Nüshu character siou44

It represents a syllable, not a word in isolation. Unicode’s Nüshu source data records its Jiangyong reading as siou44. A Nüshu character list pairs it with two Chinese spellings, 羞 and 修; the rest of the sentence shows which one the writer intended.

In traditional use, women in Jiangyong, Hunan, wrote local speech in poems, songs, life stories and letters between sworn sisters; many had little access to learning Chinese characters. Nüshu drew on Chinese character forms but chiefly used its signs to record local sounds. The earliest known artifact is a bronze coin from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851–1864), inscribed with a message that women everywhere are one family. Accounts differ on the earliest written record: one historical account is dated 1931, while a Hunan survey from 1933 is also cited.

A 2019 fieldwork account describes women singing Nüshu while sewing; some village men in that account dismissed it as “women’s singing.” A sanzhaoshu, or third-day wedding book, was a gift from a bride’s friends: its poems could comfort her while also repeating advice about a wife’s duties. China listed the Nüshu practice as national intangible cultural heritage in 2006.