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He Yanxin was the steward of a women-only language
The last natural inheritor of nushu died on October 23rd, aged 86
Nov 27th 2025|5 min read
In the summer of 1949, the year the Communists came to power in China, you might have found He Yanxin, then ten, sitting with her grandmother under a tree. It was cooler there, in the heat of the day. An ordinary scene, except that her grandmother was** inscribing** characters on the palm of Yanxin’s small hand. As she did so, Yanxin would sing the character, then jump up to draw it with a twig on the sand. For her, these lessons were fun. But she wondered why writing this script made her grandmother cry, sometimes so much that she could not see.
Years passed; the Cultural Revolution violently came and went; she brought up six children **amid the strains of poverty **and a hard marriage. Then, from the early 1980s, researchers began seeking her out. She was not easy to find. Her home, Heyuan village, was tucked away in the foggy, vertiginous sandstone peaks of Jiangyong County in Hunan, in China’s south-east. But the visitors came because Jiangyong was the only site of a mysterious ancient language used by women only. They had heard Yanxin knew it, one of very few; but once they found her, with her tough demeanour and her straight gaze, she would tell them, firmly, no.
The language was called nushu, “women’s script”. The characters were thin, slanting and graceful; locally they were called “long-legged mosquitoes” and “the words of ants”. Standard Chinese ideograms were chunky by comparison. Visually it was easy to learn, with each character representing one syllable; but to sing it well (for it was sung rather than spoken) required knowing the local dialect. It was therefore a natural medium for rural women denied education, as they all were until Mao’s time. Young unmarried women especially would meet to sing and sew nushu on fans, handkerchiefs and belts. When a bride left to live in the groom’s house, the “Third Day Books” of commiserations and hopes for her were naturally written in nushu, women to women.
Nobody knew for sure how old it was. Some said a beautiful concubine in the medieval Song dynasty had invented it, others that it was the work of Yaoji, goddess of clouds and rain. Its secrecy was also disputed. Women certainly kept it to themselves, but men would have ignored it anyway. China was—still is—a patriarchy. Nushu was overwhelmingly filled with the grief and bitterness of women who had exchanged their own families for abusive husbands, hateful mothers-in-law and bound feet that kept them home. Rather than moonlight and flowers, its most common images were of closed rooms, lost friends and pain like the slash of a sword. One of Yanxin’s favourite images was of frost and snow on plum blossom: harsh beauty that destroyed life. Yet this was not a language of resistance. Many Third Day Books reminded a woman of her **“Three Obediences”: as a child, to her father; as a wife, to her husband; as a widow, to her sons. **Brides were reminded to “serve your father-in-law with a smile”.
Desperate or resigned, by 1960 Yanxin did not need these songs. In earlier times there had been “sworn sisterhoods”, among the singers, “wisteria from the same root” which often proved stronger than ties of blood. But she herself had only one sworn sister, and they had lost touch. Learning nushu had also been an education, but under Mao all girls, like boys, could go to school. Then, slaving for her family, she had no time for it. One of her daughters asked if she would teach her, but she refused. What good was it? What money did it earn? It was useless.
Yet her subsequent claim that she knew nothing of nushu did not hold up for long. A Japanese researcher, Endo Orie, having got that denial on the doorstep, handed her a pen and paper. Clumsily, out of practice, she began to draw the characters; but rapidly they became graceful, and Ms Endo urged her to go on; to write her life. At that point, her husband was gravely ill in hospital. Even there he continued to blame her. She visited him but, like a boat without wind, she could do nothing. One night in the house alone, rather than despair, she made a start on Ms Endo’s commission. Nushu made her cry too, but fortified her more. It was precious as gold to see the determined progress of the characters down the page. Her story poured out of her as if she had only been waiting to recover this near-dead language in order to speak.
There was so much to say. She was still a baby when her father was killed by a rapacious landlord, knocked to the ground and hit until his blood ran out. After childhood, she had barely one good day. With her father gone, no man sowed rice for them; at 19, she had to be married off. She refused, skipped the ceremony and for a few years was happy to live apart from him. When she finally went to her husband’s house, it was pure oppression. She felt like a baby bird that could not chirp, let alone fly. Her mother-in-law hovered in the kitchen, criticising her cooking and complaining to her son, who then “served up the beating”. Having abandoned his studies, he tried farming, while she hauled rocks in the mines.
