Lonely River Village

Book excerpt: In pre-Communist China women in the small villages of Hunan Province developed their own secret writing system. They used this script to communicate with each other because they were not allowed to go to school and learn Mandarin. Their script is called Nu Shu, which means women's writing. It was usually sewn into household linens as decoration, in order to disguise its true purpose. This is the story of one of those little villages, adapted from actual Nu Shu writing preserved from this era.