Indeed, a new documentary called Hidden Letters, directed by a Chinese woman named Violet Feng, which describes how people are now trying to revive this language. What is most remarkable to me about this language is not only that it existed, but also that it has endured. As many scholars have noted, this may be the only script in the world that was intended only for women. We will never know the names of these innovators, but they created their own literary world with an invented writing system, NĂ¼shu. If you were a member of one group of Chinese women, you would create your own secret script, which could only be read by other women. You have no formal education, and it seems difficult to communicate with other women, and perhaps it is impossible to have any private communication. You spend your time in the north room of a house, where you embroider all day, and are kept isolated from others. Your feet were bound from childhood, so that you could not wander or engage with people outside your household. Imagine that you are an upper class Chinese woman living in a rural Chinese province in the 1600s.
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