories from Grandpa and transcribed them into nüshu; some-
times, Grandpa would read as Grandma transcribed. When a story was done,
she stitched the loose pages into a booklet. Grandma had good memory, and if
she practiced chanting a story for three to five days, she could memorize it.
Grandma told Yanxin, “Those ballads are stories about women who were bul-
lied and suffered, stories that bring tears.” But for Yanxin, what was written
was less important than how its melody sounded. Singing triggered her inter-
est in nüshu.
As she gradually expanded her nüshu vocabulary, Yanxin paid more atten-
tion when Grandma was writing:
When Grandma wrote [nüshu], I stood or sat by her side. She chanted along as
she wrote—chanting it portamento, of course. And I would remember whatever
she wrote and chanted. I learned just by watching her write. If there were some
specific characters I couldn’t quite grasp, I’d ask.
Afterwards, I’d take Grandma’s written nüshu and copy the entire text. At that
time I knew Chinese hanzi, so I also transposed the nüshu into hanzi.
2
Sung by Yanxin and recorded in December 1993.

Grandma wanted Yanxin to learn nüshu because “nüshu is for unfortunate
people.” Grandpa, who taught Yanxin hanzi, also encouraged Yanxin to learn
nüshu, because “nüshu makes sense”—as in the sanzhaoshu, which advises the
bride to set aside her uneasiness at leaving home and conduct herself like a
sensible daughter-in-law. But of course, Grandpa understood that nüshu was
also filled with accounts of women’s hardship and adversity. When he listened
to Grandma chant nüshu as she wept, he often sighed, “Pitiful! Pitiful!” “In
fact,” Yanxin added, “Grandpa wept as well. But not in front of us; he went
away somewhere and wept.”
Sanzhaoshu was especially important as a form in which women could lay
bare the injustice and miseries they faced. Yanxin remembered one occa-
sion when the bride was so wretched, Grandma could not manage to write
for her:
A girl from Grandma’s village [Tianguangdong] was getting married and her
family came to ask Grandma for a sanzhaoshu. But then misfortune struck four
or five days before the wedding: The bride’s father died. Grandma could not pull
herself together as she wrote this sanzhaoshu. Her tears kept falling and wet
through the entire paper. She cried and cried; her eyes had swollen shut. When
Grandpa realized this, he anxiously hailed me, “Granddaughter, come, come see
your Grandma; she is about to faint.”
Grandpa said to me, “Girl, I’m afraid you’ll have to write for your Grandma.”
I said, “All right!”
I then wiped Grandma’s tears and said to her, “Grandma, if you cannot open
your eyes, that’s fine. You just speak out what you’d say and I’ll write it down for
you, line by line.”
When I finished this sanzhaoshu, Grandpa asked me, “You cried, didn’t you?”
I answered, “No, I didn’t.” I was too young then, I couldn’t really understand the
sadness.
I asked Grandpa, “My handwriting is not as handsome as Grandma’s, right?
Grandma’s handwriting is very beautiful.”
Grandpa answered, consoling me, “Don’t worry! Other people cannot read
nüshu; they won’t be able to tell the difference.”3
Yanxin started learning sanzhaoshu at about ten or eleven years old. In the
past decade, she has written at least ten pieces of nüshu wedding literature she
learned from her Grandma. The following example is a sanzhaoshu written on
behalf of the bride’s cousin’s wife:
Bringing my brush to a fine point, I write on the handkerchief, and
Send it to your noble family, your respected dragon gate.
The day before yesterday my husband’s paternal uncle’s wife married her daughter,
Today, just one day on, she is now in your honorable home.
Escorted by both parents, she set out in the wedding cart,
3
Narrated by Yanxin and recorded in October 2011.
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86
Escorted also by her elder brothers.
She has two elder sisters-in-law and two younger sisters as well,
And counts as one of this world’s women of superior good fortune.
掭筆修書帕頭上 / 奉到貴家拜龍門 / 前朝叔娘交全女 / 一日之緣落貴家
父母雙全送上轎 / 哥兄遙遙交卻身 / 嫂有二位妹二個 / 世上占位上命人
Once she had praised the bride’s good fortune, the sender went on to lament
her own tribulations:
Uncle’s wife has married out her daughter this year, and
I take this opportunity to lament. . . .
I write first of all to greet her on the third day and second to lament my own
misery,
Although for the sake of courtesy, I shouldn’t lament here.
But your ill-fated sister-in-law has no means to relieve her sorrow;
That’s why she writes here to express her bitterness.
I was born debased and wretched:
With neither elder brother nor younger, I cannot hold up my head.
My parents used to have a good life;
They had two sons and three daughters.
But unexpectedly our family’s ancestral fortunes changed, and
In every way we became inferior to others.
My younger brother died pitifully:
He happened to encounter a foe,
A predestined foe.
He was killed and can never return.
叔娘今年交全女 / 借叔歌堂來訴言…/ 一接三朝二訴苦 / 理上不該來訴言
薄命嫂娘無出氣 / 才我做書訴苦情 / 想起出生命賤薄 / 無弟無兄不如人
父母先前命勻同 / 二個嬌兒三朵花 / 得知家門祖水變 / 到此如今不如人
只氣弟郎死的苦 / 撞著冤家對頭人 / 前世冤仇對頭到 / 打死連襟不回頭
Yanxin offered this sanzhaoshu to me twice, in 2005 and 2010. In the 2010
version, she gave a fuller description of the miseries that confronted the san-
zhaoshu sender, including details that had been missing in her earlier
recitation:
Who knew that our fortune would go from bad to worse:

My second brother also died.
My parents’ hearts were broken.
But what can you say? Everything is Heaven’s plan.
Then all three daughters got married,
And my parents had no one to rely on in their old age.
And so, they brought in a boy;
They raised him and married in a wife for him.
And then a grandson was born. How happy everyone was!
They celebrated his birth with banquets.

They also invited the paternal and maternal relatives to witness the genealogical
transfer of the boy to my father’s descent—
I felt at ease and had no worries. . . .
But for some reason—I’ve never understood what my [adopted] brother was
thinking—
He put aside his good conscience and insisted on returning to his original
family. . . .
He took his wife and two children back to his original home,
And then my father died of an illness.
哪知家門祖水醜 / 第二弟郎又落陰 / 父母氣得肝腸斷 / 無法升天沒奈何
三個紅花交全了 / 父母年老沒倚身 / 我毑操心接個崽 / 養大成人討了親
見個嬌孫多歡喜 / 又辦酒來又辦湯 / 約起叔孫移過譜 / 我亦安心並無愁…
不知弟郎哪樣想 / 擱毑良心要回程…/ 四母引起回家住 / 毑爺病中盡了頭
The death of the father put her mother, now a sonless widow, in a devastating
situation:
Father died the year before last,
Leaving Mother completely alone.
Last year my mother had a stroke of bad luck:
She fell in the house and became mentally ill.
She needed care and all three meals;
The uncles and aunts worried about her.
I thus brought her to my affinal home for several months,
Taking care of her attentively.
But still my mother could not be at ease;
She said she felt perturbed and wanted to go home.
Then our third sister took her to her place,
Caring for her for several months. . . .
It was then my elder sister,
Who looked after my mother with great patience.
We three daughters kept her at our places in total a year and a half,
During which she kept talking about going back home.
We three sat together and discussed—
How could we bear to send our mother home? . . .
Considering that you cannot move well,
And besides, your health is not good,
How can we three not feel frustrated
About sending our mother back to an empty house, cold and alone?
If our brother had not left,
We would have no worries.
[But now] even if we think about going back to look in on her,
We find ourselves tied up at home and unable to leave.4
4
This nüshu was also transcribed by Gao Yinxian and included in Xie ed. (1991:19–40). According to
Yanxin, Gao had learned nüshu from Yanxin’s grandmother.
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前年毑爺落陰府 / 放下母親孤鳥形 / 舊年毑娘運不好 / 廳堂跌倒又瘋了
三餐茶飯要人奉 / 叔弟伯娘操盡心 / 接到我家幾個月 / 服侍到頭有細心
只是毑娘有憂屈 / 口念心煩想回家 / 第三妹娘接出去 / 幾個月中服侍娘…
再復姊娘接出去 / 人性放長待母親 / 三徠接娘一年半 / 毑娘心煩要回家
三徠坐攏共商議 / 難捨母親送回程…/ 你的手腳不方便 / 二的身體不剛強
三徠何嘗哪不氣 / 送毑空房冷孤淒 / 不比弟郎不回府 / 咱在他家沒慮其
可曰回家看察毑 / 家有事情難起身
Here the sanzhaoshu sender laments her mother’s difficulties at having neither
husband nor son to support her in patriarchal rural society. As daughters, how
could they stand to see their handicapped, widowed mother living alone? As
daughters-in-law, where would they find the time to go see her? This sanzha-
oshu puts a key married daughter’s dilemma front and center.
Yanxin herself had never composed a sanzhaoshu for a wedding event, but
she remembered that whenever anyone came to request a sanzhaoshu,
Grandma had conducted an interview before writing. She would ask, “What’s
the family situation? What are the miseries to be narrated?” Based on the re-
quester’s responses, Grandma composed the facts into a sensible narrative. As
a young child, Yanxin once inquired, “Grandma, you can write the whole piece
by just asking a few questions?” Her answer: “Why not? It is just like writing a
letter.”
Whenever she spoke of her grandmother, Yanxin’s voice always went soft
and tender. She still feels deeply aggrieved about Grandma’s misfortunes late
in life: “She enjoyed a fairly good life when she was young. But after Grandpa
left us, her suffering began.” Her account went on:
Grandma had only one son, my uncle, who had five children. The entire family
used to lead a joyful life. But in 1958 or 1959 when there was little food, jiuma
舅媽 [mother’s brother’s wife] had a change of heart. She no longer counted
Grandma as a person and refused to give her food.
Having nothing to eat, Grandma decided to commit suicide. She tried to hang
herself, but fortunately a male kinsman found her and cut the rope and saved her.
She was unconscious for several hours and did not come around until my mother
and yima 姨媽 [mother’s sister] arrived.
My uncle had no say at all in the family; everything was up to jiuma. Jiuma
said, “My children don’t have enough to eat; I can’t afford to feed her. She has
become so old; it’s time for her to return to the West [i.e., to die].” By this time
Grandma had awakened. Overhearing these words, she said with an air of pee-
vishness, “In that case, I’ll not die but live.”
After surviving her attempted suicide, Grandma remarried. She was 86 years
old then. She died within a year.
Remarrying in one’s eighties certainly generated some gossip, didn’t it? But
what could she do? There was nowhere she could go.5
5
Narrated by Yanxin and recorded in August 2010.

Grandma’s suicide attempt coincided with the implementation of the Peo-
ple’s Commune system, with food shared by all villagers, called “communal
dining” (gonggong shitang 公共食堂) (1958–1961). Everyone was happy with this
policy the first year, but then all the villages began to suffer from food short-
ages. “People fooled around and chatted in the field. If you would be given food
anyway, what was the point of working hard?” many elders commented. To
correct this, starting in 1959, food was distributed depending on whether one
contributed to production. Each labor unit could get three liang 兩 (one liang
equals 37.5 grams) of rice per meal (about one and a half bowls of cooked rice).
Non-laborers such as the elderly and children received no more than two liang
(one bowl of cooked rice). Grandma’s family had eight members, but only two
were working. To make sure her five children did not starve, jiuma let them eat
first, “and there was never much left for Grandma.” Jiuma was also mean be-
cause Grandma’s poor health did not allow her to help out with the household
chores. Jiuma had to work in the field then rush home to cook and wash
clothes. Overwhelmed by all these tasks, she took her resentment out on
Grandma. She even said at one point, “I would rather keep an old dog than
keep you.”
“After Grandma tried to hang herself, my mom and yima proposed bringing
her to live with them. But she wouldn’t go. She said, ‘Only my son should
support me, never my daughters!’” Her position on this matter was similar to
that of the mother described in the sanzhaoshu cited above. “So Grandma
remarried—she did it in a fit of pique.”
At first, Yanxin could not understand why Grandma had to remarry. She
asked about it when she visited her in her new home. Grandma answered, “I
had no choice. I was starving every day. I have to keep on living, don’t I?” Her
new husband was a widower who had no children. He earned a living by fish-
ing. About seven or eight years younger than Grandma, he spoke very loudly:
“It was alarming,” Yanxin said. But Grandma told her, “Granddaughter, don’t
be afraid of him. He is a very nice guy.”
When she called on Grandma, Yanxin took along her own share of rice so
as not to be an economic burden. But she only went there once or twice:
“Grandma’s health deteriorated quickly. She remarried in December of 1959
and died in 1960. . . . She died of humiliation, for getting remarried at such an
old age. . . . Grandma loved my uncle so dearly. She never imagined that he
would have a change of heart.”
Yanxin’s uncle brought Grandma’s body home and buried her. In her honor,
Yanxin wrote out four pieces of nüshu to be buried with her; two were silk-
covered sanzhaoshu and the other two were the narrative ballads Lady Zhang
and Zhu Yingtai.
“When Grandma was placed in the coffin, I knelt down and gave her . . .
those nüshu. I put the nüshu in her hands and told her to take hold of them and
she did.” Very quietly Yanxin said, “Nüshu was what Grandma had transmitted
to me. Now she was gone and the nüshu would be gone with her.”
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A Mother’s Sorrow and Sadness
In Yanxin’s memory, her mother was always melancholy, sitting alone shed-
ding tears. Yanxin had no idea what had happened to her. It was Grandma who
told Yanxin that her father was killed by a fellow villager, a landlord, when she
was one and one-half years old. This landlord with his abusive power took
away all her father’s family property and locked Yanxin’s mother in the lineage
hall. When her guards were dozing, Yanxin’s mother escaped and went home
to get Yanxin, then ran to seek help from her own parents about a mile away in
Tianguangdong. Learning of the injustice against his daughter, Yanxin’s
Grandpa immediately filed a lawsuit at the court. Unfortunately, the local court
of Jiangyong colluded with the murdering landlord and refused to hold a trial
on the charge. If Yanxin’s Grandpa had been an ordinary peasant, the case
might have ended there. But since Grandpa was gentry and had helped many
fellow villagers, who were mostly illiterate, with legal issues, he was not in-
timidated by the ruling. Instead, he went to the higher court in Guiyang 桂陽,
and the verdict rendered there favored Yanxin’s mother. The murderers were
imprisoned. Soon after, however, the Japanese army invaded Jiangyong and
opened the jail. The culprits escaped, and justice regrettably was not served.
After her father was killed, Yanxin and her mother lived at her mother’s natal
home for many years. There, while Yanxin’s uncle and Grandpa slept on the
ground floor, four women lived upstairs: Grandma, Mother, Yanxin, and Yanx-
in’s unmarried aunt (yima), who was born after Yanxin’s mother had married.
Yanxin remembers that when she was five or six years old, her mother and
yima took her to the Longyantang temple during its February festival, when
many women went there to pray for a son. Yanxin’s mother was a widow and
yima had not yet married, so their visit was mainly an excursion. “At the altar
were shoes, handkerchiefs, and fans,” but Yanxin was too young to notice
whether these items were inscribed with nüshu. Later in life, though, she did
learn a nüshu prayer. This prayer describes a sister and her younger brother who
were maltreated by their stepmother, and since the brother was ill, the sister
wrote to supplicate: “I’m asking for Niangniang’s blessing / My younger brother
is sick / Please bless him with good health / And I’ll never forget your grace.”
奉請娘娘保佑我 / 弟郎有病不安然 / 保佑弟郎身體好 / 永世不忘你的恩.6
As a child Yanxin never went to Huashanmiao, the other temple where
women made nüshu supplications, but she learned a song about it from a pa-
ternal aunt when she was nine:
On the upper floor, I straighten the paper and inkstone,

To write a letter to the honorable goddesses,
Asking Gupo to read carefully
And listen to what I have to say.
6
This nüshu was given by Yanxin in August 2009.

My name is Yufeng, surnamed He,
The most pitiful person in the world. . . .
With tears flowing, please allow me to lament one by one,
How I lost my parents and brother.
The third year of the Republic [i.e., 1914] was a bad time.
On April 6, my elder brother died.
My father and mother were heartbroken,
As they held their cherished son, their tears flying. . . .
Nine months later,
Who would have expected that my father would also die?
We sold the house and land,
But in vain—giving up the family property could not redeem his life.
樓中移正詩書硯 / 寫信一封到貴神 / 奉請姑婆仔細看 / 一二從頭聽我音
出身姓何名玉鳳 / 世上唯我最可憐… / 眼淚四垂一二訴 / 父母兄弟沒世全
民國三年大不利 / 四月初六哥落橋 / 父母氣得肝腸斷 / 手抱嬌兒淚雙飄…
哥死剛剛九個月 / 誰知父親落陰橋 / 田地屋舍盡賣了 / 人財兩空沒功勞
Having lost her brother and father, Yufeng had only her widowed mother to
rely on:
My mother was upset all the time;
She spent the day crying for her son and mourning her husband.
Keeping to her empty room [as a widow], she had no way to escape her grief;
She had only a red flower [daughter], a useless one. . . .
My mother thought of hanging herself,
But she couldn’t bear to leave her daughter behind.
我娘時刻入心氣 / 哭夫哭兒過時辰 / 娘守空房無出氣 / 一點紅花無用人…
娘想房中自縊死 / 難捨紅花女一人
Yufeng’s mother eventually died of sadness. Now with her whole family gone,
what was the point of living?
Collapsing to my knees, I sobbed and sobbed.
I must have not cultivated enough goodness in my previous life,
And was therefore abandoned like wilted grass,
Suffering from the cold frost and white snow.
People under the blue sky have a good life;
I, covered with black clouds, have only lifelong worry.
Unable to think of a way out,
Finding no gate in any direction,
I thought about hanging myself
To join my mother in the nether world.
Who ever expected that the hanging rope would break?
The guards of the nether world did not come to take my life.
Now that King Yama has not claimed me,
I can only live on like a solitary bird,
One without parents or brothers,
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92
With no place to settle my lonely soul.
雙腳跪下嗯嗯哭 / 是女前生修不全 / 遺下一篼焦枯草 / 寒霜雪打白如霜
人的青天好過日 / 是我烏雲一世愁 / 想來想去真無路 / 四路無門走哪方
不如樓中自縊死 / 跟娘陰司共團圓 / 誰知吊頸繩又斷 / 小鬼不曾取我身
閻王不勾我的簿 / 留在世間孤鳥形 / 又沒爹娘親兄弟 / 無主安身冷孤魂
At this point, the divine spinsters were her only source of comfort:
Sitting alone, with no place to vent my frustration,
I bring my brush to a fine point and write to you, noble goddesses.
I am a daughter of the He family,
Whose parents are no longer in this world.
I hope to come to your place, a place of the good life;
I wish to keep you company day after day.
In front is a performance stage to keep out the rain and wind, and
In back is Flower Mountain [Huashan], a beautiful place. . . .
Many people come to thank you for your grace,
For bestowing blessings upon people for thousands of years.
The Gupo of Huashan have cultivated good fortune;
You’ll enjoy incense and renown from generation to generation.7
自坐樓中無出氣 / 把筆修書拜貴神 / 出身姓何焦枯女 / 父母身死沒世傳
來到貴神好過日 / 日日想陪小姐身 / 前面戲臺遮風水 / 坐落花山好顏容…
人人謝恩靈神好 / 保佑人民萬年春 / 花山姑婆福修到 / 受盡香煙永傳名
“Being completely alone,” Yanxin commented, “This girl was truly the most
miserable person in the world.” Compared to her, Yanxin was fortunate that
she had a mother to stand by her.
Yanxin’s mother, Chen Shipian 陳仕偏, was born in 1913 and married in
1930. Although she moved back to live with her parents once she became a
widow, she was economically independent and supported herself by leasing
out her dowry land, called suijia tian 隨嫁田. With two acres of dowry land,
mother and daughter received 800 kilograms of grain in rent a year—plenty
for their subsistence. But with the Communist Liberation, all private lands
became subject to government redistribution. Moreover, since a woman be-
longed to her husband’s family, not her natal one, according to Chinese patri-
archal ideology, she had to return to Heyuan in order to claim her land allot-
ment. Before making the allotment, party cadres conducted a survey asking
Chen about her social class. She had no idea what “class” meant; she only knew
that a widow next door was a “small landlord with lands for leasing” (xiao
dizhu chuzu 小地主出租). Considering herself also a widow, she told the
cadres, “Count me also as a small landlord.” A few months later, seeing how
landlords were physically tortured and morally criticized in public, she peti-
tioned to change her class status. Up to that point, they had kept their allotted
land, about one and a half acres.
7
This nüshu was given by Yanxin in August 2009.

Although Yanxin and her mother eventually regained three-fourths of their
original holdings, the leasing income had been reduced by two-thirds; they
now received only 200 kilograms of grain. Since leasing the land could no
longer sustain them, Yanxin’s mother decided to work the land on her own,
and to do this, she unbound her feet. However, since she had never done any
farming before and her husband’s brothers would not lend a hand, you can
imagine the outcome. After two or three years of trying to make a go of it, Chen
ended up remarrying, ending 14 years of widowhood.
Yanxin said she had no objection to her mother’s remarriage, but deep
inside she felt that her relationship with her mother had changed. “Once she
remarried, I didn’t want to live with her. I was 15 then; I was mature enough to
take care of myself. I decided not to eat at her place. I cooked on my own and
lived by myself.” Yanxin’s reaction made her mother sad; she cried every day.
Yanxin eventually gave in. After all, she was away at school at that time and
returned home only on weekends, so her contact with her mother was not too
frequent.
Yanxin had entered school at age 13. Since she had learned official hanzi
from her Grandpa and was older than most of the students, her teacher as-
signed her to begin at a fifth-grade level. When she was 18 and about to gradu-
ate from the junior high school, she quit; her mother had fallen ill, and Yanxin
was called home before she could take the graduation exam. Yanxin said with
a tone of regret, “If Grandpa had been alive, he would definitely have sup-
ported me through higher education. He once said to my mother, ‘Your daugh-
ter is smart enough; you should send her to school.’ But my mother had a dif-
ferent attitude, ‘If she were a boy, I would. But she is a girl who will marry out
anyway.’” Even though Yanxin did not get a chance to pursue her schooling
further, compared to her fellow villagers, men and women both, she was con-
sidered highly educated.
When Yanxin stopped her studies, the collectivization period was already
under way. That meant that no one had the right to choose what to do but rather
was assigned work. In 1958 Yanxin was sent to work in a steel factory in the
county town and three months later was transferred to a machinery plant. In that
short three-month period at the steel factory, she was assigned a room with a
coworker, and they swore sisterhood. This sworn sister had a relative from Ji-
angyong’s supervising unit, Lingling 零陵, who had been appointed a bureau
director in Jiangyong. When this bureau director, Mr. Li, met Yanxin for the first
time, he was so impressed that he considered her a prospective daughter-in-law.
To show his sincerity, he often gave Yanxin food certificates to supplement her
mother’s share. (During the collectivization period, one had to use certificates to
get food.) To reciprocate, Yanxin made shoes for Mr. Li; in those days, handmade
shoes were the most common form of gifts given by girls.
One day, Yanxin’s sworn sister showed her a photo—a picture of Mr. Li’s
son, Junior Li—and asked what she thought. Yanxin responded, “He looks
fine, but without meeting each other. . . .” Now that Yanxin had expressed
her “conditional” consent, the boy, who was studying in a high school in
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Changsha 長沙, Hunan’s provincial capital, visited Jiangyong for their first
rendezvous. When arranged marriage was still considered the norm in rural
Jiangyong, the meeting between a young man and girl was equivalent to a po-
tential engagement, and therefore a gift exchange between them was requisite.
The young man gave Yanxin a pen, and Yanxin gave him a pair of shoes. After
their meeting, they began to correspond. A couple of months later, Mr. Li took
gifts and money to visit Yanxin’s mother and formally proposed the marriage.
Yanxin’s mother agreed and accepted the bride price. A few months later, how-
ever, she unexpectedly changed her mind.
Like most villagers of her generation, Yanxin had been engaged when she
was an infant. Yanxin spotted this match, who was five years older, on a trip to
the periodic market in the early 1950s. “He was short and ugly,” Yanxin said to
her mother by way of expressing her dissatisfaction with the arranged match.
After Liberation, many traditional practices and agreements no longer held,
including marriage pacts arranged prior to 1949. Therefore, in 1956, when the
man’s family requested a wedding, Yanxin’s mother turned it down and re-
voked the engagement. After that turn of events, many people from various
villages came to propose marriage, but none of them gained Yanxin’s approval.
It was not until 1959 that the marriage proposal from Mr. Li won Yanxin’s
heart. Yanxin’s mother had gone along with Yanxin’s wishes, but in this case
she withdrew her approval.
Yanxin’s mother opposed the marriage not because of the unusual romance
between the two young people, but because of the distance it would take Yanxin
away from her. The family Li lived in Lingling, over 100 miles from Jiangyong,
somewhere across the winding mountain roads. Even in 1993, the drive from
Jiangyong to Lingling still took four hours, never mind the journey it repre-
sented in the 1950s and 1960s. Chen and her daughter had always relied on
each other emotionally. How could she marry her out to live in a distant city
where she would probably never see her again? Other villagers had also re-
minded her, “If you marry your daughter to such a faraway place, how can you
count on her when you get old?”
Understanding her mother’s emotional and practical concerns, Yanxin pro-
posed that her mother move to Lingling to live with her there, but her mother de-
clined. In part she realized how difficult it would be to live in a strange county
where a different dialect was spoken. In part she had now remarried, and accord-
ing to the sancong doctrine it would be absurd for her to follow her daughter rather
than remain at her husband’s place, even though he was her second husband.
But why would Yanxin’s mother have to count on her daughter when she
had a husband to rely upon? “My mother and her new husband had no off-
spring; the child they had lived only 18 days,” Yanxin explained. Out of concern
for her own future, the best move for Chen was to marry Yanxin to someone in
the same village, since after the 1949 Liberation, intra-village marriage was no
longer a cultural taboo. And there was a ready candidate, Degui, a nephew of
Chen’s new husband. Chen’s husband had no son, but his brother had four.
According to customary practice, one of his brother’s sons was obliged to take

care of him and in reciprocity would inherit his property; Degui had volun-
teered to take on that role. This made Degui the perfect candidate for becom-
ing their son-in-law. From Chen’s point of view, if Degui and Yanxin became a
couple, then she and her daughter could remain under the same roof, and her
elder years would be secure.
Whether this plan could be realized depended on Yanxin’s consent, and
Chen knew her daughter well enough to realize that she would never agree. So
she waited until Yanxin was sent by the Village Commune to work on con-
structing a reservoir in south Jiangyong to quickly settle the matter. Normally
the lapse between an engagement and a wedding had to be more than three
years, to signify how much the parents cherished their daughter, but Yanxin’s
mother rushed to complete it in ten days. The engagement was set on
August 16, and the marriage on August 26.
Yanxin, of course, was quite upset at her mother’s arbitrariness and begged
her to reconsider. But her mother was unmoved and only responded, “You are
my only child. Who else can I depend on? Have you forgotten that I brought
you up? Your father died when you were just one and one-half years old! Can’t
you appreciate my efforts and think from my position?”
“But I already have someone in mind. I don’t like the one you’ve chosen.”
Yanxin argued.
“What does that matter? As long as he works, you won’t starve,” her mother
closed the discussion.
Honestly speaking, except for being poor, Degui’s character and education
were superior to those of most of his fellow villagers. Among Heyuan’s nearly
300 households, no more than five persons of his generation were high school
graduates like Degui. But for Yanxin, all this was not important compared to
the fact that her heart had already gone to someone else. Besides, they had ac-
cepted the bride price from Mr. Li, so how could they break their promise?
Yanxin thought her mother was being selfish: “She cares about herself at
the expense of my [happiness].” To resist to her mother’s proposed marriage,
Yanxin went on a hunger strike for seven consecutive days, “I became skinny,
very, very skinny then.” Yanxin’s mother was afraid that Yanxin might do some-
thing silly, so she entrusted her to the care of a cousin, the daughter of Yanx-
in’s shu’niang 叔娘 (father’s brother’s wife). Indeed, Yanxin thought about sui-
cide. One day, she said to the cousin guarding her, “I haven’t eaten anything
for days. Please go pick some pears for me, and remember to wash the pears
thoroughly before you bring them to me.” While her cousin was away, Yanxin
cut her fingers and wrote a blood letter to bid farewell to her mother. And then
she dressed herself up as a bride. She combed her hair, decorated it with flow-
ers, put on her wedding gown, and was just about to throw a shawl over her
shoulders, when her shu’niang came upstairs to check on her. Seeing that
Yanxin’s hands were covered with blood, she cried out, “My goodness, your
fingers are hurt and bleeding!” She immediately grabbed the paper from the
table to press onto the wounds. “Shu’niang was an illiterate; she didn’t know
that the paper she used was my farewell blood letter. She thought it was some
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trash.” Yanxin said this with a laugh as if telling someone else’s story, but soon
she turned solemn: “If shu’niang had not come to upstairs in time, I would
have hung myself. If I hadn’t taken the time to write the blood letter, I would
definitely have been dead.” Now, forty-some years later, Yanxin no longer re-
members what she actually wrote in that letter. She only recalls some passages
like “When a human heart is broken; it’s like a tree whose bark has been
peeled away”人會悲傷，木會剝皮.
When Yanxin’s mother came home and learned what had happened, she
cooked eggs to nourish her daughter, since she had not had any food in days.
“But I didn’t eat a bite. I threw it out the window from upstairs. I had tried
to kill myself; how could I possibly eat anything and go on living? But I said
nothing. I had no words, no tears. My tears had all flowed out, there was
nothing left.”
Yanxin’s mother said to Yanxin in tears, “You want a suicide? Let me kill
myself first. You don’t want to live? Should I? Let me die in front of you. I have
only one daughter, and now my daughter has a hard heart.”
Yanxin was not moved by her mother’s words. Her suicide attempt did not
succeed, but she had a backup plan: running away to her yima’s village for
asylum. That plot also failed when she was caught just outside Heyuan village.
Unable to escape her predicament, the bridal lamentation on her wedding day
was her final outlet:
On ordinary days, I go downstairs to see my mother;

Today I come to lament.
The red flower [daughter] comes down to thank her mother,
Thank her mother who has suffered the snow and frost.
In a dragon year my mother picks an auspicious day
To bury her red flower among old graves. . . .
I lament, first of all, that my parent oppresses her daughter;
I grieve secondly that my mother fails to think it through.
She picks for the daughter a grave nowhere
But in deep mountains, without sunshine.
People have the clear sky and lead an easy life,
But I am covered in black clouds and will suffer lifelong sorrow.
平時下樓看待娘 / 今天下樓聽女愁 / 紅花下樓謝謝娘 / 謝謝毑娘受雪霜
龍年撿日日子好 / 安葬紅花老墳邊… / 一怨爺娘壓迫女 / 二怨毑娘想不開
我娘有墳不會葬 / 葬進陰山不顯陽 / 人的青天好過日 / 是我烏雲一世愁
While taking pity on her widowed mother, she still blamed her:
Today, the red flower has something to say:
The daughter is pushed to death, having no way out.
The daughter had no father in her childhood,
But only the mother, who was widowed for more than a decade.
My mother takes care of me with all her heart,
Taking care of this daughter till she’s grown.

I feel pity at what my mother has suffered;
I understand that each of her bones has been afflicted by snow and frost.
But even so, my mom shouldn’t press her daughter,
Pressing her daughter to marry a fellow villager and making her unable to hold
her head up.
A beautiful red flower is now stuck in cow dung;
She is unable to hold her head up among others. . . .
This only speaks to the fact that my mom does not wish her daughter to be happy
And has ruined her whole life.
今天紅花開言講 / 迫死女人無出路 / 女人小幼父落橋 / 我娘守寡十幾年
我娘本是真心顧 / 顧起女人成長大 / 痛惜我娘本是苦 / 節節骨頭受雪霜
不該我娘多壓女 / 許配同村不如人 / 好朵紅花插上牛屎上
站出四邊不如人… / 說明我娘不望好 / 如今害我一世人
Faced with this sharp accusation, Yanxin’s mother defended herself in her
responding lamentation:
Today is a good time, a good day.

I ask shu’niang to initiate the lamenting ritual.
Your mother is not capable of upgrading you;
She makes you inferior to your husband’s family.
Today is an auspicious date to marry you off,
To have you step higher and higher and be better than others.
今天時好日又好 / 請起叔娘來開聲 / 沒有搭附娘帶貴 / 去到夫家不如人
今日出門日子好 / 步步高陞勝過人
Continuing, she lamented how her husband was killed and how Yanxin’s
Grandpa pleaded at court for justice. Although the culprits were sent to prison,
justice was not served: With the Japanese unlocking the jail, the murderers ran
away, and the family property was not redeemed.
Then their life underwent another change with Liberation:
A few years later, it was Liberation;

The mother and the daughter returned home. . . .
There were many things needing care,
And yet there was no one to ask for help.
Some lands were allotted to me but I knew nothing about farming;
I thus considered remarrying.
I hoped that a new husband would make me honorable;
Who ever expected frost falling upon the snow [that things would become even
worse]. . . .
The remarriage did not upgrade me, and yet
I can never return to the old days.
再過幾年已解放 / 母女兩人才歸家… / 千般事情無照顧 / 沒有一個出氣人
分下田地不會種 / 心中想起行一步 / 搭附人家帶貴我 / 不算雪上更加霜…
將來改嫁又不好 / 終身一世不回頭
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“The remarriage did not upgrade me” expresses her dismay that the boy born
in her second marriage failed to survive, and Yanxin remained her only child:
I have bad eight characters and five elements,

And as a result have only one single daughter. . . .
I said thousands of words to her but she never listened
To why I wanted to match her to a fellow villager.
I called her to me and tried to persuade her,
But still she refused to listen. . . .
How could I know that my daughter would be like this?
But now, the wrong chess move has been made and I can’t undo it.
八字五行生得丑 / 單身一個是女兒… / 千般言語女不聽 / 我想許配在本村
叫來女兒慢慢勸 / 還是不聽娘的話… / 早不知道女這樣 / 錯下盤棋悔不歸
Yanxin’s mother demonstrated her regret at not getting remarried at a

younger age, for if she had done so she could have male children to depend
upon, and no need to ask her “ungrateful” daughter to marry nearby. And if
her daughter was ungrateful, what could she expect in her old age:
If my daughter is ungrateful and neglects her mother,

What can I say?
There are tombs in the mountains that no descendants tend;
There are people who suffer throughout their whole life. . . .
So let me put aside all my worries
And show happiness on my face.
This is what I am, at age 60;
What will I be like at age 70?8
女沒良心也可以 / 不管毑娘一個人 / 又有崗頭無繼墳 / 又有可憐一世人…
千般可憐我丟開 / 歡喜給來放面上 / 六十歲來六十樣 / 七十歲來像哪樣
Even though she had been publicly called out as “ungrateful,” Yanxin in fact went
on to take care of her mother up to the time she died in her eighties, in 1985.
Marital Life
Unlike the mainstream Chinese wedding ritual in which the groom visits the
bride’s family and convey his wife home in person, a Jiangyong groom stayed
in his own home waiting for the bride’s arrival. But when Yanxin arrived at her
new home, she saw no groom; this was in fact part of Yanxin’s plot. When her
runaway scheme failed, her next backup plan was to write to her future hus-
band, Degui, who was studying in a high school in Jianghua County, and tell
him that the wedding had been postponed to the next year. Degui believed it
8
Both Yanxin’s bridal lament and her mother’s responding laments were chanted by Yanxin and
recorded in December 1993.

and therefore did not show up. His brother then rushed to Jianghua to bring
him home. When they arrived, it was past midnight. Yanxin, who had gone to
bed, heard the noise outside and realized that her husband had come home.
She quickly went to the room of her husband’s brother’s wife, where she slept
with her little nieces for two nights. Her intention was more than obvious: to
avoid consummating the marriage.
Yanxin got married in 1960 during the collectivization period. Subject to
the communal dining system, the wedding banquet was hosted not by groom’s
or bride’s family but by the Commune. Yanxin said, “In a traditional wedding
banquet, there would be at least nine dishes. But at my wedding, we had only
two: beef and bean curd. That’s it.”
After the wedding, Yanxin followed the custom of buluofujia: She lived at
her own home and visited her husband only on certain festivals or during the
agricultural busy seasons when her husband’s family needed an extra pair of
hands. At that time, Degui was still studying outside Jiangyong, but whenever
he returned from school, he would come to fetch Yanxin. The first time, Yanxin
refused to go with him “out of embarrassment.” The second time, she did, but
they did not walk side by side. At home, they did not converse either: “I had no
feelings for him, what was there to converse about?” Yanxin actually had much
more interaction with her father-in-law, chatting about trivial things like “Has
the rice cooked yet?” Yanxin would stay for two or three days every time she
visited, but if Degui did not come to pick her up, she never went on her own:
“What’s the fun of staying there?”
It was no fun, indeed, because for a Jiangyong woman, marriage meant
having not only a husband but also a supervising mother-in-law. With Yanxin’s
forthright personality, it was a challenge for her to assume a subordinate role
with her mother-in-law, who happened to be a rather demanding woman. The
very first time she visited her affinal home, there was conflict. It was the New
Year festival and some girls invited Yanxin to go on an outing, but her mother-
in-law disapproved and demanded that she stay home and cook. When Yanxin
refused to comply, her mother-in-law grew angry, saying, “What’s a daughter-
in-law for, if she is not cooking?”
Yanxin retorted, “But it’s January 1, a day for fun and play.”
Degui heard the argument and said to his mother, “Just let her have one
day off.”
Degui’s taking sides with Yanxin made his mother even angrier. She
scolded, “You only think for your wife, not your mother. What’s the use of
taking a wife?” She commanded Degui to divorce Yanxin.
Degui disagreed, “I won’t. You are the one making decisions about this mar-
riage. If you want a divorce, go [request it] yourself.”
Yanxin, who had been cherished by her grandparents, could not tolerate
such humiliation. She asked Degui to come with her to the “village brigade,”
called dadui 大隊, to file for divorce. Under the system of People’s Commune,
dadui was in charge of village affairs in all capacities, from individual to house-
hold, from economic to civil affairs.
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The cadre of the brigade asked, “What’s the argument?”
Degui said, “I don’t have any argument with her.”
“Then why are you filing for divorce?”
“She wants to divorce my mother, not me,” Degui answered with a smile as
if it were an amusing matter. Meanwhile Yanxin was crying.
The cadre laughed, “Strange. I’ve never heard of anyone divorcing her
mother-in-law.”
The mother-in-law’s demand that they divorce, on one hand, hurt Yanxin’s
feelings; on the other, it was more or less what Yanxin hoped for. After the wed-
ding, Yanxin had visited Mr. Li. “We owed him an explanation. After all, my
mother had received 400 dollars in bride price from him, as compared to De-
gui’s 40 dollars.” Mr. Li was very pleased to see Yanxin; he even said to her, “He
Yanxin, let’s hold the wedding banquet this coming December.”
Yanxin did not say much; she just returned the 400 dollars to him.
“What’s happened?” Mr. Li asked with surprise.
“My mother changed her mind; she thinks you live too far away.” Yanxin did
not tell Mr. Li that she had already married.
“Too far? She can move there to live, too. It can be arranged.”
“No, we rural people wouldn’t get used to it.”
“You would. It’s only a matter of time,” Mr. Li insisted.
Yanxin then told Mr. Li: “My mother has actually . . . honestly, I didn’t know
about my mother’s plan. Anyway, she arranged for me to marry someone in
our own village. I’ve been engaged. [I have] to take care of my mother.”
“My goodness! Why did you agree to it?”
“I didn’t. It was my mother’s idea.”
Mr. Li thought Yanxin was only engaged and believed there might be hope,
so he refused to take back the bride price. At that point, Yanxin could only
confess. “Actually, I have already been married, on [August] 26.”
Finally, Mr. Li realized there was no turning back. Still he said to Yanxin, “If
it’s possible, we still wish to have you as our daughter-in-law. As to the money,
I won’t take it back. It’s your mother who broke the promise, not you.”
The trust and appreciation Yanxin got from Mr. Li touched her deeply, and
from that time the seed of divorce had been planted in her mind. She planned
carefully not to get pregnant, and the most direct means to achieve that was
avoiding sex. This was not too difficult. Degui was studying away from home;
he came home every month or two, stayed for only one night, and went back to
school. When longer vacations arrived, such as the New Year holidays, Yanxin
could always find excuses to sleep in her shu’niang’s house. “To this, Degui had
no objection at all. So you know we were not ‘married’ for almost two years.”
The situation changed after Degui graduated and failed to pass the eye
exam in his application to a maritime university. When Degui returned home,
“he played a trick on me,” Yanxin said.
It was New Year’s Eve, in the third year of their marriage, and Degui said to
Yanxin, “Let’s go out to the vegetable patch and pick some vegetables.”
“You go yourself.” Yanxin’s response was not friendly.

“Come on, let’s go and have a chat, a good talk,” Degui said.
When both of them sat down in the garden, Degui took a letter from his
pocket. Yanxin glanced at it and then quickly reached out to grab it.
Degui said to her, “There’s no hurry. After you read this letter, you’ll give up
hope for good.”
After the wedding, Yanxin had continued to correspond with her original
fiancé, the junior Li. In rural Jiangyong, cadres of the brigade usually distrib-
uted letters, and Degui’s brother happened to be one of these. He intercepted
the letter to Yanxin and gave it to his brother. Degui opened it and was sur-
prised to discover that he had a “competitor.” To win back his wife, Degui
then wrote in Yanxin’s name to Junior Li and told him that she was pregnant.
The letter Yanxin tried to grab contained congratulations to her on having
a baby.
After reading the letter, Yanxin knew that any hope of ever marrying Junior
Li was finished. In Yanxin’s perception, and she believed that Junior Li would
think the same way, a wife was an individual free to go if her husband was will-
ing to divorce her, but motherhood was a binding status, with child-rearing
responsibilities.
Yanxin turned to Degui and asked, “Why did you wait for me?” It seemed
that Degui had known about the Junior Li situation for quite some time but
had said nothing about it.
Degui answered, “We two have a predestined affinity, don’t we? I wait be-
cause I know that your passion for him will diminish sooner or later.” “Predes-
tined affinity” (yuan 緣) is a popular concept used in nüshu as well as in Ji-
angyong daily life for describing a long-term relationship such as marriage.
This private conversation happened to be overheard by a village matron,
who soon reported the “shocking news” to Yanxin’s mother-in-law, who was, of
course, furious. When Degui and Yanxin finally got home, the mother scolded
her son, “How stupid you are—not being ‘married’ for two years. No wonder
there have been no children. Do we marry in a daughter-in-law just to treasure
her? What’s a daughter-in-law for? To bear sons!” She then demanded that
Degui teach Yanxin a lesson by beating her.
Degui retorted, “Beat her? Can beating solve the problem?”
This only pushed the mother to more an outrageous action. She took a
knife and placed it on the table, yelling at Degui, “Kill me, kill me! Why don’t
you just kill me?”
Degui began to weep. But his father said to him, “You know how your
mother is. Just leave her alone.”
After the garden talk, Yanxin and Degui finally “married,” and at the end of
that year they had a baby boy. This baby, born in 1963, survived only five days.
Several months later, Yanxin received another letter from Junior Li, who told
Yanxin that he had also married but did not get along well with his wife. He
wrote to ask about the possibility that they could be united: “If you are willing
to follow me, I’ll divorce her.” But destiny is destiny. Just before receiving the
letter, Yanxin discovered that she was pregnant again, and her baby girl was
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102
born in 1964. She thus wrote to advise Junior Li, “Just let it go. We are not fated
to be together. From now on, let’s write no more.”
Between 1963 and 1965, Degui was assigned to teach in various schools out-
side Heyuan. His teaching wage was meager, “twenty-nine dollars [RMB] a
month, barely enough to buy clothes and food for his own needs, never mind
the friends he had to socialize with,” Yanxin said. In those days, even a chicken
cost over 10 dollars. “When I worked in the machinery plant, my salary was
only 18 dollars—enough for my own expenditures, but leaving nothing for my
mother.” Since his teaching wages were insufficient to support his family,
Degui wished to be transferred to a bank, but his request was denied by the
Commune. Degui decided to quit teaching, which made some party cadres
unhappy. To punish him, they filed a false accusation against him, an incident
I learned about not from Yanxin but from her daughter, Meili, in July 2010:
The accountant of the village brigade forged my father’s handwriting on some
anti-revolutionary theory or words against Chairman Mao. It was during the Cul-
tural Revolution, and the Red Guards then apprehended my father and locked
him in a warehouse. My father was too honest and rigid. He didn’t know how to
defend himself. My mother was more nimble; she asked his superiors to cross-
check the handwriting. My father was finally proved innocent and released.
After that incident, Degui never got another teaching assignment and re-
mained a farmer the rest of his life.
Degui’s honesty was evident from another incident Yanxin told me about.
“During the collectivization period, food was short. Many people stole produce
to survive. I told Degui to do so as well. But he refused, saying, ‘I would rather
starve than steal.’ I then said to him, ‘Well, if you don’t, I will.’” That night
Yanxin went to Tongshanling Farm and stole twenty carrots; she ran away
when she heard some noise. She said, “Almost everyone was stealing, stealing
grain or sweet potatoes.” She added, “We in Heyuan Village used to be very
rich, but then all the good land was redistributed to Tongshanling Farm for
planting pomelo and orange trees. What was left were the infertile plots. We
couldn’t accept it, so we went stealing.”
The year Degui was framed as a counter-revolutionary was when Yanxin
gave birth to their eldest son, and another four boys and one girl were born in
1968, 1971, 1973, 1977, and 1980, respectively. The fourth child, a boy born in
1973, died of diphtheria when he was a toddler. All these children were born
during the collectivization era when food was distributed based on one’s labor
contribution, which was translated into gongfen 工分 or “work points.” An
adult male’s labor usually counted for ten points a day, while a woman’s was six
to eight. However, with so many young children to take care of, Yanxin could
only work intermittently, and as a result they were always short on things to
eat. ”We basically ate rice porridge every day.” Around 1968 and 1969, with the
family barely able to survive, Yanxin had to participate in the labor force more
regularly. She locked her three children in the house and went out to work in
the fields. On days off, she put in extra time working for a Jiangyong mining

company. “I was very strong then; I could carry 80 kilograms of metal sands on
my shoulders and walk two hours, about one mile and all uphill, from the
mine to the factory. I usually went out about six o’clock, before morning had
broken, and got home at dark. After supper, I did needlework such as making
shoes and clothes.”
Yanxin did needlework not only to supply her own family but also to sell. “I
embroidered a pair of pillows and sold them for four dollars.” When cash was
really tight, they had to take out a loan to live on. But Degui was thin-skinned;
he was embarrassed to do this, so he told Yanxin to go borrow. When Yanxin
asked, “Why do I have to do this nasty job?” Degui replied, “You are responsi-
ble for borrowing the money, and I’ll be responsible for repaying the debt.”
Yanxin commented, “One thing good about Degui is that with or without food,
we’re always together, side by side.”
In 1974, Yanxin was faced with a different challenge. Her husband was away
from home, sent for three years to build a reservoir in south Jiangyong, and
leaving the five children for Yanxin to look after. She barely managed. “Those
kids were so small and my fourth child had just been born. I had to carry the
baby on my back while I planted rice, cut wood, and did household chores.”
Yanxin’s difficult family situation was not unusual. Another member of our
sworn sisterhood, Longyu, faced similar problems. Longyu bore three daugh-
ters and six sons. In the 1970s, her husband was also sent to work on the res-
ervoir project. In order for her to earn work points (six points per day), Longyu
made her ten-year-old daughter quit school to take care of her siblings. Even
so, two of her children died of malnutrition.
Yanxin gave birth to her last child, Meili, in 1980. This was one year before
the one-child reproductive policy began to be enforced in rural Jiangyong, ac-
cording to which a family was allowed to have a second child only if the first
was a daughter. Since Yanxin was approaching menopause, the policy did not
affect her at all. But Longyu, four years younger, had an intrauterine device
(IUD) inserted for the sake of birth control, while most young wives had tubal
ligations. In traditional Jiangyong, women mostly kept bearing children until
menopause. Longyu told me that one woman in her village had given birth to
as many as 16 children. She added, “Because of their high fertility rate—most
women have seven or eight babies over their lives—village women reached
menopause as early as their late thirties. But if they had few pregnancies, some
could still reproduce even in their fifties.” Yanxin’s mother, for instance, gave
birth to a baby boy in her mid-forties.
After Meili was born, the village economy underwent another reform. Once
the Communist Party took control of mainland China in 1949, its first big pro-
gram was land reform, implemented in the early 1950s. Next, the People’s
Communes were organized based on the idea of unifying political and eco-
nomic control, with communes as the basic administrative unit for managing
civilian social life and economic production. However, since the state monop-
oly and communal format of the economy had discouraged agricultural pro-
ductivity, with the end of Cultural Revolution in 1976 the new party leader,
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Deng Xiaoping, announced an “open-door” policy in 1978. At the village level,
this meant the liberation of agricultural production from communal planning
to household self-management; that is, the peasants gained the right to manage
production by themselves and the right to make decisions about marketing
their production. Since the lands still belonged to the nation and the peasants
worked on contract, the new policy was called the “household contract respon-
sibility system.” “During the communal period, we were poor, always on the
brink of starvation, but once the lands were distributed to us, we’ve been able
to basically make do,” Yanxin reported.
Participating in a Nüshu Scholar’s Field Research
After they gained control of their own production decisions, together with the
children growing up, the family’s economy stabilized. When I did fieldwork in
Heyuan in 1993, Yanxin no longer faced pressing financial problems, and that
was why she could squeeze in time with me almost every afternoon. If it were
just we two together, we might chat about anything, from personal life experi-
ences to stories about other villagers. Sometimes we chatted away so happily
that Yanxin forgot about cooking supper. On such occasions, her daughter
Meili would yell from outside my house, “Xin, it’s time to cook!” Meili occa-
sionally referred to her mother by name, which was quite unusual in tradi-
tional rural China where hierarchy is highly respected.
As my sworn sister, Yanxin reminded me what I needed to be careful about
when doing research in the village. Childbirth, for instance, was a delicate
issue. She often said to me, “Don’t ask other villagers too much about it.”
Indeed, since the importance of son-bearing had long been an integral part of
the villagers’ worldview, when China started to implement the one-child policy
in the early 1980s, there was regular resistance. Villagers figured out every pos-
sible excuse to have more children than was allowed. The story of Qiqi’s 七七
son is an example. Qiqi’s son married in the 1970s, but because his wife
showed no sign of getting pregnant after two years of marriage, Qiqi instructed
him to get a divorce. (Qiqi dared to do this because her daughter-in-law was an
orphan and had no male patron to speak up for her.) Qiqi’s son remarried in
the 1980s, and his new wife gave birth to a son within two years, meaning that
his wife was then subject to getting a tubal ligation in accordance with China’s
birth-control regulations. To avoid her sterilization, the couple began to play
hide-and-seek with the family planning cadres. They ran to Guangdong,
Guangxi, and Shanghai, where they had more babies. When they were away,
their rice fields at home were left to the management of their father, Qiqi’s hus-
band. But birth-control runaways still returned home to help out with farm
work during the busy seasons. Cadres from Tongshanling Farm (Heyuan’s
supervising unit), of course, knew this pattern, so they came looking for them
mostly during those times. Once when the cadres visited, the young couple
was indeed at home; it was five in the morning and they were asleep upstairs.

