Gendered Words: Sentiments and Expression in Changing Rural China

by Fei-Wen Liu

Built on twenty years of fieldwork in rural Jiangyong of Hunan Province in south China, this book explores the world's only gender-defined and now disappearing "women's script" known as nüshu. What drove peasant women to create a script of their own and write, and how do those writings throw new light on how gender is addressed in epistemology and historiography and how the unprivileged social class uses marginalized forms of expression to negotiate with the dominant social structure. Further, how have the politics of salvaging this disappearing centuries-old cultural heritage molded a new poetics in contemporary society?

This book explores nüshu in conjunction with the local women's singing tradition (nüge), tied into the life narratives of four women born in the 1910s, 1930s, and 1960s respectively, each representative in her own a nüge singer (majority of Jiangyong women), a child bride (enjoying not much nüshu/nüge), the last living traditionally-trained nüshu writer, and a new-generation nüshu transmitter. Altogether, their stories unfold peasant women's lifeworlds and forefronts various aspects of China's changing social milieu over the past century. They show how nüshu/nüge-registering women's sense and sensibilities and providing agency to subjects who have been silenced by history-constitute a reflexive social field whereby women share life stories to expand the horizon of their personal worldviews and probe beneath the surface of their existence for new inspiration in their process of becoming. With the concept of "expressive depths," this book opens a new vista on how women express
themselves through multiple forms that simultaneously echo and critique the mainstream social system and urges a rethinking of how forms of expression define and confine the voice carried. Examining the multiple efforts undertaken by scholars, local officials, and cultural entrepreneurs to revive nüshu which have ironically threatened to disfigure its true face, this book poses a question of whither nüshu? Should it be transformed, or has it reached a perfect end point from which to fade into history?

Genres: China, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2015

Reviews

[Bryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating, warm work of cultural anthropology focusing on several generations of practicioners of the 'women's script' (nushu) of Jiangyong county in China -- and the first thing Liu would want the reader to recognise is that this script was intimately connected with a folk singing tradition (nuge) and really should not be studied separately from it. Having just read Heroines of Jiangyong: Chinese Narrative Ballads in Women's Script, which is a collection of translated nushu, I was so glad to have Liu's work to expand my understanding of where this script might have come from and how it (in tandem with the singing) was used by women over the years to express their life experiences and create social bonds with each other. Liu had close relationships with several of the women whose work she studied, and her in-depth writing about individual informants is rich and loving and gave me that sense I love of how huge and individual the world is outside of my own experience. I will never have the chance to talk to these peasant women of Jiangyong who used nushu & nuge to organise and cope with their experiences of the Chinese 20th century, but Liu's scholarly work made a window through which I could, momentarily, see a different world, and I am very grateful for it.

[CK · Rating 4 out of 5]

I originally loaned this book because of watching He Yanxin in the movie Hidden letters and wanted to learn more about her life, but I really enjoyed learning about so many different women and their personal/nushu journeys that came before and after her. This book provides a really good scholarly understanding of nushu and nuge, but also stays close to the heart of this practice: the women who have stories to tell.