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Lisa See's Snow Flower and Secret Fan is set in Emperor Taoguang period-late Qing Dynasty that is featured by patriarchal society. One of typical features of the patriarchal society is that the male is the center of everything, while the female is in a disadvantaged position, which is clearly shown in the novel. However, Laotong-a kind of woman's friendship in the novel can be regarded as a sort of female rebellion to the patriarchal society. They communicate with each other in a special way that men have no access to, which in a way wins more space for women in feudal society in which men always are in dominated position in terms of social status in family or society. The paper is going to discuss how this nu shu narrative destructs the patriarchal society and strives for more space for women, breaking the yoke of man's gaze and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nu Shu GPS: 25 °21’00.5N, 111°27’17.7E – an interdisciplinary cooperation between dance, calligraphy, and the body in multimedia performance, began with a diary exchange between the artist and a friend, who shared their thoughts by writing in the same journal. During this ‘diary swapping’ period, they developed a semiotic system that only the two of them could understand. Later, the artist came across Nu Shu, the only written language in the world that exclusively women learned to write and read. The artist attempts to explore all the possible metaphors and meanings implied by Nu Shu. The performance Nu Shu GPS: 25 °21’00.5N, 111°27’17 attempts to bring this secret method of communication back to life among modern Chinese women.This interdisciplinary performance work employs a practical approach to art through a creative collaboration among experts from different fields: choreographers, dancers, lighting designers, programmers, etc. It attempts to apply the three stages of the art creation process (Praxis, Symbol, Presence) as the three different faces for a theory regarding this work.

This essay will examine love as a theme of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and how its presence and absence affected women of 19th-century China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many art practitioners across cultures and over generations, I work in my room. A room serves the function of essential studio space, a space where I can paint, write, read, chant, meditate or do nothing. The notion of “a room of one’s own” brought forth by the writer Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) in the 1920s is a c­ommon goal among many practitioners in the arts, women in particular. This continues to the present day. In this article, I aim to illustr­ate how my practice is akin to that of women in the West, Paris in particular, at the turn of the twentieth century in the longing for one's private space. The article explores the notion of private space in other, less obvious ways. I also discuss how women in a remote part of China in their own rooms, through the exclusive practice ofnüshu, a set of near-extinct and “secret” writing script, echoed the significance of having their own platform, a creative space in which they could excel. I demonstrate how, through appropriating some characters from the Chinese language with a “female” ideograph andnüshuscript, my drawing acts as a strategy, suggesting that the “edge” of culture could speak. In addition, it attempts to “practice that difference” advocated by the philosopher Luce Irigaray (b. 1930). Working and exhibiting in various spaces, I realize that a room for executing and displaying is a transitional tool. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper attempts to show that the intellectual construct women's language is entirely justified on a political, ideological, and economic basis that stresses the fact that women have historically been victims of overt (and covert) discrimination and exploitation in our society. Linguistically speaking, however, a women's language seems not to exist in traditional strict terms, but rather as a rhetorical term used in the form of a synecdoche. Despite their incompleteness, two attempts of characterizing truly women languages, Nu Shu and Láadan, are discussed, underlining and recognizing their legitimate symbolic value as equalizing manoeuvres. Women have resorted to more subtle linguistic means to emerge as visible agents in our society. Linguistic resources go from a passive acceptance of the traditional all-inclusive generic masculine forms, through the equalizing use of both masculine and feminine markers, to the most progressive, liberal and controversial strategies of using feminizing forms, i.e. all-inclusive generic feminine forms. Women's struggle to overcome inequity and inequality is a legitimate endeavour which is leaving visible linguistic traces in our languages. Women are changing languages around the world.