To alert her son, Qiqi raised her voice as she spoke to the cadres, “I don’t know
where my son is; I haven’t heard him call me ‘Mom’ for several years. . . . For-
tunately I don’t have to count on him; I live on what I produce here myself.”
That time the cadres stayed until late at night, and after they finally left, the
couple immediately fled to Shanghai.
Qiqi’s daughter also has more than one child, but that resulted from the
negligence of the family planning cadres. She was forced to have an abortion,
then got her tubes tied when she was already pregnant with her fourth baby.
Yanxin explained, “If the baby is not registered, the cadres may not know about
it, but the cost is that you won’t get the land entitled to a newborn. Of course,
you can claim the entitled land once the birth is registered, no matter how
many years later.” So it is basically a matter of balancing between childbirths
and land allotment; it all depends on how many years one can hang on with
short resources. Qiqi’s daughter-in-law, after giving birth to her fifth baby, de-
cided to accept sterilization simply to get land. With the children growing up,
the family’s livelihood would be in jeopardy if they did not have enough land.
While reminding me about the trickiness of the childbirth issue, Yanxin
concerned herself with my own reproductive situation. One day not long after
we had sworn sisterhood, we were discussing marriage rituals, when she un-
expectedly changed the subject and challenged me with a tone of dissatisfac-
tion, “You haven’t shared with me your true heart.”
“Why do you say that?” I returned, greatly surprised and puzzled.
Yanxin spoke in great seriousness, “Sworn sisters shouldn’t have secrets
between them, but you lied to me.”
“I lied? When did I lie?”
“You have children, but you concealed this truth from me.”
“I have children?” Hearing her say this, I almost burst out laughing. She
was checking on some gossip she had heard, which I could understand. As I
was the first outsider living in the village for an extended period, it was not
surprising that there would be discussion and speculation about me, such as
why I got married while still in school. I wondered who the gossiper might be,
so I asked, “Who told you this?”
“Nobody told me; I just know.”
“You know?” My gossip theory did not stand up this time. “But how do you
know?”
“I know because you have been married for five years, so how come you
have no children? You must have. You just haven’t let me know.” Yanxin simply
could not imagine why anyone would give up or even postpone her “right” to
reproduction.
That day it took a lot of effort to finally persuade her that I really had no
children. And from that point forward, my plans about starting a family
became her constant concern. Whenever I visited Jiangyong, she brought up
the issue. In one interview conducted in 2004, when I asked her to sing a
bridal lament for me to video record, she answered: “All right then, but you
have to promise me that you’ll have a baby next year.” Before she began the
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lament, she included the following prologue, “This song represents my best
wishes for your having a baby.” At the time I did not take her seriously, because
Yanxin is fond of joking around. But a couple years later I realized that what
she had said that day in fact revealed her sincere concern for her beloved sworn
sister’s happiness. As her youngest daughter, Meili, told me in 2010: “My
mother was very worried about you. She is worried that you will be abandoned
by yizhang 姨丈 [mother’s sister’s husband, i.e., my husband] because you
haven’t had any children.”
With a sworn sisterhood tie, Yanxin is certainly concerned with my personal
life. When it comes to my nüshu research, Yanxin is also an inspiration. During
my stay in Heyuan village, she not only helped transcribe the nüshu/nüge per-
formed, she also took part in discussions, which gave me more opportunities
to understand her. The song “Zhuzhu” and the discussion around it offers a
good example (see also Liu 2007).
Zhuzhu was born in the first decade of the twentieth century. As the bride
in an arranged marriage, she did not know that her husband was a disabled
until her wedding night. Surprised and upset, she requested a divorce. Her
own parents agreed, but her in-laws refused. The bride’s family then brought
the issue to court:
Holding a pearly brush, I inscribe the paper,

Writing about Shutang of the family Huang.
Shutang had a single child,
Named Zhuzhu, a daughter.
Zhuzhu was married into the Wang household,
Married to Dalang of the family Wang.
Dalang does not look well;
He is deformed, and Zhuzhu finds this unacceptable.
She thinks to herself,
Thinks about being like the White Snake Spirit.
The man from Tangxia is so adorable,
They have a relationship before she marries.
珠筆落言紙上記 / 記□黃家黃書堂 / 書堂所生是一女 / 名叫珠珠是女娘
珠珠出嫁王府上 / 嫁到王家王大郎 / 大郎本是不體面 / 四體不全不甘心
珠珠心頭自思想 / 珠珠思想白蛇精 / 棠下兒郎真是愛 / 先通後娶難脫情
Tang Baozhen sang this nüshu in front of several women, including Yanxin
and Xiangfu. Upon hearing the line, “They have a relationship before she mar-
ries,” Xiangfu burst into laughter, showing her disbelief, as if this were a made-
up story. To assert her credibility, Tang immediately responded, “It’s true!
Really!” And she continued:
Three hundred haozi [a denomination of currency] can make strange things

happen:
With three thousand haozi, [Zhuzhu] goes to the court.
Kneeling down in the court,

Zhuzhu wants to win this case, from the bottom of her heart.
[She wins and remarries.]
Zhuzhu wears red, dresses in red,
Sent by Shutang to the family Yi.
They meet at the crossroads,
They meet at the three-story firecracker tower.
[Arriving at Yi’s household,]
There Yunsa calls her “Mom”;
The child borne by Yi’s former wife will now be Zhuzhu’s.
Zhuzhu raises her head and looks;
And there she sees a death bed.
三百毫子出奇事 / 三千毫子在衙門 / 雙腳跪下法堂上 / 珠珠一心要講贏
捆起頭花尾又紅 / 書堂送到義家門 / 十字路上去會面 / 三層砲樓去會面
雲紗喚個娘 / 衣襟抱過是爺娘 / 珠珠仰起頭來看 / 看見一張死人床
As soon as Tang finished singing, almost everyone laughed. Some could not
even wait to make comments, which very often reflected their personal con-
texts. Xiangfu was the first to challenge Tang’s performance of this nüshu. She
simply could not believe the story was factual. This is partly because nüshu and
nüge rarely contain accounts of such a notorious liaison, and partly because
Xiangfu had been complacent about her own marriage and was known for her
rigid cultivation of womanly virtues. Born in the late 1920s, she found it diffi-
cult to understand why women would choose divorce or adulterous affairs as
alternatives to a miserable marriage.
Instead of disbelief, Tang suspended any criticism, a position that may have
come from her experience in three marriages and her understanding of how
important a husband was in a woman’s life. Her neutral stand was also related
to her perception of nüshu or nüge. For her, the meaning of these texts was lo-
cated not so much in the words but in their sung performance—the vocal qual-
ity, tuneful expression, aesthetic experience, and sentimental resonance, qual-
ities beyond logos and moral appeal. She loved to sing, and she would sing
whatever she learned. She even sang some erotic songs that the other women
were so embarrassed to hear that they collectively walked out in protest. But for
Tang, the singing itself was what mattered, regardless of the content.
Observing the lively discussion among audience members, I turned to
Yanxin and asked what she thought. She threw me a quick comment, “This is
the song of a whore,” which surprised me. Considering her modern education
and her own romantic experience, I had supposed she would be sympathetic
to Zhuzhu’s bravery in challenging tradition. But on second thought, I under-
stood why she responded that way. Yanxin’s interactions with her mother-in-
law and her intent to divorce and avoid getting pregnant all show that she cer-
tainly has revolutionary spirit, but she is also traditional in that she eventually
acquiesced to her mother’s determination that she marry someone she dis-
liked. As her sworn sister, I would describe her as having a very soft heart and
an extremely stubborn mind. Even after 40 years of marriage, and even though
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her husband Degui actually was educated, diligent, mild-tempered, and caring,
Yanxin still found it difficult to open herself to him; at least, she never allowed
herself to do so.
She seems to have lived in two worlds: a realistic one where she lives with
her husband, and a sentimental one filled with her memory of her first love.
The boundaries between these two worlds had to be clearly drawn and never
confused. This distinction also guaranteed that her emotionally charged inner
world would remain intact and her daily life functional; in other words, para-
doxically these two conflicting worlds depended on each other to exist. There-
fore, even though she was dissatisfied with her reality, she never did anything
contrary to the moral standards set in that world. She would never be unfilial
to her mother or dishonor herself by unchaste behavior. She believed that
trying to bring the two worlds together would only result in disaster, and that
was exactly what Zhuzhu did—and so Yanxin called her a whore.
When Tang performed “Zhuzhu” in 1993, Yanxin simply discussed the
lyrics with the other women present. I had no idea that she could also sing it
until 2001, when, instead of labeling Zhuzhu “a whore,” she provided a differ-
ent commentary. Zhuzhu had become “a beautiful flower that is not suitably
planted.” Her changed perception was very much associated with her hus-
band’s falling ill in I995 and passing away in 1997. With Degui’s death, keep-
ing the distinction between her two worlds was no longer necessary. Since
that time, she has only rarely talked about Junior Li. As she puts it, “The past
has passed. Why mention it?” Once we disassociate Yanxin’s personal context
from the text of “Zhuzhu,” what is left is only the general social cause of Zhu-
zhu’s misfortune: The careless choice of a marriage partner can only ruin a
woman’s life.
Degui may have played a minor role in Yanxin’s emotional life, but he was
the one who led Yanxin toward nüshu academic circles. It was thanks to De-
gui’s encouragement that Yanxin became my best companion in the field, and
after I left Heyuan, Degui’s disclosure of Yanxin’s nüshu proficiency pushed
her to admit to it. Later when Degui was hospitalized, the mental and physical
anguish Yanxin faced drove her to use nüshu to find some release. Thirty years
after she put her pen away at her grandmother’s death, Yanxin became the
most prolific of the contemporary nüshu writers.
Disclosure
I knew that Yanxin had learned nüshu from her Grandma, but she also told me
she had forgotten it. When she was suddenly declared a surviving nüshu liter-
ate along with Huanyi in 1994, I could only wonder why she had lied to me.
For a long time I could not get up the courage to ask her; I was afraid her
answer would show what a lousy anthropologist I am. But 15 years later, when
I followed her to Beijing to visit her son, who had sustained a back injury in
2009, we finally chatted about it as we sat in a Starbucks having breakfast.

In a playful and somewhat naughty tone, she said to me, “If I had told you, you
would have chased me wherever I went, wouldn’t you?” And then she paused
before continuing with a serious expression, “Besides, when you first visited
us, I was enjoying a pretty good life. I did not want to recall my sad past.” She
added for emphasis, “Nüshu is saddening, you know? Very saddening!”
So what had happened that drove her to write nüshu after I left?
Nüshu as a written script was used not only for sisterhood communication
or discharging personal sentiment; it was also an aesthetic form, a graphic el-
ement that could be integrated into women’s handicrafts, such as huadai, the
woven belts often used to secure the swaddling cloth around babies. These
nüshu-decorated belts have also become the most popular souvenir among
nüshu scholars. Whenever Zhao Liming visited the only nüshu survivor known
at the time, Huanyi of Tongshanling Farm, she would go to nearby Heyuan to
see Sasa and request nüshu belts from her. Sasa used to be an expert at this sort
of female handicraft, but she was too old for such work now, since weaving
belts required a strong waist to pull the thread tightly. So she commissioned
the job to her neighbor Longyu. Longyu was illiterate in nüshu, so Sasa’s hus-
band would copy the graphs from a nüshu publication he possessed for Longyu
to weave. When Zhao learned of this, she approached Longyu directly, and this
made Sasa’s husband unhappy; he refused to write any more for Longyu.
Yanxin and Longyu had no particular interactions before we three swore
sisterhood, but afterward, especially once I left Jiangyong, Longyu went to
Yanxin’s house whenever she was free. One day while they sat chatting, she
mentioned her worry: “He won’t copy out any nüshu for me, how can I weave
belts now?”
On hearing this, Yanxin considered. Longyu had a large family, and if she
could sell a few nüshu belts, it would help the family’s livelihood. “Besides,”
Yanxin explained to me, “we three are now an unified group, aren’t we? So I
said to Longyu, ‘Never mind if he won’t; I will.’”
Longyu was stunned, “You can?”
“I’ll try.”
Yanxin then wrote two short nüge folk songs for Longyu, the first time she
had written nüshu since her grandmother passed away. And Longyu, with
Yanxin’s help, successfully wove the belts, which she sold to Zhao Liming, who
came with the Japanese linguist Orie Endō. On receiving the belts, Zhao im-
mediately noticed a difference. She asked Longyu: “The nüshu you wove in the
past were fat and short, but this time they look slender. Who wrote these for
you?”
“It’s Yanxin,” Longyu replied. And then, unable to contain her pride, Longyu
led the way to Yanxin’s house at a trot, with the guests chasing behind.
Yanxin recalled that day: “I heard hurried footsteps sounding in the alley; I
said to myself, ‘How strange! Has something happened to Degui?’” And in no
time, the visitors arrived. Once she learned the visitors’ intentions, Yanxin
denied everything: “No, I can’t write. I write no nüshu at all.” Since Yanxin in-
sisted, the scholars could do nothing.
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110
Yanxin had revealed her nüshu proficiency to her sworn sister, Longyu, for
the sake of helping her weave belts to sell, but how about the other sister who
was writing her nüshu dissertation in the United States? At the end of that year
(1994), she wrote two nüshu handkerchiefs to send to me. One of them reads:
With a pearly brush, I write on this handkerchief,
Which will be mailed abroad to reach your hand,
To inquire after my younger sister, wishing everything you do goes well,
Advancing higher and higher, better than anyone else.
My younger sister is intelligent and travels widely,
Additionally she’ll gain glory with a fame that lasts forever.
珠筆落文帕頭上 / 寄到國外相會身 / 看察妹娘千般行 / 步步高陞勝過人
妹娘聰明走四方 / 錦上添花永傳名
She went on to write about our sisterhood, just as we have seen in many other
nüshu letters:
Now we are thousands of miles apart;
We cannot see each other. . . .
The friendship and favor I received from you will never be lost;
Never forgotten.
已經隔離千萬里 / 大儕不能再相逢…/ 得了仁情心記得 / 永遠不忘你的情
In conclusion she presents a passage of self-lamentation, which is also typical

in a sisterhood letter:
I was born into bitterness:
I am not as sensible as my sister.
Once I fell into this world, I gave three cries for my bad fortune,
For being an ill-fated woman.
With no elder brother nor a younger one,
I’m the most miserable of people in this world.
I have no shade tree to cool me,
Nor do I have mountains to back me up.
I have thousands of worries, but I have no way out,
Nor do I have someone who can relieve my anxiety.
People under blue skies have a good life;
I, under black clouds, have lifelong worry.
我是出身寒苦女 / 沒有妹娘理由深 / 落地三聲哭得丑 / 投個命薄女一人
上無兄來下無弟 / 世上唯我最可憐 / 上又沒有乘涼樹 / 下又沒有靠背山
千般可憐無解焦 / 沒有一個出氣人 / 人的青天日好過 / 是我烏雲一世愁
This was the first time I discovered Yanxin’s talent at composition. I encour-
aged her to keep writing. I did not know then that the Japanese linguist Orie
Endō had already done the same.
Endō first visited Jiangyong in 1993. In August 1994, she embarked on her
second visit with Zhao Liming, and on that visit she met Yanxin. Endō sus-
pected that Yanxin might turn out to be an emerging nüshu writer, despite her

denials. In early 1996, she visited Yanxin again. At that time, Yanxin’s husband
Degui had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and was hospitalized. Endō
brought gifts and money when she went to see Degui. “In the hospital,” Yanxin
recalled, “Endō asked Degui, ‘Does your loved one [airen 愛人] know nüshu?’”
Degui felt honored and respected at being visited by a foreign professor, so he
spoke the truth, “Yes, she can. I’ve seen her write.” Yanxin was quite angry at
Degui’s response, but what had been said could not be unsaid. As Yanxin put
it, “Now that he had told her, I could only admit it.”
To better evaluate Yanxin’s nüshu literacy, that night, Endō made a copy of
several pages of the Chinese hanzi transcription of the nüshu ballad The Third
Daughter. The piece, written by Gao Yinxian, had been included in a published
nüshu anthology (e.g., Gong 1991:66–101; Xie ed. 1991:1667–1692; Zhao
1992:691–718). She asked Yanxin to write the nüshu, and when she checked
Yanxin’s text against Gao’s, she was totally convinced that Yanxin was indeed
nüshu literate.9 In those days, Huanyi was already in her eighties, and so
Yanxin, who was thirty years younger, seemed to have more potential. Endō
encouraged her to write as many nüshu as she could.
Yanxin did have a lot to write and lament about. “Oh, I was so miserable
when Degui was hospitalized. The doctor blamed me for not taking good care
of him—Degui’s hands moved a lot and caused the IV needle to get dislodged.”
Degui complained as well about the water Yanxin prepared for him being
either too hot or too cold. Besides, Yanxin recalled, “The hospital was full of
patients and many died; I was scared.” At night, there was no place to sleep, so
she could only sit and doze. In the still of night, her sorrow overcame her. “I
took out paper and started writing,” composing her first biographical nüshu
lament. “I wrote and wrote, and the tears flowed unstoppably—tears that could
never be wiped clear. I wrote the whole night, without any sleep.” Another
middle-aged woman taking care of the patient in the next bed wept with her.
Yanxin said, “That’s how we Jiangyong women were. Whenever you saw some-
one weep, you wept with her.”
“You know, nüshu is very difficult to write: Your tears just flow whenever
you write. I had no intention to write, for it means shedding tears. You say la-
menting is to discharge miseries. But you know, the more you lament, the
more sorrowful you become. You see, [that’s why] when you were here [in
1993], you didn’t discover that I could write nüshu, did you?”
“If you didn’t want to let me know, how could I know about it?” I pretended
to pout.
Yanxin answered with a smile, “But oh, if you knew, wouldn’t you have
hounded me?”
“But you came to my place almost every day!” I said.
“Yes, but only for half the day.”
9
According to Endō (2002), despite Yanxin’s persistent denial, she did write some nüshu graphs
during their first meeting in 1994 when she was asked about her grandmother. Endō revisited
Yanxin in 1996 and asked her to transcribe The Third Daughter mainly to see the degree to which
Yanxin had resumed her nüshu literacy.
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112
“So you were afraid that I’d have tied you up all day long?”
“Wouldn’t you have?” Yanxin laughed.
“You treat me like this and call it ‘sisterhood’!”
Yanxin immediately comforted me as if coaxing a little sister to calm
down, with an apologetic gesture. “But see, didn’t I send you the handker-
chiefs after you left?” Here she referred to the nüshu sisterhood letters sent
to me in 1994.
“You know,” Yanxin continued, “even if I wanted to help, I had to get per-
mission from Degui. Degui truly looked up to you, truly thought highly of
you.” Yanxin then told me that two years before I settled in Heyuan, Zhao
Liming had heard about some Tianguangdong villager’s niece named Yanxin
who could read nüshu. Zhao came to Heyuan twice to visit Yanxin, but “Degui
disapproved.” The third time Zhao visited was when Longyu revealed Yanx-
in’s nüshu literacy. “But it was Endō who discovered me,” said Yanxin; or
more precisely, it was Endō who propelled Yanxin to move along her nüshu
trajectory. In 1997, Endō even invited Yanxin to Japan to introduce this
female-specific writing system to her fellow countrymen. This would be the
first time a nüshu writer presented the female script in person on an interna-
tional stage.
Having written her first nüshu biography in the hospital in early 1996,
Yanxin wrote out another version for me and mailed it to the United States, but
I never received it. So before she embarked for Japan, she sent me another
package that contained two nüshu fans and two nüshu-embroidered handker-
chiefs. On the pink silk handkerchief, the text reads:
With my pen, I write on this handkerchief

A note sent to your honorable family, to pay a visit to your dragon gate,
To wish my younger sister all the best,
May she enjoy good fortune, nobility, and high position.
My younger sister was born a gentry lady;
She travels many places and her name will be transmitted to posterity.
She came to Jiangyong, to Heyuan Village,
Walking the rough and uneven cobbled roads.
She lived in Heyuan for several months,
During which we sat and sang together.
Now my younger sister has left me;
I feel sad and dreary.
Sitting alone in my room and thinking the whole night,
Wondering when I can see my younger sister again.
At night I dream of us sitting side by side,
As if we had been born of the same father and mother.
親筆落文帕頭上 / 寄到貴家拜龍門 / 恭賀妹娘千般好 / 榮華富貴得做官
妹娘出生君子女 / 走過四方永傳名 / 來到江永河淵村 / 腳踩石階路不平
住在河淵幾個月 / 同坐合唱相會身 / 只因妹娘離開我 / 心中愁眉好淒涼
自坐房中透夜想 / 心想妹娘再相會 / 夜間夢見同陪坐 / 確像同父共母生

On one of the fans, Yanxin wrote out a self-lament:
With a pearly pen, I write,
Writing on this fan to transmit a story to posterity.
People should take pity on the main character,
Take pity on the woman who did not cultivate herself well enough.
She had no father since childhood, and
Her mother became a widow. . . .
The miseries that mother and daughter suffered can never be fully told,
So let’s turn to my current woes.
珠筆落文詩一首 / 寫上扇中永傳名 / 扇中之人齊疼惜 / 疼惜女身修不全
從小沒父在世上 / 房中母親寡婦當…/ 母女可憐講不盡 / 再講如今一段情
“Current woes” refers to her marriage with Degui and Degui’s falling ill:
My mother married me to a man of my own village,

Whose family was very poor.
Since my husband was not capable or ambitious,
My whole life would be unhappy.
I have no worries in the matter of children—
Blessed with four sons and two daughters.
But last year misfortune befell the family:
My husband got sick, making me very worried.
Since he’s been hospitalized,
I’ve suffered all sorts of hardships like a plum bitten by the snow.
Sitting alone with my husband in the hospital,
My tears flow the whole day. . . .
The weather grew so cold and I had no fire to keep me warm,
On top of that my own health was not so good.
My husband slept in bed while I sat on a stool;
I suffered along with my husband, suffering hardship.
Seeing his condition, I grew anxious:
His face looked yellow, his feet were swollen.
It cost the family a fortune and still he did not recover;
The family’s situation is like a boat with no water to move on.
毑娘交全同一村 / 家中貧苦不如人 / 想起配夫無能志 / 一世為人不得歡
雖然兒女沒顧慮 / 四個嬌兒兩朵花 / 去年家中大不利 / 夫有難星心煩愁
自從丈夫去住院 / 受盡千般雪上梅 / 自坐醫院陪丈夫 / 十二時辰眼淚飄…
天氣寒冷沒火烤 / 連我身體不剛強 / 夫睡床上我坐凳 / 跟夫受罪苦難當
看望丈夫我受急 / 腳又腫來臉皮黃 / 整得家窮病不好 / 家中無水不行船
But what really worried Yanxin was Degui’s unstable psychological state.
He even told Yanxin at one point to get remarried:
Because of poverty, we had many quarrels:

My husband spoke ill of me,
Saying I have a malicious heart and will die in poverty,
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114
Saying that I save money only for my children.
But the children are also yours,
Not someone else’s.
My husband said such merciless words—
It was as if he put a knife to my bones and cut out my guts. . . .
If I had in mind to put you aside,
Why should I borrow the money to help you recover?
There’s nothing I can do if you wrong me,
For I have no one to prove my innocence.
My husband’s words weigh like thousands of pounds. . . .
He told me to remarry.
A woman’s heart is nothing but true;
But men’s hearts and guts are made of steel.
A good horse cannot wear a pair of saddles;
A good woman will not marry two husbands. . . .
I would rather die of hunger here in this house,
And it is utterly impossible to marry again at sixty.
因為家窮言語多 / 丈夫說出我醜名 / 講我心毒困死苦 / 管起錢米為女兒
兒女你的親骨肉 / 不是前娘後母生 / 丈夫說出無情話 / 骨上添刀割我腸…
我有此心偏別你 / 何苦借錢整你身 / 由你冤枉沒辦法 / 無人申冤來證明
夫君說話千斤重…/ 叫我將身嫁別人 / 女人並得真心女 / 男人盡是鐵心腸
好馬不配雙鞍子 / 好女不配二夫君…/ 情願餓死家中坐 / 六十改嫁萬不能
The above nüshu came with a note:

Fei-wen, we haven’t seen you for such a long time. Do you talk and laugh as
before? Do you remember that we three sisters used to sit together and sing; and
you learned our Jiangyong native dialect. . . . I am older now and not spirited as
before. Degui was diagnosed with stomach cancer in December of the year
before last year and had surgery in February last year. After he got out of the hos-
pital, he didn’t pay attention to his own health and got hepatitis. We spent a lot of
money, but he did not recover. Moreover, he seemed to have a nervous break-
down; he was yelling and scolding all the time. Now the family is stuck like a
grounded boat. . . .
A couple years earlier, when you came to our Heyuan Village, my life was
okay. Everyday afternoon, I could accompany you, chatting and singing; I was
happy. I had never imagined that everything would become the mess it is now.
Alas, let me just stop here.10
After Degui got sick, his strange behavior caused much trouble in Yanxin’s
daily life. Since Degui had contracted a contagious form of hepatitis, the doctor
suggested that he should eat apart from the other family members, and this
hurt Degui’s feelings. He felt that his wife and children were abandoning him,
so he spoiled and destroyed many things. He threw pictures of Yanxin I had
10
The four nüshu pieces and letter were mailed to me by Yanxin in October 1997.

taken during my fieldwork into the ditch and yelled, “Let me drown you! Let
me drown you!” He also burned the nüshu Yanxin had written for Endō. Yanxin
said, “The nüshu handkerchiefs I wrote for you were almost destroyed. Fortu-
nately, I had put them aside and he didn’t notice them.” She added, “During
that period, I was very, very sad, so I wrote it all down [in nüshu].”
Although Degui said cruel things to her, Yanxin worried about him
throughout her visit to Japan in November 1997. “I dreamed the same
dream every night, that my husband was dying. So on a visit to a temple, I
solicited divine advice, and I got an oracle. It was a carp jumping onto the
land—if a carp has no water, it is definitely dying. So I begged to go home
the next day.” Indeed, the very night Yanxin arrived home, Degui died in his
sleep.
With Degui falling ill, the family’s financial situation became desperate. So
she could take better care of her husband, Yanxin called home two of her sons
who were working in Guangdong. About the same time, her fifth and youngest
son, Shanfeng, passed the college entrance exam—the first prospective college
student of the entire lineage. But was this good news or bad news? He brought
honor to his ancestors, but where would they get the money for his tuition? To
pay for Degui’s medical care, Yanxin had taken out an RMB 8,000 loan from
the bank and also used part of her eldest daughter’s bride price, about 5,000
dollars. Yanxin planned to persuade Shanfeng to give up his pursuit of college.
But Shanfeng cried, begging, “Mom, please borrow the money for me. I want
to go to the college.” She told me, “We mother and son wept together all night
long.” The next day, Yanxin looked to other relatives for help. While she strug-
gled to collect the tuition for her son, one of her lineage members out of jeal-
ousy taunted, “Oh, how caring! He cries and you get the money for him.” Even-
tually Yanxin got another 5,000 dollars loan from the Credit Cooperative Bank
of Tianguangdong with her uncle as guarantor, together with support from her
eldest daughter, who sold pigs to help Shanfeng realize his dream. Yanxin’s
marital life might have been a struggle, but her affectionate ties with her chil-
dren are always a comfort to her.
The Last Traditionally Trained Nüshu Writer
With Degui’s death, the marriage pressed on her by her mother had ended.
Yanxin’s feelings about this arranged marriage were complex: “If I myself
could have decided, I would definitely not have married Degui.” But regarding
the established fact, she admitted, “I have no regrets, either. After all, it was our
destiny to be together.” Thanks to Degui, nüshu scholars such as Endō and
myself were introduced into Yanxin’s life; he was also a source of the inspira-
tion that moved Yanxin back into nüshu writing, thus leading her to the con-
temporary nüshu world. Yanxin is no longer simply a village woman but the
last traditionally trained nüshu writer, who plays an active role in advancing
nüshu scholarship.
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116
In 1998 Yanxin was invited by Endō to stay in Beijing for two weeks. During
this period, Yanxin sang nüshu and nüge, which the Japanese-trained Chinese
scholar Liu Ying 劉穎 and Chinese linguist Huang Xuezhen 黃雪貞 recorded
and used to tease out nüshu’s linguistic characteristics. From Yanxin’s nüshu
practice, they found that knowledge of about 400 graphs will suffice for basic
expression (Endō 2002).
In 2003 Zhao Liming of Qinghua University also invited Yanxin to Beijing
for five months to edit and revise Zhao’s Anthology of Chinese Nüshu, which
had been co-compiled with Chen Qiguang and Zhou Shuoyi and published in
1992. Yanxin’s main tasks were to transliterate the existing nüshu works into
Chinese hanzi and to transcribe oral nüge, such as bridal laments, into nüshu,
both jobs previously undertaken by Zhou Shuoyi for the 1992 edition. How-
ever, in the past few years, it was discovered that Zhou Shuoyi had fabricated
some nüshu graphs, which means that the 1992 anthology likely includes
modern-day, male-invented graphs. Zhao therefore asked Yanxin to also “fix
Zhou Shuoyi’s faked nüshu.” Yanxin was fine with transcribing and transliter-
ating, but she refused to identify Zhou’s fabrications, and Zhao Liming got
upset. “I told her I wouldn’t do it, because Zhou Shuoyi and I are both Ji-
angyong people. If he learns what I did, won’t he be angry with me? How do I
face him afterwards?” Probably because of this disagreement, Zhao Liming
did not say much about Yanxin’s contribution to her new five-volume nüshu
collection (2005). But Yanxin did not care: “I don’t like that set of nüshu anyway;
there are many errors.”
“Errors? If you knew there were errors, why didn’t you fix them?” I asked.
“I don’t know why. At Qinghua University, I didn’t have any time to rest; I
had to work even at night. It was just me, and yet I had so many students to
respond to. I read out [the Chinese transcription] and her students typed. This
student asked one question, and that one asked another—it was all mixed up.
So sometimes I just answered whatever without thinking it through.”
I myself was quite familiar with Yanxin’s “free” style. For example, if you ask
when she began learning nüshu, you may get three different answers: at age
four or five when she started learning nüge, at age eight when she used a stick
to draw the nüshu graphs on the ground, and at ten years old when she learned
about sanzhaoshu. Just which answer one got depended on her mood. During
her 2011 visit to Japan, she was interviewed by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun,
and the answer she gave them was “ten.”
“Why not eight years old?” I asked afterwards.
“If I said ‘starting from eight,’ she might ask what I did from eight to
fifteen—it becomes a long story. I have to make it simpler. Honestly speaking,
the simpler the better,” she told me with a big smile.
In addition to these travels, Yanxin also gave interviews at home to media
people, scholars, and graduate students. In the early 2000s, when the eldest
nüshu woman Huanyi was still alive, visitors would see Huanyi first and then
Yanxin. Since they lived only a few miles apart, sometimes Yanxin would be
brought to Huanyi’s place for a collaborative interview.

Yanxin’s connection to Huanyi was quite interesting. Before they estab-
lished their nüshu affiliation, Yanxin had almost become Huanyi’s daughter-in-
law. When Yanxin cancelled the marriage engagement arranged for her as a
child, one of the many candidates who proposed to marry Yanxin in the late
1950s was Huanyi’s second son. Yanxin’s mother seriously considered him as
a prospective son-in-law thanks to the short distance between their two places,
but Yanxin’s shu’niang objected. She said to Yanxin’s mother, “He has pneumo-
nia, and you still consider marrying your daughter to him? You won’t get a
good result if you do. She is your only child.”
Perhaps because of this history, Huanyi felt close to Yanxin. After realizing
that Yanxin was also nüshu literate, whenever there was an interview, she
always asked Yanxin to attend. Yanxin also came to see Huanyi on her own
from time to time. Four days before Huanyi died, Yanxin happened to pay a
visit. “She looked spirited. She even gave me some preserved eggs, but she said
something weird. An American girl who just arrived to do nüshu research had
given Huanyi a red sweater. That day, Huanyi insisted on wearing it. I told her,
‘It’s hot [early September], and you still want to put it on?’ Huanyi replied, ‘I
will, even if it is hot.’ When she said that, I knew it was about time! So I told
Huanyi’s eldest son about it, and he told me that her feet had been swelling.”
Yanxin sighed, “Her [eldest] son and daughter-in-law treated her badly.”
“How so?” I asked.
“She got too old. I once brought a pack of sugar on a visit to see her. She was
very pleased and invited me to sing with her. We sang the song about Yuxiu
[i.e., “Yuxiu’s Letter Home”]. We had just started, when her son reproached us,
‘Singing, singing, your singing has cursed the whole family to death.’ I said to
him, ‘How can singing cause death? If she loves to sing, just let her.’ The son
answered, ‘Her younger son died before she did.’ Then he even said something
cruel: ‘She is not much different from an animal. If she were a pig or cow, I
would kill and eat her.’” Yanxin explained, “He thought Huanyi had lived too
long.”
“What did he mean by ‘singing has cursed the whole family?’”
“His father died before Huanyi did, so did the man of Xinzhai 新宅 [her first
husband]. Then her second son died as well.” All this cast a shadow on her
eldest son, who was afraid he might become the next victim. This son and his
wife treated Huanyi well only in front of guests. Yanxin said, “Huanyi occa-
sionally lamented to me: ‘Dying is not good, nor is living.’” She added, “Most
of the time she lay in bed, but whenever there was a visitor, she looked
energetic.”
As the eldest nüshu survivor, Huanyi won respect from the world but not
from her family. With her status as the last traditionally trained nüshu writer,
Yanxin also faces challenges in her own village.
When scholars or newsmen came to Heyuan to videotape, they usually
asked Yanxin to find a group of women to sing, just as Yuping had done for me
(see the chapter opening). “Nüge and nüshu are very pleasant to hear when
sung as a group,” many women told me. Although the interviewers may not
| Gendered Words
118
pay an honorarium, the singers expected to receive something. If they got
nothing, they held Yanxin accountable, believing that she must have taken all
the money without sharing. In other cases, interviewers might miscalculate
how much they should pay and Yanxin had to make up the difference. “There
was one time when we sang in the village pavilion for a TV station. They gave
ten dollars for each of us, but they missed one person, and when she came to
me to ask for her money, I could only give her my share.”
The Heyuan party cadres were unhappy about gaining nothing from Yanx-
in’s nüshu status. They complained that she received guests on her own—not
through the village brigade, the village’s administrative center—and therefore
monopolized all the benefits. In 2008 a team from Japan arrived to make a
documentary about Jiangyong’s bridal lamentation. Since Yanxin was consid-
ered the main character of the story, they wished to shoot the film in Heyuan
and stayed there several days. The Heyuan party cadres, however, took an un-
cooperative attitude, saying to Yanxin: “This is your personal business. We
dare not play a part in it.” Finding no place to stay locally, the Japanese team
chose another village. Yanxin said, “Whenever a nüshu interviewer came
through, the villagers would say to me, ‘You’re getting a load of water [yidan
shui 一擔水] today’. They thought I was getting rich because of the many inter-
views, but they don’t understand that giving an interview does not necessarily
come with a paycheck.”
The paycheck matter even created a conflict between Yanxin and our sworn
sister Longyu’s husband Jiliang 繼亮. It happened when the Chinese Canadian
Yang Yueqing came to shoot her nüshu documentary. Some villagers said to Jil-
iang, “Your wife has followed Yanxin all over. But Yanxin got a lot of money and
your wife got nothing.” Jiliang believed it. He therefore would not allow Longyu
to join the singing the next day11; he even burned the tools Longyu used to make
the nüshu belts. But Jiliang is a decent man. When he realized he had wrongly
blamed Yanxin, he apologized. Yanxin expressed her gratitude: “Now Jiliang
treats me very well. He often says to me, ‘Come get some vegetables from my
house.’” In 2005, when I resided in Heyuan for two months, I also noticed that
Longyu often brought carrots, greens, and beans she had picked from her
garden to Yanxin. and once Jiliang came over to fix the doors at Yanxin’s house.
During interviews, visitors always ask Yanxin to write some nüshu. In such
cases, she usually writes out a shorter nüge such as “Ascending to her Seat,” a
song performed in weddings as described in chapter 2. Sometimes she com-
posed something impromptu. When I led a crew to shoot a nüshu documen-
tary in 2010, she improvised a piece in honor of our crew:
Thank you teachers for your toil and efforts, and for
Coming to Jiangyong to see me.
In my seventies I’m on television!
Part of this scene was shown in Yang Yueqing’s (1999) documentary Nü Shu: A Hidden Language of
11
Women in China.

Thinking of nüshu, I feel sad.
I hope we will meet here again next year,
Till then I give a gift, a nüshu bag, to express my affection.12
感謝老師多辛苦 / 來到江永相會言 / 七十老年拍電視 / 思想女書好自悲
明年江永再相會 / 女書花袋表心情
In front of the camera, Yanxin looks at ease and relaxed, but she told me
privately that when many people are around, she becomes nervous and even
frightened. “I can’t write a word. I am afraid that I may forget how to write the
graphs.”
Despite her nüshu status, Yanxin’s daily life is not much different from that
of a regular villager. Her favorite entertainment is watching romance dramas
on TV, and at this I am not at all surprised. Even in her seventies, Yanxin still
is young at heart and a bit of a romantic. She also loves to play mahjong with
other villagers. I was not in favor of her appetite for gambling at first, but after
I noticed her memory was declining, my attitude changed to encouraging it.
Mahjong is a game involving calculation; and Yanxin leads a thrifty life; doing
calculations and focusing on winning or losing money may stimulate her
brain activity.
As with many other elders of the village, Yanxin’s main job was once to take
care of her grandchildren, a phenomenon pervasive across rural China as
youths and adults leave home to work in urban and suburban factories. Yanx-
in’s six children, married or unmarried, all work outside Jiangyong, mostly in
Guangdong and Hainan except for Shanfeng, who lives in Beijing. At one
time, she had four grandkids to look after. “That was a serious burden, men-
tally, materially, and physically. If anything happened to them, my daughters-
in-law would blame me for negligence.” Besides, to prepare breakfast, Yanxin
had to get up around five o’clock every morning, even in the chilly winter. Her
sons of course sent her money, but after deducting the grandchildren’s tuition,
there was not much left. As a result, she had to farm the land to help cover
family expenditures. When Endō came to see her in 2001, it happened that
Yanxin had been working at directing irrigation water to her own land for four
consecutive days without sleep. She thus wrote a nüshu on “Farming the Land”
to lament her difficulties. She gifted the nüshu to Endō to express her gratitude
for the visit and Endō‘s concern:
Three or four years after my husband died,
The family became impoverished, we can’t keep up.
We were poor when my husband was alive,
Now we are even more desperate.
Without a husband in the house, the wife does not know what to do;
She has no one to consult with on all sorts of matters. . . .
My six children have all left the village,
12
Composed by Yanxin in July 2010.
| Gendered Words
120
Who can I depend on at home?
I can’t work the fields;
But it is so difficult to ask others to help. . . .
I sat in the field with two streams of tears flowing; . . .
No [irrigation] water, just my tears flowed there.13
夫死三年上四載 / 家中貧窮不如人 / 丈夫在世家寒苦 / 如今死後更淒涼
房中無夫妻無主 / 大小千般沒商量…/六個兒女出遠鄉 / 家中事情倚哪個
田地功夫不會做 / 求人種田十分難…/ 自坐田中雙流淚…/ 田中沒水淚漣漣
Working the fields is truly a crushing job for older people. After 2004
Yanxin gave it up, and in 2006 she asked her two married sons to take back
their children, as she found herself too old to provide childcare. For her cur-
rent daily needs she relies mainly on her youngest son Shanfeng’s support.
“Two hundred dollars [RMB] a month is quite enough for me to buy food and
pay the utility bills.” Her third son works in construction but spends all his
earnings gambling.
Other than the gambling issue, what worries Yanxin most is the marriage of
her younger daughter, Meili. Meili became pregnant after cohabiting with a
young man from Guangxi when they both worked as floating laborers in
Guangdong. She returned home two months before the estimated delivery
date. This coincided with the time I had moved in with Yanxin for two months
of fieldwork in 2005. Meili and I shared the living room at night, having set up
a bed and a convertible sleeping couch there, so we had a lot of opportunities
to chat about her past and future before falling asleep. For example, would the
father of the baby, the Guangxi boy, come to propose marriage? Did she plan
for her own future, to continue working as a floating employee or open a shop
in the Jiangyong county town? What about the baby’s future education? Would
the child stay with the parent(s) wherever they worked or live with the
grandparent(s) in the village, becoming one of the “left-behind children”
(liushou ertong 留守兒童)?
One month before she gave birth, the Guangxi boy and his parents brought
the bride price to discuss with Yanxin the details of the marriage. Meili and her
boyfriend are from different areas of China, and the wedding rituals tend to be
different. For example, Yanxin thought the bride price should be used to hold
the wedding banquet and supply nutritious food for Meili’s recovery from
childbirth, but the groom’s side wanted Yanxin to return the entire bride price
to them and they would then use it to pay for Meili’s hospital stay. Yanxin also
insisted that whether the baby was a boy or girl, a banquet should be held to
celebrate the new life. The groom’s parents maintained they should do this
only if it was a boy. This made Yanxin suspect that the groom might desert her
daughter if the baby was a girl. Anyway, because of such conflicting interests,
no agreement was reached. Even worse, the boy’s parents seemed to regret
having made the trip and tried to steal the bride price they had given to Yanxin
13
Sung by Yanxin and recorded in November 2001.

and clear out the next day before dawn. The kind of family Meili would be mar-
ried into was not hard to imagine. As her mother, how could Yanxin not worry?
A couple of days after Meili successfully delivered a baby boy, and right before
I left Jiangyong, Yanxin gave me a nüshu fan she had written on Meili’s behalf:
Returning home for several months,
I have been unhappy because of worries.
Today I thus write,
Writing about my miseries on the fan. . . .
The whole family has led a carefree life,
With many children who brighten the hall.
At my coming of age
My father died.
My heart was broken, and
My mother became a widow.
With six children to carry,
She had to shoulder all the responsibility. . . .
I myself have also failed to live up to her expectations;
I have let my mother down.
By my own decision,
I chose my marriage partner.
But the husband I chose is a merciless man, and
His family cannot even be counted human. . . .
When I was pregnant,
I had nowhere to go. . . .
If my marriage had been decided by my parents,
They would choose a good man for me.
A match of husband and wife,
We’d grow old together.
But now I have made the wrong move,
A move that will destroy my whole life.
Aunty now lives in my home;
She cares for me and takes pity on me.
We sleep in the same room at night,
As if we had blood ties.
I’m also thankful,
For my yifu [aunty’s husband] who has cherished me and cared for me.14
回家幾個月 / 有愁心不歡 / 今日把筆寫 / 可憐記扇中…
一家逍遙樂 / 子孫滿堂紅 / 到我成長大 / 父親亦歸陰
氣得肝腸斷 / 母親寡婦當 / 兒女人六個 / 千般自承當…
我又不爭氣 / 連累毑操心 / 終身自作主 / 自己配婚姻
配夫無情義 / 一家不算人…/ 如今身懷孕 / 不知到哪方…
若是由父母 / 選個好兒郎 / 夫妻成婚配 / 老來過光陰
14
Composed by Yanxin in October 2005.
| Gendered Words
122
如今錯想遠 / 自害一世人 / 姨娘在我家 / 疼惜真可憐
夜間同房睡 / 確如對親生 / 甥兒多感謝 / 姨父多關心
Yanxin wrote this nüshu partly to lament on behalf of Meili and partly for
me; in addition to Meili, I myself had become a cause of worry. Most nüshu
scholars seldom return to Jiangyong, especially once they have published their
anthologies, but I have come back to Jiangyong every year or two. This worries
Yanxin: She thinks I must have been unsuccessful and so have to keep coming
back for more ethnographic data. One time she accompanied me, together
with two other Jiangyong friends, to visit her grandmother’s village, Tian-
guangdong. Observing how I did interviews on women’s singing and life nar-
ratives, she expressed concern to my friends: “The way Little Liu does research
won’t work out. Other scholars were all interested in the script, how come she
keeps recording songs?” At another time, noticing how I eagerly asked about
the sanzhaoshu rhetoric, she said to me in a very gentle voice, “Little Liu, don’t
you worry! I’m your sister. I’ll assist you in every way I can to help you suc-
ceed.” To assure my success, every time I meet with her, she always comes up
with some nüshu for me.
The nüshu Yanxin wrote for me might be based on her own experiences,
such as our sisterhood ties and her biographical laments, or some observation
or inspiration from an existing nüshu. One time, as we chatted about the song
“Zhuzhu,” she said to me in a playful tone, “Let me write about Zhuzhu. What
do you think?” The Zhuzhu she referred to was not the one of Baishui Village
discussed above but another woman surnamed Ouyang 歐陽 of Heyuan Vil-
lage. The Baishui Zhuzhu reminded her of Ouyang Zhuzhu because both had
remarried and were involved in licentious affairs. I actually met Ouyang during
my 1993 fieldwork. She was a nice-looking woman and a pretty good singer. In
2000 when I returned to Jiangyong and visited Tangxia Village, I was to be
introduced to a woman known as a good nüge singer. I was surprised to find
that it was none other than Ouyang—and that she was in her fifth marriage.
Born in 1929, Ouyang was betrothed as a child and married in 1948, the
year before Liberation, at age 19. But before long, her husband was appre-
hended and imprisoned due to his landlord status. Afraid to have any associa-
tions with someone in this class, the other villagers avoided Ouyang as much
as they could. Even when she bumped into the daughter of her mother’s
brother in the street and called her “sister,” her cousin, out of an abundance of
caution, warned, “Don’t call me that!” Feeling alienated and unable to survive
there, Ouyang remarried, this time to a teacher in a different village, Baishui.
That marriage lasted for only half a year. The man divorced her for fear of
being dragged down by Ouyang’s former association with a landlord. She was
married a third time, to a man named Dong in Heyuan, a widower with two
sons, and with him gave birth to one son and two daughters. During this mar-
riage, Ouyang had an affair with another Heyuan widower named Fu. Dong
was furious at Ouyang’s infidelity and beat her, but Ouyang was determined
to stay with Fu: “Whatever you do, I’ll just follow Fu wherever he goes.”

