From being to becoming: Nüshu and sentiments in a Chinese rural community

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article, I explore the sentiments of kelian (the miserable) that were accentuated in the Chinese literature written in a script called nüshu (female writing), which men could not read. Not known to the outside world until the 1980s when it was becoming extinct, nüshu was used for centuries by peasant women in Jiangyong County, Hunan Province, southern China. By examining the textual, contextual, and performative meanings of nüshu, I argue that sentiment is not only part of human phenomenological experience, but it also partakes in the way lives are defined, articulated, reflected, and reconfigured. In Jiangyong, sentiment was not merely a carrier of nüshu women's worldview or an embodiment of their existence as isolated and powerless beings in a Confucian–androcentric agrarian community. More importantly, it functioned as an energy flow that prompted inspiration and engagement—which these women needed to offset and transform their isolation and powerlessness. This research fills the void in understandings of peasant women's expressive traditions in rural China in the early 20th century. It also lends insights into the dialectical relations between human existence (perspective and lived reality, being and becoming, subjectivity and collectivity) and forms of emotional expression.