This bitter therapy of nushu inspired her for the next two decades to help scholars research it. She also accepted the status of an “inheritor”, the last woman to learn nushu naturally, in the family. She even acquired a nushu sister, Hu Xin, an eager young student, and helped her through her divorce as well as her chanting exercises. They would walk through the streets of Heyuan with their arms around each other.
She still had huge reservations, though. The nushu of the 21st century was not what she had learned. Men had now found uses for it, as a tourist lure. In Jiangyong you could buy trinkets with nushu inscriptions, often misspelled, and get a fan free with a bucket of fried chicken. In Pumei village an imposing nushu museum offered writing courses. But the songs were bland and pretty now, and young women very different. No one needed to understand—as she, now, fully understood—why her grandmother had so often wept as she inscribed the words of ants. ■
何燕心是女性專屬語言的守護者
自然傳承女書的最後一人於10月23日辭世，享壽86歲
2025年11月27日｜5分鐘閱讀
女書，又名江永女書，是一種獨特的漢語書寫系統。女書是一種專門由女性使用的文字，起源於中國湖南省南部永州的江永縣一帶，一般用於書寫當地的漢語方言（土話）。女書早期在江永縣及其毗鄰的道縣、江華瑤族自治縣的大瑤山、以及廣西部分地區的婦女之間流行、傳承。由於女書在文化大革命期間被嚴重破壞，再加上隨著時代的發展及人口外流，現在女書正瀕臨失傳
2004年9月20日，女書的最後一位自然傳人陽煥宜去世。
1949年夏天，也就是共產黨在中國掌權的那一年，你或許會看到當時只有十歲的何燕心，和她的祖母坐在一棵樹下。白天的酷熱中，那裡比較涼爽。那是一個再普通不過的場景，唯一不同的是，她的祖母正把文字寫在燕心小小的手掌上。每寫一個字，燕心就會把那個字唱出來，接著跳起來，用一根小樹枝在沙地上描畫。對她來說，這些課程很有趣。但她不明白，為什麼書寫這種文字會讓祖母哭泣，有時甚至哭得什麼都看不清。
歲月流逝；文化大革命猛烈地來了，又過去了；她在貧窮與艱難的婚姻中撫養了六個孩子。接著，從1980年代初開始，研究者開始尋找她。她並不容易被找到。她的家鄉何園村，隱藏在湖南省江永縣霧氣瀰漫、陡峭險峻的砂岩山峰之中。但訪客仍然前來，因為江永是唯一已知仍存在一種神祕古老語言的地方——一種只由女性使用的語言。他們聽說燕心懂得這種語言，是極少數之一；但當他們終於找到她時，面對她堅毅的神情與筆直的目光，她會堅定地告訴他們：不。
