During the 1960s Chinese Cultural Revolution an old woman fainted at a train station. While going through her belongings to identify her, police found scraps of paper with strange writing they’d never seen before. They assumed she was a spy and arrested her. But scholars sent to identify the characters realized the script was nu shu-a written language written exclusively by women in remote areas of China. Literally meaning “Women’s Writing” nu shu had very little in common with the “traditional” Chinese characters that men […]
Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1) by Lisa See
Shanghai Girls was very uneven, not terribly well-written, but just interesting enough that when it ended on a cliffhanger, I thought “Good, I want to read the sequel”. “We hug, but there are no tears. For every awful thing that’s been said and done, she is my sister. Parents die, daughters grow up and marry out, but sisters are for life. She is the only person left in the world who shares my memories of our childhood, our parents, our Shanghai, our struggles, our sorrows, […]