Since Fu and Dong were neighbors, to avoid further conflict Ouyang and her
lover moved away and lived in different places: in the village where Fu’s elder
daughter had married; in Shangjiangxu Township, where they rented a house
and lived by making bean curd; in Tongshanling Farm, where they lived as
farmers. It was during their stay at Tongshanling Farm that I met her; she hap-
pened to be visiting her husband’s younger brother, my host. A few years later,
Fu got sick and was taken back to Heyuan by his son. Ouyang survived by co-
habiting with another man from her elder sister’s affinal village but she was
soon dragged back to Heyuan by Dong. Fu died in 1999, and six months later,
Ouyang remarried to Tangxia, where I met her in 2000. Five years later, Ouy-
ang’s first husband arrived from Changsha to look for his wife and take her
back. In fact, shortly after Ouyang had married Dong, her first husband was
released from jail and hoped for a reunion with her, but since Ouyang had just
delivered her first baby and could not part with her child, he left and married
someone else. The first husband’s wife had recently died and he found he still
felt attached to Ouyang, so this time she left her husband in Tangxia and de-
parted with him for Changsha.
Since Yanxin and Ouyang’s lover, Fu, belonged to the same lineage, the
couple had looked to Yanxin for help when they hid from Ouyang’s legal hus-
band. Yanxin even lent them a cattie of grain to relieve their most pressing
need. In 1999 when Fu passed away, Ouyang was driven out by his children
and she took refuge at Yanxin’s place. There she told Yanxin, “You see, I’m so
pitiful; you can compose a song about me.” Yanxin replied, “Then I’ll write
about your remarriages.” Ouyang said, “Fine.” When this nüshu was com-
pleted, Yanxin sang it to Ouyang and asked if she could remember and recite
the whole text. Ouyang said, “Remembering and reciting are not a problem;
it’s just that some parts are not suitable to be sung [in public]. People will
laugh.”
Nüshu for Yanxin is also a tool that helped her make sense of her own past.
As I described above, Yanxin, strongly dissatisfied with the marriage her
mother had arranged, blamed her for destroying her happiness. When she told
me about this over 33 years later (in 1993), eight years after her mother had
passed away, the sorrow and loss were still reflected in her eyes. Yet there was
another dimension to her feelings that she did not admit to me for another ten
years: her guilt and self-criticism, sentiments she probably also concealed
from herself. In one meeting during my 2002 field trip, Yanxin and I were
transcribing a song our sworn sister Longyu had just sung:
I’m here for two months, and

She has not come to see me, her own mother.
It’s fine if she doesn’t come to visit,
But does she know that I have run out of firewood? . . .
If I had known my daughter had such a hard heart,
I would have remarried and been a happy person.
Eighty guanyin [i.e., official silver coins] have been given to you;
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124
Ten gong [i.e., one half acre] of good lands have been given to him [the son-
in-law].
I have been crying for seven days since I was evicted from the house,
And now one of my grandchildren has died.15
今年來了兩個月 / 還沒思想看毑娘 / 不看毑娘得事易 / 不知老娘沒柴燒…
早前知道心粗女 / 出過丈夫做好人 / 八十官洋交你手 / 十工好田到他邊
趕出討吃哭七日 / 有個外孫落了橋
This mother had transferred all her property to the daughter, because she had
no son, and she expected to be taken care of, but she ended up being evicted
from the family home and becoming a beggar. She was deeply aggrieved. Ac-
cording to Longyu’s explanation, the mother’s tears attest to the daughter’s lack
of filiality, which also led to the death of her grandson, the daughter’s child.
This story itself is not at all mysterious, but the way Longyu learned it is.
When Longyu was 14 (in 1957), a spirit medium was brought in to find out why
her mother was ill. On her journey into the underworld, the medium met an
old woman (a ghost) who asked her to help chuanming 傳名 ‘spread the word’,
that is, to carry her lament to the human world and claim justice. This song
was performed while the medium was in trance. Liang witnessed the event
and still remembered the unusual song.
The song seemed to captivate Yanxin. When Longyu and I had moved on to
a different topic, she was still consumed with the story. Then, in a whisper, she
interrupted our conversation and said, “This is a good song, a very good one. I
shall write it down [in nüshu].”
“Write what?” I asked.
“The song Longyu just performed, it’s a good song,” she reiterated.
She explained, “It’s like how I treated my mother. My mother had only one
daughter, and I almost abandoned her. Like the daughter in this lament, I had no
conscience (liangxin 良心)—I was a daughter with a hard heart!” Even though
Yanxin had in the end obeyed her mother, she knew very well that deep down she
had betrayed her morally. Her intent to record this nüge as a nüshu revealed her
deep remorse, and her complex feelings toward her mother.
In addition to composition and transcription, Yanxin also wrote pieces
based upon her recollection of the nüshu she learned in childhood. “I can
always write it down if I learned it from Grandma.” Some of those pieces are
long verses (especially the narrative ballads), and some are full of formulaic
expressions (such as sanzhaoshu). Whatever the genre, though, Yanxin seems
to have no difficulty in recitation. I am immensely impressed with her extraor-
dinary memory, even though Yanxin often demurs, “My memory is very poor.”
She said, “I had to write at night. I compose when lying in my bed. When a line
comes to me, I write it down.”
“But your memory is better than most of ours; you can always recite what-
ever your Grandma taught you,” I said.
15
Transcribed into nüshu by Yanxin in October 2002.

“That’s because it has entered into my heart. . . . If it was taught by Grandma,
it went, of course, ‘into the heart’,” Yanxin answered.
“Then how about other things?” I found her answer amusing.
“The rest, of course, is ‘outside.’”
“Where is ‘outside’?”
“The brain is outside,” Yanxin answered with a sly grin, pointing at her
head.
“But why did Grandma’s teaching go into the heart?”
“It is about lamentation; it is therefore inscribed in the heart.”
Yanxin’s answer is inspiring: Emotion is the drive whereby our hearts beat,
it evokes and becomes aspirational.
Yanxin’s words also speak to her deep affection for her grandmother: “I
dream of Grandma often. She looks well and walks as she always did. Just as if
she were alive. Whenever I have some worry, I’ll see her in a dream. In the
dream she will say to me, ‘Girl, don’t get mad. Just think with an open mind.’”
Because of these profoundly deep emotions, for years Yanxin was unable to
bring herself to write about her grandmother. It was not until 2010, when she
was informed that I was about to lead a team to shoot a nüshu documentary,
that she composed Grandma’s biographical nüshu entitled “Brought Back to
Life to Write,” a 1200-word-long verse. Although Yanxin explained, “I wrote it
to lament on behalf of Grandma as if she were alive,” this nüshu represents also
Yanxin’s tribute to her beloved grandmother, who had written on behalf of so
many Jiangyong women and helped them find release from their sorrows and
grievances:
In a furious dream, with a broken heart,

I’ve been brought back to life to write a work that will circulate everywhere.
With tearful eyes, holding the brush,
I write from the beginning.
I was born a gentle lady surnamed Yang,
Married into the family Chen of Tianguangdong.
In my youth, I led a fairly good life;
Husband and wife spent the days harmoniously.
People all said that I enjoyed everything good,
That I was superior to many.
People also came to present their invitations,
Because of my reputation for needlework and nüshu.
氣死夢中肝腸斷 / 回生修書傳四圍 / 兩眼流淚把筆寫 / 一二從頭說分明
出身姓楊君子女 / 配夫姓陳田廣洞 / 年輕本是日好過 / 夫妻和順過光陰
人人說我千般好 / 站出四邊勝過人 / 四邊之人來奉請 / 寫書繡花傳四邊
That peaceful life was, however, interrupted by the death of her husband:
Who ever expected that the blue sky would be covered by black clouds:
My husband fell ill and died. . . .
Once my husband had left us,
| Gendered Words
126
We were bullied—how pitiful!
We were tyrannized by the township head,
Who drafted my only son into the army.
With tearful eyes, I must say
That township head did us an injustice.
“It should be one out of three sons or two out of five [when it comes to conscrip-
tion].
Why was my single son drafted?”
The township head said to me,
“If you don’t want him to go, you pay.”
Yet the family was poor, and I could do nothing
But mortgage the house.
The front hall and the room in the back then belonged to him.
With no one to plead on our behalf, what could I do?
誰知青天烏雲蓋 / 丈夫得病命歸陰… / 自從丈夫歸陰府 / 被人欺負好淒涼
誰知鄉長壓迫我 / 抽我一兒去當兵 / 眼淚四垂將言說 / 鄉長對我不公平
三丁抽一五抽二 / 為何獨子去當朝 / 鄉長並對將言說 / 你不願去出錢銀
家中貧寒無可奈 / 只用房屋來抵押 / 前廳後屋由他管 / 無法伸冤沒奈何
Then her son grew up and married. With five grandchildren to cheer her up,
life should have been satisfactory. But collectivization put everyone’s life in
jeopardy:
The life was difficult during ’58–59:
With no food, it was hard to survive.
Who ever expected that my daughter-in-law would turn malicious?
She didn’t treat me like a human being. . . .
If my destiny was to suffer in this world,
Why not just go to the nether world to see King Yama?
I went to my room and hanged myself,
But the guards of Yama did not take my life.
I was released [from the rope] by a kinsman.
I fainted and lost consciousness for several hours.
My daughters came home and wept loudly; . . .
They held their mother sorrowfully.
They called to their younger brother and asked
Why would mother hang herself?
“Mother hung herself
Because she had no food to sustain her.
Without food and water for several days,
She was starving and almost fainted.”
My brother’s wife was cruel,
And Brother had no say at all.
“Father died when you were young;
It was Mother who kept the family and took on all difficulties.
Now what has happened only speaks to my brother’s not being filial,

He does not consider his own parents’ grace.”
五八九年生活苦 / 本是無糧難安身 / 誰知媳婦心腸毒 / 對我將身不算人…
人生在世難受苦 / 不如歸陰見閻王 / 走進房中自縊死 / 小鬼不曾取我身
郎叔放下昏迷去 / 幾個小時不回陽 / 女兒回家高聲哭… / 抱著母親好傷心
喊起弟郎將言說 / 一二從頭問原因 / 母親為何自縊死 / 因為無糧難安身
三五六天無水米 / 餓得頭昏眼又花 / 房中妹娘心腸毒 / 尤其弟郎沒主張
父親落橋你小幼 / 娘守空房操盡心 / 說明弟郎無孝順 / 不念生身父母情
The daughters then expressed their wish to bring their widowed mother to live
with them, a proposal that was, however, turned down:
“Let me advise my mother to think ahead:
Let your daughters take you to live with them.”
But the mother replied through tears,
“My daughters, please listen to me:
Only is a son responsible for taking care of elderly parents,
Never have we heard that a daughter does this.”
勸聲母親自想遠 / 女兒接你去安身 / 兩眼流淚答言道 / 女兒聽娘說言章
只有兒子來待老 / 哪有女兒養娘親
For Grandma, the only way to go on was to remarry:

Is there any way out of this suffering?
Male kin advised me to remarry.
In my eighties I remarried—
A case rarely seen in this world. . . .
When mother bid farewell to son, it pained her like the slash of a knife;
But to the son, he was at ease.
I went to a new family in a fit of pique.
Joyful or aggrieved, apart or together, I would eventually return to the nether
world.
想來想去真無路 / 郎叔勸我去就人 / 八十有餘行歸步 / 世上難得見一人…
娘別兒子如刀割 / 崽別娘來放輕心 / 去到人家入心氣 / 悲歡離合命歸陰
In her description of Grandma’s funeral, Yanxin changed the narrative per-

spective from Grandma to herself:
Now we’re parting;

Your daughter’s daughter is crying desperately.
Putting a white mourning hood over my head,
I get down on both knees to express my gratitude.
With four misery-filled nüshu,
I send my Grandma to the Western Paradise.
In my left hand, I hold Lady Zhang,
In my right hand Zhu Yingtai—
Altogether four books record pitiful stories that sadden,
Stories that also speak to the sadness of your granddaughter.
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Today, Grandma goes to the nether world.
When shall we meet again and be united? . . .
Tonight I sit here in the hall to accompany Grandma;
Tomorrow we will separate and my heart will break. . . .
There is no way I will see you again,
Unless we are united in our next life.
It is easy for the sun to set in the mountains to the west,
But difficult for water that has flowed to the eastern sea to return.16
有時日光分離去 / 外孫女兒更傷心 / 白布孝帕頭上帶 / 雙腳跪下報你恩
可憐女書拿四本 / 送我外婆去西方 / 左手拿本張氏女 / 右手拿著祝英台
傷心可憐書四本 / 記得孫兒真可憐 / 今日外婆歸陰府 / 幾時相會共團圓…
今夜廳堂陪婆坐 / 明日分離斷心腸…/ 要想我娘見一面 / 除非二世再團圓
日落西山容易過 / 水歸東海難回頭
Conclusions
In February 2011, on our trip to Tokyo for a nüshu seminar, Yanxin and I visited
a local temple, Sensoji. While walking down its shopping street, Yanxin unex-
pectedly said to me, “I want to buy a statue of Bodhisattva Guanyin [Goddess
of Compassion] for my fifth [son].” As I was wondering at this, since Yanxin
had long been an atheist, she continued, “I wish the Bodhisattva to bestow
blessings on my son—for his marriage and health.” Eight months later I in-
vited her to Taipei to preview the nüshu documentary focused on her life, Call-
ing and Recalling: The Sentiments of Nüshu. During this visit, to fulfill her wish,
I took her to a sanctuary in Taipei, the Yuan-Dao Guanyin Temple 緣道觀音廟.
There she not only did divination; she also wrote a nüshu to commemorate the
trip (Figure 6):
I’ve been in Taiwan for a week;

I’ve been sightseeing far and near.
Now I travel to the Patriarch Guanyin Temple,
Where I burn incense and pray for peace and wellbeing from Buddha.
On both knees, I kneel down before Buddha,
I make divination and get an oracle with great joy.
I take the oracle and read it:
Buddha17 blesses me with ten thousand years of springtime.18
來到台灣一禮拜 / 貴處遊遠看風光 / 來到祖師觀音廟 / 燒香求佛保平安
雙腳跪下佛祖前 / 求卦取籤心自紅 / 取出籤文起眼看 / 佛祖保佑萬年春
16
Composed by Yanxin in April 2010.
17
Here Yanxin miswrote “Buddha” as “Niangniang” probably because the latter was a more common
repertoire in nüshu.
18
Composed by Yanxin in November 2011.

figure 6 Hanzi transliteration of the only nüshu He Yanxin cared to make a copy for
herself (Courtesy of Yuan-Dao Guanyin Temple, Taiwan).
In the nüshu, Yanxin changed the Yuan-Dao Guanyin Temple’s name to Pa-
triarch Temple, because “it sounds better sung that way.” Yanxin heard me use
these two terms interchangeably, so she asked if she could use the later form.
I was surprised that while she offered this original writing to the temple as her
tribute, she also made a copy for herself. “I’ll take this back to Jiangyong as a
souvenir,” she said. This was the first and only time that Yanxin retained a copy
of a nüshu she had written.
It has been 20 years since she began to create and compose nüshu in late
1994. If you ask her which nüshu she has written, she always replies, “I forget
them all. I cannot recall what I have written.”
“You don’t retain a copy of your own?” I wondered.
“I don’t even make a draft, so where would I find an extra copy?”
“Never mind! I plan to write a book about you and your nüshu works, and
then you’ll have a complete file.” It was my scholarly assumption that everyone
surely would wish to have his or her works published.
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But before I finished speaking, she interrupted, “What do I need it for?”
Yanxin’s rejoinder sent me into deep reflection. What does nüshu mean to
her, after all? She learned it because her grandmother happened to be a nüshu
expert. Three decades after her grandmother passed away, she resumed her
practice out of a pure intention, to help her sworn sister Longyu be able to
weave nüshu belts, and this pure intent was also bolstered by her gratitude for
the Japanese linguist Endō’s appreciation of her writing. Of course, she did it
also to help me, her sworn sister, to succeed in my academic pursuit of nüshu
research. By writing nüshu, whether as composition or recollection, she found
her negative sentiments discharged and her affection toward sworn sisters re-
alized. But what else? In the end, the piece she chose to keep in hand is a nüshu
in which she pleads for blessing and mercy from a supernatural being—a
nüshu not reminiscing about the past but looking to the future.

CHAPTER 5 Hu Xinkui: Child Bride, Party Cadre,
Housewife
hu xinkui is an easily ignored peasant woman, always working and smiling,

but quiet. I first met her in 2000. With a dowager’s hump and a stooped body,
the then 66-year-old Xinkui was diminutive. Still, she struck me as the very
image of diligence. It was hard for me to believe that Xinkui, who had been an
illiterate child bride, advanced in her prime to serve as her brigade’s Director
of Women’s Affairs and was honorably recruited into the Chinese Communist
Party. Even as she was riding high, she was willing to withdraw without hesita-
tion to become once again a conventional, industrious housewife, silently sup-
porting her husband and the entire family (Figure 7).
I had not planned to conduct interviews with Xinkui, but it was certainly
our destiny to meet.
During my first winter in Jiangyong, I visited the old ladies who knew nüshu
and nüge, such as Huanyi and Sasa, and I also consulted with local male elites
who had knowledge of the practice of nüshu and nüge. Tang Gongwei 唐功暐,
the retired principal of Shangjiangxu High School, was one of those. Tang
(1995) had done an important survey suggesting that although nüshu was
largely a female-specific written script, a very few male peasants may have
learned it from their partners.
On my first visit with Tang, I was accompanied by six other people: my
husband, a linguist from Beijing, Chen Qiguang, and his wife, the local
nüshu researcher, Zhou Shuoyi, and two officials from the Jiangyong Cul-
tural Bureau. Hosting a group of seven overwhelmed Tang Gongwei’s wife:
How would she pull together a meal for these honored guests? When one of
Tang’s former students, Zhou Gongming 周共明 (hereafter Gongming),
dropped by, he was quickly pressed into taking on the cooking. Gongming,
dressed in his blazer—with no apron—killed the chicken, chopped the veg-
etables, and then stir-fried the lot, a most interesting scene. After the lunch,
to express my gratitude for his efforts, I used my Polaroid camera to take a
solo snapshot of him; getting one’s picture taken was a luxury back then.
Standing before an array of bamboo, Gongming looked tall, and the softness
of the swaying bamboo leaves made his strong facial features especially
handsome.
figure 7 Hu Xinkui (right), her husband (left) and their daughter (center) (2004).
Eight months later I ran into Gongming in a tiny family-style restaurant

where he was dining with a young woman, Tan Yuting 譚玉婷 (hereafter
Yuting). Later I learned that had been their first date, and earlier Gongming
had given the photo I took of him to Yuting—his way of expressing his admi-
ration. One year later they were married. I felt honored to have been part of
their courtship through that photo.
The encounter with Gongming and Yuting proved to be the start of an im-
portant chapter in my career. That day, from our conversation Gongming real-
ized I was having trouble transliterating nüshu and nüge (Yanxin had not yet
presented herself ). Gongming volunteered to give me a hand, saying, “My
shu’niang [father’s younger brother’s wife] is very good at singing. If you have
audio tapes, I could play them for her and let her tell me what the songs are
about.” From that time on, Gongming and Yuting, who were a few years younger
than me, became my best friends and indispensible helpers in Jiangyong. They
even, on their own initiative, collected field data for me and shared their reflec-
tions with me. In one letter mailed to me in 1994, Yuting wrote:
Let me tell you about my experience of going to a rural village to investigate. It made
me better understand the difficulty of traveling to a distant place where you can’t
understand the language and how exhilarating it was once you succeeded in coping
with the challenge. Take my visit to Longyantang, for example. At first I felt shy and
was afraid that I might find no one who would answer my questions so I couldn’t
help you out. But when I arrived there, I bumped into a woman in her fifties who
was very enthusiastic. Although I couldn’t quite understand her spoken language,
she introduced many people to me. The villagers there were very hospitable.
hu xinkui: child bride, party cadre, housewife | 133

Longyantang, one of the two key temples where nüshu were presented in
worship, is situated outside Jiangyong, in Dao County, which is why Yuting
had difficulty following the local speech.
Having long enjoyed the close friendship and help of Gongming and
Yuting, I felt I certainly had to pay a visit to their parents when I returned to
Jiangyong seven years after my 1993 fieldwork; this was the highest form of
respect I could show for our friendship. In the course of my first calling, Yut-
ing’s mother, Xinkui, was almost “voiceless”; however, she generously shared
her life’s narrative with me in my subsequent visits conducted mainly in 2004
and 2005. Based on our conversations and her exchanges with her husband,
daughter, and son-in-law during our interviews, together with their recollec-
tions of her, I wish to lay out the life trajectory of a typical Jiangyong woman in
transitional China. These accounts show how her life was transformed with
the changes that occurred in China from the 1949 Liberation up to 1978, and
even into the twenty-first century.
A Mother’s Widowhood
Xinkui was born in 1934 in the village of Hujia 呼家 in Shangjiangxu Town-

ship. Xinkui’s father died when she was just one and one-half years old. Her
pregnant mother, knowing that her baby would never have the chance to meet
its father, went to the cane field her husband had cultivated and wept alone.
Two months later, the child was born, and this baby boy would play a crucial
role in Xinkui’s life.
In traditional Jiangyong, whether a widow remarried depended on her fer-
tility (Liu 2001). If she had a son to inherit the family assets, even if it was only
a small parcel of land, she usually remained a widow, for remarriage could be
risky. As explained earlier, a woman’s relationship with her first husband’s
children ended upon her remarriage. Remarriage did give her a legitimate
way to have more children, but should her second husband die before she
produced another descendant, she would be left a childless widow. Under
such circumstances, she could choose between a third marriage with the po-
tential to produce more children, or rely on any children her husband had
with his former spouse. However, relying on stepsons was also risky. The
widow Tang Baozhen, whom we met in chapter 3, for example, had stepsons
who gave her only one-third of the rice she needed to live, even though they
had plenty to spare.
Another example of a woman who had difficulties with a stepson is
the focus of a nüshu written by Yi Nianhua.1 The protagonist of that story,
Yang Xixi, divorced her husband in the early 1950s because he gambled and
physically abused her. Despite having a son, she remarried and accepted
1
For the whole text, see Zhao (1992:293–298).
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134
responsibility for a stepson, raising him as her own blood and hoping to
depend on him in her old age. But that stepson turned out to be not only un-
dependable but dangerous, as Xixi lamented in her nüshu biography: “Who
would have expected you to have a malicious heart—ruining my life by blind-
ing me, hoping to take over my property?” (Zhao 1992:296). Saddled with such
a monstrous stepson, Xixi “had no home to return to,” and had to “beg for food
day by day” (Zhao 1992:297).
If a widow had no son but did have a daughter, she might also choose to
preserve her widowhood, sometimes returning to her natal village. Yanxin’s
mother is an example of this practice. With neither a son nor a daughter, a wid-
ow’s prospects were wretched: She would be left to survive on her own, or be
remarried by her affines, who considered a barren widow nothing but a burden.
Note, however, that remarriage was not necessarily restricted to widows; some-
times a wife, conceived of as an item of property, could be sold by her husband
to pay a debt. Yan Meiju 嚴美居, born in 1923 in Haotang Village of Shangji-
angxu, was remarried into Xiawan Village by her gambling husband four years
after their wedding. During her buluofujia period, the matchmaker suddenly
came to her natal home and informed her that she had a new husband. Her
new husband, a poor peasant who had lost his wife after they had been mar-
ried only two months, organized a cooperative fund to collect the money
needed for taking a wife. To avoid future controversy, he also needed to get
proof of transfer from his new wife’s former husband: “Two hands cut the
bamboo into halves which will never be united / The stones roll down from the
mountain and will never return / Heaven and Earth are witnesses to my con-
science” 兩手破竹永不合攏 / 高山滾石永不回家 / 天地良心.
Xinkui’s mother chose not to remarry. She had three sons and one daugh-
ter, and her husband left her some land. Moreover, since her own father and
brothers would come to help with the farming from time to time, she did not
have to survive by leasing her land but could work it herself, and to do this
she unbound her feet. In traditional Jiangyong, two forms of footbinding
were practiced: One entailed breaking the four toes and bending them against
the arch of the foot; and the second entailed wrapping the toes tightly to curb
the development of the feet. Xinkui’s mother had the latter type and therefore
could immerse her unbound feet in the damp paddy field; if it had been the
former, unbinding might have caused serious infection.
Even though Xinkui’s mother had sons, her own land, and her natal family
to back her up, she still lived under threat. Her husband’s only brother was a
gambler who coveted his sister-in-law’s property; he took every occasion to steal
her grain, money, and so on. Once, as he was in the process of pilfering, Xinkui’s
mother and the children returned home. A fierce quarrel broke out, and en-
raged, the uncle took out a knife and assaulted Xinkui’s mother, wounding her
in four places. Seeing his mother injured, the eldest son ran to seek help from
his maternal grandparents in Maishandong 麥山洞 in Dao County. The uncle
pursued the boy with every intention of killing him. Fortunately, Xinkui’s
brother was alert and took a shortcut and did not get caught. With the boy’s

news, Xinkui’s maternal grandparents immediately rushed to reason with the
uncle. “My maternal grandfather had five sons, two daughters . . . all very
strong. They came, and we were thus not kicked out of the house,” Xinkui said.
With the support of her natal family, Xinkui’s mother led a peaceful life for
seven or eight years. But when her eldest son reached age 20 and was about to
marry and take up some of his widowed mother’s responsibilities, he suddenly
died. “It was the first day of the New Year; my elder brother went gambling for
the first time. The minute he returned home, my mother gave him a serious
beating and called him a ‘short-lived bastard’ [duanming gui 短命鬼].” She never
imagined her scolding would turn out to be true: He fell ill the very next day
and soon left her forever. She blamed herself, but regret could not bring back
his life. “After that, my mother would sometimes all of a sudden faint. She told
us, ‘Never hit your children on the first or fifteenth of the month; the child you
hit will never come back to you.’” Her second son had died many years before.
Not long after losing her eldest son, Xinkui’s mother died of grief and regret.
At that time, Xinkui was only ten years old, and her only remaining brother,
Guogou 國苟, was just eight.
Performing Bridal Laments
The Confucian patriarchal system allots to men the responsibility for produc-
ing heirs to perpetuate the family line, and therefore even after a boy loses both
parents, his lineage kin will bring him up. In Guogou’s case, it was his gam-
bling uncle who took up that task. But a daughter’s fate was different. She
might be abandoned on the street, sold as a female house servant (called
yangnü zai 養女仔 ‘adoptive daughter’), or sent to her betrothed husband’s
home to become a child bride (xiaozai xifu 小仔媳婦 ‘child daughter-in-law’).
Xinkui’s destiny was to become a child bride. Her uncle refused to raise her
and called her future mother-in-law to take her away.
When her mother-in-law arrived, Xinkui refused to go—she even took up a
stick to fend her off. She recalled, “I couldn’t bear to part with my brother.”
When Xinkui’s mother-in-law failed to persuade her after several attempts,
other villagers advised her to send a wedding cart to make the arrangement
formal. For Jiangyong women, a wedding cart sent from the groom’s family
was a symbol of a woman’s “worth” or diqian 抵錢, a term often seen in nüshu
and nüge bridal laments.
During the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), the practice of sending wed-
ding carts was abolished, but it was briefly resumed in 1963; since then, how-
ever, it has been permanently abandoned. Many women who married around
that period brought up the issue of the wedding cart. Those married in 1963
announced with a great pride, “I came here by palanquin,” while others would
lament, “It’s a pity that I did not take one at my wedding!” The wedding cart
was also a marker that distinguished a cherished adult bride from an unat-
tended child bride. A child bride was usually taken to her future husband’s
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household by her natal family, so a case like Xinkui’s was quite unusual: Her
mother-in-law not only sent a wedding cart but also hired a band of musicians
to greet her formally.
Now that the transfer had become a formal reception, the bride’s side
needed to prepare a corresponding ceremony, that is, to perform kuge or bridal
lamentation. Typically, the ritual of kuge, held for three consecutive days before
wedding, opened with a ceremony called kaisheng 開聲 ‘to initiate the lamen-
tation’, led by a matron:
My niece,
Today is a good time, a good day.
Ranks of dragons and phoenixes align;
The golden cock cries out to the phoenix.
The golden cock crows, and it wins ten treasures;
The phoenix chirps and announces ten kinds of repute.
The lotus flower grows a pair of seeds;
The golden flower bears a couple of seeds.
When his family comes to request a wedding, the woman will become noble.
When the red book arrives, a woman becomes worthy.
姪女啦 / 今日時好日又好 / 龍對龍來鳳對鳳 / 金雞對起鳳凰啼
金雞啼聲取十寶 / 鳳凰啼聲出十名 / 蓮花結子結成對 / 金花結子結成雙
他家求親女為貴 / 紅書進門女抵錢
The kaisheng lament, like all bridal laments, was performed impromptu.
But since it was an opening ceremony, a formulaic expression using auspi-
cious symbols was expected, to signify a promising union. The groom and
bride are referred to as “dragon” and “phoenix,” respectively, and the “seeds”
signify bearing sons. The kaisheng person herself had to be chosen from
among the village’s “good-fortune matrons,” women who have a husband, son,
and daughter.
A kaisheng ceremony proceeded as follows. The good-fortune matron stood
on the third step of the stairs in the bride’s house, and the singing girls were ar-
rayed on the ground floor. The bride began at the head of the stairs on the second
floor. As soon as the kaisheng mistress pronounced her first line, the singing
girls immediately joined in with a chorus known as wugeng chou 五更愁 ‘heart-
break through all the five watches’, and then the bride debuted her lament. In
other words, the three parties—bride, singing girls, and kaisheng matron—sang
simultaneously, yet each sang separate lyrics and melodies, which respectively
symbolize the bride’s past (girlhood days), her present (liminal transition), and
her future (as a happy and fortunate married woman).
To rejoin the kaisheng person’s initiation, the bride may lament:
Bamboo leaves are green; tree leaves are green.

My good-fortune shu’niang is here to begin the lamentation.
The leaves of chives are long, and my mother does not have them trimmed;
The daughter is still young, and the mother does not keep her home.

The red book was sent to the family and my mother has taken it;
The wedding cart has arrived and the daughter must own it.2
竹葉青木葉青 / 命乖叔娘來開聲 / 韭菜葉長娘不割 / 是女年低娘不留
紅書進門娘收下 / 花轎進門女抵擋
As she uttered her first lament, the bride descended the stairs, indexing her
stepping away from girlhood, since upstairs was where the unmarried girls
slept and did their needlework. After the wedding, their activities went from
upstairs to downstairs, since they took on cooking, laundry, fetching water,
cutting wild plants for making pig feed, and the like. Once she reached the
ground floor, the bride gained autonomy in the succeeding kuge, in which she
took the lead as to whom she lamented.
In Xinkui’s case, she did not perform the three days of bridal lamentation,
but there was a kaisheng ritual. “Once I was dressed up and ready to descend
the stairs, I remember it was Yueying [a member of the Seven Sisters described
in chapter 3] who initiated the lamenting ritual.” After the kaisheng, Xinkui was
escorted by the villager wives to mount the wedding cart. Xinkui remembered,
“I had no intention to get in. I planned to smash the palanquin to pieces.” She
was not angry with her mother-in-law but with “Big-belly,” her gambling uncle.
“While my mother was ill, Big-belly had started selling our land. We later sold
another two parcels of land to bury my mother. As to the rest, he said he would
use it to raise Guogou. Raise Guogou? Guogou only got hit now and then; what
good could he do for him?” To protect her only brother from mistreatment,
Xinkui wished to stay in her natal village forever. Of course, Xinkui was also
unwilling to ride in the wedding cart because she felt miserable about her own
fate: “I was still so small but I had to go to his place to be supervised by others,
to be a burden to others, and be detested.”
Once they realized it was Xinkui’s intention to destroy the wedding cart, the
other matrons tried to calm her, especially her Third Grandma. After her
mother’s death, Xinkui and her brother were afraid to stay in their house by
themselves and so had moved to live at Third Grandma’s house, from where
Xinkui was married. Before she left, Third Grandma advised her not to jump
off the palanquin, “Definitely do not jump off once you have gotten on. Re-
member, the wedding cart is an omen of your lifetime’s happiness.” In the face
of these kinswomen’s care and concern, even though she was only ten years
old, Xinkui felt obliged to perform kuge, “to lament a few words” to express her
gratitude and bid farewell to the village where she grew up. A woman named
Hu Wuxian 呼烏仙, born in 1925, told me she still remembers that scene viv-
idly from 60 years ago: “Xinkui was so little, and when she passed our door,
she lamented to my father.”
As to what she had lamented, Xinkui said, “How could I possibly remem-
ber? I was just a kid, how would I know how to wail? . . . I just made some
wu-wu sounds.”
2
The kaisheng and the bride’s responding laments were sung by He Jinghua and recorded in
November 2001.
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138
I visited Xinkui several times, each time in the company of Gongming and
Yuting. It was 2004 when we first discussed bridal lamentation with Xinkui; it
was also then that Yuting first learned about her mother’s being a child bride,
in the course of our interview with Hu Wuxian. Earlier we had also conducted
interviews with Gongming’s shu’niang about bridal lamentation, among many
other things. Gongming’s shu’niang, his father’s brother’s wife, named Tang
Nianzhi 唐年芝 (born 1937), is an engaging singer. She gave us an instructive
and compelling demonstration of how kuge was performed.3 We were all
moved to tears. Yuting shared her reflections with me afterwards: “I used to
think rural women had no culture at all; I couldn’t bear to hear those laments
when I was a child. I considered kuge backward and an affectation, not sincere
at all. . . . But now I find they are truly natural folk poets. . . . Although they
were illiterate, rhymed verse would just flow out of their mouths on whatever
object they saw, whatever scene they beheld. I’m totally stunned by their quick
and clever thinking.”
Contrasted with shu’niang’s fervor in sharing her kuge knowledge with us,
Xinkui’s remark that “I just made some wu-wu sounds” did not come close to
satisfying Yuting’s curiosity. She urged her mother, “Try to recall, think about
how you lamented. Lament a few words for us.”
Unable to resist her daughter’s prompting, Xinkui began to relate the con-
tent of the kuge she had sung to Third Grandma: “I am sorry that I had caused
my Third Grandma to worry about me. If my mother were alive, how would I
be married from your house?”
Before she had finished, Yuting interrupted, “That’s too spoken!” (taibai
le 太白了). As an old tradition, Jiangyong kuge preserve many classical and
poetic forms. Xinkui’s “spoken” lament was more conversational than
literary.
But Xinkui did not respond to her daughter’s objection directly; instead, she
pointed out the central compositional principle of kuge: qiangzhe qu 牆著去 ‘to
go along the wall’. She emphasized, “It is all ‘qiangli ge’ 牆理歌”—songs that
“follow a principle.” In other words, kuge not only involved an emotional out-
pouring; it also had its own logical flow.
Yuting then asked her mother to demonstrate how to qiang (牆 ‘to go along
the wall’). “Say, if you were married, how would you lament to Third Grandma?”
Xinkui: “Isn’t it just as I said?”
Yuting: “Just the two lines?”
“When you add portamento to it, there would be quite a lot,” said Xinkui.
To draw the emotion to its climax, a lot of decorative words, words with no
semantic meaning, were used when singing kuge. Taking the above kaisheng
lament as an example, in actual performance, the line “Dear niece, today is a
good time” would be like “Ai-yi-ye, nie—oo—ce la, today is ou a good time ai, a
good day la” 哎咿耶姪哦女啦 / 今啊日喔時好哦日又好啊; those decorative
sounds and cries are part of the portamento (tuoyin).
3
For Tang Nianzhi’s kuge performance, see Liu (2012).

“But it couldn’t be just two sentences,” Yuting insisted.
Despite all her daughter’s pressing, Xinkui would not lament, and this did
not surprise me. In my fieldwork experience, there are two types of kuge infor-
mants: one who starts lamenting even before you ask for it, such as Tang
Baozhen and my sworn sister Longyu, and another who feels uncomfortable
about lamenting in public and does so only after frequent requests and encour-
agement. Xinkui seemed to be the second type.
Seeing mother and daughter go back and forth without any resolution, Yut-
ing’s father cut in, saying to his wife, “Why don’t you just wail a little bit, say,
as if to Hanwen’s mother.” (Hanwen’s mother is Third Grandma.)
Xinkui laughed in answer, “Isn’t it just like: Oh, Grandma. . . .” (A kuge
always began with a kinship term by which the bride addresses her lamentee.)
To help her mother conquer her sense of embarrassment, Yuting used
Gongming’s shu’niang as an example: “Some people can wail a lot. Later let me
play the tapes of his [Gongming’s] shu’niang wailing.”
Xinkui nodded and laughed, saying “His shu’niang? Of course! And his
gu’niang 姑娘 [father’s sister] was especially good at wailing.” Xinkui knew
how good both women were because in 1994, when Gongming’s third sister
was married, Xinkui was invited to the wedding celebration. Considering
this a rare opportunity for many female relatives from different villages to
get together, Gongming took along the tape recorder I had mailed to him
from the United States and began doing interviews. Bridal laments, then
on the verge of extinction, fit perfectly within the wedding context, and
the women sang one kuge after another. Xinkui had observed all of these
performances.
Yuting’s strategy of making reference to Gongming’s shu’niang worked.
Xinkui began to wail, “If my mother were alive . . . I’d be worthier . . .” After a
few lines, she stopped, saying “I can’t go on. Just thinking of this, the tears start
to come.”
Seeing tears in her mother’s eyes, Yuting had to wipe her own tears as well.
She said to me, “I get emotional whenever I see tears.”
Xinkui reiterated, “The wailer had to go along with the wall if it’s a wall, and
to scale the cliff if it’s a cliff.” In other words, just what a person laments de-
pends on the context of the protagonists. The protagonists here include the
bride and her interlocutor.
In Jiangyong, bridal lamentation was not merely the bride’s solo perfor-
mance; it was also an interaction between the bride and her interlocutor, who
performed a dialogic exchange with the bride called yiku yipei 一哭一陪 ‘one
cries, the other accompanies’, also sometimes referred to as peiku 陪哭 ‘to cry
along with’. The bride only lamented solo to male kin or to children who could
not offer responses to the lamentation. Female addressees, however, per-
formed peiku or yiku yipei to honor the bride; peiku also provided an occasion
for them to publicly pronounce their own grievances and release their senti-
ments of suffering. When Xinkui was married, she may have been too young
to have mastered wailing, but in the years to come she had many opportunities
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140
to participate in kuge as an interlocutor, and as a girl Yuting had seen her
mother perform peiku. She therefore asked her, “Mom, how about your perfor-
mance of peiku with the bride?”
Xinkui answered, “It all depends on the bride’s fate. There was a certain way
to address those with good fortune and another way for those of ill fortune.”
To guide her mother into her memories, Yuting asked: “When Jiefeng mar-
ried, did you wail with her? How about her junior sister? I remember that she
lamented to you.”
This reminded Xinkui of her niece’s lament:
Oh, my dear gu’niang [father’s sister],
We both have an ugly fate;
We suffer deficiency.
We cannot compare with others;
[Without] mother, we therefore suffer.
Oh, my dear gu’niang,
You have been living in his house since you were a child.
How pitiful!4
姑娘啦 / 是咱命醜啦 ... / 虧了咱啦 ... / 不比人啦 ... / [沒得]毑娘受苦啦
姑娘啦 / 從小他家啦 ... / 也是可惜啦
Xinkui explained, “We both were orphans. . . . Because of the ‘rotten ances-
tral water’, you see we two had bad eight characters, inferior even to that of an
old maid.” Xinkui here used “rotten ancestral water” (xiu zushui 朽祖水) be-
cause she and the bride belonged to the same lineage.
Xinkui emphasized, “Kuge is not something that can be taught and learned.
It is not taught; rather, you figure it out by yourself—you wiggle along to com-
pose your own laments. It is learned by listening to how others wail.”
Xinkui’s husband agreed, “True, you listen and understand how the other
people ‘make the turn’.”
Xinkui added, “For example, if you lament to a gambler like your brother,
you may wail, ‘Do not go the gambling table / Even if you don’t lose money,
you lose the days’ 賭錢檯頭不去陪 / 不失錢唄又失日. If lamenting to a
scholar, it would go something like: ‘Camphor wood camphor / Camphor
wood makes a table that is squarely square / A table has four feet and four writ-
ing brushes’ 樟木樟 / 樟木做檯做四方 / 四個檯頭四桿筆.”5 Here Xinkui
used a gambler as an example because her only son was addicted to this trou-
bling habit. Fortunately, she has the comfort of knowing that her daughter
Yuting and son-in-law Gongming are both filial and decent, teaching in pri-
mary school and high school, respectively.
At this point in our discussion, Yuting’s father again jumped in. He seemed
eager to show off: “If you want me to perform kuge, I can do it for three consec-
utive days.”
4
Chanted by Xinkui and recorded in October 2004.
5
For more examples on bridal lamentation in Jiangyong, see Liu (2011).

