Special cultural heritage
In 1982, Gong Zhebing, a Chinese teacher from the South-Central China University for Nationalities, began to study this script. But due to the passing of time, less and less people in Jiangyong County were familiar with Nüshu.
Starting in the 1990s, China stepped up preservation of the language amid great efforts to better protect the country's traditional culture in a globalized society.
In March 2001, the government of Jiangyong County established a Nüshu museum which has a classroom designed to teach the script. In 2005, the American Ford Foundation set up a special project to help protect Nüshu.
Finally in 2006, the language was among the first to enter the national list of China's ancient cultural heritages, arousing keen attention from worldwide scholars.
As the movie "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" recently hit the market, the knowledge of Nüshu has increasingly drawn people's attention and more and more people of the young generation have expressed their willingness to learn this script and find their "laotong."
"The movie was so amazing and before this I just didn’t know about the 'laotong' tradition or the Nüshu script," said one female audience member after watching the film in Beijing. "I think if there is a chance, I will try to learn Nüshu and write to my best friend," added the audience member.
Recently in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, a home school was opened to teach Nüshu and women of various ages have come to learn the script, hoping to find friendship, hope, and love through the script.
