Hey everyone, me again, Lhasa Montgomery, here with another jewel taken from the boundless

reservoir of Chinese history. I wanted to introduce today one of those topics that I offer up from time to time.

I'm guessing most of you aren't familiar with this topic of Nieu Shou, Nieu and you with that

omelet Uw, the dots, meaning woman or female.

This character for female,

pretty much since the time of the inscriptions

found on the Shang Dynasty Oracle bones shows a human figure in a submissive pose.

Shu means book or in this case writing or script.

So Nui Shu means women's writing or women's script.

It is the written form of a certain flavor of the local

Siang Nan Tuhuuha dialect called Chengguan Tuhuha.

Shiang is the abbreviation of Hunan.

And Nan means south.

Tuuwa means local dialect.

This is one of many local dialects of southern Hunan.

The Linguofranca of the general region

was the Shiang dialect, but even that would be divided up

as each town or village might have their own little variance.

I've heard this so many times in the course of reading about history,

about the status of women and Chinese society, at least up to the end of the Ching.

They didn't have it so good.

Well, that's a well-known fact.

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