A bride had to direct her lamentation to both men and women, but men did
not need to respond unless they had some grievance to discharge—say, having
no son; otherwise, they would be ridiculed. Gongming’s shushu 叔叔 ‘father’s
younger brother’, for example, had lamented about his lack of offspring at the
wedding of his wife’s sister’s daughter (see Appendix 3 for “Dialogic Lamenta-
tion with the Bride”). Yuting’s father, although he had observed many perfor-
mances throughout his life, had never done kuge before. Yuting found her fa-
ther’s boast hard to believe. She challenged him, “Suppose that our elder aunt
is getting married, how would you perform a bridal lament to her?”
“Which elder aunt?” her father asked.
“The one living in Haotang Village,” Yuting answered.
“Bridal lament? She is almost on death’s door!” said Yuting’s father. Indeed,
this elder aunt is 100 years old.
“Then, how about doing a funeral lament for her?” Yuting could suggest
this because there were two forms of lament in traditional rural Jiangyong: the
wedding lament and the funeral lament, both performed by women.
To get her husband out of this embarrassing situation, or perhaps because
she was now warmed up, Xinkui began to take the initiative in our conversa-
tion. She told Yuting, “In her case, you have to honor her, praising her for her
good fate, for having so many grandchildren.”
Yuting’s father added, “Highlight the many children and grandchildren she
enjoys—that’s definitely something not to be left out. And then after mention-
ing her good fortune, you lament her suffering, and then you again talk about
her glory. How to lament her suffering? That is . . .”
Before he could finish his thought, Xinkui jumped in, “That would be to
talk about her parents.”
“Her parents left her early and she was married at a very young age. It’s
thanks to her husband, who improved her circumstances, that she has so many
prosperous children. That’s how you qiang with it,” Yuting’s father continued.
Xinkui agreed, “Whatever the situation is, you just have to qiang with it.”
But qiang is only a basic principal and not sufficiently artful to build a repu-
tation. “Those who really did kuge well could wail a whole day without pause”;
that is, they were able to wail spontaneously. Xinkui gave an example: “Take
Yueying of Hujia Village. She could wail from morning till dusk—that’s how
good she was.”
Yueying had a reputation in the village for singing kuge. Some of the young
girls liked to get on her kuge nerve: They made fun of her to get kuge ideas
from her.
“How would they do that?” Gongming asked.
“They’d pretend to be a bride and lament to her.” Some villages contain two
or three hundred households, and the bride had to visit each one during her
three-day lamentation rite. This means she had a tight schedule and would not
stay long in each household, but rush to give her performance and move on.
As a result, when the bride performed kuge, she might not enter the house but
had to stand outside to perform her lament. Upon hearing the bride’s kuge,
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142
the lamentee would respond from inside the house, and she might continue to
wail even after the bride had left. Yueying belonged to this type. “When she
heard someone wailing to her, ‘Oh, my dear aunt . . .’, she would pick up from
inside the house and lament and lament, even though the bride had already
left—you just can’t admire her wailing enough,” said Xinkui.
Gongming, sitting to the side, could not believe that someone “loved” to
wail that much, and asked, “Was she a madwoman?”
“No! She could write, write on paper and on fans—that’s how smart
she was.”
Xinkui’s husband also complimented Yueying’s talents, “She did know the
script [nüshu]. That was her intelligence, strength, and eloquence.”
Xinkui explained, “Some women in Hujia Village did duzhi dushan [chant-
ing nüshu written on loose paper or fans], they wrote on fans, handkerchiefs,
or books. They did it with their friends from the villages of Puwei, Xinzhai,
Tongkou. . . . They sometimes came here to visit relatives, and they would
say, we feel bored and sad, let’s sing nüshu!” Xinkui described their chanting:
“They sat side by side. . . . Occasionally they discussed words they didn’t
quite understand. . . . As they sang, their bodies swayed.” From her account,
duzhi dushan seems to have been popular in rural Jiangyong in the 1930s and
1940s.
Xinkui proudly added, “I purchased a nüshu fan at the periodic market [in
the 1940s].” She never learned the script from the visiting women, but still she
got a nüshu item for herself, perhaps out of admiration for those nüshu
literates.
Being a Child Bride
Around 1944–1945, Xinkui at age ten was taken by wedding palanquin to her
betrothed’s village, Lima 櫟馬 in Shangjiangxu. His family prepared an in-
formal feast to host a few close relatives, informing them of the child bride’s
arrival, but other than this, there were no wedding rituals. Since she was still
a child, she was to sleep not with the groom but with ‘his mother’, while the
father-in-law slept in a separate house to guard the cows so they would not
be stolen. In traditional Jiangyong, women commonly used the expressions
‘his family’ (ta jia 他家), ‘his village’ (ta xiang 他鄉), and ‘his mother’ (ta
niang 他娘) to refer to their affinal associates, and all these terms carry a hint
of alienation.
When Xinkui married in, her husband, the younger son of the family, was
still a student at a junior high school in another village—not every village had
a school back then—and he commuted between the two villages every day.
After he enrolled in the high school in the county seat, he came home only on
weekends. When he and Xinkui saw each other, usually at mealtimes, they
hardly spoke. Xinkui said, “I was a bit scared and shy. I was shy when I saw
him and he was shy when he saw me.”

“Why did you feel shy? You had been carried [by palanquin] to his house
already?” Yuting, who had pursued her own romance, could not understand
why her mother, whose life was structured by traditional gender relations and
an arranged marriage, would feel that way.
“I was scared to death,” Xinkui responded. “Even just raising my eyes to
look at him made me embarrassed.” She added, “You know, some [women] do
not recognize their men, even after having a baby. Take for example, a woman
in Lima who had already had a baby. One day she saw a man enter the house
and called him ‘brother.’ The man chided her, ‘Are you blind or what?’”
“If she didn’t recognize her husband, how on earth did they have a baby?”
Yuting asked.
“No one dared to light the lamp [at night]!” Xinkui answered. Without
lighting the oil lamp, they certainly could not see each other clearly. “Those
days are beyond what you can imagine. Do you think they were the same
as now?”
“You must be joking!” Gongming said.
“No, it is true,” Xinkui assured him.
To confirm, Gongming asked again, “They did not recognize each other
even after they had a baby?”
“Believe it or not!” Xinkui did not feel like explaining further.
“How can I believe that? It might be more convincing if they had no baby.”
Yuting also found it bizarre.
In support of his wife, Xinkui’s husband gave another example, “There
was a man in Xinzhai who died the year before last. He got married at age 51
or 52. He shaved his beard and wore a long robe at his wedding.” According
to the local custom, his wife went back to her natal home for buluofujia after
the wedding and only returned months later. “Just as she entered the village,
she noticed an old man with long beard collecting dog shit. She hailed him,
‘Dear uncle, have you had lunch yet?’ The man realized it was his wife, and
thought ‘How stupid this woman is! She does not even recognize her own
man. People will ridicule us for sure.’” And, as expected, the villagers from
then on called them ‘dear uncle’ (qinjia shu 親家叔) and ‘dear uncle’s wife’
(qinjia niang 親家娘).
Xinkui nodded, “Yes, there were such persons in those days.”
But Gongming was still not convinced. These were two different situations:
“This was the first time she went home; but the other already had a baby.”
Xinkui reiterated, “In those days, you dared not raise your head to have a
look at him.” Xinkui emphasized this because it was how she had interacted
with her child groom. She said, “I never addressed him by name, and he never
called mine. We just smiled slightly to acknowledge each other.”
Instead of interacting with her husband, Xinkui spent more time with her
husband’s older brother, learning to work the land. “I followed him everywhere—
to work on the tea tree slopes, clearing away weeds, and the like. I also went with
him to make the trails between paddy fields,” that is, paths that directed irriga-
tion water into the rice fields. Jiangyong maidens were referred to as “upstairs
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144
girls” because they did not work in the fields, but as a child bride, Xinkui enjoyed
no such luxury. In addition to farm work, she also herded cows, cut wild grasses,
and collected firewood and thatch during the day, and did needlework (such as
making shoes) at night. When she grew older, she learned to plant rice seedlings
and plow as well.
Why did she take on laborious tasks like planting rice seedlings and plow-
ing? “For fun!” Xinkui answered, as if it had been her own choice. But of
course, she admitted that her in-laws also wished her to help with such work.
It was not because they meant to abuse their little child bride, but because her
husband’s elder brother was also a ritualist who would be called away to per-
form ceremonies from time to time, such as offering sacrifice to appease the
spirits of the house, temple, hall, or mountain. If the harvest in the mountains
was not good, for example, a ritualist would be called to worship the mountain
spirits. Each time it took him three or four days to complete a set of rituals, and
during his absence Xinkui had to take over the farm work. Her father-in-law was
aging, and her mother-in-law was a ‘short-footed woman’ (duanjiao po 短腳婆)
who could not do manual labor because of footbinding. Her husband was still
a student staying outside the village, so the only one who could fill in for her
brother-in-law was Xinkui.
In Jiangyong, when something was beyond human effort or management,
one sought help from the spirits through either a shigong 師公 ‘master’ or xian-
niang po 仙娘婆 ‘divine lady’. The shigong is a ritualist who exorcises or van-
quishes evil spirits, and the xianniang po is a spirit medium who can travel to
the netherworld to check on one’s destiny and causality, called chahua 查花,
which means to check on the status of a flower that represents a particular in-
dividual. The differences between shigong and xianniang po are clearly distin-
guished by gender: While a spirit medium is female, a ritualist is male, and
this role (or expertise) is passed along through the family line. Xinkui said that
many of her husband’s ancestors were shigong, but this heritage had been dis-
continued for two generations. Then Xinkui’s parents-in-law fell ill. They went
to consult with a spirit medium and were told, “The ancestors want someone
to inherit the line.” The elder brother had thus become a shigong.
This brother got married two years after Xinkui joined the family. The new
bride enjoyed more privileges than Xinkui. For example, while Xinkui had to
work in the fields, her sister-in-law only needed to take care of household
chores. But Xinkui made no complaint: “After all, she was formally married
into the family, and I was just ‘taken in.’” She explained, “If they refused to
keep you, you had no place to go.”
In 1946, not long after the new bride had married in, the groom was con-
scripted. Since the mid-1920s, Jiangyong had suffered three phases of con-
scription: the civil war between Kuomintang and Communist parties in 1927–
1937, the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945, and then the second
Kuomintang-Communist civil war which led to the Communist Liberation in
1949. One local saying perfectly describes the continuous warfare: “How diffi-
cult it is to be a man of Hunan? / With a belt and one gun / He stands guard

after supper / Stands guard from midnight till dawn” 湖南良子最難當 / 一根
皮帶一根槍 / 吃了夜飯去放哨 / 夜裡放哨到天光.6
According to the initial conscription regulations, if a family had three sons,
one of them would be enlisted; for a family with four sons, it was a pair. But
by the late 1940s, after repeated drafting, manpower resources had shrunk
and the actual practice was to enlist one out of two, or two out of three sons.
If one did not cultivate good relations with local administrative leaders, even
a single son was conscripted. The purpose was to extort money from the
draftee’s family; Yanxin’s grandmother had been one who fell victim to this
system. Others would choose a different way to fulfill the conscription duty:
Instead of bribing the official in charge, they might purchase a substitute.
When Xinkui’s brother-in-law received his conscription notice, his wife cried
day and night, demanding that her in-laws purchase someone to take her hus-
band’s place. Such a substitute was not too difficult to find. After a long period
of war, the rural economy was in ruins and many poor families faced a sur-
vival crisis. Xinkui’s in-laws found a man who was willing to submit himself
in exchange of one thousand kilograms of grain, which was to support his
elderly mother.
In addition to bribery or purchasing a substitute, a last resort for families
facing conscription was to help their sons escape. Yuting’s father has two
brothers, and all three of them left home. Yuting’s father fled to Zhaixia 宅下
Village in Shangjiangxu to work as hired labor; his two brothers went to
Xiawan and Tangxia villages, leaving their mother alone at home. Their mother
was disabled, so the three sons had to send her food from time to time.
The family Yuting’s father worked for at that time was headed by a regiment
commander in the Kuomintang army. “He was also a landlord. He treated me
very well—food and clothes, nothing was wanting,” said Yuting’s father. “His
younger brother was fond of me as well. He wanted me to serve in his army.”
It is ironic that Yuting’s father fled to escape conscription, but still ended up a
soldier. “I joined the 46th Company of Baoshan, stationed at Jiangyong High
School. . . . I served there for two years.” In 1949, threatened by the Commu-
nist army, the Kuomintang’s Baoshan company retreated to Hengyang 衡陽 in
Hunan Province preparatory to transferring to Taiwan. But they arrived one
day late, and the last plane had taken off. Yuting’s father could only return to
Jiangyong. Every time he met me, he always mentioned this: “You know, I
almost came to your Taiwan.”
Yuting’s father, Tan Yunde 譚運德 (hereafter Tan), recalled, “Before I es-
caped to Zhaixia, I had actually been enlisted and taken away by some cadres.
I, together with other ten villagers, went to Xinkui’s affinal home to get her
brother-in-law for conscription. I saw her that day: She was holding a cob of
corn and eating it.” Tan never imagined that the child bride of this family
would become his wife 15 years later.
6
Chanted by Tan Yunde and recorded in October 2000.
| Gendered Words
146
Director of Women’s Affairs
In the winter of 1950, Xinkui’s child groom graduated, and the couple finally
was formally married. But being married did not change their lives very much.
They were still apart most of the time. Two months after their wedding,
Xinkui’s husband, without any discussion with his family, joined the military.
Instead of yielding to forced conscription, he enlisted of his own free will,
summoned by the call to “resist US aggression and aid Korea” (kangmei yu-
anchao 抗美援朝).
Although marriage did not change Xinkui’s life, a series of reforms brought
about by the 1949 Liberation did. Land reform abolished the traditional
tenant-landlord system and demanded that everyone, male and female, go to
work in the paddy fields. This was a huge challenge for the “upstairs girls” and
the “short-footed women,” but not for Xinkui, who was used to doing farm
work. Besides, although small in stature, no more than five feet tall, Xinkui
was physically strong: She could carry more than 50 kilograms at a time. She
was also morally determined and able to bear hardship. Because of her know-
ledge of farm work and physical strength, plus her integrity and hardworking
nature, Xinkui was promoted to the position of Director of Women’s Affairs at
the brigade level in 1953. The most crucial factor in this recognition, however,
was her status as a child bride, which fit perfectly with the ideology of Com-
munist Proletariat Revolution. As Xinkui put it, “I had no father, no mother,
and was also a child bride—this is to say that I have a good chengfen 成分 [class
status].”
In addition to her personal qualities and chengfen, she had one more advan-
tage: no family resistance. In a traditional rural community like Jiangyong,
finding a female cadre who could work with men such as the party secretary
and chief of the production team all day long without eliciting her family’s
concern or gossip was difficult, especially when meetings sometimes did not
adjourn until midnight, or she had to at other times go away on official busi-
ness for ten days or more. A typical housewife would have to arrive home on
time to do the cooking and the household chores, but a woman like Xinkui
who had no family burden could be summoned to a meeting anywhere, at any
time. And of course, Xinkui added, “You had to have an upright heart, then no
rumors would be spread around.”
Xinkui’s superiors saw her high potential. “I would not have stayed in Ji-
angyong but could have gotten out of agriculture if I were literate,” said Xinkui.
Indeed, not long after she was appointed Director of Women’s Affairs, she was
nominated for preliminary status as a Communist, and in 1955, after two years
of observation and review, her Chinese Communist Party membership was
formalized.
As Director of Women’s Affairs, Xinkui’s duties involved political affairs,
production, education, and health care. Political affairs entailed mainly ideo-
logical and propaganda work. Persuading “upstairs girls” to take part in agri-
cultural work was one of her main challenges, since some of them declared

they would rather starve than labor. Even tougher was persuading women to
accept their husbands’ military service. Over the preceding two to three de-
cades, many families had gone bankrupt and many people had died in the
wars; soldiers who had volunteered to fight in resistance to the United States
and to support Korea often came home maimed or disabled. In the villagers’
minds, there was nothing good about being a solider. Xinkui understood this
very well, and she had no intention to try and change their thinking. What
she did was to persuade village women to consent to their husbands’ enroll-
ment, with the understanding that whether a husband could pass the physi-
cal examination and actually be enrolled was a different issue. Xinkui ex-
plained: “Military service was a form of ideological propaganda, and a
woman’s giving consent meant that ideological education would be carried
through.” She proudly stated, “The percentage of carry-through reached as
high as 90 percent.”
Production included the construction of reservoirs, steel making, and deep
plowing of the fields. China implemented the Great Leap Forward policies
from 1958 and 1960, with steel production and People’s Communes (including
the communal dining system) as their major focuses.7 It was hoped that China
could “surpass Great Britain and catch up with the United States” (chaoying
ganmei 超英趕美) in 15 years. A steel factory was set up in the county town, and
a mining exploration zone was established in Tongshanling (literally ‘copper
mountain ridge’), where Xinkui served for some time. “Other people explored
the ores, and I was responsible for smashing the big rock into small pieces and
throwing them into the stoves to smelt,” said Xinkui. There were many stoves
across Jiangyong, but only two were “women’s stoves.” Xinkui was commander
of one such stove (the other was in Huangjialing Township). As commander,
Xinkui supervised hundreds of women, and she was constantly pestered by
their requests for leaves of absence. Every woman was entitled to get two days
off during menstruation, but if Xinkui gave permissions as requested, the pro-
duction index assigned by her superiors would fall short. “The issue of leaves
always caused me headaches,” she recalled.
In industry, production centered on steel making; in agriculture, it was
grain cultivation. In 1958 the idea of deep plowing was promoted in hopes of
raising productivity. Although many peasants knew by experience that disturb-
ing the soil too deeply was not necessarily conducive to productivity, it did not
matter; what mattered was that it was done and done in the spirit of experi-
mentation. Xinkui understood this well, so “I secretly plowed the soil a bit
shallower.”
Education meant building nurseries and kindergartens. Xinkui explained:
“Since almost every adult had to work in the fields and leave their children
unattended, some little kids drowned while playing in the water.” If there were
institutions to take care of them, women then would have no fear of such
7
More than 1,400 People’s Communes were established in Jiangyong, and 40,000 workers were
sent to make steel (Jiangyong xianzhi 1995:24).
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trouble. This was a good idea but not practical, since not every production
team could afford such an arrangement. Xinzhai succeeded in this regard, but
Hujia Village did not. One major reason was distance. The Hujia production
team comprised many widely scattered villages, and parents taking extra time
to get their kids to school before work meant lower productivity.
Health care was another big issue. With the vast malnutrition that resulted
from the Great Leap Forward, many villagers suffered from edema, especially
in 1959–1960. A mutual-aid convalescent hospital was erected in Fuqiaotou
浮橋頭 Village, and more than a hundred patients were sent there. Xinkui was
once assigned to work there, not as a commander but as a staffer. “I delivered
meals and brought them water for washing themselves.” Xinkui asked her
sworn sister to come with her for this job, a relationship she had formed while
working smelting iron in Tongshanling.
Dealing with domestic affairs was also part of Xinkui’s duties. She had to
find ways to resolve conflicts between husband and wife. Before Liberation,
there had been wife selling but no divorce; after Liberation, women became
aware of this new right. “A woman with children from Hujia Village requested
a divorce: The couple accused each other of eating on the sly.” Xinkui added,
“From the village brigade’s standpoint, we of course encourage reunion, but
that couple ended up separating.”
Caught Between a Husband and a Brother
While Xinkui took the post as Director of Women’s Affairs, her husband
served in the army and was stationed at Mount Heng 衡山 in northern Hunan.
During this period he did not return home even once, even when his mother
passed away. Six years later, he retired from service and was assigned to work
in Zhangjiajie 張家界 in western Hunan. Once, during a business trip to
Changsha, Hunan’s provincial capital, he visited Jiangyong for three days—
the first and only time he returned to his hometown. Before he left, he asked
Xinkui to go back with him to Zhangjiajie where he worked, but Xinkui was
tied up with conscription work at the time. Two months later, her husband
wrote to ask her again to visit, and this time, with her coworkers’ encourage-
ment, she made the trip.
This was the first time Xinkui had traveled away from home. Although it
was much safer back then than today, it was undoubtedly a long trip. She took
a bus from Jiangyong to Lingling, where she caught the train to Changsha.
Xinkui was lucky enough to make a new friend in Lingling who hired a tricycle
cab for her when they got off the train. Xinkui was illiterate, and her husband
had given her a written address for the lodge where they were supposed to
meet. But when the cab arrived at the address given, there was no such place.
Stuck in a strange city and knowing no one, Xinkui began to cry; but crying
would not solve her problem, so she looked around and found the only lodge
in the area. She entered and asked if there was a guest registered in her

husband’s name. The clerk answered, “Yes, there is. You might want to check
over there,” and he pointed toward the dining hall. Xinkui walked in just as her
husband happened to be walking out, so they finally met up. It turned out that
her husband had made a mistake when writing out the name of the lodge.
That was a difficult trip for Xinkui, not only because of the distance but also
because of her organizational commitments and obtaining food. Being a Chi-
nese Communist Party member was a high honor and required commitment.
If one failed to participate in party assemblies or activities for three months,
one’s membership would be revoked. Xinkui was not sure how long she would
be away from home. To maintain her status, she had to transfer her registra-
tion from her hometown to her husband’s place. The party secretary in
Zhangjiajie happened to be someone from Jianghua, a county adjacent to Ji-
angyong; this made Xinkui a sort of tongxiang 同鄉 ‘from the same home-
town’, and therefore the transfer procedure went smoothly. In China, geo-
graphic associations remain an important resource for people who are traveling
or doing business away from home.
Her party registration had to be transferred, and so did her food rations.
During the People’s Commune era (1958–1984), all food was distributed by the
government. As a Director of Women’s Affairs, Xinkui was entitled to two cat-
ties of grain, and the Jiangyong authorities had issued approval for transfer-
ring that entitlement to Zhangjiajie where Xinkui would stay. But the authori-
ties in Zhangjiajie refused to accept it because of household registration issues.
Xinkui belonged to a rural household, but her husband was a city employee, so
despite their marital tie, their household statuses were simply incompatible.
Unable to make the transfer work, the Jiangyong authorities in the end had to
mail the food certificates to Xinkui at Zhangjiajie.
With her food certificates taken care of, Xinkui was supposed to enjoy some
leisure time with her husband, but she had labored all her life and felt uneasy
not working. Her husband noticed this and said to her, “You seem bored; let
me introduce you to some work place.” Xinkui answered, “Sure.” Soon he had
arranged for her to work at a pig farm, but the wages she earned never reached
her hand. Xinkui visited her husband in August and stayed there until she hur-
ried home in October, but the pig farm distributed the wages only at the end of
the year, so all her earnings went to “the man of Lima,” the term Xinkui used
to refer to the husband she had been betrothed to as a child.
She stayed with the man of Lima for only two months, not because she
could not get used to the non-agricultural lifestyle, but because she wished to
complete arrangements for her own brother’s wedding as soon as she could.
Like Xinkui, her brother had been engaged when he was still a baby. Liberation
not only caused a change in political regime but also freed people from the
bondage of traditional practices, including childhood betrothals. Xinkui’s
brother’s family assets had all been gambled away by their uncle. With her
family impoverished, Xinkui was afraid that the family of her brother’s be-
trothed might cancel the marriage agreement. She wished to have the wedding
settled while she still had an official post and some power.
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When Xinkui returned to Jiangyong, she immediately proceeded with her
brother’s marriage arrangements. She never expected to see the successful
marriage of her brother come at the expense of losing her own husband.
Two months after returning to Jiangyong, she received a letter from her
husband, a request for divorce. What had happened?
“Back then, we were both immature. . . . He left in ’51, and then I went to see
him in ’58—that’s it. And we were divorced in ’59.”
When mentioning this divorce, Xinkui did not show any emotion. She even
mocked herself: “After the divorce and before coming here in ’64, I enjoyed
some fun for a number of years, you see.” (Xinkui’s “coming here” refers to her
remarriage to Tan, Yuting’s father.)
This was the first time Yuting had heard her mother speak about “the man
of Lima”; it was also the first time she learned of her mother’s being married
and abandoned. She was eager to find out why her mother’s first marriage had
fallen apart after her visit to Zhangjiajie. She asked, “Mom, during your stay
there, was he nice to you?”
Xinkui answered, “Not bad, and we didn’t have any arguments.”
She added, “He had given me a watch and wanted me to wear it, but I
didn’t.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I didn’t feel like wearing it. If you work in the city, it’s fine to wear a watch.
But I lived in the village; it didn’t fit,” Xinkui explained.
“Was it his watch or did he purchase a new one for you?” Gongming
asked.
“His.”
“Could it be that because it was a man’s watch you didn’t wear it?” Gong-
ming followed up.
“What if he purchased a women’s style for you, would you have worn it?”
Yuting asked.
“I wouldn’t have taken it, either. In those days, how many women wore
watches?” said Xinkui.
“That’s why he wanted to divorce you. You were short on romantic attrac-
tion.” After saying these words to her mother, Yuting turned to me and said
with a tinge of disappointment, “My mom has to take some responsibility for
this divorce.”
Gongming disagreed. He said to his wife, “That’s your guess.”
Gongming’s father-in-law, Tan, expressed his opinion as well: “I thought the
man should be held accountable. ‘You called me to come over there, and I
came. You told me to work wherever, and I followed your wishes.’”
“And she stayed there raising pigs for two months,” Gongming continued.
Tan added, “It was fine for her to work at a pig farm, but the man of Lima
should have dealt with her household registration. I have to criticize him for
this. He should have made some arrangement for her, but he just gave her
some money and sent her back. And when she went back, he wrote to di-
vorce her.”

Xinkui spoke up in defense of her former husband: “He did, but it didn’t
work out.”
Tan was not convinced. In a reproachful tone, he commented, “This man
had a different idea.”
Xinkui spoke up for him once again: “He spent several days trying to deal
with the matter.”
If the household registration could not be settled, there was no way Xinkui
could have stayed there for long, so Yuting asked, “Mom, when you returned,
did he escort you back?”
“No, he just took me to the bus station,” Xinkui said.
From Zhangjiajie to Jiangyong, Xinkui had to first take a long-distance bus
to Changde 常德, stay there overnight, and in the early morning transfer to
another bus to Changsha. From there she took the train to Lingling, where she
spent another night, and finally she took the bus to Jiangyong the following
day. How could a man let his young wife travel alone, especially if she was
illiterate?
Xinkui sighed, “Alas, he did not escort me home. He didn’t want to.”
“Did he mention divorce while you were there?” Yuting asked.
“No! Never!” Tan answered this question for his wife.
Yuting wanted to hear the answer from her mother. She asked again, “Did
he talk about divorce during your two-month stay there?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He sent her back like sending away a ghost,” Tan was blunt about his feel-
ings toward his wife’s former husband.
But Xinkui again defended him, “He did ask me to stay, but I insisted on
coming home anyway.”
“Why did you have to come home?” Gongming wondered.
“I had to. Guogou was at home. If I didn’t come back, the family line would
be disrupted.” Guogou, the only heir of the family, had to marry, or there would
be no son to continue Xinkui’s natal descent line.
“Had you thought about going back there after Uncle was married?” Yuting
anxiously asked.
“I didn’t want to.”
“Why not? How could you just let him decide whether to divorce or not?”
Tan felt aggrieved for his wife.
But Xinkui had her pride. She said, “If he wanted to divorce me, just let
him. Let him find someone else.” Changing to a tone of sarcasm, she contin-
ued, “I heard that a tailor had visited often to entice him. She lived not far away
from his work place. You come to my place and I come to yours—wouldn’t
they just turn ‘wild’ [have an affair]?”
“What’s the reason he gave for the divorce?” asked Yuting.
“Not bearing children.”
“How could he know you couldn’t? You had been at home.”
“I was there for a certain period of time and showed no sign of getting
pregnant.”
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Just as I was wondering, “Wouldn’t it be too harsh to expect someone to get
pregnant in only two months?” I heard Yuting ask, “Did he come home for the
divorce?”
“No!”
“He could file for divorce without showing up?” Gongming was surprised.
“Yes, he could,” said Xinkui.
Tan then commented, “That man was insincere and malicious. . . . He had
plotted all this.”
“If he was not here, how could he proceed with the divorce?” Yuting asked.
“Why not? One letter sufficed. He wanted the divorce and I did not object to
it, so he just wrote a letter to the superior of the area, [and it was done],” said
Xinkui.
Without being asked, Xinkui continued, “He was dying to have a baby.”
Yuting said, “How strange! You had none with him, but you had so many
with Father.”
Xinkui proudly answered, “I was pregnant within a month after coming to
your father’s.”
Yuting offered, “The problem could be on his part.”
Xinkui replied, “I heard that he also had many.”
Tan then turned to his wife, asking, “You went to the hospital and had some
scan, right?”
“Not a scan,” Xinkui countered.
“No? You did. He wanted to know if you could bear children.”
“Not a scan. I just went for an examination of my uterus. Did you think that
was to check my fertility? . . . It was to check my menstruation. I went to the
hospital on my own.”
“Did he ask you to?” I asked.
“He did.”
“And the results?”
“It said that my uterus was a bit retroverted. I then went to have another
gynecological examination.”
“What did the doctor say about your fertility?”
“He didn’t specify. He just said everything was okay, except the
retroversion.”
“The verdict of the divorce clearly cites the examination,” Tan added.
Xinkui laughed, saying, “He [Tan] has taken care to preserve that verdict!
The land certificate is also in his possession.”
“What was written on the verdict?” Gongming was curious.
“That there was no kid,” Xinkui answered.
Tan said to his wife, “He must have been seeing someone else already
before you visited—otherwise, why would he divorce you?”
Yuting agreed, “That was his plan.”
“It was certainly a plot. You see, he hadn’t written home for five or six
years. Why then suddenly ask her to visit? And then some time later, he wrote
again, saying that the family descendants are not many and since you can’t

get pregnant, let’s get divorced.” Tan had gotten worked up and used coarse
language to reproach the man of Lima: “This man sucks. . . . Shit! He is worse
than a dog.”
Xinkui again spoke up for her former husband: “He had written once or
twice before he brought up the issue [of divorce].”
“So what did he say in his earlier letters?”
“He inquired after his father, his sister-in-law, his niece, and the like. He
mentioned divorce in his third letter.”
Tan explained to us, “His reason was that his family’s descent line was frag-
ile. For the sake of the family, let’s work this out harmoniously. . . . He wrote to
the local officials and asked them to deal with the matter for him.”
Seeing her children take such an interest in her past, Xinkui went upstairs
to look for her yellowed divorce paper and showed it to us. In the column
“reason of divorce,” it was written “Parent-arranged marriage, child bride, the
woman has ailments, both volunteer to dissolve their marital relation.”
It became apparent that the man of Lima had deliberately asked Xinkui to
go to the hospital for the exam, so with results in hand he could divorce her.
“What came to your mind when you were informed of the divorce?” Gong-
ming was concerned about his mother-in-law’s feelings.
“What came to my mind? Nothing. If he wants a divorce, then let’s
divorce.”
“Didn’t you feel disturbed?” Gongming followed up.
Xinkui answered, “I had no child with him. What could I do?”
“You had known him all those years. Did you develop any feelings toward
each other?” Yuting asked.
“With no children, it’s hard to develop feelings,” Xinkui admitted.
“Were you angry when you got the [divorce] letter?” Yuting asked.
“Angry? What could you do about it?”
“Were you?” Yuting asked again.
“Of course, I was. How could I not be? . . . After all, we were together for
only those two months. But what could I say? I had no children for him.”
“Did you blame him?”
“No, I blamed myself.”
“Holding the divorce paper, what did you think?”
“What did I think? That I would ‘play’ [i.e., be single] for a few years. If I got
tired of it, I would ‘go’ [i.e., remarry].”
Xinkui had even thought about remaining single. She remembered, “After
I fell ill I decided to go; otherwise, why should I?”
“What was the illness?” Gongming asked.
Xinkui answered, “I didn’t know what it was; I just couldn’t move, couldn’t
get up, couldn’t eat a thing. . . . The other housemates thought I had left for a
meeting. It was not until I had to call for water that they knew. They immedi-
ately went to Hujia to inform your aunt.”
“How come you got so seriously ill?” Gongming asked.
“I fainted all of a sudden and had a very high temperature.”
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154
Tan commented, “It was because she had overworked.”
Gongming nodded. He knew all too well that his mother-in-law was always
working, here and there, without a moment of rest.
Tan explained to me, “You see, her hunched back, sore lower back, and foot
pain all came on because she was always standing in cold water. She always
rolled up her pants to cut firewood or collect weeds for the pigs.”
“I was transferred to many places, but wherever it was I had to work in
water,” said Xinkui.
Tan concluded, “True, during her years in Lima, it was always like that.”
In 1962, Xinkui fulfilled her final duty as the child bride of her foster
family: She buried her father-in-law. When she spoke of this, Xinkui displayed
a seldom-revealed emotion toward her first husband: “When the old man was
sick, we wrote to him and called him up, asking him to come back. But he
didn’t show, nor did he send a cent home—this made me quite angry. I thought,
‘What a malicious heart you have! Your father is dying and you do nothing!’”
When Xinkui’s mother-in-law passed away, it was Xinkui’s brother-in-law, the
ritualist, who took care of the funeral. But then this brother also died, and his
wife remarried. Xinkui was the only one left. When she buried the old man,
she even had his coffin painted, to make it look more decent. At that time,
Xinkui was already divorced but still she did all this out of gratitude. In her
words, “After all, I had lived there with them for so many years.”
Remarriage
Xinkui’s divorce was made known only among the party cadres; she intention-
ally hid it from the other villagers. On the one hand, this was because she
wanted to enjoy her carefree youth: “It was a lot of fun. No one to supervise
you, discipline you, or direct you in what to do. You could go out to meet
friends or attend meetings.” On the other hand, it helped her avoid sexual ha-
rassment: “If they knew you were alone, some would approach and try to get
close to you.” In the 1960s, divorced single women were very rare, and men
might well have taken liberties with her by verbal harassment, physical contact,
or stalking.
After two or three years, however, more and more villagers came to know
about it. and some began to propose marriage. She had admirers from many
villages. Some of them had never married before; some already had children,
and others were party cadres. But none of them caught Xinkui’s eye. Xinkui
explained to Yuting, “I said clearly that it had to be decided by your uncle
[Xinkui’s brother]. ‘If he’d agree, I’d agree.’”
Xinkui got along very well with her brother and the brother’s wife. For
Xinkui, her brother and sister-in-law were just like parents to her.
Tan added, “He has only one sister, and she has only one brother. I’ll help
you make a decision, and you help me.”
“Yes, two can think better than one,” Xinkui said.

Then, how was her marriage to Tan arranged?
“It happened through the introduction of the party secretary,” Xinkui an-
swered with a smile.
Tan, born in 1930, is a peasant of Tuqiangwu 土牆屋, a village adjacent
to Xinkui’s affinal village, Lima, and her natal one, Hujia. Compared to the
hundred-household Hujia, Tuqiangwu is quite small, with only fifty or so
households. Many of Shangjiangxu villages are single-surnamed, populated
over hundreds of years by one single family. For example, the Hujia (literally,
Hu families) villagers are mostly surnamed Hu 呼. Tuqiangwu was an excep-
tion: Its villagers migrated there just one hundred years ago and had various
surnames. That this place was available for the new residents to explore also
suggests that the soil there was not very suitable for rice cultivation. A local
saying describes it as follows: “The lands in Tuqiangwu are small; in nine
years out of ten, there is no harvest. You come here with two empty hands, and
you soon run away at night.” It is also said, “If you have a daughter, never
marry her to Tuqiangwu.”
Before Liberation, to escape from forced conscription, Tan worked in
Zhaixia Village and later served in the Kuomintang army, from which he saved
14 official silver dollars (about the value of fourteen catties of grain), with
which he purchased two acres of land. Not long after he purchased his own
land, however, the nationwide land reform of 1950–1953 was implemented in
Jiangyong. All lands were supposed to be confiscated and redistributed. Tan
had developed feelings for his land and he insisted on keeping his original
parcel, even if the share he stood to gain by distribution was larger and better.
His strong stand earned him the label of “local king” (tubazhu 土霸主), a term
often used to refer to the exploiting landlord class, which was denounced and
banished in the early Communist years. But Tan did not care at all—that is his
personality. To avoid trouble, most people refrained from mentioning any as-
sociation they had with the Kuomintang, which had been at war with Chinese
Communist Party in the 1940s, but Tan was fearless. He often said, “If you ask
me which party is better, Kuomintang or Communist, I’d say they are equally
good.”
Although a bit unyielding, Tan is a diligent, honest, and righteous peas-
ant. Once the idea of People’s Communes began to germinate in 1954, he
played important roles in many arenas. Strictly speaking, the People’s Com-
mune was put into practice in 1958, but it developed via a process that
started with small-scale agricultural cooperative organizations, the so-called
mutual-aid groups (huzhu zu 互助組). Land reform allowed peasants to
own their lands. But owning land was only the first step; what was also
needed was the means to cultivate crops, including draft buffalo and agri-
cultural tools. Besides, once the lands were evenly distributed, each share
was too small to work efficiently and economically. Some peasants thus
came up with the idea of a cooperative mode of production, with several
households working together as a unit, sharing their buffalo, agricultural
tools, and human labor. This was the basic schema of the mutual-aid group.
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When the scale of mutual cooperation expanded from households to the
village level, it was called a “primary commune” (chuji she 初級社), and
when it developed beyond village boundaries, it was an “advanced com-
mune” (gaoji she 高級社). In Jiangyong, by the end of 1956, 583 advanced
communes had been established, with about 96.7 percent of households
taking part in this cooperative mode of production (Jiangyong xianzhi
1995:23). The advanced commune eventually developed into a system that
controlled both politics and the economy, that is, the People’s Commune.
Along with political and economic control came ideological education for
the purpose of purging reactionaries. In 1963 the “Poor and Lower-Middle
Peasant Association” (Pinxia zhongnong xiehui 貧下中農協會) was set up,
with the aim to instill socialist education in the minds of peasants, encour-
aging them to compare the new liberated society with the old feudal one
and to develop gratitude from testimony reminding them about their mis-
erable past. This association disappeared from China’s political stage in the
1980s when the nation adjusted its policies toward openness and engage-
ment with the rest of the world.
Tan was a leader in a mutual-aid group in the 1950s and chairperson of the
local Poor and Lower-Middle Peasant Association from 1965. From 1971, he
also served ten years as the village party secretary. But his greatest delight is
talking about building a reservoir for the village. The villagers of Tuqiangwu
could now enjoy running water at home, instead of walking miles to a well as
most Jiangyong villagers did. From a political point of view, his greatest honor
was being selected to serve as one of two deputies to the People’s Congress of
Yongzhou 永州 for the Ninth Party Congress held in Beijing in 1969. (Yong-
zhou, also known as Lingling, is the administrative unit supervising Jiangyong
and eight other counties.) At the Party Congress, Tan met Chairman Mao and
stated his personal belief: “All cadres and officials, regardless of rank, are the
civilians’ orderlies.”
Tan and Xinkui held their wedding in 1964. Tan seemed to be fated to an
association with child brides. Strictly speaking, he had two marriages, but in
name he had three, and all three were child brides. The first wife lost her par-
ents at age 13. With no one willing to raise her, her aunt introduced her to Tan’s
parents. Since Tan was born when his mother was 32 and father 42, consid-
ered late among Jiangyong people, this orphan girl was brought home as a
child bride to help take care of the younger boy, but she died before reaching
marriageable age.
Tan’s first actual marriage took place in 1954; that wife had also been a
child bride, but not with Tan. She had lost her parents at age four, was sent
to her betrothed’s home, and married there at age 17. Not long after the wed-
ding, her husband was taken away to serve in the army. That half-month of
marital life left her pregnant, and at the end of the year she gave birth to a
daughter, who was named “Liberation,” for it was the year of Liberation. Un-
fortunately, although the 1949 Liberation brought in a new China, the social
ideology of son preference had not changed. After receiving no word from

her conscripted husband, the woman was remarried to Tan, and her only
child was abandoned in the street because her husband’s lineage members
were unwilling to waste family resources on a girl who would eventually
marry out. When Tan learned about the abandoned child, he took her in and
raised her as his stepdaughter. Tan and this wife had two sons, but the eldest
died in infancy. As the younger son told me, “My mother carried my brother
on her back while cooking. But because the kitchen was too smoky, one day
the baby choked and died.”
Between 1959 and 1961, with the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the rural
economy was ravaged and there were serious, chronic food shortages. To fight
off starvation, then 12-year-old Liberation went to the mountains to search for
wild edible plants. She was delighted to find a patch of wild mushrooms. She
picked a few and took them home, never dreaming that they would take her
mother’s life. At that time, Tan led a road construction team building the main
road through Jiangyong. Every day he left home in the early morning and
walked two hours to the construction site, from Shangjiangxu to Yunshan
Township. Losing his wife left the kids unattended, so Tan had to bring his two
children to work. The younger one, named Guoquan, was only six—too little to
walk such a long distance. To carry him, Tan used a shoulder pole with two
baskets: Little Guoquan rode in one basket and a big rock went in the other for
balance. Liberation was old enough to walk on her own, but “I tripped all the
time,” she remembered.
In those days, a Communist Party leader took care of not only ideological
education and production, but also his subordinates’ family life. Since Tan had
lost his “female guest” (nüke)—a term Jiangyong people used to refer to a
wife—the party boss allowed him to quit his post with the road construction
team and return to his home village. In the meantime, he searched for an ideal
partner for Tan. Thinking both Tan and Xinkui were dutiful single cadres, he
proposed to Tan, “Let me do something good for you. The way you are now is
not like having a real home. How about letting her [Xinkui] come to your place?”
At this suggestion, Tan shook his head, saying seriously. “This is not some-
thing you can joke about.” Like others, Tan did not know Xinkui was
divorced.
The party secretary reassured him, “Her divorce was processed under my
supervision.” Tan then agreed.
At that time, Tan already had a good impression of Xinkui because “She
came to take care of my two children all the time—say, to bathe them. . . . The
little Guoquan was especially attached to her, following her wherever she
went.” Tan said, “In those days, doing this sort of thing was called sixiang hao
思想好’ [righteous thinking]—that is, to be altruistic, always leaving conve-
nience to others but taking up difficulty oneself.”
Now that the superior had proposed his marriage to Xinkui, Tan called on
his brother Chengcheng to make the arrangements. Interestingly Chengcheng
brought the marriage proposal not to Xinkui but to her brother. Both Xinkui’s
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158
brother and his wife were satisfied with this proposal. Her brother’s wife often
said to Xinkui, “Sister, he went out for meetings again, you should go over
there and check on his children.” The other villagers knew about Xinkui taking
care of Tan’s household chores and teased Tan, “Lucky you. She has not given
her consent to any one else, but this time the ‘crying-face lady’ seems to agree.”
Many people called Xinkui “crying-face lady” (kulian po 哭臉婆) behind her
back because she was always quite serious.
Xinkui’s coworkers in Women’s Affairs, however, were not optimistic about
this match. One thought Tan was not handsome enough, saying, “The guy
from Ganyi is nicer looking.” Others did not like the desolation and remote-
ness of the place Xinkui was about to marry to: “Anywhere else is better! Why
go to Tuqiangwu to be eaten by tigers?” But Xinkui did not care: “If that’s the
way it is, just let it be.” Tan himself would never agree that his home village was
inferior to others. From his point of view, “The water, the mountains, the trees
here are all better.”
In fact, before returning from his post with the road construction team
to Tuqiangwu, Tan had received another match proposal, with another di-
rector of Women’s Affairs who worked in the county seat. If Tan had mar-
ried that woman, he would stayed at the political center of the county, and
his career would have been more promising, but he eventually decided to go
back to his old home: “I loved the pines, the firs, and those two old houses
[in Tuqiangwu].”
Concerning his match with Xinkui, however, there was one thing about
which Tan felt uncertain. “To be my wife, she had to be a good cook.” Tan was
not sure whether Xinkui’s cooking style suited his taste. Hearing those words,
Xinkui knew what Tan meant and immediately cut in, “Of course, if you eat
alone, salty is better.”
Xinkui said this because a few days before their wedding, Tan went to
Xinkui’s place to move her things to his home, including jars of preserved
vegetables, such as ginger, hot pepper, daikon, and beans. Preserved vegeta-
bles, called suanxian 酸鹹 ‘sour and salty’, have long been part of Jiangyong’s
culinary culture. Before moving them, Tan had opened each jar and tasted
them, one by one. And he almost backed out: “Good Heavens! So salty—my
tongue even swelled up.”
“Of course, salty is better; it can stimulate the appetite,” Xinkui laughed,
defending herself.
“I held these jars and my heart was pounding—thump, thump, thump. I
said to myself, ‘Well, well, well, what can I do now? It’s too late to cancel the
wedding.’”
Tan turned to Xinkui and said, “Even after we married, I said this to you
many times. If I had known about those jars earlier, I definitely would not have
married you.”
Xinkui laughed, turning to me, “My preserved vegetables are saltier, and his
are always more sour.”

Toiling, Working, and Working Harder
One year after their marriage, Tan and Xinkui had their first son, named Mei-
quan; two years later, they had a baby girl. Since Tan had two sons already (one
with his former wife), he wished to have more daughters, so he named this girl
Laiyu 來玉, literally ‘coming jade’; he hoped that her birth could bring him more
“jades” (daughters). Indeed, in 1969 and 1974, they had another two daughters.
Laiyu, when grown up, changed her name to Yuting, literally “standing up like
pure jade.” She said, “Although I was born in a remote mountain village, I did not
want to be looked down upon. I wished to be like a lotus flower, which stands
upright and remains pure, even though it grows out of the mud.”
After having her own baby, Xinkui still went out to meetings all the time.
One day when she got home, it was past midnight. Seeing her husband still up
holding her son and sitting beside the pond with the dog, waiting for her to
come home, she knew that it was time to make up her mind. In 1965 she quit
her post and became a full-time housewife. She left all the political affairs to
Tan. Xinkui said, “He is stronger than me. . . . He has the eloquence and he can
control the situation.”
Xinkui and Tan got married when the “socialist education movement” (she-
jiao 社教 1964–1966), also known as the “four purifications movement” (siqing
四清), was first implemented. Originally this movement sought to correct bu-
reaucratic corruption in the areas of recording work points, accounting, prop-
erty, and warehousing. Then it was expanded to cleanse the bureaucracy of
reactionary elements, particularly in the political, economic, organizational,
and ideological domains. Part of the campaign involved sending “reactionary”
intellectuals to the countryside to learn from the peasants; it was also meant to
eradicate the old traditions and create new ones. Corresponding to the four
purifications movement was the establishment of the Poor and Middle-Lower
Peasant Association: The former focused on the ideological reform of bureau-
crats and intellectuals, and the latter was to inculcate socialist ideas and an
understanding of class struggle among the peasants. The mentality of purge,
struggle, and destruction eventually snowballed into the ten-year Proletariat
Cultural Revolution, which started in 1966.
When purification movement officials went to the village to do their inves-
tigations, Tan was the brigade’s accountant, Xinkui its Director of Women’s
Affairs, and his brother Chengcheng was deputy party secretary. All of them
became targets. The officials were rigid and mean: “They took away boxes of
materials and did not allow you to do your job—they just interrogated you. I
once broke up a chicken cage and tried to burn it to get warm, but they wouldn’t
allow it,” Tan said.
“You also had no right to speak,” Xinkui added.
In addition to corrupt cadres, tradition was also a reactionary element that
had to be eliminated. The officials searched out any “feudal” articles, such as
the masks worn during local drama performances, and burned them. The vil-
lagers could not accept this and they attacked the officials. Although Tan was
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unhappy about the officials’ domineering methods, he objected to any vio-
lence. He stood up and told the instigators: “If you hit the socialist education
officials, I will use clubs to whip you guys.”
Once Tan made it clear that overt violence would not work, the villagers de-
veloped more subtle approaches. The officials were each supposed to provide
the head of the household where they stayed with a small sum together with a
food certificate for rice, and accordingly the host was expected to prepare them
a meal. But hosts served them only sweet potato and dishes cooked without oil.
The officials eventually became afflicted with edema. Tan felt sorry for them,
so now and then he invited them to get supplementary nutrition at his place.
But the supplement was also minimal: “We added a little meat to the home-
made bean curd, and that’s what we ate.” The rural economy back then was
very difficult.
Since the officials found no sign of corruption in Tan, the superiors asked
him to chair the Poor and Lower-Middle Peasant Association and lead the peas-
ants. Tan proudly declared, “I was very ‘hot’ then.”
Being “hot” also means he was politically active. There were always superi-
ors and cadres coming to visit and discuss issues with him, and in such cases,
Tan had to treat them as guests. But his wages were quite limited, so how could
he come by enough food? For this he had Xinkui’s skillful hands and diligence
to thank.
Xinkui herself hardly mentioned the terrible toil of that period. It was
Yuting who shared with me her recollections.
In Yuting’s mind, her mother was always working, working, working. In
2010 she wrote:
Mother, whenever I think about you leaving home to work, my tears flow.
Seeing you stooped from overwork, my heart is as if cut by a knife. In my
mind, one scene keeps coming back. When I was still little, I once walked with
you to Dupang Mountain, going up and down along a ravine to pick grass for the
pigs. I couldn’t go any further; the bamboo basket weighed thousands of kilo-
grams on my back and I was unable to breathe. I shed tears because I had to carry
that heavy load from the bottom up to the ridge. I couldn’t move. The rest of our
group had moved on, and you, already carrying a full basket, put your hand on
my back to give me strength. Finally, by a peach tree, we stopped. You climbed up
the tree and pick a few peaches. You rubbed the peaches back and forth on your
clothes, and gave them to me. You told me to rest there, said that you would come
back to pick me up after carrying your basket to the ridge. When you bent down
and took my hands, I noticed your beautiful face was full of wrinkles and also the
white hairs that shouldn’t appear at your age. Seeing this, I didn’t say anything
but felt so sorry—I knew that it was because you worked too much and too hard
for your children. From that moment, I said to myself: I’ll strive; I’ll walk out of
this little village; I will create a good living environment for you. But incompetent
as I am, I have failed to realize this dream. And now whenever I go home, seeing
you stooped, I feel ashamed.

