Nüshu sign fu5

𛋷 is a Nüshu sign read fu5 in Jiangyong County, Hunan, China. Several Chinese characters can carry that sound, so context supplies the word. Local women used Nüshu to record their speech.

Text symbol

What 𛋷 means

It records a syllable, not one fixed Chinese word.

Nüshu developed from Chinese character forms and records sound. One mapping links this sign to Chinese characters pronounced alike in Jiangyong.

Why did women write Nüshu?

It gave local women a way to put their speech in writing.

Women in rural Jiangyong with little formal schooling wrote letters, life stories and songs. Friends gave brides “third-day missives,” booklets of good wishes three days after a wedding.

The oldest known artifact is a coin from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a rebel state in China (1851–1864), found in Nanjing. Its message says women everywhere are one family. The earliest written report is a 1933 Hunan survey; neither date marks the script’s origin.

Part of the collection

𛅰

Nüshu Script (Women's Writing)

Who writes 𛋷

Loading…

Questions people ask

Why does 𛋷 show as a box on some devices?

Not every system ships a font for the Nushu block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.