Like many other scholars, I used to think that “nushu” scripts, literally meaning "women's scripts," are transfigures of those characters used by the Han Chinese. After working on them over the past 20 years, I have come to believe that this widely accepted inference is not entirely correct. I have sufficient reason to say that “nushu”  scripts represent an ancient system of writing signs different from the system of Chinese characters.
    A nationwide survey on ethnic minority languages in the 1950s and 1960s revealed that the ethnic Yaos had had no written language of their own. This naturally led to the belief that “nushu”  scripts are transfigures of Chinese characters, thus belonging to the “cultural sphere of written Chinese.”
    I have noticed that areas where “nushu” scripts have been found are inhabited almost exclusively by ethnic Yao people. Wherever they are found, “nushu”  scripts are remarkably identical or similar in both structure and meaning, as well as in the shapes of their strokes. This fact suffices to prove that these scripts form a system of writing signs different from the system of Chinese characters.
    Even more important is the fact that from among “nushu” scripts I have identified many that are in fact “borrowed” from scripts on oracle bones left over from the Yin-Shang period about 3,000 years ago. To put it another way, these “nushu”  scripts are identical with scripts on oracle bones in structure. Far back during the Zhou period (11th century BC-236 BC), scripts on oracle bones were beginning to ceased to be used and, as result, had remained unknown until oracle bones bearing them were unearthed in the late 19th century. This fact suffices to prove that “nushu”  scripts represent a very ancient system of writing signs. In other words, “nushu”  scripts are as ancient as scripts on oracle bones and may have been closely associated with scripts on oracle bones.
    From among “nushu”  scripts I have found many pictographs that look like birds complete or partial in view. I assume that these pictographs were created at a time when the bird was taken as a totem. Only when bird was taken as a totem would it have been possible for the prehistory people to use a pictograph of the bird head to denote the human head, and a pictograph of the complete bird to denote the human body. There are also “nushu”  pictographs resembling the rice plant in different stages of growth, rice cultivation and rice food. Obviously, these were created after wild rice species had been domesticated and people had begun growing rice for food.
    China is one of the first few countries to grow rice. Direct evidence to this has been found in numerous ruins of the old and new stone ages. One of these is the site of Hemudu culture that existed in what is now Zhejiang Province 7,000 years ago. Lots of rice seeds and other rice-related relics were unearthed when the site was excavated for the first time from the autumn of 1973 to the spring of the following year. Basing themselves on all these, scientists calculated that the annual rice output could be as high as 120 tons.
    But, why is it that “nushu” was eventually reduced to oblivion .
    My textual research may provide a clue to this question. In 1704, the 43rd year of the reign of Emperor Kang Xi of the ’ing Dynasty, Li Laizhang, head of the local government, ordered burning of all texts bearing ethnic Yao writing signs. The official had been infuriated because the ethnic Yaos refused to study those Confucian and other classics imposed on them by the government. The order was executed without delay, and virtually all texts with ethnic Yao writing signs were destroyed.
    But there are still questions that need to be answered. Are these ancient ethnic Yao writing signs “nushu”  scripts? May I be bold enough to infer that to preserve their written language, women embroidered their ethnic writing signs on their aprons which, as time went by, eventually became “nushu”  scripts, scripts used exclusively by women.
    I am not sure whether my inference is correct. To put it in a nutshell, more study is needed to crack the mystery surrounding those “nushu”  scripts.