This paper attempts to show that the intellectual construct womens language is entirely justified on a political, ideological, and economic basis that stresses the fact that women have historically been victims of overt (and covert) discrimination and exploitation in our society. Linguistically speaking, however, a womens'language seems not to exist in traditional strict terms, but rather as a rhetorical term used in the form of a synecdoche. Despite their incompleteness, two attempts of characterizing truly women languages, Nu Shu and Láadan, are discussed, underlining and recognizing their legitimate symbolic value as equalizing manoeuvres. Women have resorted to more subtle linguistic means to emerge as visible agents in our society. Linguistic resources go from a passive acceptance of the traditional all-inclusive generic masculine forms, through the equalizing use of both masculine and feminine markers, to the most progressive, liberal and controversial strategies of using feminizing forms, i.e. all-inclusive generic feminine forms. womens'struggle to overcome inequity and inequality is a legitimate endeavour which is leaving visible linguistic traces in our languages. Women are changing languages around the world.En este artículo se intenta demostrar que el constructo el lenguaje de las mujeres se justifica por completo desde una perspectiva política, ideológica y económica, que pone énfasis en el hecho de que históricamente las mujeres han sido víctimas de discriminación y explotación manifiestas (y encubiertas) en nuestra sociedad. Sin embargo, en términos lingüísticos el lenguaje de las mujeres parece no existir en el sentido estricto tradicional, sino más bien como una expresión retórica en forma de sinécdoque. A pesar de su carácter inconcluso, se analizan dos intentos por caracterizar verdaderos lenguajes de las mujeres, Nu Shu y Láadan, poniendo de relieve y reconociendo su valor simbólico legítimo como maniobras para lograr la igualdad. Las mujeres han recurrido a procedimientos lingüísticos más sutiles para emerger como agentes visibles de nuestra sociedad. Los recursos lingüísticos van desde la aceptación pasiva de las formas masculinas tradicionales de inclusión total de género, pasando por el uso igualador de marcadores tanto masculinos como femeninos, hasta las estrategias más progresistas, liberales y controversiales del empleo de formas 'feminizantes', es decir, formas femeninas de inclusión total de género. La batalla de las mujeres por superar la inequidad y la desigualdad constituyen un intento legítimo que está dejando huellas lingüísticas visibles en nuestras lenguas. Las mujeres están cambiando las lenguas en todo el mundo.

An essay is presented on women writers, artists, and performers and mentions writers J.K. Rowling and Gwen John, and talks about the 2011 exhibition "A Room" at the Ox Warehouse in Macao, China. The author discusses her drawing interest and tools such as graphite on paper and fabrics as preceded in both Eastern and Western drawing traditions. She also talks about Nu¨shu culture and its significance in her creative work and writing.

The article discusses the harp piece created by composer Tan Dun with principal harpist Elizabeth Hainen of Philadelphia Orchestra. The masterpiece titled "Nu Shu: Secret Songs of Women for Harp, Orchestra and 13 Microfilms" takes the format of a dramatic symphony. The Nu Shu seeks to communicate a deeper message that unveil the secret language developed by Chinese women to express their hidden emotions.

