Nüshu provided a way for women to cope with domestic and social hardships and helped to maintain bonds with friends in different villages. Convivial words of friendship and happiness were embroidered in Nüshu on handkerchiefs, headscarves, fans or cotton belts and exchanged. Though Nüshu wasn’t spoken, women at social gatherings sang and chanted songs or poems that varied from nursery rhymes to birthday tributes to personal regrets or marriage complaints using Nüshu phrases and expressions. Older women often composed autobiographical songs to tell their female friends about their miserable experiences or to promote morality and teach other women how to be good wives through chastity, piety and respect.

Though Nüshu is now understood as a means of communication for women who had not been afforded the privileges of reading and writing in Chinese, it was originally believed to be a code of defiance against the highly patriarchal society of the time. Historically, it was not socially acceptable for Chinese women to openly talk about personal regrets, the hardships of agricultural life or feelings of sadness and grief. Nüshu provided an outlet for the women and helped to create a bond of female friendship and support that was of great importance in a male-dominated society.’

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