Dupang Mountain, about 2,000 meters high, is part of the Five Ridges
(Wuling), south of which was considered “barbarian” territory (Gong 1991:15).
Tuqiangwu is situated along Dupang, and therefore is a remote and desolate
village. The “grass for the pigs” Yuting mentions here is the plants used for
feed, such as leaves of the sweet potato, beet, and a plant called niuer 牛耳. To
prepare pig feed, one has to cut the leaves into pieces, cook them into a thick-
ened mass, and then add some grain husks and boil the swill. Raising pigs is
the major means by which peasants earn extra cash. Once Xinkui and Tan’s
wedding had been decided, Xinkui began raising pigs, and with the revenue
from selling them she paid the wedding costs. But raising pigs is an extremely
laborious job. In addition to the time spent preparing pig feed three times a
day, it involves collecting firewood and the plant material. A capable woman
raised two pigs at a time, but Xinkui always had three to eight pigs to take
care of. With that many, she had to go deeper into the mountains to collect
enough edible leaves. Yuting occasionally helped her mother with this task
when she was little, and she remembered, “I often hurt myself while cutting
wild grasses.”
After Yuting entered school, she went with her mother less frequently.
From lack of practice, she found herself unable to keep up with the others; vil-
lagers tended to go cutting “pig weeds” together as a group. To keep her daugh-
ter company, Xinkui walked with Yuting, falling far behind. “And the more you
fell behind, the more you felt scared,” said Yuting. She explained further:
I was afraid of ghosts and snakes. Whenever I saw a snake I jumped around and
would fall down bleeding. I didn’t have much stamina, either; especially when
the sun scorched my face, I lost all energy. And just thinking about walking that
far and carrying a heavy load up to the ridge . . . made me cry. So I walked and
cried. And there was nothing to eat. I was thirsty. That’s why my mother climbed
the tree to pick peaches for me. She also wanted me to rest there. Before she
left, she told me: “I’ll go up first and come down to get you. Don’t be scared. Just
stay here.”8
She added, “Life back then was very difficult. Every morning, before I went
to school, I had to go out with my mother to collect firewood. And after class, I
went herding the cows.”
Yuting said, “My parents did not send me to school at first, but I desper-
ately wanted to go.” In those days, when a child reached school age, the
teacher would visit his or her parents and urge them to send their child to
study. “So I told my middle brother, ‘I want to go to school, so tell your teacher
to visit us and get me into school.’” The teacher did pay a visit, but Xinkui
thought about keeping Yuting at home one more year: “My mother wanted
me to stay home to help.” But because of Yuting’s eagerness to study, Xinkui
did not insist. Yuting understood that her mother on her own could hardly
8
Narrated and recorded in July 2012.
| Gendered Words
162
manage the whole household, so she tried to be as helpful as she could, fetch-
ing water, cutting pig grass, herding the cows, and so on. Yuting proudly said,
“My record for herding cows was seven head. I took them to graze in the
mountains and I used the time to collect firewood, and then I walked the
cows home with the firewood.”
“Why were you herding so many cows?” I asked.
“We’re a big family and without corresponding income, we wouldn’t have
enough to eat.” Besides, “Many people came to discuss matters with my father,”
said Yuting.
Gongming then gave me some background information: “Can you guess
how many guests her family had? Even in my village [Tangbei], whenever you
mentioned Tan Yunde, villagers will tell you, ‘Oh, yes, I have been to his house
for a meal.’ And they were nobody, just regular peasants, but they would say
this. Sometimes I wondered why they traveled there. Anyway, if they passed by
his house, they went in and ate there.”
Yuting agreed, “Yes, there were lots. Many came to our production team to
borrow grain, because they didn’t have enough to eat. Basically, if you came to
see my father, he always took care of you. At that time, there were no cars; you
traveled by foot. And when you had walked from your own village to mine, it
was about noon. Wouldn’t we have to cook lunch for those visitors?”
“Would your mother complain about so many visitors?” I asked.
“She did. . . . And she was the one who worked and worked, how else would
a beautiful young lady like her become a hunchback?”
“Was it because your father was very strict with her?” I wondered.
“Not exactly. How to explain my father? . . . He took all the credit, and any
fault was all my mother’s. He scolded my mother all the time. And my mother
just endured it. Sometimes I think she was too tolerant. She probably just got
used to his scolding.”
Yuting then gave me an example. “There was the time my middle brother
hit me. Didn’t I go to my mother for help? ‘Mom, take a look here. Brother hit
me and it’s swelled up!’” Xinkui felt Yuting’s head and found four bumps. She
got so angry, she grabbed a stick and beat her son. But Yuting’s father stopped
her; he even knocked her to the ground.
“Alas, my father was busy with his own matters. . . . Basically it was my
mother who disciplined us. But the fact was, my mother didn’t have much
spare time, either. I must admit that the care we received from our parents was
too little; the training they gave us was very limited.”
Although the parents did not pay much attention to their children’s up-
bringing, all Yuting’s younger sisters, like Yuting, received a school education.
With different dispositions, each followed her own developmental trajectory.
The third sister of the family is filial and a good helper at home, but the second
one became addicted to gambling and because of this she got divorced and
became homeless.
Yuting’s elder brother Guoquan, the son Tan had with his former wife, at
one point had the opportunity to go to college, but that did not pan out. On the

eve of the Cultural Revolution, in the anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois atmo-
sphere of the time, students appealed to abolish the college entrance exam,
since it allowed the feudal-oriented bourgeois class to focus on study but know
little about politics. It also excluded excellent children of the laborer, peasant,
and revolutionary classes from college because they were not good at taking
exams. This appeal was put into practice, and all high school graduates were
qualified to go to the college only if they came with a zhibiao 指標 ‘quota or
pass’ assigned by their superiors. The college entrance exam did not return
until the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.
In 1974, while Tan was chairperson of the Poor and Lower-Middle Peasant
Association, he was given a zhibiao so his eldest son, Guoquan, could enter
college. After thorough consideration, however, he decided to give this privi-
lege to another youth, Little Yi, who had been sent to the countryside to learn
from the peasants as part of the socialist education campaign.9 Thanks to this
opportunity, Little Yi finished his college education and became a doctor; he
now works in Jiangyong People’s Hospital, where he serves his second home-
town. Guoquan instead joined the army, an opportunity also procured thanks
to Tan’s connections. Tan made this decision mainly for economic reasons. At
the time the family had two adults (Tan and Xinkui), two youths (Tan’s chil-
dren with his former wife), and four little children (borne by Xinkui). If Tan’s
eldest daughter, Liberation, got married and Guoquan went to college, there
would be only two breadwinners. If Guoquan served in the army, his wages
could supplement the family economy. It was no wonder Guoquan said to me
many times, “All my younger brothers and sisters were raised under my
patronage.”
After Guoquan joined the army in 1974, a woman presenting herself as
Guoquan’s girlfriend moved in with Tan’s family. Guoquan intentionally wrote
no letter home in hope that this girl would give up and leave, but things did not
turn out as he expected; instead, his stepmother Xinkui got sick because they
had no word from him. Rumor had it that Guoquan was sacrificed on the Sino-
Vietnam battlefield. Yuting remembers, “My mother got mad at my father and
urged him to inquire with the Military Department about my brother’s situa-
tion. And then we realized that he didn’t write because he had another girl-
friend there and he wanted to get rid of the one at home.” The girlfriend at
home eventually became Xinkui’s daughter-in-law.
“But this daughter-in-law disrespected my mother. Isn’t it said that a
daughter-in-law should help with household chores such as cooking? Well, she
didn’t! She even quarreled with my mother. She scorned my mother as a taŋ42
iaŋ13 məŋ33.” Yuting was little then and did not know what the expression meant;
it was only when she grew older that she learned in the local dialect taŋ42 iaŋ13
məŋ33 refers to a child bride. She never believed that her mother really was a
child bride until we conducted interviews with her in the 2000s.
9
Between 1963 and 1978, many intellectuals were banished to the countryside for reeducation. By
1978, these demoted intellectuals in Jiangyong numbered 8,827 persons ( Jiangyong xianzhi 1995:26).
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164
Yuting’s middle brother used to work but complained that his wages were
too low. He quit and became addicted to gambling. Tan and Xinkui are both
diligent peasants, so how could their son have become a gambler?
Yuting said, “My father had little time for us. When we were small, he could
not even tell me and my little sister apart; he would call her by my name.” Still,
Tan was no doubt an exemplary peasant. “On days when there were no meet-
ings, he got up first thing in the morning and took a hoe out to work in the
fields,” Yuting remembered. In his spare time he organized locals to plant
trees and build the reservoir.
Gongming commented, “He was very dutiful about his own job, but not
strict enough with his children.”
Yuting continued:
My middle brother first gambled with other villagers, and he won many sticky
rice cakes, which he brought home. We were naturally happy about that. “Wow,
we have so much to eat. Yummy!” My father just grinned; he didn’t reprimand
him. But my mother demanded that my brother never do it again. The next time
my brother brought more cakes home, my mother angrily threw them all out.
She said to my father, “Aren’t you ashamed of eating these? Won’t you regret it if
your son turns into a gambler someday!”10
And indeed, that is what he became. “He even borrowed money in my father’s
name, and still my father paid off his debt.”
“My father expected us to be just like him, to be exemplary peasants. When
we grew older, he required us to work in the fields, learning to plow and plant
rice, especially after collectivization was replaced with individual cultivation.”
By this she meant the “household contract responsibility system” implemented
in the early 1980s. The household contract responsibility system transferred
the right to plan production and consumption from the commune to individ-
ual households. Under the new system, the harder you worked and the better
you planned, the more you earned.
During the period of the People’s Commune, although one’s earnings de-
pended on one’s efforts, there was a set limit. A male laborer at most got ten
work points, and if he worked before breakfast and after supper, he acquired
two extra points. A female laborer, because of her inferior physical strength, got
six or eight work points. Child labor varied from village to village. In Yuting’s
Tuqiangwu, all students would be called to help with the harvest, which was
considered volunteer activity and therefore earned no work points. But in Gong-
ming’s Tangbei Village, such work counted. “I remember I worked with my
parents and elder sister one Sunday, and I was given two points.” Because the
credit was very low, Gongming and his brother participated in the rural work-
force only occasionally. “It was mainly my father, mother, and two elder sisters
who worked to earn points. My father would get full credit [twelve points],
10
Narrated and recorded in July 2012.

my mother eight, and my two elder sisters at age sixteen or so earned three to
four points,” Gongming recalled.
Even with four working members, Gongming’s family did not have enough
to eat and his father had to borrow grain from the brigade. Gongming never
had the courage to ask his father where on earth he found the money to repay
that debt. To subsidize the family expenditure, Gongming’s mother raised pigs
as well. “But she could raise two at most—because you didn’t have enough
food to raise more; nor did you have that much time.” Some women also told
me that after years of toiling to raise pigs, they needed to take one or two years
off before doing it again, it was so labor-intensive.
Small wonder that Xinkui’s ability to raise seven or eight pigs at a time
became legend. But Xinkui seems to have had no choice. When food was in
short supply, being the wife of a decent and incorruptible party cadre, Xinkui
had to use every possible resource to maintain the family’s finances, never
mind hosting the incessant visitors. She could only toil, work, and work harder.
Conclusions
Since we met in 1993, Yuting has accompanied me to many villages, including

Hujia and Lima, where her mother grew up, Tangbei, her affinal village,
Zhaixia, where her father worked as a hired worker, Haotang, where her aunt
and stepsister had married, and many others besides. In 2010, she also joined
our documentary crew to travel among these villages. Recalling her experi-
ences, she wrote the following:
As early as ’93, I happened to get acquainted with Teacher Liu Fei-wen—it has
been 20 years now.
All those years, I accompanied her to do interviews with people and conduct
surveys in the villages. Honestly, I was very often out of patience at first, because
I thought she was doing something boring and with no positive result. Gradually,
because I had to help translate, I changed my attitude from impatience to being
serious, and this changed the way I perceived the elderly women of the village.
Who says that Chinese women’s footbinding straps were overlong and stinky
[i.e., feudal and backward]?11 These women, although uneducated, could speak
verses impromptu, verses that win admiration. . . . They could also write the
unique script [namely, nüshu].
At first I was not interested in the script at all, and I had especially adverse
feelings toward rural women’s bridal lamentation.
I remember when I was still a child, I went with my mother to join in rela-
tives’ wedding banquets, and I heard the brides wail. In my memory, they consid-
ered lamenting to the bride to be an honor. . . . I also heard the women say, “Oh
quick, the bride is about to lament to me.” Then they began preparing to perform
“Foot-binding strap” was a term used by intellectuals of the early Republican era to symbolize why
11
China failed to catch up with Western modernization.
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166
lamentation with the bride. When the bride lamented to my mother, my mother
lamented along with her. Seeing them, one crying and the other accompanying
made me mad, especially when I saw both of them wail with a handkerchief over
their faces. . . . I wondered why do they have to cover their faces, why don’t they
let people see their tears? I wondered also at how they could start wailing at any
time and stop when needed; I thought what they did was only formal and perfor-
mative, not from their sincere hearts. But now, I realize that the bride wailed to
express her sadness at separation, and the one wailing along with her was teach-
ing the bride how to behave in her husband’s household . . . and expressing her
reluctance to see her off. They had that many words to say probably because the
scene of bridal lamentation reminded them of their own past, of the time when
they were married off.
When Mother was lamenting to the bride, she must have also thought about
how young she was when she stepped into the wedding palanquin and how
lonely her little brother would be once she had left. From the moment she took
her seat in the sedan chair, her heart split into several buds: One was about how
to behave as a good child bride; one was about taking good care of herself; and
there was also one concerned with her brother.
If not for Teacher Liu, for her deep exploration into the roots [of this custom],
I would never know my mother’s bitterness.
It is also because of Teacher Liu’s visit that I was able to learn about my own
family history, to better understand my parents. . . . In the process when Teacher
Liu tried to understand what had happened to you [Yuting’s mother], when you
were telling her your deepest grievance, the pain you hid behind your fortitude, I
was truly moved by your kindness and your striving and spirit to cope with diffi-
culties. I can’t imagine what exactly it was like and what you had actually experi-
enced. Why would Heaven treat you this way, letting you taste all that toil, sour-
ness, bitterness, and sorrow?
Yuting mentioned my “deep exploration into the roots” because, after sev-
eral conversations with me, Xinkui could not help but feel some curiosity
about me. She told her daughter, “How strange, she seems to be interested in
every word we say.”
Xinkui was not an eloquent person; she was in fact quite reserved and inar-
ticulate. But behind her reservation were her simple, unadorned characteris-
tics: wisdom, capability, strength, diligence, and kindness.
Although Yuting thanked me for letting her learn about her mother’s lived
experiences through my research, I am the one who actually owes her thanks.
Without her acting as go-between, I would never have gotten to know such an
optimistic and resilient village woman. In adversity, she could endure, being a
self-respecting but dutiful child bride. While enduring, she never forgot her
responsibility as an elder sister, and helped her brother marry in a wife and
perpetuate the descent line of her natal family. Although her brother’s mar-
riage came at the cost of her own, she complained to no one, not the man of
Lima, and certainly not her brother. She only blamed herself for not getting

pregnant in time. Once divorced, she harbored no resentment. Even though
she was no longer a daughter-in-law of her Lima affines, she nonetheless
buried her father-in-law to repay his having raised her.
Her status as child bride was dissolved with the Liberation of China in
1949, which gave her a political stage on which to demonstrate her talents.
Neither her membership in the Communist Party nor her official post changed
her ability to bear hardship, but instead brought forward her resilience and
honesty. To her, all lives are equal, with no distinction between nobility and
inferiority.
After marrying Tan, unable to attend to both her career and child care, she
withdrew from the alluring political arena and devoted herself to being the vir-
tuous wife of an incorruptible cadre. This was never an easy task. Constant
social engagements, cadre meetings, peasants coming to borrow grain—all
these activities meant expense. To cover them all, Xinkui had to explore all pos-
sible means of production and financial resources, and raising pigs was the
most effective means if also the most laborious. Xinkui’s youth was thus spent
raising pigs. If the children could help, that was good, but her dear daughters
wanted to go to school, so what could she do? She could only take it all on her-
self. Over the decades, her back grew hunched and her spine bent. Her chil-
dren’s proper upbringing was always beyond her reach; she could only depend
on their own awareness and self-discipline. Life can never be perfect. Two of
her children became addicted to gambling—that was her pain; the other two
are filial and know how to get on—that was her comfort.
Xinkui died in February 2012. Five months later, when I went to visit her
husband Tan, he told me, “My old woman asked about you one month before
she left. She said: ‘My Taiwanese lady hasn’t come for quite some time. I miss
her very much.’”
With Xinkui, my emotions are not only those of remembrance but also grat-
itude. Every time I visited Tuqiangwu, she always greeted me with gentleness
and good cheer. I wish to thank her for sharing her ups and downs, her honor
and struggle, and the diligence and toil she hid behind her ready smile. It is my
honor to transfer her toils and moral sentiments onto these pages and leave
her story to the world, as a witness to what she experienced in the changing
rural society of twentieth-century China.
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CHAPTER 6 Hu Meiyue: Crossroads of Tradition
and Modernity
hu meiyue, born in 1963, is one of a new generation of nüshu chuanren (nüshu

transmitters). Nüshu chuanren, now an official title awarded by the Jiangyong
Propaganda Office, was established in 2003 when Jiangyong authorities for
the first time formally acknowledged nüshu’s cultural significance and estab-
lished criteria for recognizing women who have sustained this heritage.
Meiyue, then in her forties, was on the list with Huanyi, who died a year later
in her nineties, along with Yanxin and He Jinghua, both in their sixties. In
2010 three more women were added to the list: Zhou Huijuan 周惠娟 (born
1941, sister of Zhou Shuoyi), Pu Lijuan 蒲麗娟 (born 1966, daughter of He
Jinghua), and Hu Xin 胡欣 (born 1988, Meiyue’s student). Of the current six
nüshu chuanren, only two, Yanxin and Meiyue, learned nüshu before it became
an academic sensation. But unlike Yanxin, Meiyue was educated under the
Cultural Revolution rubric of “breaking the four traditions,” a social move-
ment aimed at destroying old ways of thinking, traditional practices, customs,
and institutions or artifacts of cultural heritage. Meiyue’s nüshu learning expe-
rience thus provides an interesting contrast with Yanxin’s: While Yanxin brings
us to a nostalgic nüshu world, Meiyue represents a new generation’s attempt to
revitalize a disappearing tradition (Figure 8).
Meiyue’s nüshu knowledge came from her grandmother, Gao Yinxian.
Living in Puwei Village in Shangjiangxu Township, Gao was 80 years old when
she first met with nüshu scholars. At that time, Meiyue was not married and
still lived at home; she therefore had many opportunities to observe those
scholars conducting nüshu research.
“It was 1982 when Gong Zhebing and Zhou Shuoyi first came,” Meiyue re-
called. “They came and asked if Grandma had some nüshu to show them.
Grandma wondered, ‘Nüshu was circulated only among women; why would
these two gentlemen need nüshu?’ So she asked, ‘What do you want with
nüshu?’ To which they answered, ‘It’s useful!’ Grandma then handed them a
copy of the nüshu entitled Zhu Yingtai.” This was a narrative ballad popular not
just in Jiangyong but across China.
figure 8 The new-generation nüshu transmitter Hu Meiyue, writing in her grand-
mother’s room (2010, Courtesy of Chou Chen).
Two years later, in 1984, another nüshu scholar, Zhao Liming, arrived.
Meiyue remembered, “After she finished her interview with Grandma, she
asked if I could take her to Tongkou Village to see Yi Nianhua.” Yi and Gao
were the only two surviving nüshu practitioners back then. “When I asked,
‘What for?’ She gave me the same answer, ‘It will be useful!’”
In 1986 the nüshu researcher Xie Zhimin came to Jiangyong to collect lin-
guistic data with his colleague Gong. They called upon Puwei Village once
again. “He lived with us for about 40 days. He tape-recorded what Grandma
sang every day.” She added, “Occasionally he would bring Yi Nianhua to our
village to sing with Grandma.”1
Now three decades have passed. “What is nüshu for?” remains a question for
which Meiyue has no answer. “Although I don’t know why, I’m doing it anyway,”
she admits. For Meiyue, “doing” means upholding the nüshu heritage.
Since its discovery by outside scholars in 1982, nüshu research has gone
through various ups and downs. While its discovery certainly excited the aca-
demia worldwide, the deaths of Gao and Yi between 1990 and 1991 threatened
the end of nüshu as a recognized cultural heritage and subject of scholarship.
Fortunately, the emergence of two other practitioners, Huanyi and Yanxin, in
1991 and 1994, brought new hope to this endangered female expressive cul-
ture. These women traveled far outside Jiangyong to introduce nüshu to the
world. Huanyi at age 87 went to Beijing for the World Conference on Women
1
At the end of that same year, Gong even brought Gao (accompanied by her grandson) to stay in
Wuhan 武漢 for two months so that Gao could concentrate on recollecting the nüshu she had
learned.
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in 1995; Yanxin at age 58 visited Japan in 1997 and fourteen years later, in 2011,
she traveled to Japan and Taiwan for international nüshu conferences.
It was in 2001 that Meiyue finally made up her mind to stand up and do
something for nüshu, a tradition her grandmother Gao had once represented.
In addition to her regular farm work, she began to offer nüshu classes and
teach nüshu to interested villagers. Most of today’s nüshu learners were tutored
by Meiyue, including Hu Xin, the youngest of the nüshu chuanren.
A decade has passed since she undertook this mission. In retrospect,
Meiyue is not without regrets and some grievances: “I feel tired, exhausted,
and sometimes confused, too. I ask myself, ‘Why do I do all this? Have I been
foolish or what?’”
Meiyue’s confusion and ambivalence reflect not simply her personal strug-
gles; in fact, they grow out of nüshu’s dilemmas and challenges in contempo-
rary society. Whither nüshu? Can it last, should it be transformed, or has it
reached a perfect end point from which to fade into history?
Learning Nüshu as a Child
Meiyue was born into a rural China struggling through a series of social re-
forms, including land reform, the Great Leap Forward, and the People’s Com-
mune movement. The communal dining system was particularly challenging,
and many villagers describe it as their most difficult time since Liberation. To
boost the economy, in 1962 the Chinese Communist Party implemented a
policy referred to by Jiangyong villagers as fenxiahu 分下戶 ‘distributing to the
households’ or dangan 單幹 ‘to work individually’. That is, food was distrib-
uted according to the “work points” earned based on one’s labor contribution.
Meiyue was born in the year after this policy was introduced.
Meiyue is the second child of her family, which eventually included three
sisters and one younger brother. Her father is the sole heir of the family and
thus took full responsibility for supporting Meiyue’s grandparents. There were
nine mouths to feed and only three breadwinners (Meiyue’s father, mother,
and grandfather). Just to subsist, Meiyue’s parents had to work at night to earn
extra work points. Child care was left to Meiyue’s grandmother, whom Meiyue
called nainai 奶奶 ‘paternal grandmother’, hereafter Grandma.
“My parents took charge of the fieldwork, and Grandma was responsible for
household chores. If we were mischievous or bothered her with this or that
when she was busy, she would say, ‘Children, behave and later I’ll sing a song
for you.’ Over time, we learned those songs, didn’t we?”
One song Gao often sang was “One-year-old Daughter”:
One year old, she is a pearl in the hand.
Two years old, she is a jade winding around the feet.
Three years old, she learns to step and walk.
Four years old, she brings a basket and enters the garden.
Five years old, she goes with her Grandma to pick hemp leaves.
hu meiyue: crossroads of tradition and modernity | 171

Six years old, she follows Grandma in raising baby silkworms.
Seven years old, she learns to wrap the knitting ball.
Eight years old, she sits at the reel spinning cotton into yarn.
Nine years old, she tailors and makes clothes.
Ten years old, she can do needlework without asking for help. (Zhao 1992:
581–582)
一歲女手上珠 / 二歲女纏足玉 / 三歲學行又學走 / 四歲提藍進菜園
五歲跟婆摘麻葉 / 六歲跟奶養蠶嬰 / 七歲藍編織小團 / 八歲上車紡細紗
九歲裁衣又學剪 / 十歲拿針不問人
“One-year-old Daughter” is perhaps the most popular nüge circulated in Ji-

angyong, so popular that even the men can sing it, since they too were raised
with this nursery rhyme. In addition to this nüge, Meiyue’s grandmother also
taught her little ditties, such as the following:
The pig collects firewood; the dog lights the fire.
The cat fills a bowl of rice to feed the baby pig.
豬撿柴狗燒火 / 貓公盛飯餵小豬
Little dragonflies flit all around the god.

All the girls from every house come to see the god.
小蜻蜓踏團神 / 家家女子來看神
The red cock, its tail flutters.

A three-year-old girl can sing a song.2
紅雞公尾飄飄 / 三歲姑娘會唱歌.
As Meiyue grew older, Grandma taught her ceremonial songs performed in

the rites of the singing court at weddings. Unlike the bridal laments that were
improvised depending on whom the bride addressed, wedding choruses had
fixed melodies and lyrics, and therefore required practice. The custom of pei
hongniang 陪紅娘 ‘accompanying the bride’ provided the most expedient occa-
sion for practicing these choruses. After the wedding date was selected, the
singing girls, numbering from 20 to 60, depending on the size of the village,
would be invited to stay with the bride day and night over a period as long as
six months before the wedding. During this period, the girls accompanied or
assisted the bride doing needlework, such as making shoes for the groom’s
family, and as they worked, they chatted, gossiped, and learned nüshu and
nüge, including bridal laments and ceremonial wedding songs.
Meiyue first participated in a singing court when she was ten years old. At
that time, the traditional ceremonial songs she had learned from Grandma were
no longer used. Because of new regulations about ‘civilized weddings’ (wenming
jiehun 文明結婚), the three days of singing court were cut to one day, and more-
over, the nüshu and nüge traditionally performed during the wedding were
2
These ditties were narrated by Meiyue and recorded in August 2010.
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172
replaced by revolutionary melodies. Although they are no longer used, the tradi-
tional melodies still provided Meiyue with an early touchstone for understand-
ing the social context in which nüshu and nüge were practiced and valued, and
they would become her inspiration for composing nüshu works later in life.
Meiyue proudly recalled, “Grandma often remarked that Second Sister [i.e.,
Meiyue] had the best memory; she could learn a song by singing it once or twice.”
But what triggered Meiyue’s interest in nüshu was not so much the fun of sing-
ing but Grandma’s sisterhood ties. Grandma had a sworn sisterhood of seven
members, including Tang Baozhen who also lived in Puwei Village (described in
chapter 3). Meiyue recalled, “After supper, Grandma would take a walk in the vil-
lage and chat with neighbors. And when she got back, she would sit in her
favorite chair and sing, mostly in the company of Tang Baozhen.” As to the rest
of Grandma’s sworn sisters, though they lived in different villages, “The Seven
Sisters remained very close. They called upon one another from time to time.”
“In those days, when I was still very little, I followed Grandma wherever she
went. When she visited her sworn sisters, I went as well. Unlike my older
sister, who was usually left home to look after my younger brother and sis-
ters. . . . Grandma would take both of us along only when she was visiting
nearby. After all, it was a hassle to take a couple of kids for a long-distance
walk,” said Meiyue.
“On occasions when they gathered, the Seven Sisters would take out nüshu
works and read. They read Zhu Yingtai, Flower-Selling Girl, The Third Daughter,
and the like.” These narrative ballads, originally written in official hanzi, not
only celebrated women’s virtues but also opened up a fantasy world for women
to imagine and explore. The story in Zhu Yingtai, the first nüshu piece Meiyue’s
Grandma handed to nüshu scholars, provides the best example of this.3 The
girl Zhu Yingtai disguises herself as a young man to leave home and study in
an academy. There she lives with her classmate Liang Shanbo in the same
room for three years. Such intimacy puts sexual differences front and center.
As described in this nüshu, when Yingtai gets up in the middle of the night to
urinate, Shanbo notices that she squats instead of standing up. Trying to con-
ceal her sexual identity, Yingtai defends herself with an argument that points
to women’s superiority: “To urinate standing up is the way of cows and horses
/ To lower one’s body to do so is the way of immortals” 高身出便是牛馬 /
低身出便是仙郎 (Gong 1991:105–107). At another time when Yingtai is bath-
ing, Shanbo happens to see her uncovered upper body and questions her once
again, at which Yingtai proclaims:
People who have good luck have large breasts,
But people without good luck have no breasts.
A man with large breasts is bound to achieve high office,
But a woman with large breasts will lead a lonely life. (Gong 1991:105–107)
有福之人奶子大 / 無福之人無奶房 / 男子奶大得官做 / 女子奶大守空房
3
For detailed discussion of Zhu Yingtai, see Liu (2010a, 2010b).

As a girl, Meiyue could not quite follow what had been discussed among
Grandma’s sworn sisters, but she remembers, “While reading these stories,
they would explain the scenarios to one another and make comments. They
would say, ‘How could Shanbo not figure out that Yingtai was a woman in
male disguise after living with her for three years?’ ‘That Shanbo was a real
gentleman.’ ‘Yingtai was a gentlewoman as well; she successfully concealed
her identity without being detected.’”
Meiyue also remembers the scene when these sworn sisters read and sang
nüshu: “The villagers, male and female, young and old, flocked around. The
male onlookers were mostly young boys. Adult males would listen for only a
while and then leave; they came by mainly to see what was happening. They
could not read nüshu, but they found the women’s chorus amusing.”
“These sworn sisters also composed pieces, especially when one of them
encountered difficulties. . . . They wrote about those sufferings, whether yours,
mine, or whoever’s.” The first nüshu piece discovered by outside scholar was
such a biographical lament concerning Xijing. Xijing was not a member of
Gao’s sworn sisterhood, but merely an acquaintance of Tang, the youngest of
the Seven Sisters. Tang remarried in her mid-thirties to a man in Baishui Vil-
lage, where she met Xijing. After her second husband died, she remarried
once again to Puwei Village, where she befriended Gao. This affiliation made
Xijing’s misery known to Tang’s other sworn sisters.4
Xijing lost her father when she was three and married at age 20. When she
didn’t bear children, her in-laws brought in a concubine, a popular practice in
traditional rural Jiangyong in such situations, but the concubine ran away for
unknown reasons a couple of years later. Not long after that, the husband fell
sick and died, leaving Xijing completely alone and childless. What made Xijing
even more wretched was that neither of her two brothers had a son. Out
of sympathy for Xijing’s situation, Cizhu committed her life story to a
handkerchief:
People who inhabit an empty room [i.e., widowhood] have no one to consult with;
I, who also inhabit an empty room, have no one and nothing in my hands.
When we are young, we depend on our husbands; when old, we rely on our sons.
Having neither, whom can I count on? . . .
Others who suffer can always find outlets.
I, however, have nothing at all, truly nothing.
No tree before me to share a bit of breeze;
No mountain behind me to back me up.
Even under such suffering,
I still have to worry about my two elder brothers:
My own parents had four children, but three of us are heirless. . . .
I have no place to express my grievance at home;
I therefore turn to my sworn sisters.
4
According to Silber (1995:141), Xijing listed herself a member of Gao’s Seven Sisters, which also
included Cizhu, Gao, Tang, together with Yi, and other two women (Lü Yueying and Lü Shuyi).
| Gendered Words
174
It is just that we live so far apart;
With bound feet, it is difficult to get to your honored house.
To visit you is like the meeting of rivers from thousands of miles apart,
Like flowers ten thousand miles distant brought to blossom in the same garden.
(Gong 1991:178–189)
人守空房沒吩咐 / 是我空房兩手空 / 少時靠夫老靠子 / 無夫無兒靠哪人…
別人命輕有出氣 / 是我可憐裡面虧 / 面前又沒乘涼樹 / 背底又沒靠背山
將身可憐猶然走 / 又慮哥哥兩徠人 / 同父所生親四徠 / 佔開三人沒源流…
房中心煩無出氣 / 來邀結交姊妹行 / 就是不該路頭遠 / 腳小難行到貴家
千里如河來共水 / 萬里如花來共園
Meiyue recalled, “I was probably only four when I first saw them write. I
had no idea what they wrote; I only vaguely knew that they did it to comfort
each other. They looked sad. I felt like. . . . Anyway, my tears just flowed. You
know my tears are always close to the surface and fall easily,” Meiyue said with
an embarrassed smile.
In time, as she participated more and more, Meiyue developed a special at-
tachment to nüshu, partly out of admiration and partly out of curiosity. Her
sentiments of admiration were evoked “when seeing these sisters so enjoy
their reading of nüshu and being so supportive of one another.” Her curiosity
was aroused when she noticed that “even educated students did not recognize
the graphs Grandma wrote.” After she started school, her curiosity turned to
puzzlement: “Why did Grandma’s script differ from that taught by the school
teacher?” Grandma told her that the script she and her sworn sisters wrote was
called “mosquito words,” “mosquito-leg words,” or “ant words.”
“I like to learn all sorts of things, whatever they are, so I asked Grandma,
‘Could I learn to write the script?’ Grandma was pleased with my taking the
initiative, and she began to teach me how to write, word by word and stroke by
stroke.”
“Grandma guided my hand and said to me, ‘You have to write from right to
left. This is a dot and this is a slide. . . . If you find you’ve left too much space,
you lengthen this stroke a bit to make it look good.’”
The first nüshu characters Meiyue learned were the numbers from one to
ten, and then the song “One-year-old Daughter.” The first nüshu piece Gao
handed to Meiyue to read was Zhu Yingtai. She told Meiyue: “In the future, you
also need to learn The Third Daughter, Flower-Selling Girl, and the like, because
they contain many nüshu graphs.” Indeed, all these nüshu pieces were long-
verse ballads, and Gao was quite aware of the word count of each. In one nüshu,
she wrote, “The Third Daughter has more than 6,000 words; Fifth Daughter
Wang (Wang wuniang 王五娘) has about 5,000. Lady Luo has 5,000 characters
or so, and Flower-Selling Girl over 5,000” (Zhao 1992:514–516). Because these
works contain a considerable nüshu vocabulary, they also function as nüshu
word books. Tang had told me, “When Cizhu passed away, she left all her
nüshu ballads to Gao Yinxian. And whenever Gao Yinxian stumbled when writ-
ing certain nüshu graphs, she would look to those for reference.”

Although the nüshu pieces her grandmother taught were traditional, the way
Meiyue learned them was not. Nüshu was conventionally written with a wooden
stick or a Chinese writing brush, but Meiyue wrote them in pencil. Where tradi-
tional women learned to write nüshu by singing and recitation, Meiyue learned
with the help of a second script, hanzi. She used hanzi to annotate each nüshu
graph, recording its meaning as well as its pronunciation. Pronunciation here is
important because, as Meiyue emphasized, “Nüshu is not an ideographic writ-
ing system like hanzi, but one that reflects the local pronunciation [tuyin 土音].”
Meiyue’s nüshu childhood ended when she reached puberty and had to spend
more time on “female work”—practicing embroidery, weaving, and making
shoes. Growing up also meant assuming increased responsibilities in the house-
hold. On her way home from school, for example, she had to collect firewood.
Occupied with needlework, household chores, and school assignments, she had
little spare time to continue with nüshu. In 1978, after graduating from junior
high school, she became a full-time laborer who earned work points to do her
share supporting the family. At that point Meiyue completely put nüshu aside.
Participant Observation of Nüshu Research
It was 1982 when nüshu reentered Meiyue’s life, one year after she had become
engaged. She still remembers how she spent that year’s girl’s party called
douniu 鬥牛 ‘bull-fighting’, a traditional festival held every April 8, when the
men went out for the bull-fighting game and the unmarried girls got together
to practice cooking, sing nüge, read nüshu, and play all sorts of games. At that
party Meiyue read the story of Zhu Yingtai, a choice that reflected her anxiety
about married life. At that time arranged marriage was still the norm, although
it was arranged in the couple’s adolescence instead of in childhood as had been
common in the pre-Liberation era. Meiyue’s anxiety arose because “I couldn’t
understand how two strangers would be able to spend their entire lifetime to-
gether.” Her anxiety also grew out of her increased understanding of the male-
dominated social structure of Jiangyong: “Here women have no power whatso-
ever; they have to submit themselves to men. Needless to say, there are real
pressures if you wish to have a successful family,” she said. From the story of
Zhu Yingtai, however, Meiyue gained a sense of liberation: “Whenever I
thought of this story, I felt relaxed. If men in the world could be like Shanbo,
who respects women, then women’s lives would be easy.” Meiyue never imag-
ined that just one year later, the first work her grandmother shared with a
nüshu scholar would be none other than Zhu Yingtai.
Meiyue’s wedding took place three years after that party. Under traditional
circumstances, she would have been expected to perform a bridal lamentation,
but this had become a personal choice rather than a social requisite. Since the
Cultural Revolution, there were people who condemned bridal lamentation as
“feudal and backward” and refused to lament at their own weddings. Others,
however, still considered it a way of “expressing gratitude toward one’s parents,”
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176
and Meiyue was one of these. But unlike a traditional bridal lamentation, which
lasted for three consecutive days, Meiyue performed hers only on the wedding
day itself, and “I didn’t cry so desperately as a traditional bride,” she recalled.
Meiyue’s lamentation, or kuge, was not something she learned from her
grandmother. Women would not sing such laments in everyday life. She learned
instead by participant observation in actual weddings: “When we were kids,
whenever we heard that bridal lamentation was being performed, we followed
the bride wherever she went, traveling almost across the entire village, even at
night.” Meiyue explained, “Bridal laments are created impromptu [suikou chu 隨
口出]. . . . I therefore had to learn by listening attentively to how the bride la-
mented, and if I had questions about why she lamented this way or that, I brought
them up on other days when the village women sat together and chatted.”
Meiyue could not quite remember what she had lamented at her own wed-
ding, or perhaps she did not wish to disclose that to me, but she did remember
lines from other women’s laments, such as “I worked with my parents from
sunup / I went back home with them at sunset / When I was as tall as the table,
I was my father’s daughter / Once I grow as tall as the cabinet, I become his
[the husband’s]” 太陽出早跟毑去 / 太陽落嶺跟毑歸 / 養的檯高爺的女 /
養的櫃高他的人. Indeed, the central sentiments of bridal lamentation remain
sorrow at parting from family because of the tradition of marrying out.
Although patrilocal marriage is the custom in her home region, Meiyue did
not immediately leave home after her marriage, thanks to the practice of buluo-
fujia, which allowed her to stay with her family a few more years until she was
about to deliver her first baby. It gave Meiyue plenty of opportunities to observe
how the early nüshu scholars worked with her grandmother.
Meiyue recalled, “They encouraged Grandma to write down as much as she
could, to write whatever she remembered.” With the scholars’ encouragement,
Meiyue’s Grandma Gao composed several new nüshu works. In 1984, for exam-
ple, Gao wrote about her nervousness and excitement the first time a TV pro-
duction team came to visit her and Tang:
I write to send out a poem.

You gentlemen please listen to what I have to say:
I was born into a poor family, and
I have no good dress in the chest.
I can only wear my clean clothes to go on TV,
With no idea what television is for. . . .
I happened to not feel well, and lay on the bed,
But still, I lifted my spirits for the telecast.
We were two carps swimming in the pool,
With no idea how deep the water,
With no idea what a telecast is all about. (Zhao 1992:514–516)
修書傳文詩一首 / 幾位先生聽言章 / 我是出身貧寒女 / 箱腹沒得好衣裳
洗水衣裳電視上 / 不知照像為哪行…/ 我在高床不光輝 / 用起精神照電視
兩頭鯉魚游下塘 / 口塘不知水深淺 / 照相不知哪一行

The next year, 1985, when her village suffered a flood, Gao wrote:
Holding a pen, I write to let the world know.
Please do listen to what I have to say. . . .
In midyear of ’85, something terrible happened:
A great flood seized us on April 8.
The fields destroyed are many thousand parcels;
The watermelon and sponge cucumber are all ruined.
Not a single hot pepper or eggplant survives;
Cowpeas and yam vines are also spoiled. . . .
The poor locals, men and women, have to carry away the mud,
Carrying mud on their shoulders—what suffering! . . .
When will we again be able to hoe the land and plant the seeds
So there will be a harvest in the future? (Xie ed. 1991:640–646)
把筆修書傳世上 / 各位聽我說言章…/ 八五年中吃大虧 / 四月初八發大水
摧煞禾田達萬千 / 西瓜絲瓜盡摧了 / 辣薑秋茄沒一篼 / 豆角薯藤盡摧毀…
可憐男女去挑土 / 男女挑土好淒涼 .../ 幾時鋤開種歸起 / 使得將來有收成
In addition to composing new pieces, Gao also inscribed the nüshu pieces
she had learned before. But note, Meiyue reminded me, “Nüshu were about
discharging one’s miseries, and the stories of misery Grandma knew were just
so many. When she had committed all those sad stories to paper, there was
nothing more she could write up. And yet the scholars still urged her to write.
They said, ‘Whatever it is! If you know how to sing it, write it down.’” So Gao
and her sworn sister Tang worked together as a team. Tang had the best
memory for nüge and Gao had nüshu literacy. “They sang and wrote, and as a
result, all manner of nüge were turned into nüshu, including bridal laments
and riddles. But you know, in the past these forms were only oral,” Meiyue
emphasized.
Meiyue’s observations suggest the necessity of rethinking the ends of aca-
demic engagement with nüshu materials. Specifically, she points to a common
problem with most nüshu anthologies published today: They contain what is in
fact a conflation of nüshu and nüge. Many nüge, such as the bridal laments, cer-
emonial melodies, little ditties, and even riddles that were never sung at all, are
recorded and presented as if they were all equally nüshu works. This lumping
together of nüshu with nüge—that is, transcribing all nüge into nüshu—enables
us to acquire more examples of the “women’s graphs,” but it overwrites the
significance of oral nüge. Like nüshu, nüge has distinct expressive niches that
simply cannot be captured in written text. When we contrast bridal lamenta-
tion with sanzhaoshu, the different expressive niches of nüshu and nüge become
more obvious.
Bridal lamentation and sanzhaoshu were both part of the Jiangyong wed-
ding ritual, but they differed in their forms of expression. In bridal lamen-
tation, the expressive arena is more contentious and challenging, since it
often delivers sentiments of protest against patriarchal social institutions.
The following verse, addressing a common element in many women’s bridal
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178
lamentations, shows how resentment might be expressed at parental bias in
favor of a son:
The red satin is here for sale, but my mother does not want to buy it;
The green satin is here, but my father cares only about the money.
Parents care about money, not their daughter.
Money is reserved for their only son to purchase houses and farmlands.5
紅緞到來娘不剪 / 綠緞到來毑惜錢 / 毑是惜錢不惜女 / 留給獨子置田莊
Such an overt denouncement seldom appears in the sanzhaoshu writing; at

best, the sentiments of protest would be mitigated by an emphasis on women’s
obedience and compliance with social protocols, as in the sanzhaoshu I pro-
cured from Baishui Village in 2000:
Being a woman is useless:
We have to put aside our feelings and serve the six relatives with a smile.
It is only because of protocols wrongly set out by the Jade Emperor
That we are pressured to observe the rules.
His village is not like that of our mother’s.
We have to cultivate our nature and see human relations from a long-term per-
spective, and treat his family according to the social rites.
If we wail all the time, even only in our minds,
People will laugh at us and say that our family knows nothing of courtesy.
已是女人真沒用 / 捨歡笑眉待六親 / 只怨玉皇制錯禮 / 世煞不由跟禮當
他鄉不比娘樓坐 / 人性放長禮侍他 / 若是時時在心哭 / 取笑儂家無禮人
The inclusion of nüge bridal laments and nüshu sanzhaoshu in a traditional

Jiangyong wedding suggests that their expressive horizons are not mutually
inclusive. While sanzhaoshu edifies the bride to accept the existing social codes,
bridal lamentation is powerful in its immediacy and capacity to challenge the
society’s gender system and hierarchical status quo. By subsuming nüge into
nüshu, we silence the socially repressed and illiterate women who had long
relied on oral performance to empower themselves. We have salvaged nüshu
content at the cost of losing the less privileged form of expression.
In 1987 Meiyue left nüshu circles and moved to her affinal village to help her
husband build their home. This occurred when her in-laws implemented the
division of family property; in Jiangyong such division was done when all or at
least more than one of the sons had married. Three years later, in 1990, Gao
died. In memory of her Grandma, Meiyue made several trips to visit Gao’s old
friends and sisters. It may have been then that the seed of carrying forward the
nüshu heritage her Grandma once represented got planted in her mind. How-
ever, following the birth of her second child in 1992, she had to devote herself
completely to child-rearing and thus dropped nüshu. With the discovery of the
other nüshu women Huanyi and Yanxin in the early 1990s, nüshu scholars
seemed to have forgotten Meiyue.
5
Sung by Wu Longyu and recorded in 1993.

