An Analysis of Nushu Culture and Its International Representation
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0 Estenson “A Good Girl Can Fight Her Way Through a Thousand Troops”: An Analysis of Nushu Culture and its International Representation. By Kimberly Estenson In partial fulfillment of the degree Bachelor of Arts with Honors in East Asian Studies Wittenberg University April 1, 2019 1 Estenson I. Introduction In the southernmost region of the Hunan province, the small rural village of Jiangyong was largely unknown to Chinese history. However, today it is acknowledged for being home of the only female script and writing system in the world, nushu (女书). Nushu means women’s script, however, this is merely what the rest of the world calls the script. The women of Jiangyong call it by numerous names, including “mosquito writing” because of its delicate and elongated shape, like the legs of a mosquito. This writing system was a central tradition of women in Jiangyong up until the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Surprisingly, while this script is hundreds of years old, it was virtually unknown to the outside world until its accidental discovery in the 1980s. Since the discovery of nushu, scholars and the media have represented nushu women in a degrading and misogynistic manner, and so have trapped these individuals into generalized and false stereotypes. For instance, on one extreme nushu women are remembered and defined today for their tragedies that result from a seemingly powerless existence under an androcentric, Confucian culture. On the other extreme, different scholars have painted them as a secret revolutionary society that maliciously seeks to overthrow male authority. Whether seen as a powerless character solely at the whim of their Confucian society, or as a rage filled man-hater, the actual women of Jiangyong are not having their stories accurately and respectively communicated. Social media, films, novels, and newspapers have all further negatively impacted the image of these women. I believe that in many cases these false conceptions are the result of the desire to sensationalize the image of these women in order for the media to make more money. In other cases, this deception is accidently conjured because scholars are employing false stereotypes of Chinese women or current ideas of western feminism to understand these women, 2 Estenson rather than looking at the actual historical and cultural context in which nushu developed. On this issue, I am in accordance with the nushu scholar and professor at Qinghua University Zhao Liming, who wrote, “distorting tradition is worse than losing it.”1 In fact, nushu is at risk for being lost and its international representation has already been devastatingly distorted. It is a dying script, with fewer and fewer women able to produce it. However, what must be saved is the actual history and culture of nushu, rather than its current international representation. Therefore, I seek to provide the complex cultural and historical aspects that have led nushu women to taking part in the creation of poetic narratives. Once I demonstrate how the women of Jiangyong are not products of western feminism, I will, however, show that the opposite of western feminism does not equal a powerless and meaningless existence. I argue that through the telling of one’s pain whether in a performative manner or by script on paper, nushu women have claimed agency over their stories by using their own script to fight societal isolation, create a space for their stories in a Confucian culture, and also write stories of complex and noble women who then affect the nushu women’s understanding of their own identity. II. Misrepresentation of Nushu Nushu has primarily become known outside of China under false assumptions. For instance, when it first was known to the world, it was advertised to be a completely new language. In actuality, nushu is not its own language, but just its own writing system that phonetically communicates the local dialect. Nushu was also painted as a revolutionary secret that was hidden from male eyes. This false idea is largely the result of scholars that originally studied it, who assumed that because it was unknown to the outside world, that its concealment 1 Yin Yijun, “The Last Guardian of China’s Women-Only Script,” Sixth Tone, April 22, 2018, accessed March 9, 2019, https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002805/the-last-guardians-of-chinas- women-only-script. 3 Estenson was intentional. In fact, what drew many scholars to this topic was the fact that this script was what they believed to be an ancient and secret language. Scholar, Llara Maria Sala, attended the first nushu conference in 1993, and discusses this initial distortion of the nushu image in her essay “What the World's Fascination with a Female-Only Chinese Script Says about Cultural Appropriation.”2 She states that the conference was mainly populated by male academics that were eager to unlock the mystery of this script. Sala even goes as far as to suggest that this sensationalizing in order to profit off another culture is a form of cultural appropriation3. Yet, when Sala visited the on of the nushu villages in Jiangyong County to ask about the “secret language” the villagers laughed at the idea of what they saw as a useless past time being perceived as some act of revolution. While nushu is a gendered script (it is meant to be written, read, and spoken only by women), it was never purposefully kept from a male audience. In reality, men never learned the script because they believed it was inferior to hanzi, ideographic characters that record the Han language. On this topic, the long time nushu researcher, Silber points out how men would have come in to contact with nushu because it was often recited at weddings and other important ceremonies. A prominent example of misrepresentation of nushu includes an article inspired by the death of the last native nushu writer, Yang Huanyi, in the 2004 New York Times article, “Yuang Huanyi, Last User of a Secret Code Dies.” In the article the reporter states, “Women were not educated, and gathered at homes to make shoes or embroider. Though in early Chinese history, the penalty for creating languages was death, women quietly developed a code for their secret 2 Ilaria Maria Sala, "What the World's Fascination with a Female-only Chinese Script Says about Cultural Appropriation," Quartz, May 24, 2018, accessed January 26, 2019, https://qz.com/1271372/what-the-worlds-fascination-with-nushu-a-female-only-chinese-script- says-about-cultural-appropriation/. 3 Ibid. 4 Estenson sorority.”4 This quote exemplifies the over generalization by westerners of female submissiveness in Confucian cultures by emphasizing how their lives were merely spending their days making shoes. In addition, the article clearly perpetuates the misconception that nushu is something secret and that it is its own language. Furthermore, by pairing the creation of nushu next to the idea that the creation of languages was punishable by death, the reporter is projecting nushu in a revolutionary manner—an almost life or death act of rebellion. Outside of scholastic reports and news articles this misunderstanding concerning the purpose of nushu has been perpetuated by popular culture. For instance, the novel written by Lisa See and then 2005 movie Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, directed by Wayne Wang, tells the story of two girls who communicate in a secret code written on a fan in order to deal with the societal inequalities that they undergo. 5 Nushu is again portrayed as a code in which the girls are able to subvert the patriarchy. Also problematic, the film and novel tend to focus on moments where the nushu women exert little control over their lives and bodies, such as during foot binding, and so nushu women are portrayed as merely oppressed beings. Therefore, there is still an issue with defining women by their limitations or by being passively acted upon rather than remembered for their ability to write stories that help them navigate a male dominated culture. In addition, while the film chose to cut this scene, the novel includes a sexually intimate scene between two sworn sisters. This also feeds into a false image that was popular among scholars when nushu was first discovered, that is, the belief that nushu was created to be a secret language among lesbians. Finally, I believe it is also important to note that Lisa See was actually born in 4 Huanyi Yang, “Last User of a Secret Code, Dies” The New York Times, October 10, 2006, accessed March 20, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/international/asia/yang-huanyi- last-user-of-a-secret-code-dies.html. 5 Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Directed by Wayne Wang. United States: Fox Searchlight, 2011, DVD. 5 Estenson France and is only one-eighth Chinese, and so her perspective on the Chinese experience could be skewed. Finally, many western feminists with well-meaning intentions have also contorted nushu’s international image. Western feminism has historically prioritized white, middle-class women as well as American ideologies such as democracy. This, then, does not take into account women from other parts of the world who may have fewer rights as females in their countries or who have very different cultural and historical backgrounds. On this issue, feminist scholar Su- Lin Yu writes, “Western feminism, which ignores realities of women who are being confronted with diversities of values and religious lifestyle, has often been criticized of being essentialist, monolithic, and ethnocentric”. 6 Western feminists have projected a story similar to their own battle for rights onto the women of Jiangyong, who had no concept of words like “democracy” or the “patriarchy” for nearly all of nushu’s history.