Heroines of Jiangyong: Chinese Narrative Ballads in Women's Script

摘要

Women's script or nueshu, which although probably originally derived from Chinese characters is syllabic in nature, was developed and, as far as we know, exclusively utilized, by the rural women of Jiangyong county in southern Hunan. It first became publicized to the wider world in the late 1980s, but for a century or more before had been used exclusively by women to record a range of writings, including short poems, letters, marriage songs and long autobiographical ballads.