November 5, 2004

In China, a Scholar, a Once-Forbidden Script, and Tourism

By JEN LIN-LIU

The story is compelling. Thousands of years ago, forbidden to read and write, Chinese women in several villages in Southern China developed a secret writing system. In cloth diaries women wrote Nushu, which means literally "women's book." These diaries, which may have been shared, liberated women from illiteracy and allowed them to express their thoughts without being censored by the village men.

But the facts about the secret system are now being distorted by the Chinese government,