Emerging as a Nüshu Transmitter
Meiyue’s ties with nüshu were reinvigorated in 2000. That was also when I
first met her, on a visit to Xiawan Village where she had settled with her hus-
band. It was September and approaching the harvest season. That day, about
four o’clock, as I was interviewing an old man, a retired schoolteacher, regard-
ing traditional wedding rituals, Meiyue showed up in the crowd. Noticing her
presence, one bystander pointed at her and said to me, “She can write nüshu.”
I was suspicious at first because she looked too young to be a nüshu writer.
After learning who she was, I said to myself, “Yes, her grandmother was the
famous Gao Yinxian, but I interviewed her father in 1992 and he did not men-
tion that any of Gao’s granddaughters could write nüshu.” To verify, I asked if
she could write a couple of nüshu graphs so that my friend Gongming, who
had assisted my research since 1993 but had never seen nüshu before, could
have a look. Meiyue confirmed my request with Gongming and then nodded
her agreement. She wrote out the following: “I will not sing of former kings
or the latter Han / I will sing only of the lady Zhu Yingtai” 不唱前王並後漢 /
偏唱英台一女娘—the opening phrases of the famous ballad.
Even though Meiyue had proved her nüshu literacy, I did not pay her much
mind at that point. In my experience interviewing young women, I had noticed
that many, driven by a sense of pride in Jiangyong’s unique cultural heritage,
were at first eager to learn nüshu, but they did not persist, especially once they
realized there were no financial gains to be made from it. I did not expect
Meiyue to be any different, even though from the way she spoke and interacted
with me she did seem different from others her age.
Four years passed before I bumped into Meiyue again, at the newly built
Nüshu Park (Nüshu yuan 女書園), also referred to as the Nüshu Museum. The
Nüshu Museum, located in Puwei Village where Gao had lived, was built in
2002 as a venue for preserving and exhibiting nüshu culture.6 Initially con-
tracted to a Hongkong management company, the Nüshu Museum was taken
over in 2009 by the Center for Nüshu Cultural and Research Administration
(Nüshu wenhua yanjiu guanli zhongxin 女書文化研究管理中心), under the su-
pervision of the Jiangyong Propaganda Office. Its name has since been changed
to Nüshu Ecological Park (Nüshu shengtai yuanqu 女書生態園區).
In 2004, while visiting Nüshu Park, I heard someone call out “Liu Laoshi!”
(劉老師 ‘Teacher Liu’). I was surprised to see Meiyue, who was no longer a
peasant but an officially appointed nüshu transmitter and a contract employee
working in the park. I was even more surprised when I learned that she had
been composing in nüshu since we last met. I then realized that when she
wrote the opening phrases of Zhu Yingtai for me in 2000, she was also writing
6
The facility was built for an event called “One Festival, One Meeting.” The “one festival” refers to
the Yao’s King Pan 盤 Convention, held in turn by ten counties over three different provinces and one
autonomous region. The Yao Convention for the year 2002 was coordinated by Jiangyong County,
whose officials took the opportunity to also organize a nüshu conference, hence the “one meeting.”
| Gendered Words
180
the preface to a new phase in her nüshu career. Just a few months after our first
meeting, she decided to devote herself to teaching nüshu. What brought her
back to nüshu circles this time was not scholars, but a group of village girls.
It was February 2001 when Meiyue, following tradition, returned to her
natal village for the Chinese New Year festival. There she came across several
girls who had just graduated from junior high school. They had nothing to do
but kill time, since they had to wait another year to procure the identification
cards that qualified them at age 16 to go work in a coastal city. Working as
“floating labor” in urban factories has been a rite of passage for adolescents
since the early 2000s. When they saw Meiyue, they grew excited, as if they had
found the answer to their boredom: “Sister, we would like to learn nüshu.
Would you please teach us?” Meiyue answered, “Let me sing one for you first
and see if you’d like to learn it.” These girls were obviously fond of the tune, so
after Meiyue’s performance, they said, “Yes, we’d love to!”
Inspired by these adolescents, Meiyue and her brother, Gao’s only grand-
son, soon organized a nüshu class in Puwei Village. To make sure the girls
were serious, Meiyue’s brother reminded them that although the class was
free, as students they had to pay the photocopying fees. “The students did go
to the county town to make copies of the nüshu reading materials used in class,
and every one of them also purchased a tape recorder,” said Meiyue.
The first class started in March 2001, with just six or seven students. But
five months later, the number had increased to as many as 40, and included
both teenagers and middle-aged women. The class initially took place in Mei-
yue’s brother’s house. A few months later, with support from the authorities
of Shangjiangxu Township, which provided desks, chairs, and a blackboard
(which reduced the copy fees), the classroom was moved to the ancestral hall
of the village, a place traditionally used for important collective activities
such as wedding banquets. In 2002, when Nüshu Park was established, the
class then moved to the nüshu lecture hall (nüshu xuetang 女書學堂) inside
the park.
These girls’ interest launched Meiyue’s role as a nüshu tutor. Every weekend
she walked the five kilometers from her affinal village, Xiawan, to her natal
Puwei to teach. Despite the inconvenience, she never missed a class except
during the agricultural busy seasons, when seedling planting or the harvest
was in process. Meiyue taught as a volunteer all that first year. In 2002 the Ed-
ucation Department of Jiangyong finally got funding to subsidize Meiyue’s
nüshu teaching, with a stipend of 300 dollars (RMB) per month, but that lasted
only one year. By 2003 the number of the students had dropped to single digits
and the nüshu class was forced to recess. Class resumed in 2004 and so did the
funding, but this time it was provided by the Jiangyong Propaganda Office,
whose major mission was to promote nüshu as a UNESCO intangible cultural
heritage. During the recess period, whenever a newspaper or television team
came to do a report, Meiyue’s brother’s wife, Yi Yunjuan 義運娟, who had also
been appointed a nüshu transmitter in 2003, would fill in for Meiyue as the
teacher, and village girls were called in to play student roles.7 Since 2006, with

more and more youths joining the “floating work force” even before they pro-
cure their IDs, interest in the nüshu class has dried up.
Over those four or five years, however, the students Meiyue taught totaled
more than 100. Meiyue kept track of their names in a notebook. Of all these
students, only one, Hu Xin, has stayed in Jiangyong and become the youngest
nüshu transmitter, and Hu Xin stayed around only because her health did not
allow her to work away from home. The other young villagers had all left for
jobs in the coastal cities of Guangdong, even Meiyue’s own daughter. “After all,
there are no financial prospects in learning nüshu. It can only serve as a per-
sonal hobby,” she admitted.
Seeing her students leave, Meiyue was certainly disappointed, but she did
not lose hope either. Before they left, she reminded them: “Never forget nüshu.
You can always use it to record whatever you encounter.” And some of them
have. They have used nüshu to transliterate classical poems or write in their
diaries. The quality of their writing is not very good, however. Their rhyming
is especially weak—the rhymes have to fit nüshu’s chanting tune (Huang
2005a; Liu Ying 2005)—and this is a detriment as far as singing and compos-
ing nüshu texts is concerned. Skill in rhyming has to be nurtured in a natural
singing environment. Even Meiyue sometimes finds it difficult. Her challenges
as a nüshu transmitter therefore are not only finding effective methods to
transmit nüshu knowledge to new generations, but also advancing her own
knowledge and skill.
Practice
Nüshu literacy requires knowledge in at least three areas: singing, reading, and
writing (including composition). Meiyue chose to start with singing “because
it can best inspire interest in learning.” But when it comes to reading and writ-
ing, the situation becomes a bit complicated. Nüshu is a writing system tied to
the local dialect, but in the nüshu-circulated area, two spoken language variet-
ies are used: the Southwest official dialect (xi’nan guanhua) used among the
elite-official class for government matters, and the local dialect (tuhua) used in
villages for daily conversation. An educated man may have a command of the
official dialect, but most peasants (both male and female) traditionally could
speak only the local dialect. But just how “local” a local dialect may be is prob-
lematic (Huang 2005b). The fact is that each township has its own linguistic
characteristics, which differ slightly as a result of the difficulties of transporta-
tion and communication in rural areas. Nüshu, nonetheless, was circulated
across several townships. For the sake of communication, if not standardiza-
tion, the native variety of a certain township stands out and predominates as
far as chanting nüshu and nüge is concerned, and this happens to be chengguan
7
Yi Yunjuan, who was listed as a nüshu chuanren in 2003, was dropped from the list in 2010 because
she could not actually write nüshu (she had earned the chuanren title in 2003 largely because her
husband, the only grandson of Gao Yinxian, had helped organize the first nüshu classes in 2001).
| Gendered Words
182
yin 城關音, the dialect used in Chengguan, the county seat.8 Thus, a traditional
Jiangyong woman had to master two tongues: the spoken dialect of her village
and the one used for chanting nüshu.
Meiyue’s students are from Shangjiangxu Township and therefore speak
the Shangjiangxu dialect. Since they did not grow up with the nüge singing
tradition, they have no knowledge of chengguan yin. Instead they learn official
Mandarin Chinese, since that is what is taught in school. Transliterating be-
tween nüshu and modern Mandarin is difficult, because nüshu contains many
classical terms and phrases that are not part of daily speech, and making the
leap between Shangjiangxu dialect and that used in chanting nüshu is even
more of a challenge. Writing nüshu presents different challenges. In school
students learn to write simplified Chinese hanzi horizontally, from left to right,
but nüshu is written vertically like traditional hanzi texts.
In addition to thinking through the problems around nüshu’s chanting and
writing, Meiyue also had to create her own teaching materials. She decided to
begin with the sanzhaoshu, “because this was the most characteristic of all
nüshu.” Meiyue herself had never participated in a sanzhaoshu performance
(since sending them was no longer popular in the 1960s when she was born),
nor had her grandmother taught her about the form. Her knowledge of san-
zhaoshu came from her own study of the nüshu anthologies published by Gong
(1991) and Xie (ed., 1991),9 and she had done some practice compositions on
her own. The following from 2004 is one example, which shows how Meiyue
has captured the key elements of the nüshu wedding genre:
Thinking of you in my upper chamber, I write this letter
To inquire about my elder sister—it has been three days [since the wedding].
This is also my congratulations to your honorable family,
Where you were taken by wedding cart, where all is jolly, happy, and carefree.
We separated the day before yesterday;
My mind has not been at ease since then.
Hoping that your respected family will be lenient,
And allow my elder sister to return home soon [for the practice of buluofujia].
樓前念想做書本 / 看望姊娘三日天 / 恭賀貴家多鬧熱 / 花轎遙遙並沒憂
前日拆開同樓伴 / 時刻時時擱不開 / 來望高門請諒大 / 姊娘早回三兩日
After expressing respectful regards to the groom’s family, the text turns to
comfort the bride:
You are now in a house at his village;
I myself am left here with tearful eyes.
But still, I’ll advise my elder sister:
Girlhood days are gone and can never return.
Don’t cry at being married off;
8
Chengguan yin is also called gaotou yin 高頭音 ‘upper variety’, since Chengguan is located in the
upper stream along the Xiaoshui.
9
Meiyue did not have a copy of Zhao (1992).

Don’t wail at having no father.
It is equally precious to have a widowed mother to marry you;
You can still stand proud among others in his village. . . .
In his family, you have to take the long view;
After all, you are worthily married out.
你在人家他鄉府 / 我自眠心眼淚含 / 又勸一聲姊娘聽 / 女日收了要想圍
不哭可憐到他府 / 沒爺把當見可憐 / 寡婦交囑也為貴 / 落他高樓賽過人…
在以人家盡想遠 / 也是抵錢出遠鄉
In conclusion, this sanzhaoshu laments women’s being “useless” and remi-

nisces about their irretrievable sisterhood ties:
Having you sit with me in the upper chamber,
I had someone to consult with on anything.
Now we are separated only three days,
And yet it feels as if it has been years.
I cry heartbroken even in my dreams;
I’m angry that our reunion will be difficult. . . .
But it is not up to us;
We have to be separated. . . .
It’s all because we were born wrong [as daughters],
And therefore we must leave our parents and make his [family] populous. . . .
I’m angry that I’m truly useless:
Like the swallow, I’ll fly away when full-fledged.
It’s all because the Jade Emperor of Heaven
Set out a wrongful protocol, that a daughter can stay with her parents for only
half of her lifetime. . . .
This coarse writing is sent to your affinal home;
It represents my sincere respect and best wishes.10
有你在樓同共坐 / 手取千般合商量 / 如今不同到三日 / 好比幾年幾載春
妹的夢中傷心哭 / 只氣合歸就是難…/ 可是不由咱口曰 / 各自分開不團圓…
想著可憐咱錯投 / 送冷毑門鬧熱他…/ 只是氣儂真沒用 / 燕子毛長各自飛
天上玉皇制錯禮 / 女在娘邊半世休…/ 傳說粗文到親府 / 妹唄點心算禮情
In addition to studying the published nüshu anthologies, Meiyue also con-

sulted with the elders of her own village and conducted interviews when visit-
ing relatives in other villages, in hopes of collecting more nüshu and nüge. “I
want to record stories that have been passed down from generation to genera-
tion,” she said. One good example is “When the Golden Cock Crows,” a song
she learned from a 70-year-old woman from Jinjiang Village. This story is
about a mother’s grievance at the malice of her daughter’s mother-in-law. The
daughter came from a poor family and had “a name but no voice,” meaning
there was no one to speak for her because she was fatherless. She was despised
by her mother-in-law, who not only spoke ill of her but would not allow her son
10
This nüshu was given by Meiyue in November 2004.
| Gendered Words
184
to visit his mother-in-law. Refusing to accept such humiliation, the bride’s
mother wrote to claim justice:
When the golden cock crows, its cries carry far away,
My daughter has a name but no voice.
With a rueful heart, I write this as my tears fall in streams;
I ask you all to listen to what I have to say. . . .
Had I known my daughter’s in-laws were such persons,
I would never have given her in marriage even if the bride price were paid in
gold. . . .
While living at home, she was cherished.
But since she’s married, she faces nothing but difficulties.11
金雞高啼聲送遠 / 是女得名不得聲 / 心慈做書雙流淚 / 列位聽我開言音…
結親知道頭上意 / 裝進黃金不到來…/ 在己樓中多為貴 / 出嫁落他幾樣難
In addition to this popular song—so popular that almost every woman I

interviewed born prior to 1950 could sing it, if in slightly different versions—
Meiyue has also collected some other pieces that have never been published.
One is a woman’s complaint at her husband going whoring and smoking
opium. In this song, the protagonist even expresses discontent with the rule
that requires a woman to stand by her husband no matter what:
Taking up the pen, I write on paper,
I write to announce my misery to the world.
I was born into a wealthy family,
But my life became demeaned after marrying into his family. . . .
Since I married him seven years ago, . . .
I’ve suffered considerably.
He went whoring, gambling, and smoking opium;
He spent all the family wealth.
Even worse—not only his family property,
My dowry was also squandered.
We quarreled and fought day after day.
I then swallowed my anger and comforted my husband:
What has gone is gone,
Let’s start over again.
After all, wealth and nobility could yet be won.
I only wish if my husband would listen to his wife.
We husband and wife could work together harmoniously, diligently.
But my husband did not listen and joined the army.
He was gone for a year, sending no message home,
But I did not lose patience.
After another three years, five years,
Still receiving no word, I was then advised,
11
This nüshu was given by Meiyue in November 2004.

Advised to go elsewhere.
I thus bade farewell to his ancestors.
I am not the only one [thusly wronged] in the world.
It is the Emperor who established an unjust rule.
If a man is no good,
Even if he were a prince, I would not follow him.12
掭筆修書落紙上 / 是我可憐傳世上 / 我是出身富豪花 / 去到他家賤命薄…
我去陪夫七年滿 .../ 夫不當頭盡氣多 / 又賭又嫖又吹煙 / 全部家財盡敗了
敗盡家財不算事 / 連我嫁妝都敗盡 / 夜夜吵鬧大天光 / 我也忍氣將夫勸
過了事情不提了 / 從頭開始再起家 / 富貴無底也是真 / 只要我夫聽妻話
夫妻和氣勤儉做 / 不聽妻言去當兵 / 當兵一年無信音 / 不搭信歸心不冷
長情再守三五年 / 再沒字歸相勸我 / 我是該家別處求 / 窮奴自身辭祖宗
世上不是我一人 / 皇帝至今錯制禮 / 君子並無落處好 / 坐位天子不跟他
Interestingly, this song was offered in 2003 not by a woman but by a man, a
fraternal uncle of Meiyue’s husband. This man, Tang Maogui 唐茂貴, in his
eighties then, was a traditional Confucian scholar. He had learned this song
from his maternal aunt as a child. In Jiangyong it was not uncommon for boys
to learn nüshu or nüge by (over)hearing or observing the performances of their
senior female relatives.
Another song Tang Maogui provided was a letter of condolence sent to
sworn sisters, both of whom had suffered paralysis:
In a beautiful spring, with a crescent moon,
I’m here to ask you to listen to what I’m about to say. . . .
These are my sincere words to you.
You are not the only ones who suffer.
Peculiar things and strange people are all over the world;
Some are faced with an even more difficult situation than yours.
Green onions stand upright all the time;
Garlic shoots bend throughout their lives.
Fleas leap and jump;
Lice crawl to get around.
Great trees deep in the mountains are magnificent;
But grasses on the ground have their own dignity.
The birds in the sky can fly to Jiangnan [the Yangzi Delta];
Carp in the river have their own course. . . .
Some mountains are higher, some lower. . . .
It’s our destinies to be born thus.13
春天秀色峨眉月 / 奉請姑娘聽信音…/ 我真提言來對你 / 不光姑娘不只你
世上奇事奇人多 / 還有比你更加難 / 蔥苗直直是一世 / 蒜苗彎彎一樣行
蚤母跳跳又一樣 / 蝨婆游游一樣行 / 深山大樹多威武 / 平地草木一樣行
天上鳥子遊江南 / 河腹鯉魚一樣行…/ 石山又有高低矮 ... / 因緣相配命生成
12
Sung by Meiyue and recorded in November 2004.
13
| Gendered Words
186
It is worth noting that Meiyue added many lines to this nüshu—such as
those regarding the flea, louse, tree, grass, bird, and carp—because, she said,
“The original text was not long enough.” This editing of a received text is not
uncommon among nüshu and nüge practitioners, and this explains how a song
may develop various versions across the nüshu or nüge community. Her use of
those particular images also exemplifies how everyday scenes become inspira-
tion for literary creation.
In addition to collecting traditional sung texts, Meiyue also composed new
ones for the sake of teaching. “Origins of Nüshu” is one example. Written in
2001, it concerns the genesis of nüshu. Inspired by Yi Nianhua’s “If You
Wonder Where Nüshu Comes From” (Zhao 1992:868–869), Meiyue’s “Ori-
gins of Nüshu” claims that a person known as Nine-kilogram Girl (Jiujin
Gu’niang 九斤姑娘) was the inventor of nüshu:
Several thousand years ago in Shangjiangxu,
Lived a talented village girl,
Who weighed nine kilograms at birth.
People called her Lady Nine.
Nine-kilogram Girl was capable,
With sharp eyes and a nimble, clever mind.
She excelled at weaving and spinning;
She could also rub hemp and do all kinds of embroidery.
The girls nearby all liked her and
They became her dear sisters.
Even those far away heard about her,
And swore sisterhood with her. . . .
Women in the past were illiterate,
And it’s difficult to ask others to deliver oral messages.
So Nine-kilogram Girl created a script,
A miraculous script to be written on handkerchiefs,
On paper or on fans,
Script to be sent to sisters, whether nearby or far off.
These sisters were truly happy to receive messages;
They sat together and consulted one another.
They read and they wrote;
They sang and they learned.
When they finally grasped [the script],
They used it to express their suffering.
From generation to generation, this script has been transmitted,
A remarkable script, with which to lament one’s bitter feelings.14
幾千年前上江墟 / 有位農村才華女 / 出生下來九斤重 / 人人喊她九姑娘
九斤姑娘真能幹 / 眼活心靈又聰明 / 一雙好手紡織布 / 搓麻繡花樣樣行
近邊姑娘也喜歡 / 和她結拜好姊妹 / 還有遠方聞訊來 / 也來結交姊妹情…
14
This nüshu was given by Meiyue in August 2010.

以前女人不識字 / 託人帶口信又難 / 九斤姑娘創造字 / 創造奇字手帕上
也有紙本紙扇上 / 送給遠近的姊妹 / 姊妹收到真歡喜 / 一齊坐攏來聯繫
一邊讀來一邊寫 / 一邊唱來一邊學 / 後來姑娘學會了 / 寒苦姊妹帶世來
一代一代傳下來 / 以憑奇字訴苦情
By using this piece for teaching, Meiyue not only provided a vehicle for
learning the nüshu graphs but also offered background on nüshu’s historical
and social contexts: who created it, under what circumstances, and how it was
disseminated. In this piece, Meiyue also notes the key function of nüshu: to
“lament one’s bitter feelings.” Now that she was a nüshu transmitter, Meiyue
expected herself to be able to write a nüshu in this regard as well—that is, to
convey a particular woman’s story of misery. To undertake this task, she began
to observe people’s life experiences around her: “When you see someone else
suffer, you want to write something to help relieve her pain.” In 2004 Meiyue
completed her first biographical lament, for a woman called Fang. Before she
started, she consulted with her subject: “Would you write about yourself?”
Fang answered, “Alas! I don’t know how to write, or otherwise, I’d write more
than one [lament].” Meiyue responded, “Then tell me more about yourself and
let me write one for you.”
Fang gave birth to her first baby three years after she had married. To
build a better future, she and her husband went with their newborn to
Guangdong to earn a living. Unfortunately, this new family soon fell apart:
The husband died in car accident 18 days before their second child was born.
Meiyue felt driven to write a nüshu about Fang not just because of Fang’s
own misfortune, but also because of the misery of Fang’s deceased hus-
band’s mother, a widow. This widow had lost her husband when her son was
only three years old. At that time, she was in poor health and depended on
her little son to help take care of her. The child went begging for food from
door to door every day, and they managed to survive. And now just when
they were finally about to enjoy a better life, she lost her beloved son as
Meiyue wrote in this biographic nüshu:
Born to misery,
[The child] lost his father at the age of three and could only depend on himself.
With something to eat this meal, but nothing for the next,
We had no idea what time would bring.
In the morning, he got up to beg for rice,
Begging to feed his mother.
The mother for her part was thinking,
Thinking to save as much rice as she could.
Each day saving a handful,
Over time even a trickle will grow into a lake.
自從出身是苦命 / 三歲沒毑獨自立 / 飽一餐來餓一餐 / 不知時間哪樣來
清朝起來去討米 / 討米歸來養老娘 / 老娘心中自思想 / 心中想起節下來
一日節下一抓米 / 小水長流江成湖
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188
She never expected that after all the difficulties they had been through to-
gether, her filial son would leave the world before her:
You were a filial son in this world, and
You married in a virtuous wife. . . .
In spring, a warming season,
The swallows left the nest and flew to the south. . . .
In winter, the season of cold, snow, and frost,
All the leaves had fallen because of the chill, . . .
And you returned to the nether world,
Leaving your wife and daughter behind.
Eighteen days after you passed,
My granddaughter was born.
你在世間孝順子 / 娶個媳娘賢娘女 ... / 春來天色端洋洋 / 燕子出窩到南頭…
冬來天氣寒雪霜 / 霜寒樹木又落葉…/ 你唄一命歸陰府 / 丟下母女在世人
你去陰司十八日 / 添個花孫隔天女
Having lost her only son, this mother could only blame her destiny:
All my family were pushed from me . . . and
All my complaints can never be fully expressed. . . .
I don’t blame Heaven or Earth;
I can only blame my destiny for not being lucky enough.
From the time I fell into this world with three cries,
My fate, manifested in my eight characters and five elements, was determined. . . .
I called to Heaven but Heaven didn’t respond;
I called on Earth and Earth didn’t answer.
It’s all because I didn’t cultivate a good fate in past lifetimes;
I therefore had to rely on my son and now my grandchildren.
If I had a say,
I wish my young man had survived.
But who ever expects the sun to go backward, and
My old white head to see off his young black one.15
我的親人盡推去…/ 我的怨言說不盡…/ 不怨天來不怨地 / 只怨我身福薄單
落地三聲哭不好 / 八字五行注定來…/ 喊句天來天不聞 / 喊句地來地不靈
我是前世不修到 / 等了子來又等孫 / 設此口中曰得下 / 留得青春在世上
誰知日頭倒出山 / 是我白頭送黑頭
This nüshu is both traditional and not. It is traditional in the sense that it
attributes misfortune to one’s “eight characters and five elements,” or destiny;
it is untraditional because it refers to a modern social phenomenon, the mass
migration of village youths to the south to work as “floating labor.” When I col-
lected this lament from Meiyue in 2004, I was also introduced to Fang. From
my interview with her, I learned that some crucial incidents were left out of
15

Meiyue’s nüshu. I then encouraged Meiyue to further develop the story line of
this piece, but whenever I visited her in subsequent years and asked about her
progress on it, she was always strangely evasive: “I’m very busy. I have no spare
time.” It was not until 2009 that she finally confessed the real reason: “I no
longer write nüshu.”
While the vibrancy of her old declaration that “I’ll glorify nüshu” still lin-
gered in my ears, she had decided to cap her pen. What had happened, what
had stopped Meiyue?
Can’t Bear to Write
“Alas, I can’t bear to write nüshu!”

“Nüshu is about misery. It’s all tears and suffering. So I asked myself, ‘Why
write about this? It only causes me more pain.’”
“I used to be an optimistic person. But when I wrote nüshu, I had to express
sorrow and melancholy. Pouring my emotions into it left me in a state of
misery.”
“It’s only a psychological state, right?” I supposed.
Meiyue’s answer surprised me: “It is more than that; my life situation wors-
ened as well.” She told me, “In the years when I was preparing nüshu teaching
materials, my family’s livelihood went bad. My husband got sick; the livestock
we raised died—many things happened. I thus said to myself, ‘I won’t write
any more.’”
She emphasized, “I’m not the only one saying this; many others have said
the same.” She explained, “Cizhu’s son had asked her not to write nüshu. He
said, ‘Nüshu should not be learned or written. The more you write nüshu, the
more you suffer.’” Cizhu did suffer a lot. Her father died before she was born,
and then she lost her mother. She lived for eight years in an orphanage before
she married. Ten years after her marriage, she lost her husband and child, and
was left completely alone. To survive, she agreed to a second marriage, from
which she bore her only son, the one quoted above.
To further persuade me, Meiyue pointed to Yi and Tang: “Yi Nianhua had
only two daughters but was married three times. The same is true for Tang
Baozhen. How many marriages did she go through? Perhaps more than three;
the official record notes three, but they say she went ‘missing’ for a short
period of time.” (This suggests there might have been another relationship.)
Indeed, Yi, a prolific nüshu writer, had a miserable life. Born into a gentry
family of Tangxia Village, she was literate in both Chinese hanzi and nüshu. In
her long autobiographical nüshu, she enumerated one misfortune after an-
other, beginning with the death of her father and her mother’s widowhood:
My mother was named He Guangci;

My father, Yi Xijun.
He died at age 27,
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190
Leaving my mother to manage alone.
I was four when my father passed away,
And my younger sister, one year old.
I had no elder brother nor a younger;
And as such my widowed mother had no comfort.
Since my mother was widowed at a young age,
My maternal grandparents worried and
They sent my junior uncle to bring her home.
We three, mother and two daughters, spent most of our time at my uncles’.
My mother’s two brothers cared for us,
So did my mother’s two sisters. . . .
My mother’s two sisters also advised,
Advised my mother not to leave her daughters,
Because her parents were still healthy and
She would have no worries if she stayed with them.
She should stay to take care of her daughters—bring them up,
And marry them—and she would be honored for this effort.
So my mother stayed with us one year after another, and
Before she knew it, it had been ten years.
我娘名叫何光慈 / 父親名叫義昔君 / 二十七歲落陰府 / 拋下我娘守空房
爺死之時我四歲 / 妹娘一歲不知天 / 上無兄來下無弟 / 我毑空房沒開心
娘守空房年輕少 / 外公外婆多慮心 / 叫我細舅來接姊 / 三母常常在舅家
兩個舅爺多疼惜 / 兩個姨娘解毑心 .../ 兩個姨娘齊相勸 / 勸毑安心守女兒
如今爺娘剛強在 / 坐齊毑邊不見愁 / 守得女兒成長大 / 交全紅花出功勞
守了一年守一年 / 不覺守了十年春
At age 14, Yi moved back to her father’s village and got married three years
later. There she had to deal with a demanding mother-in-law:
When I turned 17,
Grandfather married me into Tongkou Village
To a man named Lü Quan.
In the first few years with the family Lü, I had no worries at all.
Three or four years later,
I gave birth to a daughter.
One day when my husband went to the academy,
Mother accused me of doing something I didn’t:
She accused me of cooking eggs for myself on the sly.
Which god could prove my innocence?
I sat with her during the day;
I slept with her on the same bed at night.
I had been serving my parents with all my heart;
How could I possibly do such a thing?
But that day my mother-in-law demanded that I kneel down;
She spat curses at me.
I was sleepless for several nights, crying throughout.

There was not a neighbor or male kin who dared to speak up for me.
Finding no way out,
I thought of ending my life, but then the truth would never be revealed.
What could I do?
I could only await my husband’s homecoming and explain everything to him.
年華年剛十七歲 / 郎公交全桐口村 / 配與盧全為夫主 / 初到盧家並無煩
來到三年上四載 / 養起女兒是一個 / 我夫出鄉書房去 / 誰知母親說枉言
枉我暗中煮蛋吃 / 哪個神仙來証明 / 日間與娘同陪坐 / 夜間同被又同床
年華盡心待父母 / 哪有此心偏別娘 / 老娘當天來跪下 / 咬土三口咒我身
透夜不眠透夜哭 / 郎叔不敢說分明 / 心中思想無路走 / 辭別世間理不明
左思右想無計策 / 守夫回家說分明
The following year, more misfortunes befell her. Yi gave birth to a son but
lost it, and one year later her husband left her as well:
When the boy was three years old,
He was afflicted with a mouth inflammation and we grew distraught.
We spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars,
But in vain—both my child and the money were gone.
And it reminded me how vicious my mother-in-law was:
She spat curses at me,
Cursing me for being no good,
And so my son had died at age three.
My son died in February,
And in September I gave birth to a daughter.
One year later,
On that daughter’s first birthday, I lost my husband.
我兒養了三歲滿 / 口內起疳心亂溶 / 錢銀整了幾百塊 / 人財兩空沒功勞
想起老娘心腸毒 / 咬土三口咒我身 / 咒我將身沒好處 / 咒了三年崽落陰
二月我兒落陰府 / 九月生下小女身 / 小女將來一歲滿 / 女兒交生夫落朝
In her late twenties, Yi had become a widow responsible for raising two
daughters. Her widowhood happened to coincide with the Sino-Japanese War.
To seek refuge, she fled with her young daughters into the mountains for sev-
eral months:
In the thirty-third year of the Republic [1944], we fled from the Japanese.
A widow with no husband was especially miserable.
The others had husbands to carry the supplies and grain;
I had no one and could only suffer, with two streams of tears flowing.
My elder daughter was fourteen then,
And the younger one six.
I fled with my daughters from the Japanese;
I myself carried the rice into the mountains.
Walking in the mountains, my tears flowed;
For I had no husband to build us a shelter.
Other male kin and the villagers took pity on us;
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192
They allowed us to take refuge with them. . . .
Living in the mountains for several months,
We suffered from the cold, snow, and chill.
三十三年走日本 / 寡婦沒夫好可憐 / 人人有夫拿糧食 / 是我無夫淚雙流
大女年剛十四歲 / 小女年剛六歲人 / 引起女兒走日本 / 獨個拿米到山林
走到山中流珠哭 / 沒夫起廠沒安身 / 伯叔看見齊疼惜 / 叫我入廠去安身…
住在山中幾個月 / 受盡寒霜雪上眠
After suffering so much, when the Communist Party brought social and
political reforms to the Jiangyong villages in the 1950s, Yi decided to marry in
a son-in-law for her second daughter so she would be taken care of in her old
age. But despite Yi’s wishes and best efforts, her second daughter insisted on
moving to her husband’s place, probably because matrilocal marriage was not
widely accepted at that point and the idea of not marrying out made the second
daughter feel demeaned and ashamed. Also, according to William Chiang’s
report (2002), the second daughter refused to share the family property with
her mother and therefore forced Yi to remarry. But misfortune seemed to
follow Yi no matter what she did, and this second marriage did not last a year:
Her husband fell ill and died. Her two stepsons refused to accept this tragedy
and they condemned Yi for bringing misfortune to their family. In the face of
their accusation, Yi knew she had to remarry yet again:
Who knew that I did not cultivate enough merit in my previous life;
I was thus matched in a false bond.
I remarried in June,
But one year later that husband died.
I kept my widowhood for one year and
Because my stepsons criticized me,
I remarried once again.
I found another old man and we kept each other company.
I remarried just when the socialist education movement was over.
I remained in that marriage for twenty years.
My old husband shouldn’t have died,
Leaving me desolate and alone.
誰知前生修不到 / 再配一個假姻緣 / 頭年六月我改嫁 / 去了一年夫落陰
身守空房一年滿 / 兩個兒子言語多 / 將賤就賤行歸步 / 相陪老伴過時光
社教結束我改嫁 / 如今去了二十年 / 不該老伴落陰府 / 拋下孤淒我一人
Yi was widowed for the third time in the 1980s. At that time, she had been
identified as a nüshu writer. Because she coveted the profits associated with Yi’s
nüshu status, the second daughter brought her back to Tongkou Village to live
with them. Soon, however, her daughter and son-in-law began to complain:
They wished that I would just throw myself in the river.
The river was not covered and so convenient for ending my life.
My daughter is truly a cruel person.
She and her children discussed how to throw me out.

She scolded that I had only returned home to enjoy the good life,
That I didn’t realize what kind of person I was.
They said that I had never been sick
But only pretended to be.
望我投河自縊死 / 大河沒蓋好終身 / 女兒本是心腸毒 / 幾母商量趕我身
罵我回家來享福 / 不自思量哪樣人 / 又說我是沒得病 / 故意做出病樣形
With such a merciless daughter, Yi could only cry out for help in conclusion:
Now I’m old and no one takes care of me.
With a poisonous ulcer on my skin,
I’m like a bird in a cage,
A bird with wings but no feathers—how can I fly? . . .
I wish to go to the hospital to consult a doctor,
But my daughter refuses to give me any money . . .
I can only go to the periodic market to seek help from a friend,
To borrow enough money to get some shots. . . .
Now my own daughter has thrown me out,
What place can I call home? (Zhao 1992:277–292)
我今年老無人養 / 身生毒瘡十分難 / 我今可比籠中鳥 / 有翅無毛亦難飛…
要到醫院去整病 / 女不給錢亦不行…/ 到了墟場靠朋友 / 借錢幾元去打針…
親生女兒趕出我 / 如今何處是我家
Meiyue summed up, “Anyway, many of those who practiced nüshu were
widows, including Yang Huanyi. Her husband was bitten by a poisonous snake
and died just two months after they were married. And her second husband
was a gambler. All the family responsibility fell on her shoulders.” She went
on, “Yanxin is no different—her husband died not long after she was identified
as a nüshu writer.”
Meiyue reiterated, “Writing nüshu truly makes one’s life sad and
dismaying.”
It was hard for me to believe that Meiyue, educated under the Communist
anti-superstition ideologies, would hold such a view. I tried to absorb what she
said and murmured: “Nüshu makes one’s life sad and dismaying?”
Hearing this, Meiyue burst into laughter and confirmed what I had just
said, “Yes, it is really so.”
I followed up, “But isn’t it because of sadness and dismay that we rely on
nüshu to discharge those bitter emotions? Moreover, your Grandma wrote
nüshu for other women, and yet we never heard that she said that writing nüshu
would make a woman’s life more bitter, did we?”
Meiyue explained, “That’s because Grandma’s heart had gone through all
that suffering in the first place. Grandma had two daughters and they all died
before her—experiences like that were certainly depressing. It occurred when
the Japanese army invaded Yongming 永明 [i.e., Jiangyong]. My aunts [Gao’s
daughters] had already run away, but they returned home for some things and
got caught.”
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194
From Meiyue’s point of view, Grandma had suffered such severe hardship
that she had developed certain “antibodies,” thus making her immune to any
further attack. But Meiyue was different: She was a fresh recruit with no de-
fense mechanism, and was therefore vulnerable to be overtaken by nüshu’s
web of misfortune.
Meiyue admitted, “Nüshu has the power to jiekaixin 解開心 ‘liberate one’s
heart’. When we encounter certain mishaps, if we didn’t have nüshu to write it
down, we would become sadder and sadder. With nüshu, we don’t have to dwell
on the sadness. Whenever we need to remember what we’ve gone through, we
just read the nüshu and get the feeling of it back from that. Our mind is thereby
set free.” In other words, nüshu helps preserve the memory but not the burden.
Although it can generate a soothing curative energy, Meiyue believes that
nüshu is equally a curse. “It casts misfortune on those who write about misfor-
tunes,” and this has intimidated Meiyue and kept her from writing, because of
her personal experiences. “Of course, we experience twists and turns in our
lifetime anyway,” continued Meiyue, trying to address her points rationally.
“But how can you explain that just as I was working on nüshu, the cows and
pigs we raised all died before they were grown, every one? And the same thing
happened three years in a row. No kidding!” Out of fear of nüshu’s curse,
Meiyue decided to stop writing miseries.
Of course, Meiyue understood that if she wished to uphold the nüshu herit-
age, she had to write and compose. As a compromise, she chose to work on
pleasant or aphoristic texts: “Nowadays, I write mostly Confucian sayings or
congratulatory messages,” such as ‘Wish you propitious and happy’ (jixiang
ruyi 吉祥如意), ‘Enjoy smooth sailing and favorable wind’ (yifan fengshun
一帆風順), and ‘Have one’s wishes come true’ (xinxiang shicheng 心想事成).
Meiyue has no intention of being trapped by the psychological burdens and
material repercussions of nüshu’s lamenting nature.
Nüshu in Contemporary Society: Dilemmas and Challenges
“What does nüshu mean to me? It teaches us female propriety and morality.
Without nüshu, we would be ignorant.” Meiyue cited the narrative ballad The
Third Daughter as an example (see Gong 1991:66–101; Xie ed. 1991:1667–1692;
Zhao 1992:691–718). This is the story of a girl who ranked third among her
siblings. Her mother badgered her to leave her poor husband and marry some-
one rich or she would disown her. But the daughter did not give in; she argued
with her mother that fortune cannot be achieved on demand and a woman
should not marry twice. Being spurned by her mother only made her work
more diligently with her husband. Their hard work moved the gods and their
virtue was eventually rewarded: One day, when working in the field, her hus-
band found gold; her two sons later passed the civil service exam. As the third
daughter became better off, her mother went bankrupt and had to beg for food
to survive. It was eventually her once despised daughter who took her in and

looked after her in her old age. For Meiyue, this story is meaningful because “it
teaches the lesson that we shouldn’t judge people as high and low on the basis
of rank or wealth.”
While acknowledging nüshu’s admonitory value, Meiyue did not deny that
some of its forms were outdated. For instance, she has become uncomfortable
with nüshu’s biographical function; her discomfort was initially sparked by
working with Fang.
“In 2004 when I was writing about Fang’s life story, you asked me to con-
tinue and write more, and I did try. I went to interview Fang, as you scholars
did. I told her about writing her a nüshu, but she responded, ‘What’s the use?
It won’t change anything.’” Meiyue had tried to persuade her: “Once I’ve writ-
ten it, you can keep a copy. Later in life if you wish to review something, you
can take it out and read. You can leave it to your two daughters as well.” But still
Fang declined, waving her off, “I’ve no time.”
“No time” could only be an excuse. After Meiyue had pursued the subject
several times, Fang finally revealed her true concern: “Spreading my life story
around doesn’t seem such a good idea.”
Fang’s answer got Meiyue to thinking: What does writing one’s suffering in
nüshu mean to the protagonist?
Nüshu, as Jiangyong women’s distinctive expressive culture, developed into
a genre for “lamenting one’s misery” for a reason. In the past, nüshu could
“liberate one’s heart” because there was a group of people who readily shared
the protagonist’s misery, listening to it and providing their sympathy. This
made the act of lamenting worthwhile. The community’s moral support moti-
vated the lamenter to uphold her own dignity and stand strong. In this sense,
nüshu was an effective means of empowering the weak and easing the sorrow
of suffering women. But now, with the traditional nüshu community dissolved
by societal changes, its purpose has changed. Writing nüshu is part of Meiyue’s
self-training to become a qualified nüshu transmitter, while for scholars like
me, collecting nüshu serves our various research agendas. But how does it ben-
efit protagonists like Fang, who cannot even read it and so have developed no
attachment to it? As Fang fairly stated, for her “it won’t change anything.”
Sympathizing with Fang’s view, Meiyue began to wonder: “Some of our life
experiences should not really be passed around, should they?”
When Meiyue first practiced nüshu, however, it did not occur to her that
composing a biography was inappropriate. In 2003 she composed her own bi-
ography, which was taken off by someone from Beijing. Meiyue did not tend to
keep copies of her own compositions, and she cannot remember what she had
written then. She is only sure that she no longer feels like writing one. “To write
an autobiography, you have to mention incidents you experienced, one by one.
Why bother? Especially after thoroughly reviewing Yi Nianhua’s (auto)bio-
graphical nüshu, I swore to myself, ‘I will never write about myself. Never ever!’”
With a hint of puzzlement in her voice, she continued, “Why would those
old women . . . just write down whatever they had seen or experienced? . . . Yi
wrote about the many places she had been [married] and how poorly she was
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196
treated by her mother-in-law and her daughter. Wasn’t she afraid that people
would ridicule her and sneer at her?”
“But how do you explain the fact that your Grandma, Cizhu, and Tang had
composed biographies for themselves or on behalf of others [say, Xijing]?” I
challenged.
Meiyue countered, “That’s because they didn’t know scholars would publish
their writing. When they wrote, they simply wrote down what they thought,
felt, and believed. . . . If they had known that their writing would go public, they
would never have done it, definitely not. Besides,” Meiyue added, “nüshu in the
past had no shengming 聲名 [they were not attributed to particular persons].”
True, traditional biographical nüshu were mostly anonymous. Not only was
the author unknown, so was the identity of the main character of the story.
Except for cases of protest, the protagonist is identified mostly by her birthplace,
affinal location, or sibling ranking, but seldom by her personal name. Only re-
cently, once nüshu became a subject of scholarship, a source of business, and a
topic of news coverage, have nüshu writers begun to claim authorship and en-
titlement. This has arisen partly because of the benefits attached to nüshu (e.g.,
receiving an interview fee or selling nüshu items to visitors) and partly because
of publication protocols, since scholars are required to provide the sources of
their collected data. Nowadays the nüshu writers either directly embed their full
names in their biographical compositions or add a signature at the end of the
piece. I still remember vividly that in 1992, when I first interviewed the then
eldest nüshu woman, Huanyi, and asked her to write some nüshu for me, the
other scholars and officials present encouraged her to write her name and the
date after she had finished the piece. If a nüshu piece is presented in the form
of a scroll (to be hung or publicly displayed), the seal of the writer is also affixed.
Meiyue’s work is no exception. On the scroll she sent to celebrate my grand-
mother-in-law’s one hundredth birthday, she wrote, “With fortune as great as
the East Ocean’s ever-flowing water / With life as long as the South Mountain’s
ageless pine” 福如東海長流水 / 壽比南山不老松, to which she added two
seals “Yinxian’s family transmission” (Yinxian jiachuan 銀仙家傳) and her own
name “Hu Meiyue.”
In addition to traditional biographies being nameless, Meiyue added, “A bi-
ographical nüshu would also be buried with a woman after she died.” She ex-
plained, “Women’s own laments would go with them because they didn’t want
them passed along.” Indeed, the collected nüshu written before Liberation con-
tain no biographies, but mostly narrative ballads, sisterhood letters, and san-
zhaoshu—the types of pieces often carefully preserved and handed down to the
next generation.
At this point, Meiyue’s voice took on a gentle tone. “Grandma once thought
that nüshu could never be sustained. During the Cultural Revolution, Red
Guards came to the villages to search and probe, and they burned everything
that was considered traditional. One day when the Seven Sisters were gather-
ing, one of them on her way to the meeting saw people ‘wearing red arm-
bands’ moving in their direction. She immediately alerted the others to hide

