Nushu Garden 女书园

About Nushu Garden

Nüshu is written in elongated rhomboid characters with fine even strokes, known locally as 'long-legged mosquito' or 'ant' writing, and it circulated in the Shangjiangxu area and neighbouring villages. Texts are usually in seven-syllable verse and were written on cloth-bound booklets given as wedding gifts, on fans, on cloth handkerchiefs and on paper, and sometimes embroidered; women read and taught them together while doing needlework. The subjects include third-day wedding congratulation books, marriage songs, letters between sworn sisters, autobiographical laments and retellings of Chinese stories. Because no early artefacts survive and the script is not recorded in the histories, its date of origin cannot be established.

The county authorities built the garden in 2002 in the home village of the late nüshu transmitter Gao Yinxian, together with the Pumei suspension bridge and a stone path to the site. It was completed in October 2002 on 2,500 square metres of ground with 1,600 square metres of building, in an imitation Ming and Qing style, and its name inscription was written by Wen Xuande, then deputy secretary of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee. The plan is a front hall with a rear courtyard; the courtyard holds a nüshu school hall in the centre and four further halls around it. Displays use text, photographs, objects and audio-visual material covering original documents, craft work, calligraphy, scholarship and local custom.

What to look for

• The central nüshu school hall in the rear courtyard, the focus of the garden's plan
• The four surrounding halls: a general building and a women's needlework hall on the left, a nüshu craft hall and a nüshu calligraphy and painting hall on the right
• Original nüshu documents and works among the displays, alongside craft, calligraphy and audio-visual material
• The imitation Ming and Qing buildings themselves, covering 1,600 square metres on a 2,500-square-metre site
• The Pumei suspension bridge and stone path built with the garden to reach the islet village

Location & getting there

Getting to Nushu Garden

Confirm the venue or campus, reservation channel and exhibition calendar. A museum name may cover more than one building.

• Search for 女书园 with 永州市 and 江永县.