Nüshu Character 1B22C

It records a local sound, not one fixed Chinese word.

The Jiangyong reading cyu44 can stand for Chinese words such as 书 (“book/script”) or 树 (“tree”). Nüshu grew from Chinese characters but usually writes syllable sounds, not word meanings.

When does the evidence place Nüshu?

The oldest known artifact is a bronze coin dated 1851–1864.

Its Taiping Heavenly Kingdom inscription says all women are one family; scholars disagree about how much earlier the script began. In traditional Nüshu use, many women who could not write Chinese characters used it to record local speech in songs, poems, and cloth-bound marriage booklets exchanged by sworn sisters (women who pledged friendship). After wider attention in the 1980s, preservation work also framed Nüshu as women's cultural heritage.