their nüshu. At that time, they thought nüshu would be circulated only among
women of their generation. They would have never imagined that history
would change course. Now, thanks to scholarly interest [nüshu survives]. The
more scholars, the better, no?”
“Since Grandma handed down the nüshu heritage to me, it is my responsi-
bility to keep it alive. I will glorify nüshu!” Meiyue exclaimed on more than one
occasion. But fulfilling this promise has not been without challenges and
pressures.
The first, and imminent, crisis is that the practice has no successors. Ac-
cording to Meiyue, “From 2005 to 2006, basically no students were coming
to the nüshu class. Even if the village girls had plenty of free time, they pre-
ferred to hang out instead of learning nüshu. They said, ‘Nüshu is impracti-
cal.’ Some of them might have been interested, but they were quickly dis-
couraged by their parents, who considered nüshu a distraction from formal
schooling.”
She also said, “No one feels like learning nüshu, unless it is by family trans-
mission. My daughter learned it, but she says she has her own career plan. She
worked on nüshu only when she was at home with me.” Meiyue’s daughter now
works in Guangdong.
“It’s a shame that my younger sister didn’t continue. She learned nüshu
even better than I had, but unfortunately she became addicted to gambling.
She took the wrong path,” said Meiyue sadly. Gambling and drug use are Ji-
angyong’s two major social problems nowadays.
Only one member of the young generation has learned nüshu really well.
This is Hu Xin, Meiyue’s former student and the youngest official-appointed
nüshu transmitter. Beginning 2003, Jiangyong official government has imple-
mented a series of policies to regulate the transmission of nüshu, including the
recognition of “nüshu transmitter” inaugurated in 2003 and the Interim Mea-
sures for the Administration of Nüshu Chuanren (Nüshu chuanren pingxuan
guanli banfa shixing 女書傳人評選管理辦法試行) promulgated in 2004.
These official engagements have reshaped, if not threatened, nüshu’s cultural
form in contemporary society. They define what counts a qualified nüshu
transmitter in four areas: (1) proficiency in reading, singing, reciting, and writ-
ing nüshu, (2) skills for doing women’s needlework (embroidering and weav-
ing) and knowledge of the local dialect and local customs, (3) civic virtue (to
love her hometown, be high-minded, observe national laws, and do nothing in
violation with any legal regulations or village protocols), and (4) loyalty by sub-
mitting to the leadership of the Center for Nüshu Cultural and Research Ad-
ministration, which operates under the supervision of the Jiangyong Propa-
ganda Office.
Being an officially appointed transmitter or chuanren is not only an honor,
she will also be entitled by the Propaganda Office to a monthly subsidy of 20
dollars (RMB), a stipend that was raised to 100 dollars in 2010. A chuanren, in
return, is obliged to create nüshu upon government request and provide, free
of charge, reproduction copies of all her nüshu works at the pleasure of the
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local authorities. This is an interesting development, since nüshu used to be
marginalized and therefore provided a vehicle for women to articulate their
true, and sometimes overtly counter-mainstream, voices. Now that local gov-
ernment has tried to absorb nüshu into its propaganda system, it is no longer
a women’s folk tradition but instead is expected to perform certain political
missions. Moreover, a nüshu chuanren is also expected to “actively transmit her
nüshu knowledge to whoever takes an interest in it.” By using the term “ac-
tively,” the Propaganda Office lays the responsibility for sustaining the nüshu
heritage on the shoulders of nüshu practitioners.
On the part of practitioners or chuanren, to sustain nüshu as a living herit-
age, composing new texts rather than merely reciting the old is the key. In this
regard, Meiyue is troubled by the public expectation that nüshu is a kind of
money-making enterprise. “If I want to use nüshu to record someone’s life
story, writing about so-and-so, I would have to do interviews [with the subject].
But now interviewees think I am taking advantage of their suffering to make
money. They all see us in terms of money.” Refusing to be so defined, Meiyue
chose to back out. True, and undeniably, some people were attracted to nüshu
because of the perceived financial benefit. A man in his forties named Qiang
admitted that this was his motivation for learning nüshu. He did not really care
about the sufferings recorded in the script; his interest was in doing nüshu as
a form of calligraphy to sell. He submitted his nüshu pieces to the Jiangyong
Propaganda Office in hopes of being selected for the exhibit at the Shanghai
World Expo 2010, which he believed would boost the market value of his nüshu
works. He was denied because of his gender and became angry at what he saw
as “sexual discrimination.” He complained, “Nüshu goes nowhere if you
depend only on those few women. We need more people to take part. It’s unfair
that men’s nüshu writing is excluded and worth less.” Qiang seemed concerned
with nüshu’s development, but in fact he was mainly interested in using the
form to transcribe classical Chinese poems. In this he was not unique, how-
ever: Nüshu chuanren Hu Xin, Zhou Huijuan, and Pu Lijuan all do the same.
For them, nüshu is now only a vehicle for expanding the art of Chinese callig-
raphy. This is the fourth challenge Meiyue faces: How should she counter the
trend toward beautifying or reifying nüshu?
Meiyue once commented, “Nüshu’s written strokes are stiff and the graphs
are called yingbi zi 硬筆字 [‘stiff-stroke characters’]. Both Grandma’s and He
Yanxin’s nüshu writing is like this. But they say that such writing is not good
enough; it lacks artistry.” “They” refers to local authorities, in particular the
Jiangyong Propaganda Office, as well as nüshu scholars and artists outside Ji-
angyong. These people judge the appearance of nüshu writing in terms of Chi-
nese calligraphy, which demonstrates power, flow, and control of the brush-
strokes. To upgrade the “artistic value” of nüshu, the Jiangyong Propaganda
Office created the title “nüshu propaganda ambassador” (nüshu xuanchuan
dashi 女書宣傳大使) and conferred it on certain calligraphers who have voiced
interest in developing nüshu’s aesthetics. These artists have introduced the
habits of calligraphic styles, such as xingshu 行書 (a semi-cursive or running

style) and caoshu 草書 (cursive or grass style) to the stiff-stroke nüshu writing
and thus have changed nüshu’s distinct and delicate morphology. To differenti-
ate, Meiyue calls the traditional style “archetypical form of nüshu” (yuan sheng-
tai nüshu 原生態女書, that is, texts written prior to Liberation) and the calli-
graphic style “artistic nüshu.” The artistic nüshu is more popular and therefore
has won favor among nüshu chuanren and nüshu artists alike. Nowadays only
Yanxin insists on writing “only the nüshu I learned from my Grandma,” that is,
the archetypical script. Meiyue occasionally writes artistic nüshu to meet popu-
lar demand.
Interest in beautifying the nüshu script, in fact, emerged as early as the
1990s, when Zhou Shuoyi, after helping with so much nüshu research, began
to organize the graphs he had collected. If he considered a certain one not
beautiful enough, he would add a dot or stroke to make the original more mor-
phologically balanced. Sometimes, he would create a new nüshu graph by
transfiguring certain hanzi characters he considered beautiful in shape. For
example, (永 yong, usually written ) and （傳 chuan, usually written ）
both seem to be his invention. In 2002 he published Nüshu zidian 女書字典
(Nüshu dictionary), the first of its kind. Meiyue noted, “It is said that his first
draft contained more than 2,000 nüshu graphs, then he cut it down to 1,600
after being corrected by referees. But according to Grandma, nüshu had only
about 700 or 800 [graphs]—definitely fewer than one thousand words.”
While the emphasis on artistry has threatened nüshu’s written morphology,
the distinction between nüshu and nüge has also eroded. This began as early as
the 1980s, when nüshu scholars had all their collected nüge transcribed into
nüshu, as mentioned above. Now another agent drives this conflation—the Ji-
angyong Propaganda Office, which broadly redefines nüshu as a cultural com-
plex comprising nüshu writing, nüge songs, and nüshu-associated customs
(e.g., the singing court performed at weddings). To create a more lively and
entertaining image for nüshu, local authorities have incorporated dance into
sanzhaoshu performances, and this is how sanzhaoshu were publicly performed
at the nüshu conference held in Beijing in 2010, conference organized by Ji-
angyong Propaganda Office for “salvaging” the nüshu culture. They even mod-
ified the nüshu and nüge lyrics that they feared might give a negative impres-
sion of Jiangyong. For example, one popular folksong contrasts the different
lifestyles of a daughter and a daughter-in-law: “As a daughter, you are feng liu
[‘flowing like the wind’] / As a daughter-in-law, you are yanlei liu [‘flowing like
tears’]” 做女風流真風流 / 做媳風流眼淚流). Feng liu 風流 is a local terminol-
ogy describing carefree girlhood days, but in Mandarin Chinese it carries the
implication of licentiousness or lack of social restraint, so the Jiangyong Prop-
aganda Office changes it into huan le 歡樂 (‘joyful and happy’, or haŋ44 lau33 in
local dialect). But in so doing, the acoustic parallelism of feng liu (faŋ44 liou42)
versus yanlei liu (ŋuoɯ13 la33 liou42) is completely lost. The local authorities’ ra-
tionale underlying all these modifications is simply to create a more attractive
image, which they believe will help nüshu be listed as a UNESCO intangible
cultural heritage. There is no small irony in the fact that this is being done by
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disguising the true face of nüshu, a tradition that women created to lament and
give expression to their bitter emotions. In light of all this, Meiyue finds her-
self in no position to criticize or change the situation. After all, she is now a
nüshu chuanren on the government payroll and required to comply with the
regulations of the Propaganda Office. This does not leave her much room to
glorify the nüshu heritage as she knows it.
Conclusions
As nüshu is being pulled toward artistry, commercialization and politicization,

on top of its lack of successors, how should Meiyue position nüshu and define
herself? Take writing the script, for example: Should she write what her grand-
mother taught her, the stiff-stroke characters, or the artistic nüshu favored by
the market and the government alike? When the discourse that “writing nüshu
truly makes one’s life sad and dismaying” becomes an emotional, psychologi-
cal, and cognitive burden for Meiyue, is it fair that nüshu be liberated from its
generic “lamenting one’s misery” and transformed into a happy or aphoristic
genre? And when nüshu is being used mainly to transliterate writings of male
elites such as classical poems or other congratulatory verses, which means that
it is no longer a gender-defined writing culture, is nüshu still a “women’s”
script? In what sense can nüshu continue to function as a record of women’s
life experiences and provide a vehicle and opportunity for rural women to ar-
ticulate their authentic feelings?
This is the cultural arena in which Meiyue, a new-generation nüshu heir, is
situated. At the crossroads between tradition and modernity—between nüshu
researchers’ academic pursuits and the public perception of nüshu as com-
modity, between the Jiangyong Propaganda Office’s political agenda and
nüshu transmitters’ personal aspirations and interests—practices that tradi-
tionally defined nüshu are now faced with either disappearing into history or
being reinvented. About such challenges Meiyue sighs, “Alas! I feel exhausted.
Learning nüshu seems to bring me only burdens and responsibility. Am I
foolish or what?”

CHAPTER 7 Conclusions: Subjectivity, Expression
and Prospects
writing history in china has long been the exclusive preserve of men, and
in particular of elite men. In this historiographical tradition, women are usu-
ally objects to be documented rather than subjects who write. In the arena of
literary creation, women’s compositions have also been limited, largely be-
cause they were generally denied access to literacy. It was not until the Ming-
Qing (1368–1911) era that female literacy gained social recognition as “cultural
capital” (Bourdieu 1977), but even so it was confined mainly to the scholar-
gentry or new urban elites. For most Chinese women, who were peasants, lit-
eracy remained an unattainable luxury.
However, as Trinh Minh-ha has insisted, “Something must be said”
(1989:119). This statement holds true also for Chinese peasant women, who
express themselves not by writing but through oral transmission, such as sto-
rytelling, narration, and singing. Oral performance, however, has long been
marginalized in Chinese history and also among sinologists; moreover, it
tends to get lost over time and becomes unrecoverable. As a result, how women
perceived and lived their lives in rural settings and adjusted to the changing
social milieu has left us with a blank page. Men’s documentation of women
remains the main authority by which women’s muted existence has been
preserved.
It is in the context of rural women’s silence in history and absence in litera-
ture that nüshu and nüge play a role. They provide us with a view of peasant
women’s lifeworlds, their perceptions, emotions, moral pursuits, and hopes
and aspirations. As women’s expressive culture, nüshu and nüge helped con-
struct Jiangyong women’s “intersubjective selves,” selves nurtured through
self-reflection and the inspiration of shared life stories. As women’s own cre-
ations that circulated only among women, nüshu and nüge also allowed women
to express their “true selves”—not selves camouflaged to fit into the male liter-
ary canon but ones that could be incongruent with men’s portrayals and even
different from their gentry women counterparts when it came to their writing
worlds. These were also selves laden with dialectical and mutually contending
voices, selves that had to be expressed not only in words but also in compelling
performances. With women’s life narratives as an intertextual reference, nüshu
and nüge together weave a soundscape that speaks to women’s subtle, vulner-
able, yet resilient selves and their undeniable subjectivities.
Women’s Selves and Subjectivities
Across nüshu and nüge narratives, the most recurrent theme is certainly widow-
hood, which happens also to be the subject predominating in elite males’ docu-
mentation of women in Jiangyong’s historical gazetteers. But these sources
present the subject in quite different ways. The local documentation, like most
Chinese historical work, tends to define widowhood through moral discourse,
reducing it to an ideology of wife-to-husband fidelity. In nüshu and nüge, as well
as in women’s life narratives, widowhood (or remarriage) is not so much a
moral issue as a practical dilemma that involves a complicated d ecision-making
process pertaining to a woman’s fertility status, economic situation, natal pa-
tronage, affinal support, and moreover, the broader social milieu.
The particulars make all the difference in women’s accounts. Tang Baozhen’s
first remarriage was driven by her lack of children and failure to adopt a son.
As a childless widow faced with an identity crisis and fissured emotions, she
remarried, referred to as xingguibu ‘to walk somewhere else to find a home’ in
nüshu and nüge. Her second marriage brought her a daughter, but when she
was widowed for the second time in her late forties, she was pressed in the in-
terest of economic survival to remarry again. By contrast, Hu Xinkui’s widowed
mother did not remarry because she had children and economic stability. Her
husband’s gambling brother coveted her property and tried to maneuver her
into remarriage, but thanks to her strong natal family support she survived in
her affinal home as a widow. Similarly, Yi Nianhua’s mother had a supportive
natal family; she brought her daughters with her to her natal village, where she
remained a widow. He Yanxin’s mother also preserved her widowhood in her
natal home, where Yanxin learned nüshu from her maternal grandmother.
However, life is never static; it is full of possibilities and opportunities as
much as constraints and challenges. People constantly make do within the
changing social-political circumstances of the times. For Jiangyong women,
the Liberation of China in 1949 was one such critical transition. The Chinese
Communist Party introduced many new policies and negated the authority of
certain old traditions, and this affected a widow’s life in numerous ways. The
new practice of intra-village marriage, for example, spared a widowed mother
from having to part with her daughter through marriage patrilocality, and this
was equally true for the mother’s remarriage. Land reform is another example.
It gave land to poor widows who otherwise would have to remarry to survive.
On the other hand, it took away the means by which widows with better eco-
nomic standing had sustained a livelihood. For example, by losing the option
of leasing her land, Yanxin’s mother had to remarry after more than a decade,
because with bound feet she was unable to work the fields herself when her
conclusions: subjectivity, expression and prospects | 203

affinal family refused to help. Yanxin’s Grandma Yang also remarried, but in a
different and, sadly, more frustrating situation. In the lean era of the Great
Leap Forward, Yang had remarried at age 85 after a failed suicide attempt. Her
daughter-in-law held back food for her children at the expense of her elder’s
well-being. In pre-Liberation China a husband might take in a concubine or
use his wife to repay a debt, but he hardly ever divorced her and left her com-
pletely isolated. However, Xinkui had to remarry after her first husband filed
for divorce out of concern over her ability to reproduce. To some extent the
prolific nüshu writer Yi was also a victim of the new practices. With matrilocal
residence becoming viable after Liberation, she managed to bring in a son-in-
law instead of marrying her daughter out, in the hope that her old age would
be secure, but things did not work out that way. She was eventually abandoned
by her daughter and forced into two subsequent remarriages. Like Yi, Tang
had only a daughter but no sons, and yet she did not attempt a matrilocal mar-
riage because her daughter argued that a woman would develop a better rela-
tionship with her mother if she married out.
Tang’s daughter’s statement makes an interesting contrast with nüge bridal
laments, a contrast that heuristically exposes women’s ambivalent and intri-
cate emotions when it comes to the issue of mother-daughter ties within the
restrictions of patriarchal society. As a daughter, Yanxin struggled with fulfill-
ing her mother’s wish—marrying a fellow villager so she would be able to take
care of her mother—when pursuing her own marital happiness by marrying
her chosen match, who lived far away, was a real option. Yanxin’s grandmother,
who as elder of the household had enjoyed control of family resources, was put
at a great disadvantage post-Liberation. Faced with an uncaring son and a vi-
cious daughter-in-law, she, under sway of the sancong ideology, preferred re-
marriage to living with her daughters. She found herself in a situation similar
to that of the handicapped widow described in the sanzhaoshu she had com-
posed, which Yanxin reproduced for us.
While influencing a widow’s lived reality, the 1949 Liberation also affected
children’s lives once their mother had remarried. In traditional Jiangyong, a
boy would always be taken care of by his father’s lineage members, but a daugh-
ter’s destiny varied; she might be brought up at her father’s village or sent to
her betrothed home as a child bride. After Liberation, when the old child bride
practice was considered “feudal poison,” the fatherless daughter, without her
mother’s protection, might even end up a vagrant on the street. Xinkui was a
child bride so at least had the refuge of her in-laws, but her stepdaughter, who
was born the same year as Liberation, became homeless after her mother re-
married. Tang’s daughter was lucky that her stepfather (Tang’s third husband)
was kind enough to raise her until she reached marriageable age.
Whether she remains a widow or remarries, and no matter what resources
she possesses, a woman’s destiny is contextually defined, dependent on her
three affiliations: natal patronage (father), affinal support (husband), and fertil-
ity (child). In this regard, the nüshu/nüge and gazetteer discourses seem to run
more closely parallel, since both assume the dominance of the patriarchal
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204
sancong doctrine. Closer inspection, however, shows that these discourses are
centered on starkly different subjectivities. The gazetteer’s account of widow-
hood is approached from the vantage point and interests of the deceased hus-
band (including the descent line he represents), in which his widow is merely
a derivative or extension charged with fulfilling whatever he has yet to accom-
plish, whether taking care of his offspring or serving his parents. In this line of
thinking, remarriage is not an option and therefore is left out or condemned.
In nüshu and nüge, however, a woman’s children—sons and daughters both—
are the foundation of her very self, her social responsibility and emotional
harbor. Therefore, a childless widow tends to choose remarriage; otherwise, if
economic conditions allow, she will often choose to remain a widow to bring
up her children, either at her affinal or natal village. Here, widowhood has
nothing to do with moral chastity but rather concerns a woman’s survival, ma-
terially and emotionally, and her maternal duty.
Built around these different subjectivities, not only do the perspectives of
the gazetteer and nüshu/nüge differ, their historiographical horizons are also
distinct, with some areas included in both and some exclusive to one or the
other. After all, each genre has its “excess of seeing” (Bakhtin 1990) or “expres-
sive niches” (Liu 2003, 2010a, 2010b), and therefore certain dynamics unac-
knowledged in the gazetteer (and other popular discourses) are revealed and
even highlighted in nüshu/nüge. For example, although local gazetteers cele-
brate the virtue of widowhood chastity and emphasize a woman’s obligation to
her husband, this obscures the fact that her husband’s family or lineage may
not appreciate a woman’s remaining a widow, especially if she is childless.
Moreover, although a married-out daughter is often considered “spilled water”
that will never return, a Jiangyong woman in fact can spend her widowed life
at her natal home. Besides, although it seems materialistic, subsistence is
always a widow’s first and most pressing challenge, and so many women chose
to remarry when the political and economic situation became reconfigured.
Last but not least, a woman’s emotional life is as important as her moral status
(her chastity) and economic survival; her children and natal support can pro-
vide her great comfort.
Along with widowhood, women’s jiebai sisterhood is another subject high-
lighted in both local gazetteers and nüshu/nüge, but depicted differently in
each. The gazetteer editors seem suspicious of women’s jiebai bonds, which
are nonetheless celebrated in nüshu and nüge. That Yang Ximei, who did not
even know the “women’s script,” could still recall part of a nüshu sisterhood
letter shows how admired and revered a nüshu-forged jiebai pact was in rural
Jiangyong. While expanding girls’ social ties, nüshu allowed jiebai sisters to
provide moral support when one of them was in a desperate emotional state or
faced some serious life challenge.
Unfortunately, the possibility of married women giving each other moral
support via nüshu was at best a hopeful promise but not a general social fact.
In reality most jiebai relationships made in girlhood days dissolved after the
girls had all married. This explains why premarital sisterhood letters, filled

with thoughts of passion, optimism, and pride, became tainted with gloom,
uncertainty, and struggle in wedding-performed sanzhaoshu, especially pieces
written on behalf of the bride’s jiebai relations. This marks a sharp contrast
with the writing world of gentry women living in urban Jiangnan (the lower
Yangzi) of the Ming-Qing era. Both groups, the nüshu users in rural Jiangyong
and female literati in urban Jiangnan, used writing to establish female circles
of association that were not completely sancong-defined. But whereas nüshu as
“women’s script” had little impact on male culture, whether rural or elite, Ji-
angnan female literati used “men’s script” (hanzi) to expand their social net-
works from familial to social arenas, and even to address the broader public via
print and publication. Operating under a lack of male support and trust that in
turn led to self-restraint, compounded by the inconveniences of Jiangyong’s
rural context, nüshu sisterhood communities often failed to survive in the face
of challenges set by village exogamy.
Note, however, that despite foreseeing the disruption of their sisterhood
ties, Jiangyong women did not passively accept this or merely complain. In-
stead, they managed to use the one occasion when nüshu was integrated into a
mainstream ceremony—the wedding—to proactively set up a new female
social network in the bride’s affinal village to compensate for loss of the jiebai
affiliations of her natal context. The creation of this affinal network is, signifi-
cantly, built not only upon a textual construction but also on the performance
of the sanzhaoshu. This leads us to the expressive depths of nüshu and nüge.
Expressive Depths: Performance, Genre, and Expressive Horizon
Sanzhaoshu is a unique body of literature; it is the only type of nüshu that is

performed on a formal ritual occasion. It is distinct also in that it brings to-
gether various social actors from across villages, whether they can read nüshu
or not: the bride (the sanzhaoshu recipient), bride’s natal associates (senders),
bride’s female affines (audience and chanters), and the nüshu expert (writer).
As a wedding missive prepared and presented exclusively by the women them-
selves, sanzhaoshu can be seen as a transfer of the bride between the women of
her natal family and those of her affinal one. To help the bride quickly adapt to
her new environment, indispensible advice is offered about how to transform
from a carefree daughter into a subservient daughter-in-law, illuminating the
path toward maturity. Publicly presented, sanzhaoshu provides a platform for
the bride’s kinswomen to lament and discharge negative sentiments (e.g., frus-
tration, grief, and regret) in hopes of restoring emotional balance. The nüshu
expert who writes on commission is always aware that her writing reaches out
not only to her client and the recipient of the sanzhaoshu, but also to a wider
audience. Her job is therefore to compose a reasonable discourse and convinc-
ing narration that can comfort those suffering melancholy and simultaneously
transmit knowledge of how society operates and its expectations according to
androcentric principles.
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206
Heuristically, while justifying the existing social structure, women also use
sanzhaoshu to articulate their criticisms of androcentrism, criticisms that
become pronounced in performance. The sanzhaoshu, designed to be chanted
by the bride’s affinal villagers but never the bride herself, structurally presents
the bride as a subject to be sympathized with, rather than one to be judged and
evaluated. This sympathy facilitates familiarity and links the bride to her san-
zhaoshu audiences, the women she will interact with most in her married con-
text. In this way, Jiangyong women not only critique men’s inattentiveness to a
bride’s situation but also help prepare the way into her new community on the
bride’s behalf.
The coexistence of compliance and critique in sanzhaoshu, on the one hand,
speaks to women’s inner complexity and their struggle to negotiate between
the centrifugal and centripetal forces of their society. On the other hand, it
points to the fact that voices can never reside purely in text and urges us to
explore the “extra-textual” elements (Foley 1992), such as performance. Perfor-
mance here refers not only to how a text is chanted, but also to the act of doing
it and how the audience receives the performed text. Xinkui’s performance of
bridal lamentation is a good example. As a child bride, she had no idea how to
lament reasonably, but she still managed to execute some wails to express her
gratitude to those who gave her comfort after her mother died and to bid fare-
well to the village she had grown up in. In her case, the act of performing itself
sufficed.
The Heyuan villagers’ group discussion of the song “Zhuzhu”—the story of
a woman who rejects a deformed betrothed and takes up with another man—
shows how audience members may respond to the same text in different ways.
The elderly Xiangfu focused on the semantic meaning of the story and refused
to believe that such a licentious event should be recorded in a song. But Tang,
a few years older than Xiangfu, enjoyed the piece simply because she loved to
sing, no matter what the content. Yanxin’s responses to this story are even
more instructive. She first remarked that it was a song about a whore, but eight
years later, after the death of her husband, Yanxin showed sympathy with the
main character and attributed Zhuzhu’s misfortune to parents who did not do
their best to arrange a good marriage for her. Yanxin’s changing perceptions
illustrate how a woman’s inner world is a site of polemic selves and how one’s
“way of seeing” constantly interacts with one’s changing living reality.
Whether as performers or readers, we may take diverse meanings from a
single text at different stages in the life cycle, and each person’s interpretation
may vary, one to the next. In this regard, a text is not itself a destination but a
matrix with the potency to advance into the multiple-track and ongoing inter-
textualizational processes of meaning production (Bauman and Briggs 1990;
Duranti 1993; Kristeva 1980). Nonetheless, although the meanings of a text
multiply and ferment, the text itself is not completely free but has its own re-
strictions; that is, just what is to be textualized is largely determined by the
medium that carries the voices. That is, although nüshu and nüge are largely
interchangeable owing to the shared sung performance, each genre still

retains its unique expressive horizon, which cannot be replaced by the other.
This may be best illustrated by comparing nüshu sanzhaoshu with nüge bridal
laments.
Sanzhaoshu and bridal laments, both presented during a wedding, have
many aspects in common: They are both publicly performed, lamentation-
oriented, and characteristically admonitory. However, since bridal lamentation
is oral and improvised, the emotions expressed are more straightforward and
stronger. The bride can even complain about her parents’ bias against daugh-
ters, which would be criticized as unfilial if presented in a written format such
as the sanzhaoshu. Of course, as a written transmission, sanzhaoshu enjoys
unique advantages. In Chinese society, where literacy is deemed a form of
cultural capital, the very act of preparing a sanzhaoshu demonstrates how
much the bride is cherished by her natal family. As a transmission tool, it pre-
serves the good old days the bride holds dear against adversity she may face in
the future. In other words, while nüge as folk singing gives women the free-
dom to move between social hierarchies and personal emotions, the written
nüshu can offset time constraints and turn experiences of the past into retriev-
able memories. As Hu Meiyue put it, “Whenever we need to remember what
we’ve gone through, we just read the nüshu and get the feel of it back from
that.”
If nüshu and nüge contain their own expressive niches, by the same token
each has its generic limitations. We cannot therefore count on nüshu and nüge
to provide a comprehensive picture of women’s diverse lived experiences, and
this is why ordinary women’s life narratives are important: They broaden our
understanding of women’s lifeworlds beyond the expressive horizons of nüshu
and nüge. As we saw with Xinkui’s story, some dimensions of women’s social
reality go unrevealed in nüshu and nüge. A woman’s success is one such in-
stance. While Xinkui’s misery as a child bride comes through in nüshu/nüge,
her winning appreciation from her superiors, fulfilling her obligations as a
dutiful Communist Party cadre, and managing to maintain her family finances
as the diligent housewife of an honest cadre would not be mentioned.
Besides omitting women’s glory, nüshu and nüge do not account for the
influence of modern social movements in rural Jiangyong, including the tre-
mendously important Cultural Revolution. This is partly because nüshu was
condemned as a “witches’ script” during that decade, so no one dared to use
it or write about it. Partly because of economic pressures, village women
found themselves tied up in agricultural work and enjoyed no spare time to
practice nüshu/nüge. However, even decades after the Cultural Revolution,
no nüshu have been composed about personal experiences during that
period. I once raised this question with Yanxin and was told: “Yes, it was a
very difficult time and we suffered a lot. But those were collective miseries
and nothing personal; all of us, male and female, young and old, suffered the
same, so what’s the point of writing about it?” Yanxin’s answer suggests not
only that writing nüshu is an act of asserting individual subjectivity but also
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208
that nüshu at heart remains a gender-defined social practice; it is, after all,
“women’s script.”
Sentiments: Expressive, Performative, and Transformative
In social practice, nüshu is a genre in which to “lament one’s misery” or su

kelian; nüge often also performs this function, especially the biographical nar-
ratives. The terms “lament” and “misery” give the impression of bitterness,
sadness, grief, regret, and perturbation. Note, however, that nüshu/nüge dis-
course does not simply textually describe one’s phenomenological existence,
whether psychological or material; in practice and through performance, it
may also give rise to other sentiments, which in turn transform the protago-
nist’s being. Tang composed her own biography because “I wished people to
know what I had suffered.” Composing or transcribing her experienced suffer-
ing in nüshu/nüge helped relieve her sense of vulnerability. While making
known her heartfelt emotion and the difficulties she confronted, she also de-
clared her resilience and fortitude in the face of life’s ordeals. The act of lam-
entation itself thus sets off a sort of chemical reaction in the emotions articu-
lated; it simultaneously signifies vulnerability (misery and suffering) and its
opposite (fortitude and resilience), in which her vulnerable self finds its worth
and demands respect.
Similarly, the woman in the netherworld who complained through a spirit
medium about how poorly she was treated by her daughter lamented with a
purpose. She aimed to “spread the word” to the human world via a song that
stated her bitterness and desire for justice. Interestingly, the performance of
this song inspired self-reflection and became a site of atonement. When Yanxin
heard this story from our sworn sister Longyu, she felt compelled to transcribe
it into nüshu, as her way of repenting for the “hard heart” she had shown
toward her mother over the issue of her marriage.
In a different vein, He Yufeng, who submitted a nüshu verse to the spinster
deities, solicited blessing from the super powers after she lost her family and
found no purpose in living. Her prayer lamentation represented an intersec-
tion between despair and promise. When we have no other recourse, the su-
pernatural, thanks to its endless unknowable quality, may provide some imag-
ined promise to the vulnerable heart in search of a silver lining. This mysterious
zone is much like the concept of destiny, to which Jiangyong women often
refer when some misfortune befalls them—a concept that functions like a bot-
tomless well that will absorb all suffering and can thus redirect attention from
dismay to hope and fantasy.
Sometimes a nüshu su kelian might be written on behalf of others and there-
fore may carry dual discourses, sentimental and meta-sentimental (containing
meaning beyond the sentiment inscribed). The first nüshu item collected by
the scholar Gong Zhebing and local cadre Zhou Shuoyi, for example, is a bio-
graphical nüshu Cizhu composed for Xijing. This piece inscribed Xijing’s

misery as well as the friendship she was shown by the Seven Sisters. Yanxin’s
practice of nüshu provides us with even clearer examples. In 1994, after put-
ting nüshu aside for more than three decades, Yanxin picked up the pen and
wrote again, but she did it just to help our sworn sister Liangyu continue to
weave nüshu belts. In 1996 when Yanxin first composed her own biographical
su kelian, on one hand she was driven by her husband’s illness, but on the
other, she did it also to express gratitude to the Japanese scholar Endō, who
came to visit Yanxin’s hospitalized husband every day during her stay in Ji-
angyong. The works Yanxin wrote to Endō are thus a mixture of two different
sentiments (perturbation and gratefulness) directed to two different objects
(herself and Endō). The nüshu Yanxin has written for me, whether a new com-
position or a recollection, embody her love and care as my sworn sister; they
represent her best wishes for my career success.
Yanxin’s retrospective composition about her grandmother, “Brought Back
to Life to Write,” also carries multiple feelings: pity at her Grandma’s misery,
criticism of the township head’s corruption (for drafting Grandma’s only son
into the army), and bitterness at her aunt’s cruelty, which eventually forced
Grandma to attempt suicide and then remarry. More importantly, it speaks to
her deep remembrance of the grandmother who cherished her, nurtured her,
and taught her nüshu. But when the emotion is too sharp, it may be hard to
face and so gets buried in some hidden corner. This was true of Yanxin’s feel-
ings toward her Grandma. She could not bear to write about nüshu, even in the
sense of retrieving what her Grandma had taught her for many years; she
therefore concealed her nüshu literacy from me during my 1993 fieldwork. And
another 15 years since resuming nüshu writing, she has finally put her inner-
most reminiscences and feelings about her grandmother into words—feelings
expressed not simply in text or in the act of composition but through the fer-
mentation of time.
Yanxin’s nüshu journey detoured from concealing to resuming, and she has
become the most productive and talented nüshu writer to date. By contrast,
Meiyue’s nüshu trajectory, which began with the promising aspiration to
uphold the nüshu heritage, now is tinted with doubt, despair, and frustration—
a trajectory that reflects the larger problem of how nüshu will persist or even
survive in contemporary society.
Whither Nüshu: New Poetics and Changing Cultural Politics
The scholarly discovery of nüshu in 1982 has changed the course of nüshu history.
Thanks to this research, nüshu, which was on the verge of disappearing, survives.
Nüshu scholars traveled from village to village to gather original texts. They also
ignited nüshu practitioners’ passion to continue using “women’s script,” whether
to create new literature or reproduce the old stories based on their recollections.
Through the collaborative efforts of scholars and practitioners, more than 500
nüshu works have been collected. These works are pieces of a puzzle that reveal
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210
how Jiangyong women have used nüshu to proclaim their existence and more-
over to inspire one another through the moral value they see in their shared suf-
fering. In this regard, scholarly engagement did revive this dying cultural heri-
tage. As Meiyue once observed, “The more scholars, the better.”
Two decades after nüshu was discovered and became nationally and interna-
tionally acclaimed, local authorities established a museum dedicated to the
practice and set up criteria for selecting officially recognized nüshu chuanren in
hopes of getting UNESCO’s recognition of nüshu as an intangible cultural heri-
tage. As this was going on, artists and other culturally active entrepreneurs,
local and national, became interested in the commercial possibilities of nüshu
and joined the ranks of people working to enliven the tradition.
These multiple efforts and interests are based on the renown of nüshu; iron-
ically, they have also threatened to disfigure nüshu’s true face. Entering the
nüshu field as outsiders, we come with certain agendas and methodologies that
help us focus on certain aspects of the intricate total reality. These agendas and
methodologies are like lenses through which we filter what we see of the world,
lenses with coatings that alter how light is reflected and transmitted and ac-
cordingly how reality is perceived. Interestingly, although these engaged exter-
nal interests—whether scholars, local officials, or cultural entrepreneurs—
may differ in their concerns and approaches, all seem to have their perspectives
altered by the same coating: Han Chinese chauvinism.
Han chauvinism has helped shape the image of female-specific nüshu in
various ways. Scholars, mainland Chinese in particular, who hold with the ide-
ology of literacy as the “ladder to success,” tend to ignore the significance of
oral nüge. They either lump it together with nüshu or consider it merely a con-
venient category of content that can be rendered in nüshu. A conflation of nüge
with nüshu, as can be seen in all published nüshu anthologies, narrows the
expressive horizon of nüge to its textual construction and suppresses its perfor-
mative power. More seriously, it silences women who are illiterate in nüshu but
have been using oral performance to assert their subjectivities. These nüge
women are then doubly silenced, silenced by the dominant discourse of the
society and by scholars in their pursuit of nüshu. This clearly contradicts what
nüshu scholars have tried to achieve—recovery of a channel by which peasant
women’s muted voices may be heard and recorded.
The various cultural entrepreneurs, invested as they are in mainstream lit-
erary aesthetics, tend to consider nüshu too folkloric and insufficiently sophis-
ticated. To “advance” the local vernacular nüshu to a form of high culture, some
use it to transcribe classical literature, and some introduce ideals of calligraphic
beauty to nüshu to transform the delicately feminine handwritten nüshu into a
more elite, if not masculine, form that employs vigorous brushstrokes. These
endeavors to commodify nüshu follow the Jiangyong government’s lead in
trying to stimulate the local economy and publicize nüshu nationwide. An
entire exhibition room in the nüshu museum is designated for showcasing
new calligraphic nüshu works, but not a single piece of the traditional nüshu
handwriting is displayed there.

Over the past ten years, local government has played a very active role in
redefining the nature of nüshu. With its patronage of nüshu chuanren, the gov-
ernment believes it owns the right and has the authority to oversee nüshu writ-
ers and instruct them in what to write. In 2012, for example, when an athlete
from Jiangyong won an Olympic gold medal for the first time, the Jiangyong
Propaganda Office demanded that every nüshu chuanren on their payroll write
a piece to congratulate the local heroine. They went so far as to draft a piece
and ask the nüshu chuanren to revise and transcribe it—a piece full of the ex-
pressions of patriotism and local pride that are often present in official gazet-
teers but never in traditional nüshu.
As the official system gradually absorbs nüshu and naturalizes its adoption
of mainstream literary discourse, there have also been troubling developments
within the ranks of the nüshu chuanren. A new discourse has emerges that says
writing su kelian may elicit misfortune. It casts a psychological burden upon
the nüshu writers, especially when they write outside their own experiences or
emotional drive. Meiyue is perhaps the clearest example of someone suffering
tribulations perceived to be brought about by sustaining a nüshu practice.
Having developed a special feeling for nüshu as a child and seen the scholarly
interest in nüshu in the early 1980s, Meiyue’s pride in her Grandma Gao‘s
nüshu contributions eventually made her decide to take up the challenge of
sustaining the tradition. She immersed herself deeply in the nüshu world, or-
ganizing classes, reading published nüshu works, collecting texts across vil-
lages, and composing her own. Earning official recognition as a nüshu chuan-
ren in 2003 put her in a perfect position to fulfill her ambition. But around
2005, she veered from the traditional course. Out of fear of nüshu’s “cursing”
force and discouraged by criticism of her traditional nüshu writing and the
unpopularity of the hard, stiff graphs she had learned from her Grandma,
Meiyue stopped composing su kelian. She now likes to use artistic nüshu to
write aphoristic verses or transcribe classical male-authored poems. She is not
unique in this regard but represents the common practice among most nüshu
transmitters today.
A new style of nüshu is taking shape, nüshu that is characterized by the poet-
ics of celebrating or transcribing classical poems and commonplace happy
verses instead of traditional su kelian. In addition, the cultural politics of nüshu
has become part of the government’s propaganda system rather than rural
women’s own channel of expression. The practice of nüshu is now a profession
and a means of earning living rather than a spontaneous reflection of women’s
lived reality. As recipients of government stipends, nüshu chuanren are obliged
to defer to official authority and give up their writing freedom. This marks a
sharp contrast to Cizhu’s “nüshu manifesto” when she claimed that “We read
nüshu / Not for power, not for fame / But because we suffer.”
When nüshu is no longer a tool of women’s self-expression, can it still be
counted as a “women’s script?” When it no longer encodes women’s sense and
sensibilities, can it be called “women’s literature?” When nüshu as a “little”
tradition becomes an instrument of the official “great” tradition, what is its
| Gendered Words
212
value, or specifically, what makes nüshu valuable for illuminating aspects of
women’s experience that are otherwise ignored and silenced?
Historically, nüshu and nüge were developed to give voice to peasant wom-
en’s experiences, but they also became forms of lamentation at women’s failure
to be heard. If these forms were part of a struggle to gain recognition over the
course of history, their current challenge is to survive the threat posed by the
emergence of the new nüshu. Nüshu as women’s expressive culture will cer-
tainly move along with society, and in this sense, even the new nüshu has dis-
tinct cultural significance. But it should not thus overwrite the history of how
nüshu and nüge have stood for women, spoken for women, eased women’s af-
flictions, and transformed their vulnerable being into a hopeful becoming.
Nüshu was silent for so long, and history may just repeat itself if we let the
“women’s script” become blurred beyond recognition and slip into oblivion.

APPENDIX 1 | Widowhood in Local Gazetteers
L ocal gazetteers published throughout China covered issues pertaining to

widowhood mostly in sections that featured biographies honoring worthy indi-
viduals. The criteria for worthiness were not the same for women as they were for
men, however. In Jiangyong gazetteers, men were recognized for literary talent, po-
litical or military contributions, loyalty, filiality, and righteousness. Women were
commended only in moral terms—for sacrificing their lives to preserve their chastity
(e.g., committing suicide to avoid rape), for never marrying and remaining chaste in
the name of filial piety, or for being widowed young (before age 30) and thereafter
remaining a widow (Zeng 1991; Mann 1987). In most cases, tragedy was the precondi-
tion for women to have their biographies recorded for posterity, especially among
women of the non-gentry classes.1
Yet even if they performed exceptional moral acts or suffered some particu-
larly noteworthy tragedy, most women remained “nameless” in the local histo-
ries, as they did in their daily lives (Watson 1986). A woman was usually intro-
duced as the wife of X, mother of Y, or daughter of Z. This custom manifested
the social meaning of sancong as understood from the male elite’s perspective.
That is, a woman was merely derivative, an extension, of her male associates—
father, husband, and son. When applied to widowhood, sancong meant fidelity
to the deceased husband. A biography of a woman née Zhou provides such an
example: When asked by her mother-in-law about her plans following her hus-
band’s death, she responded, “If I remarry . . . how will I have face to meet my
husband under the ground?” (Yongming xianzhi 1907, 42:8).
Fidelity here is characterized by a woman’s determination not to remarry.
But determination alone was sometimes insufficient, since a widow’s sexual-
ity might lead to temptation and infidelity. To eliminate this possibility, local
gazetteers considered huirong 毀容 ‘disfiguring the face’ to be a virtuous act
1
Occasionally women of extraordinary talent were also documented in gazetteers, but usually in
footnotes attached to the biographies of their celebrated fathers or spouses rather than in the female
biography section.
215
(e.g., Yongming xianzhi 1907; see also Carlitz 1994). However, huirong was
atypical. More often reported in the gazetteers is a widow’s suppression of her
sexual attributes. Née Lu, widowed at 28, for example, was praised for “wear-
ing wood hairpins and cotton skirts as if she were a poor housewife,” despite
her status as the surviving spouse of a scholar-official. Moreover, to shield her-
self completely from any man’s sexual gaze or appropriation, the gazetteers
report that she “never let her words spread beyond the family, nor set foot out-
side the house” (Yongming xianzhi 1846, 11:13; 1907, 42:23).
Still, to be a chaste widow, preserving one’s widowhood and controlling
one’s sexuality were not enough; filial piety and maternal capacity were also
required. Therefore, in the same text, née Lu was reported to “serve her mother-
in-law with filial piety and take care of her stepson like her own blood”
(Yongming xianzhi 1846, 11:13; 1907, 42:23). This conception of widow chastity
is elaborated further in née Wang’s biography. Née Wang was widowed at age
25. Within two years, both her mother-in-law and her husband’s elder brother
had also died, leaving her aged father-in-law, a mentally retarded brother-in-
law, and her own two-year-old son as the only surviving males. To fortify the
family lineage, “She persuaded her father-in-law to take a concubine,” which
resulted in the birth of a new brother-in-law. “For decades,” her biography con-
tinues, “She served her father-in-law and second mother-in-law with prudence
and got along with her other sisters-in-law in harmony. . . . Thanks to her su-
pervision of his study, her son was able to hold a position [in county govern-
ment]” (Yongming xianzhi 1846, 11:11; 1907, 42:21).
The message here is clear: To qualify for recognition, a wife must not simply
be a follower or dependent with no interest in power; more importantly, she
should also be an extension of her husband, ready to act on his behalf whenever
needed.2 Thus, when a husband fails to fulfill his duties due to an early death,
his wife, acting as his surrogate, must take on the responsibilities of the de-
ceased. If a widow remarried, all these obligations went unfulfilled. It is thus
no surprise that scholar-officials writing the histories emphasized the impor-
tance of a woman preserving her widowhood. In the direct language of the
Yongming xianzhi: “Due to concerns about . . . reputation and fidelity, women
are not to remarry after their husbands die” and “if they remarry, they will be
shamed.” Even “among poor families, many women choose to remain chaste,
despite economic hardships” (Yongming xianzhi 1846, 3:5; 1907, 11:1). Here,
widowhood is characterized as a moral imperative that demonstrates a wo-
man’s virtue (her reputation, chastity, and sense of shame). By implication,
remarriage is unvirtuous and thus should be left undocumented.
2
Similarly, as Susan Mann (1991) suggests, Qing literati emphasized not so much women’s
subordination but rather the ways in which they complemented their husbands.
| Widowhood in Local Gazetteers

216
APPENDIX 2 | Literacy, Gender, and Class
B oth for peasant women who knew nüshu and for educated Jiangnan guixiu
閨秀 ‘gentry women’, writing was a meaningful and conscious ideological act
rather than a means of earning enfeoffment or rank, as men’s use of their literacy
tended to be. For women, writing was a means of capturing their reflections and
sensibilities concerning everyday reality. Thus, not surprisingly, emotions or the “cult
of qing” 情 (Ko 1994:18) are front and center in both nüshu and guixiu writings. Al-
though the ways by which qing is addressed may be different, both bodies of literature
are full of women’s expressions of mutual admiration, sentiments of loss upon sepa-
ration, and reminiscences. Writing letters was a particularly powerful tool through
which women offered comfort to those in difficult situations, such as widowhood.
For example, Wu Zao 吳藻 (c. 1799–1862), a Jiangnan female literata, upon hearing
about the death of her friend Wang Duan’s 汪端 (1793–1838) husband, composed four
song lyrics as a condolence. She asked the new widow to take good care of herself
(Chung 2001) in a manner similar to the way Cizhu helped Tang through her ordeal.
In these widowhood writings, we get a sense of how expressions of sisterhood help
dissipate misery.1
In terms of rhetoric, both women’s literatures also employ metaphors as-
sociated with husband-wife relationships to represent sisterhood ties. Terms
such as ‘love’ (lian 戀) and ‘love longing’ (xiangsi 相思) appear in literati wom-
en’s writings, and words like ‘pair’, ‘match’, ‘phoenix’, and ‘mandarin duck’ are
common in nüshu.2 This language easily leads to speculation about possible
lesbian partnerships. But where I found no concrete evidence of any such rela-
tionship in my Jiangyong fieldwork, Kang-i Sun Chang offers a perceptive in-
sight: She sees this literary strategy as a “gender mask,” meant to cross gender
boundaries and reach the ideal of androgyny (Sun 1998, 2000).
Above all, the most significant characteristic shared by nüshu practitioners
and Jiangnan guixiu was their aspiration to broaden their vision of the world.
1
For guixiu’s perspectives on widowhood in the Ming-Qing era, see Sun (1998).
2
For literary expressions regarding sisterhood in nüshu, see also Silber (1994:52–54).
217
Through literary expression, women were able to transcend the confines of the
“inner quarters” and the Confucian sancong ideology. They employed writing as
an “event” that made room for shaping female alignments and subjectivities
beyond the scope of familial and male-based definitions of womanhood. It
should be noted, however, that although they shared the same aspiration, the
extent to which that aspiration could be realized—specifically, how extensively
literacy-based female social circles were developed and sustained—distinguishes
peasant nüshu writers from the female gentry in Jiangnan.
For Jiangnan guixiu, the rise in female literacy from the sixteenth century
onward allowed women to gain the skills needed for literary creativity and pre-
pared them for taking on the social roles of teachers, writers (poets and novel-
ists), and anthology editors. Some even earned a livelihood with their literary
and artistic skills. For example, Yun Zhu 惲珠 (1771–1833), Wang Duanshu
王端淑 (c. 1621–1706), and Shen Shanbao 沈善寶 (1808–1862) became famous
for editing anthologies of women’s literature. Shen Shanbao and Huang Yuan-
jie 黃媛介 (c. 1620–1669) supported themselves and their families by selling
their paintings and poetry (Ho 1999; Fong 2000). Huang Yuanjie was also
very much sought after as a teacher of other women (Widmer 1989). These
new roles allowed women to expand their social domain. Some women com-
municated through the exchange of verses; some published their works, thus
reaching out to the reading public; some even befriended male scholars or
women belonging to a different class, courtesans. This development, as Doro-
thy Ko (1994) discusses in Teachers of the Inner Chambers, can be seen as a
series of nested circles originating in the private domain of the inner chambers
and extending to the social realms of kinship, neighborhood, and on, to the
public spheres of print culture and literary gatherings such as poetry clubs,
through which gentry women could meet outside their homes and mingle so-
cially with male literati.
By contrast, nüshu remained limited to domestic and interpersonal ex-
changes; there is no evidence that nüshu writers ever attempted to cross the
line into public discourse. Moreover, their social connection as sworn sisters,
originally formed in large part through nüshu writing, frequently faded after
marriage. Two major factors account for nüshu’s deviation from the guixiu
communities. One is gender interaction. Ko (1994:14) points out that gentry
women during the Ming-Qing era “depended on men to publish their verses
and to expand their social networks.” Ellen Widmer (1989) also notices that
although some women came close to supporting themselves through their
writing or painting in late imperial China, they still relied to some extent on
male friends or patrons.
Indeed, male scholars were the “major editorial brain” behind most guixiu
literary activities (Chang 1992). They preserved, prefaced, introduced, com-
mented on, and distributed women’s works; they also took part in tutoring
women artists (Ho 1999). There had been a tradition of gentry women burn-
ing their poems for fear of exposing their poetic talents to the outside world,
which implied that literary creativity was an extension of a woman’s body and
| Literacy, Gender, and Class