這種語言叫做女書，「女人的文字」。字形纖細、傾斜而優雅；在當地被稱為「長腳蚊子」或「螞蟻的字」。相比之下，標準漢字顯得厚重笨拙。從視覺上看，它很容易學，每個字代表一個音節；但要唱得好（因為它是唱出來的，而不是說出來的），就必須懂得當地的方言。因此，對於那些被剝奪教育機會的農村女性而言，這是一種自然的表達媒介——直到毛澤東時代之前，所有女性皆如此。尤其是未婚的年輕女子，常常聚在一起唱誦女書，並將它繡在扇子、手帕與腰帶上。當新娘離開娘家、搬進夫家時，為她準備的「三朝書」(「三朝書」是新娘出嫁第三天，由女性親人或閨中密友所贈特定形式的女書作品，讓我們從它開始，傾聽女書訴可憐的故事。 這是寫在一條藍色布帕上的「女書」(圖一)。 「女書」指的不僅是婦女的書寫創作，更是女人用自己所創造出來的文字，書寫而成的作品)——寫滿安慰與祝福——理所當然地是以女書書寫，由女人寫給女人。
沒有人確切知道女書有多古老。有人說它是中世紀宋朝一位美麗的妃子所創；也有人說它出自雲雨女神瑤姬之手。它是否祕密流傳，也眾說紛紜。女性確實只在彼此之間使用它，但男性本來也會忽視它。中國是一個——至今仍然是——父權社會。女書的內容，幾乎完全充滿了女性的悲傷與苦澀：她們離開原生家庭，換來的是暴力的丈夫、刻薄的婆婆，以及把她們困在家中的纏足。女書中最常見的意象，不是月光與花朵，而是封閉的房間、失散的朋友，以及如刀劍劃過般的疼痛。燕心最喜愛的一個意象，是覆著霜雪的梅花：殘酷的美，卻摧毀生命。然而，這並不是一種反抗的語言。許多三朝書都提醒女子她的「三從」：幼時從父、出嫁從夫、夫死從子。新娘被告誡要「笑臉侍奉公公」。
到1960年，無論是出於絕望或認命，燕心已不再需要這些歌。在更早的年代，歌唱女書的女性之間會結成「結拜姊妹」，稱為「同根紫藤」，其情誼往往比血緣更深。但她自己只有一位結拜姊妹，而且早已失去聯絡。學習女書曾經也是一種教育，但在毛澤東治下，女孩與男孩一樣可以上學。之後，她為家庭勞碌奔波，沒有時間再碰它。她的一個女兒曾問她是否願意教她，她拒絕了。那有什麼用？能賺多少錢？毫無價值。
然而，她後來聲稱自己對女書一無所知，並沒有維持太久。一位日本研究者遠藤織枝，在門口得到這樣的否認後，把筆和紙遞給她。她笨拙地、因為久未使用而生疏地，開始描畫那些字；但很快地，字形又變得優雅起來。遠藤女士鼓勵她繼續寫下去，寫她的一生。那時，她的丈夫正重病住院。即便如此，他仍然責怪她。她去探望他，但就像一艘無風的船，她什麼也做不了。某個夜晚，她獨自在家，沒有陷入絕望，反而開始動筆，完成遠藤女士的請託。女書也讓她落淚，但同時給了她力量。看著那些字堅定地一行行往下延伸，彷彿黃金般珍貴。她的故事從她心中傾瀉而出，彷彿她只是一直在等待重新找回這種幾乎死去的語言，好讓自己得以說話。
她有太多要說的事。她還是個嬰兒時，父親就被一名貪婪的地主殺害——被打倒在地，反覆毆打，直到血流乾為止。童年之後，她幾乎沒有過一天好日子。父親死後，家中沒有男人耕田；十九歲時，她被迫出嫁。她拒絕了，跳過婚禮，並在幾年內與丈夫分居，過得還算快樂。當她終於搬進夫家，那完全是一場壓迫。她覺得自己像一隻不會鳴叫、更別說飛翔的小鳥。婆婆在廚房裡盤旋，批評她的菜、向兒子抱怨，而他隨後便「端出一頓打」。他放棄了學業，嘗試務農，而她則在礦場裡搬運石頭。
這種苦澀的女書療癒，激勵她在接下來的二十年間協助學者研究女書。她也接受了「傳承人」的身分，成為家族中最後一位自然學習女書的女性。她甚至結交了一位女書姊妹——一名熱心的年輕學生胡欣——不僅在誦唱練習上指導她，也陪伴她度過離婚的艱難。她們常常手挽著手，走在何園村的街道上。
然而，她心中仍有極深的保留。二十一世紀的女書，已不是她所學的那個樣子。男人如今也找到了利用它的方式，把它變成觀光誘餌。在江永，你可以買到刻著女書（往往拼寫錯誤）的紀念品，只要你買一桶炸雞還會附送一把扇子。在蒲美村，一座氣勢宏偉的女書博物館提供書寫課程。但現在的歌詞變得平淡又漂亮，年輕女性也已大不相同。沒有人再需要理解——正如她如今完全理解的那樣——為什麼她的祖母在書寫那些「螞蟻的字」時，會一再落淚。■
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