Exclusively used by women over generations, nüshu, women's script, had remained a secret among women within the township of Shangjiangxu in Jiangyong County, Hunan Province, China, until the mid-1950s. Writings in nüshu are found on papers, paper fans, booklets, and some are embroidered on fabrics. The use of nüshu has died and it is no longer practised. I travelled into the region three times and visited some elderly women who shared with me their experiences of nüshu in embroidering, weaving, chanting and writing. I am recapturing here some accounts of these women, who developed their own means of creative communication asserting themselves. With their modest artefacts in nüshu, the women expressed their concerns, in turn defined for themselves positive terms in the contexts they lived. The rhetoric of the writing is interwoven with individual and collective memories, fragmentary and repetitive, recalling a dying culture which once united the women in an exclusive sisterhood, at the same time delivering a genealogy of their being, which was forgotten in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes the form of a letter, a genre prevalent among many women across cultures, and manifestly among some women in the Nüshu region. Exclusively used by women in Shangjiangxu Township, Jiangyong County, Hunan Province, China, Nüshu, women's script, is believed to have been created by women. Through generations of practice of this matriarchal script in writing letters, wedding missives, biographies and autobiographies, some women had defined positive terms for themselves in the contexts in which they lived. Addressing an elderly woman, now deceased, whom I visited three times over a span of five years, the writing covers accounts of the women's practice, interwoven with cultural discourse, mainly women's art and literary practices, and philosophy from the West. Whilst bringing forward a forgotten culture and seeking the possibility of articulating one's desires, the writing opens up a dialogue connecting women in the practice of chanting, writing and drawing, across cultures, space and time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chinese Nüshu (...) is a unique type of women's writings found at Jiangyong of Hunan Province in the 1950s. It is also used to refer to various cultural conventions related to these writings. NOshu and its culture have brought great benefits to working women living in Jiangyong region: among others, it provides generations of women there with an effective and legitimate channel of catharsis. Meanwhile, it provides a psychological support and marriage counseling for women through establishing various rituals on weddings. Furthermore, it helps women create their own festivals, through which they can display their ability, characters, and desires for relief and self-esteem. Obviously, Ntishu and its culture have important significance to women in that region, providing them with psychological support, comfort, guidance, and even therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's script is the translation of a Chinese term, Nushu. It refers to a script devised and transmitted by communities of women in Jiangyong County located in Hunan province in south China during the late imperial and early modern period. The term also refers to the body of writings recorded in that script, such as letters written to women friends and petitions to local deities. Nushu is regarded as the world's only gender-specific script. It was used only by women in the pre-contemporary period. Nushu was primarily used to forge friendships amongst women living in segregated communities within traditional Chinese society. This study will explore a number of stories recorded in women's script that relate to memories of past events in the region, including traumatic events of war and suffering, and the tumultuous years of the transition to socialism. Nushu writings provide rare insight into how collective memories help regional communities to construct a sense of group identity and offer a remarkable example of the expressive power of marginalized groups in pre-modern Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the advent of L'écriture féminine and the feminist revolution, Chinese women formed a kinship through the secret language of Nu Shu. Cixous, Kristeva, and Irigaray concentrated on redefining themselves as asexual-neither male nor female. Chinese women in the nineteenth century used Nu Shu as a form of affinity and passive aggressive defiance of the androcentric society in which they lived. They embraced their femininity in the curves and strokes of the Nu Shu language. Condé and Schwarz-Bart searched to explore the themes of alienation as Martinicans living in a European French society and the search for an identity that typifies the quintessential Caribbean patriarchal culture. The evolution in consciousness of the female and how she sees herself as part of the diasporic dilemma confronting Caribbean society is marked by the almost limited early works by women authors. As women found their voices and led the way for other women, a natural empowerment ensued with new loyalties as generations transcended the effects of colonialism, indentureship, and slavery. Afro-Caribbean women became vocal and paved the way for East Indian writers to emerge and find their voices. Contemporary literature exemplifies these women's struggles toward empowerment and identification with the land of their birth. From confusion spawns a new position for women as they move toward self-expression and self-actualization with the appointment of the first Indo-Trinidadian female Prime Minister. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nushu, women's script, is believed to have been created and practiced exclusively by women in the Shangjiangxu Township, Jiangyong County, Hunan Province, China for some hundred years. Through a set of unique matriarchal scripts, these women developed a tradition of storytelling, orally in chants, in embroidery, and in written form. They had produced abundant records of their stories in the form of either a biography or an autobiography, which shows a valid representation of their genealogy, a vital condition informing women's identity. I am taking the form of an autobiography, an interdisciplinary practice, as a disrupting challenge of conventions to reveal fragments of the stories of some of these women I visited in the region. With a singular ‘she’ throughout the writing, I have attempted to resist from all patriarchal definitions and appropriations: she is fluid, she is in flux, she is multiple, and she cannot be fixed. She is one and all. She is fragmentary and a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper attempts to show that the intellectual construct women's language is entirely justified on a political, ideological, and economic basis that stresses the fact that women have historically been victims of overt (and covert) discrimination and exploitation in our society. Linguistically speaking, however, a women's language seems not to exist in traditional strict terms, but rather as a rhetorical term used in the form of a synecdoche. Despite their incompleteness, two attempts of characterizing truly women languages, Nu Shu and Láadan, are discussed, underlining and recognizing their legitimate symbolic value as equalizing manoeuvres. Women have resorted to more subtle linguistic means to emerge as visible agents in our society. Linguistic resources go from a passive acceptance of the traditional all-inclusive generic masculine forms, through the equalizing use of both masculine and feminine markers, to the most progressive, liberal and controversial strategies of using feminizing forms, i.e. all-inclusive generic feminine forms. Women's struggle to overcome inequity and inequality is a legitimate endeavour which is leaving visible linguistic traces in our languages. Women are changing languages around the world.