218
therefore should be retained in the inner quarters (Chang 1994).3 In the late
imperial era, however, such writings were sometimes saved from the fire by
male members of the family, unlike the continued practice of burning nüshu
by the nüshu owner’s family in Jiangyong. Cha Shenxing 查慎行 (1650–1727),
for instance, stopped his mother Zhong Yun 鍾韞 from burning her poems
and later had those works published (Sun 1998). Another man who publicized
women’s work was Ye Shaoyuan 葉紹袁 (1589–1649), who published works by
his wife, Shen Yixiu 沈宜修 (1590–1635), along with poems by his three tal-
ented daughters (Chang 1994). In addition, the emergence of companionate
marriage (one that involved intellectual sharing) in the gentry class, such as
that between Xi Peilan 席佩蘭 and Sun Yuanxiang 孫原湘 (1760–1829), may
also have encouraged male participation in women’s writing worlds (Kang
1988). Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716–1797) is probably the best example of a man who
tutored women (see Chang 1994; Ho 1999; Kang 1988; Sun 1998).
In contrast to the male literati’s appreciation of and support for guixiu liter-
ary talents, male peasants and scholar-officials in Jiangyong seemed to have
been indifferent to or distrustful of jiebai relations and nüshu events. Because
of these different male attitudes toward women’s writing activities, nüshu and
guixiu developed different aesthetic dispositions. The guixiu literary style
tended to identify or merge with that of male elites; that is, it was grounded in
an appreciation of the aesthetics of qing, emphasizing the transcendental, ele-
gant, dignified, and spontaneous qualities of literary expression (Sun 1998).
Nüshu developed in a completely opposite direction, becoming a female-exclu-
sive cultural practice that stressed lamentation (su kelian) as a literary strategy
for transforming and transcending difficulty.
In addition to gender interactions, social class—reflecting the broader eco-
nomic and social context in which literacy is situated—was also an important
factor in shaping women’s writing lives. The women writers of the gentry class
lived mainly in the Lower Yangzi River Delta, known as the prosperous “rice
bowl” of the empire since the early tenth century. In late imperial China, the
growth of the cotton and silk industries brought additional affluence and ur-
banization to the region.4 This prompted the commercialization of print cul-
tures and the development of extensive transportation systems. Nurtured by
these cultural-economic resources, the Jiangnan guixiu, via their published
works, were able to make friends with people they never met in person. They
transcended social and geographic barriers by taking advantage of the well-
established water routes, trade channels, and marketing and merchant net-
works that radiated from this region. Whether through travel or by epistolary
exchange, literary ties between close friends could be continued even after a
gentry woman had married (Widmer 1989, 1997).
3
For the scholarly debates in late imperial China regarding female talents and virtues, see Mann
(1997).
4
For an analysis of the economic transformation of Jiangnan in late imperial China, see Naquin and
Rawski (1987).
Literacy, Gender, and Class | 219

This cultural-economic infrastructure was largely missing in Jiangyong,
nonetheless. Although a few local gentry women did publish their works either
as single collections or in a collaborative format (that is, in the collections of
their male kin or spouses),5 there is no evidence that a nüshu publication ever
existed. Even more fundamental was the lack of a reliable nüshu delivery
system. For a letter to travel between villages, a peasant woman had to depend
on circumstances that were often situational and beyond her personal control—
geographic proximity or access to the same periodic market or even willing
and available messengers. Since the resources needed to reach out were diffi-
cult to come by, patrilocal village exogamy would remain a major stumbling
block to sustaining nüshu-constructed social networks.
5
Two examples of such published works survive in local gazetteers. One is Lanyuan yigao 蘭園遺稿
written by Pu Wanxin 蒲畹馨, included in her father’s collection. The other is Jinghualou shi 鏡花樓詩
by Pu Ehui 蒲萼輝. See Yongming xianzhi (1907, 44:22–23).
| Literacy, Gender, and Class

220
APPENDIX 3 | Dialogic Lamentation with the Bride
T his is a dialogic lamentation originally performed by Tang Nianzhi and her

niece, the bride, in 1976. In the reproduction I witnessed, the bride’s role was
played by the bride’s mother, Tang Nianzhi’s elder sister. The lament was initially
sung to Tang Nianzhi’s husband, Gongming’s father’s brother. Even though the man
rarely responded, in the original version he did answer with a few phrases before
stepping back and giving control to his wife, whom the bride addressed as yi 姨 or
yi’niang 姨娘 (mother’s sister). The couple lamented their having only daughters but
no son, while the bride consoled them that “a daughter is equally precious.” Note that
the dialogical lamentation in Jiangyong was not performed in an antiphonal style
(with interlocutors taking turns to lament and pausing slightly before rejoining), but
with two voices concurrent throughout the performance. In other words, one had to
wail while listening to and incorporating the interlocutor’s utterances into her suc-
ceeding lamentation. To illustrate how this works, in the following, I will indent and
italicize rejoinders to distinguish them from the bride’s lamentation:
In front of his house stands a money-hanging tree,

I feel sad even before my niece begins to lament.
From which falls gold in the morning and silver at night.
I knew of the date selected [for the wedding].
But gold and silver are not what my uncle loves.
What my uncle loves is having a pair of scholarly sons,
But being poor, I enjoyed no free time.
面前有兜懸錢樹 / 朝早落金夜落銀 / 落金落銀叔不愛 / 叔是愛雙讀書郎
甥不開聲我自愁 / 久時聽聞他揀日 / 是我窮人沒日空
At this point, Tang Nianzhi stepped in to take over and lament with the bride,
And a pair of daughters sitting upstairs [doing needlework]. . . .

My hands cannot reach the moon above;
My feet cannot step on its crescent.
Thirty and three pairs will take the civil entrance exam.
Nice trees and red flowers are not things I can ask for and be granted.
221
Forty and four pairs will study in the academy.
I did not cultivate my fate in past lives and therefore I am oppressed.
You will never seek help from Confucius. . . .
I am oppressed by my fate; I can only accept reality.
Under the city wall there are many people just like you.
You are going to his house and will be improved and noble.
Yi is not the only one.
You will have noble sons and grandchildren who can compete with anyone.
The bamboo-fenced house next to us grew bamboo shoots [descendants] late . . .,
You won’t be like your yi’niang,
But the late-arriving golden grandson can still compete with anyone.
Who cannot compete with anyone from anywhere.
When you catch no fish in the river, shrimp are equally valuable.
My days at home, though impoverished, were not meant to last.
When no son is in the house, a daughter is equally precious.
I imagined that in marriage my life would get better.
Who ever thought that I would become a bitter gourd that falls into a garden of bitter
gourds?
My father died when my younger brother was just born.
We were poor and miserable,
But with hope that by bringing up the brother,
He would return the mother’s grace.
To live in his house you must learn to be mature.
And never forget to come home to see your mother.1
愛雙姑娘樓上坐 ... / 三十三雙入府考 / 四十四雙入學堂
手把不到天頭月 / 腳踩不到月亮彎 / 好樹紅花好不來 / 前世不修命壓我
上也不求孔夫子 ... / 城牆腳下多有伴 / 不光姨娘你一個....
壓低命步就世間 / 去到人家跟人貴 / 貴子貴孫賽贏人 / 不像姨娘我一樣
上屋竹園遲出筍 ... / 遲陪金孫賽贏人 / 河底無魚蝦公貴 / 家中沒仔女為貴
站出四邊不如人 / 在家淒寒日子淺 / 算是去到人家賽贏人
不算苦瓜落入苦瓜園 / 爺爺死早弟郎細 / 自苦自賤 / 弟郎長大有名聲
有日回報父母恩 / 你去人家學老成 / 永遠歸家看望毑
1
Performed by Tang Nianzhi and her elder sister and recorded in October 2002.
| Dialogic Lamentation with the Bride

222
GLOSSARY
airen 愛人
baijiatang 拜家堂
Baishui 白水
buluofujia 不落夫家
caoshu 草書
chahua 查花
changben 唱本
Changde 常德
changge nü 唱歌女
Changsha 長沙
Chaoshui 潮水
chaoying ganmei 超英趕美
chengfen 成分
Chengguan 城關
chengguan yin 城關音
Chen Qiguang 陳其光
Chen Shipian 陳仕偏
chouwu 愁屋
chuan 傳
chuanming 傳名
chugong 出工
chuji she 初級社
chuxiang 出鄉
dadui 大隊
da getang 大歌堂
dangan 單幹
Dao 道
Degui 德貴
diqian 抵錢
douniu 鬥牛
223
duanjiao po 短腳婆
duanming gui 短命鬼
du pashu 讀帕書
duzhi dushan 讀紙讀扇
feng liu 風流
Fengtian 鳳田
fenli qian 分離錢
fenxiahu 分下戶
fu 婦
Fuqiaotou 浮橋頭
gaoji she 高級社
gaotou yin 高頭音
Gao Yinxian 高銀仙
getang 歌堂
gong 宮、工
gongfen 工分
gonggong shitang 公共食堂
Gong Zhebing 宮哲兵
Guanyang 灌陽
guixiu 閨秀
Guiyang 桂陽
gu’niang 姑娘
guofang 過房
Guogou 國茍
guoye 過夜
Gupo 姑婆
Han 漢
hanzi 漢字
Haotang 浩塘
He 何
He Chunse 何春色
He Jinghua 何靜華
Heng (Mount) 衡(山)
Hengyang 衡陽
hen chao 很吵
hen nanting 很難聽
he sanzhao 賀三朝
He Xijing 何西靜
He Yanxin 何豔新
Heyuan 河淵
He Yunzhu 何韻竹
hongbao 紅包
Hu 呼
huadai 花帶
Huang Xuezhen 黃雪貞
Huangjialing 黃甲嶺
huan le 歡樂
Huashanmiao 花山廟
| Glossary
224
Hu Cizhu 胡慈珠
huirong 毀容
Huizong 徽宗
Hujia 呼家
Hu Meiyue 胡美月
Hunan ge xian diaocha biji 湖南各縣調查筆記
Hu Wuxian 呼烏仙
Hu Xin 胡欣
Hu Xinkui 呼新奎
Hu Xiuying 胡秀英
Hu Yuxiu 胡玉秀
huzhu zu 互助組
jiaguwen 甲骨文
jiang 江
Jianghe 江河
Jianghua 江華
Jiangyong 江永
Jiangyong xian jiefang shinian zhi 江永縣解放十年志
jiaobei 交杯
jiaoquan 交全
jiaoque 交卻
jiebai 結拜
jiekaixin 解開心
Jiliang 繼亮
jingcheng 京城
Jinghualou shi 鏡花樓詩
Jingtian 荊田
Jinjiang 錦江
Jin Nong 金農
Jiujin Gu’niang 九斤姑娘
jiuma 舅媽
jixiang ruyi 吉祥如意
Juyin 菊陰
kaisheng 開聲
kangmei yuanchao 抗美援朝
kan sanzhao lou 看三朝囉
ke 客
kuge 哭歌
kulian po 哭臉婆
Laiyu 來玉
Lanyuan yigao 蘭園遺稿
laogeng 老庚
laotong 老同
Li 李
lian 戀
liang 兩
Liang Shanbo 梁山伯
liangxin 良心
Glossary | 225
Lima 櫟馬
Lingling 零陵
Lingwai daida 嶺外代答
Li Shi’an 李世安
Liu A’yi 劉阿姨
Liu Laoshi 劉老師
liushou ertong 留守兒童
Liu Xiansheng 劉先生
Liu Ying 劉穎
Longtian 龍田
Longyantang 龍眼塘
loushang nü 樓上女
Luoshi nü 羅氏女
Lu Runchi 盧潤池
maichang de 賣唱的
Maihua nü 賣花女
Maishandong 麥山洞
mei guiding 沒規定
Meili 美麗
Mo Yuexing 莫月形
nainai 奶奶
nanshu 男書
Niangniang 娘娘
niuer 牛耳
nüge 女歌
nüke 女客
Nüren xingke shi 女人行客詩
nüshu 女書
nüshu chuanren 女書傳人
Nüshu chuanren pingxuan guanli banfa shixing 女書傳人評選管理辦法試行
nüshu ge 女書歌
Nüshu huisheng 女書‧回生
Nüshu shengtai yuanqu 女書生態園區
Nüshu wenhua yanjiu guanli zhongxin 女書文化研究管理中心
nüshu xuanchuan dashi 女書宣傳大使
nüshu xuetang 女書學堂
Nüshu yuan 女書園
Nüshu zidian 女書字典
Ouyang 歐陽
Pan (King) 盤(王)
panhu 盤瓠
pei hongniang 陪紅娘
peiku 陪哭
Pinxia zhongnong xiehui 貧下中農協會
Pu Bixian 蒲碧仙
puchuang 鋪床
Pu Lijuan 蒲麗娟
| Glossary
226
Puwei 浦尾
qiang 牆
qiangli ge 牆理歌
qiangzhe qu 牆著去
Qianlong 乾隆
qiantouzai 前頭仔
qing 情
qinjia niang 親家娘
qinjia shu 親家叔
Qiqi 七七
saicha 塞茶
sancong 三從
Sangu ji 三姑記
sanzhaoshu 三朝書
Sasa 四四
shan’ge 山歌
Shangjiangxu 上江墟
shejiao 社教
shengming 聲名
shigong 師公
shoudu 首都
shu’niang 叔娘
shushu 叔叔
siqing 四清
sixiang hao 思想好
suanxian 酸鹹
suijia tian 隨嫁田
suikou chu 隨口出
su kelian 訴可憐
su kuqing 訴苦情
taibai le 太白了
ta jia 他家
ta niang 他娘
Tang Baozhen 唐寶珍
Tang Maogui 唐茂貴
Tang Nianzhi 唐年芝
Tangxia 棠下
Tan Yunde 譚運德
Tan Yuting 譚玉婷
Taoshui 桃水
ta xiang 他鄉
tengxi sheng 疼惜聲
tian 田
Tianguangdong 田廣洞
tianxia funü / jiemei yijia 天下婦女 / 姊妹一家
Tongkou 桐口
tongnian 同年
Glossary | 227
Tongshanling 銅山嶺
tongxiang 同鄉
tubazhu 土霸主
tuhua 土話
tuoyin 拖音
Tuqiangwu 土牆屋
tuyin 土音
waigong 外公
waipo 外婆
wan 完
Wang Gangzhen 王剛珍
Wang wuniang 王五娘
wei kaifang xian 未開放縣
wenming jiehun 文明結婚
wugeng chou 五更愁
Wuhan 武漢
Wuling 五嶺
Wu Longyu 吳龍玉
Xiangfu 箱福
xiangsi 相思
xianniang po 仙娘婆
xiao dizhu chuzu 小地主出租
xiao getang 小歌堂
Xiao Liu 小劉
Xiaopu 瀟浦
Xiaoshui 瀟水
xiaozai xifu 小仔媳婦
Xiawan 夏灣
Xie Zhimin 謝志民
xi’nan guanhua 西南官話
Xingfu 興福
xingguibu 行歸步
xingke 行客
Xingke ji 行客記
xingshu 行書
xinxiang shicheng 心想事成
Xinzhai 新宅
Xixi 細細
Xunnüci 訓女詞
Yang Canxian 楊燦仙
Yang Huanyi 陽煥宜
yangnü zai 養女仔
Yang Sansan 楊三三
Yang Ximei 楊喜梅
Yang Xixi 楊細細
Yangzhou baguai 揚州八怪
| Glossary
228
Yan Meiju 嚴美居
Yao 瑤
yi 姨
yidan shui 一擔水
yifan fengshun 一帆風順
yiku yipei 一哭一陪
yima 姨媽
yingbi zi 硬筆字
yingtou xizi 蠅頭細字
yi’niang 姨娘
Yi Nianhua 義年華
Yinxian jiachuan 銀仙家傳
Yi Yunjuan 義運娟
Yi Zaozao 義早早
yiyin duozi 一音多字
yizhang 姨丈
yizi duoxing 一字多形
yizi duoyin 一字多音
yizi yiyin duoyi 一字一音多義
yong 永
Yongming 永明
Yongming xianzhi 永明縣志
Yongzhou 永州
yuan 緣
Yuan-Dao Guanyin Temple 緣道觀音廟
yuan shengtai nüshu 原生態女書
Yue 越
Yueying 月英
Yuping 玉萍
Yushu lou 御書樓
Zhaixia 宅下
zhang 章、張
Zhangjiajie 張家界
Zhangshi nü 張氏女
zhaolang 招郎
Zhao Liming 趙麗明
zhibiao 指標
zhong 中、終
Zhongguo nüshu jicheng 中國女書集成
Zhou Gongming 周共明
Zhou Huijuan 周惠娟
Zhou Shuoyi 周碩沂
Zhujiawan 朱家灣
Zhu Yingtai 祝英台
zuibutong 最不通
zuo getang 坐歌堂
zuowei nü 坐位女
Glossary | 229
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INDEX
Note: fig. following a locator indicates a figure.
accusation, biographical ballad as, Hu Meiyue on, 188–90, 194–97

23–26 written by He Yanxin, 112–115,
admonition, nüshu and nüge as, 22, 37, 121–123, 126–29, 210
69, 196, 208 written by Hu Cizhu, 3, 23–24,
advanced communes, 157 174–75, 197, 209
ancestral rights, 70 written by Yi Nianhua, 24, 50,
Anthology of Chinese Nüshu (Zhao), 47, 117 134–35, 190–194
aphoristic nüshu, 195 written for Fang, 188–90, 196–97
archetypical nüshu, 200. See also written for He Xijing, 3, 174–75, 209
yingbi zi birth control, 104, 105–6
artistic nüshu, 200, 211 bridal lamentation. See also dialogical
artistry of nüshu, 199–201, 211 lamentation; yiku yipei
of Chen Shipian, 98–99
baijiatang, 70 of He Yanxin, 97–98
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 12 of Hu Meiyue, 176–77
ballad, nüshu, 85, 175. See also changben; of Hu Xinkui, 137–43, 207
Fifth Daughter Wang; Flower-Selling performed by Tang Nianzhi,
Girl; Lady Luo; Third Daughter, The; 221–22
Zhu Yingtai versus sanzhaoshu, 20–23,
Bauman, Richard, 12 178–79, 208
Briggs, Charles, 12 Tan Yuting’s recollections regarding,
biographical nüge 139, 166–67
composed by Tang Baozhen, 7, 44, “Brought Back to Life to Write,”
46–52, 75, 209 126–29, 210
composed by Wang Gangzhen, 25 buluofujia, 5, 100, 177
biographical nüshu, 23–26
composed by Tang Baozhen and calligraphy, 199–200
transcribed by Gao Yinxian, 7, 44, chahua, 145
46–52 Chang, Kang-i Sun, 217
243
changben, 29. See also ballad, nüshu; and nüshu scholars, 81, 112, 113
Fifth Daughter Wang; Flower-Selling unstable psychological state of, 114–16
Girl; Lady Luo; Third Daughter, The; dialogic, 42, 75, 140, 142
Zhu Yingtai dialogical lamentation, 221–22. See also
Cha Shenxing, 219 bridal lamentation; yiku yipei
chastity, of widows, 205, 215–16 distribution networks, 65–66, 220
Chengcheng. See Tan Chengcheng divorce, of Hu Xinkui, 151–55
chengguan yin, 182–83 Dupang Mountain, 161–62
Chen Qiguang, 3, 8, 36n12, 47, 117 du pashu, 18
Chen Shipian, 91–99 duzhi dushan, 18, 143
cheongsam, 83
Chiang, William, 3, 36n12, 193 eggs, four, 49
childbearing, 72–74, 104, 105, 106–7 emotion. See sentiment
child brides, 136–40, 143–47, 164, Endō, Orie, 110, 111–12, 113, 117, 210
167, 204 excess of seeing, 12, 205
childcare, and Great Leap Forward, expression
148–49 as dialogic, 75
China, exchange between Taiwan and, 5–6 form of, 16, 46, 178, 179
Chinese calligraphy, 199 medium of, 12, 72, 207, 209
chuanren. See nüshu chuanren as self-reflective, 75
chuxiang, 47. See also village exogamy as transformative, 75, 209–210
Cizhu. See Hu Cizhu expressive depths, 206–8
collectivization period, 15, 39, 49, 94, expressive horizon, 12, 40, 42, 179,
100, 103–4, 127, 165 206–8, 211
college entrance exams, 164 expressive niches, 12, 40, 178, 205
commiseration, 55–61 extra-textual, 207
communal dining system, 90, 100,
148, 171 Fang, biographical nüshu for, 188–90, 196
communal period, 104–5 “Farming the Land,” 120–21
community of sentiment, 34, 71 feng liu, 200
conscription, 28–29, 48, 145–46 fenli qian, 25
consolation, 35, 52, 55–61, 75 Fifth Daughter Wang, 175
contemporary society, nüshu in, Flower-Selling Girl, 47, 85, 173, 175
195–201, 210–13 folklore movement, 41
context, 6–7, 108, 140, 202–4 footbinding, 83, 135
Cultural Revolution, 3, 38, 103, 104, 160, four eggs, 49
164, 169, 176, 197, 208 four purifications movement, 160–61
curative, nüshu as, 195 funeral lament, 142
curse, nüshu as, 190–95, 212
Gao Yinxian
Degui, 81, 103 and discovery of nüshu, 3
death of, 116 distribution network of, 66
discloses He Yanxin’s nüshu literacy, on future of nüshu, 197–98
109, 112, 116 Hu Meiyue learns nüshu from, 171–76
engagement and marriage of, 95–96 as research subject, 169–70, 177–78
hospitalization of, 112, 114 and Seven Sisters, 44, 173
marriage of, 99–103 suffering of, 194–95
| Index
244
and Tang Baozhen, 7, 50, 173 reaction of, to Zhuzhu nüshu, 108–9,
writes nüshu for scholars or mass 207
media, 177–78 regrets of, 124–25, 209
genre, 12–13, 30–34, 196, 205, 206–9 as research subject, 12–13, 15, 43,
Gong Zhebing, 3, 169, 209 117, 120
grandchildren, grandparents caring for, role of, in advancing nüshu scholar-
120, 171 ship, 116–20
Great Leap Forward, 136, 148–49, 158 on Tang Baozhen, 75–76
guixiu, 217–19 visits Yuan-Dao Guanyin Temple,
guofang, 48 129–30
Guogou. See Hu Guogou writes nüshu as tribute to grand-
Gupo, 26, 72, 74 mother, 90, 125–29
Gupo Temple, 26, 72–75 writes nüshu to author, 111, 113–115,
119–120
Han Chinese, 4 writes nüshu to lament on behalf of
hanzi her daughter, 122–23
linguistic characteristics of nüshu writes nüshu for scholars or mass
versus, 36–37 media, 119–21
transcription of nüshu into, 21fig., on Yang Huanyi, 118
80–81, 130fig. Heyuan Village, 9fig.
health care, and Great Leap Forward, author’s sworn sisters in, 10–12
149 fieldwork in, 8–14
heart, brain versus, 125–26 He Xijing, 3, 174–75, 209
He Chunse, 50 He Yufeng, 92–93, 209
He Jinghua, 13, 169 He Yunzhu, 82
he sanzhao, 69 hongbao, 82–83
He Yanxin, 45fig., 79fig. household contract responsibility
author’s first interactions with, 78–81 system, 105, 165–66
as author’s sworn sister, 11–12 huadai, 18, 110
childhood of, 81–84 Huang Xuezhen, 117
concern of, for author’s personal life, Huang Yuanjie, 218
106–7 Huashanmiao, 26, 37, 72–75, 91–92
concern of, for others, 121–23 Hu Cizhu
on Cultural Revolution, 208 as author of first nüshu included
daily life of, 120–21 in local gazetteer, 1, 38
engagement and marriage of, 94–99 biographical lament of, 23–24
helps with field research, 105 and discovery of nüshu, 3
introduces author to Tang Baozhen, distribution network of, 66
44–45 influence of, on Zhou Shuoyi,
learns nüshu, 84–90 37–38
life of, during collectivization period, remarriage of, 190
103–4 sisterhood letters between Tang
marital life of, 99–103 Baozhen and, 55–63, 217
meaning of nüshu for, 131, 209 suffering of, 190
mother of, 91–99, 204 sworn sisterhood of, 44, 53–55
as nüshu chuanren, 169 writes He Xijing’s life story, 174–75,
nüshu literacy of, 109–16 197, 209
Index | 245
Hu Cizhu (Continued) visits husband in Zhangjiajie, 149–50
writes nüshu to celebrate Yueying’s work of, 160–63, 166
birthday, 53–55 Zhou Gongming on, 163
Hu Guogou, 136, 138, 150–51, 152, 155 Hu Xiuying, 34–37
Huanyi. See Yang Huanyi Hu Yuxiu, 34–37
huirong, 215–16
Huizong, Emperor, 34–37 intertextual, 14, 42, 203, 207
Hu Meiyue, 170fig.
learns nüshu, 171–76 Jiangyong
on nüshu as retrievable memories, and discovery of nüshu, 3
208 fieldwork in, 6–14
on nüshu ballads, 175. See also footbinding in, 83, 135
changben. history and social structure of, 4–5
as nüshu chuanren, 169–71, 180–82 practice of nüshu in, 18
and nüshu in contemporary society, remarriage of widows in, 134
195–201 research subjects in, 14–16
on nüshu origins, 177–78 singing as part of women’s daily lives
and nüshu research, 176–78 in, 17–18
on nüshu scholarship, 210 sworn sisterhood in, 52, 64
nüshu study and practice of, 182–90 wedding performance in, 22–23,
nüshu trajectory of, 210 69–70, 74, 136–38, 172
as research subject, 13, 15, 43 jiaobei, 69–70
stops writing nüshu, 190–95, 212 jiebai. See sworn sisters and sworn
writes biographical nüshu for Fang, sisterhood
188–90, 196, jiekaixin, 195
Hu Siao-chen, 40 Jiliang, 119
Hu Wuxian, 138 Jin Dongxin, 17
Hu Xin, 169, 181, 198 Juyin, 50n4
Hu Xinkui, 133fig.
author’s first interactions with, 132–34 kaisheng, 137–38
and bridal lamentation, 136–42, 207 kelian, 31. See also sentiment of misery;
character of, 167–68 su kelian
as child bride, 143–45, 155, 204 Ko, Dorothy, 40, 218
children of, 160, 162–65 kuge, 20–22, 137–43, 176–77. See also
as Director of Women’s Affairs, bridal lamentation
147–49 Kuomintang-Communist civil wars,
divorce of, 151–55 145–46
marriage of, 143–47
mother of, 134–36 Lady Luo, 80–81, 175
relationship with brother, 136, 138, Lady Zhang, 85. See also
150–151, 159 Flower-Selling Girl
relationship with daughter-in- lamentation. See also bridal lamentation;
law, 164 su kelian
remarriage of, 155–59, 204 biographical ballad as, 23–26
as research subject, 14, 15, 43 to liberate one’s heart, 195
Tan Yunde on, 161–63 nüshu and nüge as, 30–34, 57–61, 84,
Tan Yuting on, 166–67 86–89, 92–93
| Index
246
nüshu as, 97–99, 112, 114–15, 120–21, role of nüshu and nüge in wedding
188–89, 196, 209–10 performance, 20–23. See also
in sanzhaoshu, 23, 71, 86–89 sanzhaoshu
in sisterhood letters, 111 and supplication to Gupo and
land allotment, 93, 106 Niangniang, 74. See also prayer;
land reform, 104, 147, 156–57, 203 worship verses
laogeng, 52 of Tan Yunde, 157–58
laotong, 52, 83 wedding rituals, 20–23, 69–70, 74,
lesbian partnerships, 64–65, 217 136–38, 172
Liang Shanbo, 30, 173–74 Meili, 78, 103, 121–23
Liberation (step-daughter of Tan Meiyue. See Hu Meiyue
Yunde), 157–58, 164 meta-sentiment, 209
Liberation of China (1949) mining, and Great Leap Forward, 148
land reform under, 93, 147 Mo Yuexing, 29
social changes brought about by, 39, mutual-aid groups, 156–57
150, 168
as time of transition, 203, 204 nanshu, differences in narration in
life narratives, 42–43 nüshu versus, 31–34
Li Shi’an, 31–34 Narayan, Kirin, 7
literacy of women, 202, 217–20 Niangniang, 26, 72, 74
Little Yi, 164 Niangniang Temple, 26, 72–75
Liu Ying, 117 Notes on the Investigation of Each Hunan
local gazetteers County (Zeng), 37
depiction of sworn sisterhood in, nüge. See also biographical nüge
64, 205 demise and revival of, 39
versus nüshu, 31–34 editing of, 187
widowhood in, 203, 205, 215–16 erosion of distinction between nüshu
Longyantang, 26, 72–75, 91 and, 178, 200, 211
Lu Runchi, 13 examined through life narratives,
42–43
male-authored literature, role of nüshu as expression of women’s “true
and nüge in transcription of, 29–30, selves,” 202–6
85. See also changben; ballad, nüshu expressive depths of, 12, 206–8
Mandarin Chinese, transliteration nüshu and, 2
between nüshu and, 183 practice of, 16, 18
Mann, Susan, 40 purpose of, 5, 80, 212–13
marriage. See also bridal lamentation; role of, in biographical laments,
child brides; remarriage; sanzhaoshu 23–26.
fenli qian, 25 role of, in wedding performance,
of He Yanxin, 94–99, 124–25 20–23. See also bridal
of Hu Meiyue, 176–77 lamentation; kuge
of Hu Xinkui, 136–40, 143–47, scholarship on, 7, 40, 41–42
151–55 nüshu. See also biographical nüshu
impact of, on sworn sisterhood, aphoristic, 195
61–63, 65, 66, 205–6 artistry and beautification of,
in narrative nüshu, 27–28 199–201, 211
recognition in, 144 for cheering one’s heart, 54
Index | 247
nüshu (Continued) scholarship on, 39–40, 170,
in contemporary society, 195–201, 210–11
210–13 significance of, to contemporary
demise and revival of, 39 scholarship, 3
developing literacy in, 182–83 as soothing energy, 195
development and use of, 1–2 structural impingements shaping,
discovery of, 3 63–66
editing of, 187 as supplication, 72–75, 91–93
erosion of distinction between nüge as tool for making sense of past,
and, 178, 200, 211 124–25
examined through life narratives, as transcription tool, 29–30, 50
42–43 use of, in Jiangyong, 5
as expression of women’s “true and women as writing subjects,
selves,” 202–6 41–42
expressive depths of, 12, 206–8 yuan shengtai, 200
fieldwork on, 6–14 nüshu chuanren, 39, 169, 180–82,
first piece of, included in local 198–99, 211–12
gazetteer, 1, 38 Nüshu Ecological Park/Nüshu Park/
versus guixiu, 218–20 Nüshu Museum, 180
versus local gazetteer, 31–34, 38, nüshu propaganda ambassador,
203–205 199–200
hanzi transliteration of, 21fig., 80–81, Nüshu zidian (Zhou), 200
130fig.
as lamentation, 30–34, 97–99, 112, one-child policy, 104, 105–6
114–15, 120–21, 188–89, 196, “One-year-old Daughter,” 171–72, 175
209–10 oral performance, marginalization of,
learning, 18 2, 202
for liberating one’s heart, 195 “Origins of Nüshu,” 187–88
as narrative, 27–29 Ouyang Zhuzhu, 123–24
origins and history of, 34–38, 187–88
practice of, 16, 18 pei hongniang, 172
purpose of, 212–13 peiku. See yiku yipei
recognition for, 2 performance, 7, 14, 41, 42, 46,
relation of, to suffering, 190–95, 212 77, 107–9, 203, 206–8,
as reminder of past, 80 209, 221
research subjects for, 14–16 of kuge, 139–42
rhyming in, 181 oral, 40, 179, 202, 211
role of, in biographical laments, of sanzhaoshu, 67–72, 75, 183, 200
23–26 sung, 2, 18, 108
role of, in sworn sisterhood, 19–20, of wedding, 19, 20–23, 27
21fig. See also sworn sisters and performative, 12, 167, 209, 211
sworn sisterhood People’s Communes, 156–57, 165–66
role of, in wedding performance, pigs, raising, 161–63, 166
20–23. See also sanzhaoshu pilgrimages, to Huashanmiao and
role of, in worship verses, 26–27, Longyantang, 72–73
72–73, 91–93, 129–130, 130fig., plowing, and Great Leap Forward,
91–93, 209 148
| Index
248
Poor and Middle-Lower Peasant written by Yang Canxian, 82, 84
Association, 157, 160, 161 Sasa, 45, 77, 78, 110
portamento, 85, 139 self-reflective, 75, 202, 209
prayer, 26–27. See also supplication, sentiment, 209–10
nüshu as; worship verses atonement, 209
predestined affinity, 102 bitterness, 1, 2, 87, 111, 167,
primary communes, 157 209, 210
Pu Bixian, 37 cheering up, 35, 57, 127
Pu Lijuan, 169 fortitude, 167, 209
frustration, 1, 24, 36, 75, 78, 93,
qiang, 142 206, 210
Qiang, 199 gratefulness, 46, 210
qing, 217, 219 grief, 16, 20, 92, 136, 209, 210
Qiqi, 105–6 grievance, 1, 2, 24, 57, 126, 140, 142,
167, 171, 174, 184
remarriage. See also xingguibu kelian, 31. See also sentiment of
of Chen Shipian, 94, 99 misery; su kelian
of Hu Cizhu, 190 melancholy, 13, 36, 37, 91,
of Hu Xinkui, 155–59 190, 206
of Ouyang Zhuzhu, 123–24 meta-sentiment, 209
of Tang Baozhen, 48–50, 51, 59–60 misery, 25, 36, 46, 49, 58, 76,
of Wang Gangzhen, 25–26 87, 128, 174, 178, 185,
of widows, 134–35, 203–4, 205, 216 188, 190, 208, 209,
of Yang Canxian, 89, 90, 128 210, 217
of Yi Nianhua, 193 perturbation, 23, 59, 209, 210
resonance, 71 pride, 16, 29, 41, 79, 100, 136, 152,
rhyming, 181 180, 206, 212
protest, 1, 20, 108, 178, 179, 197
saicha, 70 regret, 94, 99, 116, 121, 136, 165, 171,
sancong, 4, 5, 41, 95, 204–5, 215, 218 206, 209
Sangu ji. See Third Daughter, The remorse, 125
sanzhaoshu, 23, 68fig. repentance, 209
as admonitory text, 69, 179 sadness, 20, 24, 42, 86, 91–99, 128,
versus bridal lamentation, 167, 194, 195, 209
178–79, 208 sorrow, 16, 20, 67, 81, 91–99, 112,
compliance and critique in, 66, 207 124, 126, 167, 177, 190, 196
dance incorporated into performance tengxi sheng, 34
of, 200 ungrateful, 27, 99
as lamentation, 31, 86 Seven Sisters, 44, 53–55, 66,
purpose of, 66, 206–7 173–75
recollected and reproduced by He Shanfeng, 116, 120, 121
Yanxin, 86–89 shan’ge, 5, 83–84
text and performance of, 67–72 Shangjiangxu, 4, 8, 156, 183
uncertainty concerning sisterhood tie Shen Shanbao, 218
expressed in, 61–63 Shen Yixiu, 219
written and taught by Hu Meiyue, shigong, 145
183–84 Silber, Cathy, 3, 53
Index | 249
singing Taiwan, exchange between China and,
as part of women’s daily lives, 17–18 5–6
and writing, 2, 7, 18, 179, 208 Tan Chengcheng, 158–59, 160
purpose of, 80 Tang Baozhen, 45fig.
and Tang Baozhen’s perception of ability of, in nüshu, 7, 44, 50
nüshu, 108 author meets, 44–45
Sino-Japanese War, 28–29, 192–93 author’s fieldwork with, 45–46
sixiang hao, 158 biographical nüge of, 47–52
social class, as factor in shaping death of, 13
women’s writing lives, 218–19 distribution network of, 66
socialist education movement, on Huashanmiao and Longyantang,
160–61 72, 73–74
son-bearing lamentation of, 209
and one-child policy, 105–6 on performance of sanzhaoshu, 70–71
supplication for, 72–74 relationship with daughters-
steel making, 148 in-law, 51
su kelian, 2, 30–34, 43, 196, 209–10, remarriage of, 48–50, 51, 59–60, 203
212, 219. See also lamentation; kelian; as research subject, 7, 14–15, 43, 44,
sentiment of misery 45–46, 75–76, 177–78
subtext, 69 sisterhood letters between Hu Cizhu
Sun Yuanxiang, 219 and, 55–63
superaddressee, 42 suffering of, 190
supplication, nüshu as, 72–75, 91–93. sworn sisters of, 52–55, 173–74
See also prayer; worship verses and Zhuzhu nüshu, 107–8, 207
sworn sisters and sworn Tang Gongwei, 132
sisterhood Tang Maogui, 186
of author, 10–12; See also He Yanxin; Tang Nianzhi, 139, 221–22
Wu Longyu Tan Guoquan, 158, 163–64
of Gao Yinxian, 173–75; See also Tan Laiyu. See Tan Yuting
Hu Cizhu; Tang Baozhen Tan Meiquan, 160
of He Yanxin, 11, 83; See also Wu Tan Yunde, 133fig.
Longyu children of, 160, 164–65
letters between Tang Baozhen and discusses kuge, 140, 141–42
Hu Cizhu, 55–63 generosity of, 163
letters by He Yanxin to author, Hu Xinkui marries, 155–59
111, 115 military service of, 146
in nüshu versus local gazetteers, work and political activity of,
64, 205 160–61, 165
role of nüshu and nüge in, 19–20, on Hu Xinkui’s first husband, 151–54
21fig., 55–61 on Hu Xinkui’s work ethic, 155
and structural impingements Tan Yuting, 133fig.
shaping nüshu, 63–66 accompanies author on research
of Tang Baozhen, 52–55, 173–74 visits, 166–67
and text and performance of author’s first interactions with, 133–34
sanzhaoshu, 61–63, 67–72, 184 birth of, 160
of Yang Canxian, 82 discusses arranged marriage, 144
of Yang Huanyi, 6–7, 66 discusses kuge, 139–42, 166–67
| Index
250
discusses Hu Xinkui’s first husband, women
151–53, 154 Communist Liberation’s effect on,
on family, 164–65 39, 203–4
as filial daughter, 161–63 dependence of, on male affiliations,
on Hu Xinkui’s work ethic, 161–63 204–5
Ten-year history of Jiangyong since forging of collective female identity
Liberation (Zhou), 37 among, 70–71
text, 7, 18, 19–30, 31–34, 39, 42, 46, in Han Confucian patriarchal com-
67–72, 108, 178, 209 plex, 4–5
textual construction, 12, 40, 41, 187, literacy of, 202, 217–20
206, 211 in local gazetteers, 215
Third Daughter, The, 85, 112, 173, 175, nüshu and nüge as expression of,
195–96 202–3
“tiger incident,” 31–34 role of singing in lives of, 80
tongnian, 52 scholarship on, as writing subjects,
transcriptions of male-authored litera- 40–42
ture, 29–30. See also ballad, nüshu selves and subjectivities of,
transformation, 75, 209–10 202–6
Trinh Minh-ha, 202 social status of, 48–49
trust, in fieldwork, 7–8 use of, of writing, 217–20
tuhua, 37, 182 vulnerability of, 75
tuyin, 176 worship verses, 26–27, 72–73, 129–130,
Tuqiangwu, 156, 157 130fig., 91–93, 209. See also prayer;
supplication
village exogamy, 4–5, 15, 47, 61, 66, 74, Wu Longyu
206, 220. See also chuxiang as author’s sworn sister, 11,
53, 81
Wang Duan, 217 on childbirth and menopause, 104
Wang Duanshu, 218 learns nüge through spirit medium,
Wang Gangzhen, 25–26 124–25
wedding carts, 136–37, 138 life of, during collectivization period,
wedding choruses, 22, 172–73 104
wedding rituals, 20–23, 69–70, 74, He Yanxin writes huadai nüshu for,
136–38, 172 110
“When the Golden Cock Crows,” 184–85 Wu Zao, 217
Widmer, Ellen, 218
widowhood. See also widows Xiangfu, 80, 107, 108, 207
lamentation of, in nüshu, 24–25, xianniang po, 145
47–50, 114–115, 120–121, 128, Xie Zhimin, 3, 170
190–194 Xijing. See He Xijing
in local gazetteers, 205, 215–16 xi’nan guanhua, 37, 182
as recurrent nüshu theme, 203 xingguibu, 48–49, 203. See also
widows. See also widowhood remarriage
dependence of, on male affiliations, xingke, 52, 64–65
204–5 Xinkui. See Hu Xinkui
remarriage of, 134–35, 203–4, 205, 216 Xi Peilan, 219
vulnerability of, 48–51 Xunnüci (Pu), 37
Index | 251
Yang Canxian, 82–83 Yi Zaozao, 82
final years of, 89–90 Yuan-Dao Guanyin Temple,
He Yanxin learns nüshu from, 84–89, 129–30, 130fig.
125–26 Yuan Mei, 219
He Yanxin’s nüshu tribute to, Yueying, 53, 138, 142–43
126–29, 210 yuan shengtai, 200
nüshu practice of, 82, 84–85 Yun Zhu, 218
remarriage of, 89–90, 204 Yuping, 77–78
Yang Huanyi Yuting. See Tan Yuting
death of, 13
and huadai, 110 Zeng Jiwu, 37
as nüshu chuanren, 169 zhaolang, 51
relationship with He Yanxin, 118 Zhao Liming, 3, 77–78, 110, 111, 113,
relationship with son, 118 117, 170
as research subject, 6–7, 8, 77, 117 zhibiao, 164
suffering of, 194 Zhong Yun, 219
sworn sisterhood of, 52, 66 Zhou Gongming
Yang Sansan, 31 author’s first interactions with,
Yang Ximei, 19, 205 132–33
Yang Xixi, 29, 134–35 discusses arranged marriage, 144
Yang Yueqing, 119 discusses Hu Xinkui’s first husband,
Yan Meiju, 135 151, 153
Yanxin. See He Yanxin discusses Hu Xinkui’s first marriage,
Yao, 4–5 154–55
Ye Shaoyuan, 219 as filial son-in-law, 141
yiku yipei, 140–41. See also bridal on Tan Yunde, 165
lamentation on working under household
yingbi zi, 199. See also archetypical contract responsibility system,
nüshu 165–66
Yi Nianhua on Hu Xinkui’s work ethic, 163
and discovery of nüshu, 3 Zhou Huijuan, 169, 199
nüshu written by, 24, 50, 134–35, Zhou Shuoyi, 3, 37–38, 117, 169,
190–94 200, 209
remarriage of, 204 Zhuyi, 48
as research subject, 44, 170 Zhu Yingtai, 29–30
and Seven Sisters, 44, 174n4 Zhu Yingtai, 29–30, 85, 90, 128, 169,
suffering of, 190–94 173–74, 175, 176, 180
Yi Yunjuan, 181 Zhuzhu, 107–8, 207
| Index
252

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CHAPTER 1 Discovery and Encounter 1

Appendix 1 Widowhood in Local Gazetteers 215

D oing fieldwork is a journey of adventure, full of challenges and surprising

How many beautiful women die sad;

The discovery of nüshu was entirely unexpected. In 1982 a junior Chinese

discovery and encounter | 3

Doing Fieldwork in China

As a Taiwanese anthropologist who pursued a Ph.D. in the United States, I took

discovery and encounter | 5

discovery and encounter | 7

Taking Up Residence at Heyuan Village

discovery and encounter | 9

Becoming Sworn Sisters

discovery and encounter | 11

From Nüshu and Nüge to Life Narratives

In 2000, seven years after my initial fieldwork, I returned to Jiangyong to

discovery and encounter | 13

Based on my 20 years of fieldwork in Jiangyong since 1992, the following anal-

discovery and encounter | 15

On a stool, squarely square,

Girls usually do spinning and weaving with their female neighbors,

singing was an integral part of women’s daily lives in traditional Jiangyong.

text and practice | 19

A jiebai proposal might sometimes be respectfully turned down, especially

text and practice | 21

While sending congratulations, this sanzhaoshu also admonishes the bride

After conveying these compliments and warnings, the sanzhaoshu sender

text and practice | 23

Gangzhen’s misery as a quasi-widow partly resulted from the indifference of

text and practice | 25

Petitioning the higher powers seems to be her last resort:

Unable to endure her toddler husband, the bride, at a girlfriend’s instigation,

text and practice | 27

Transcriptions of Male-Authored Literature

text and practice | 29

In the course of her studies in Hangzhou, Yingtai, disguised as a young man,

A Genre for “Lamenting One’s Miseries”

Alas! How much strength could the women muster?

text and practice | 31

This is followed by the tiger incident, set up by a portrayal of an ordinary Ji-

text and practice | 33

“What use is an obituary?” is clearly a shot aimed at the local gazetteer’s

Origins and History

Sitting in the Imperial Palace, I write.

My family enjoyed good standing,

Life in palace, however, proved solitary and miserable:

text and practice | 35

To prevent this tragedy, Hu Yuxiu wrote home to advise her family:

text and practice | 37

text and practice | 39