Yang Huanyi

Yang Huanyi
Born	Jiangyong County, Hunan province
Died	2004.09.20

Yang Huanyi (c. 1909 — September 20, 2004), an inhabitant of Jiangyong County, Hunan province, was known as the last proficient of Nüshu script (women's writing). Many people believe the language originated there. She was the last person who could recognize, read, sing and write Nüshu, which means that after her death only researchers have these skills. On the other hand, Nüshu characters are structured by four kinds of strokes, including dots, horizontals, verticals and arcs.

When she was young, Yang learned Nüshu together with Gao Yinxian, the eldest of the seven sworn sisters who were the most authoritative speakers and writers of the female-only language for three years.

They cultivated a true and deep friendship and often corresponded with each other by Nüshu. Yang attended the National Academic Research Seminar of Nüshu in 1991 and the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Her works about Nüshu have been collected by Zhao Liming, a professor of Tsinghua University and it was published in 2004. People honor her by means of protecting Nüshu education and the government is trying its best to restore Nüshu to its former 

glory.

Biography

During her childhood, Yang Huanyi learned some traditional medicial practices from her grandmother and specialized in curing pediatric measles. Her father Yang Shiyang was an open-minded country doctor. Realizing that people who had studied Nüshu were more civilized and well-educated, he encouraged Yang Huanyi to learn it. At that time, you needed to pay to study Nüshu, so a cash had to be paid for learning every new word. Poor as she was, Yang never gave up learning it. She earned money by working part-time jobs as well as picking beans and peanuts for others. She studied it for more than three years and paid tuition fees of over 1000 pennies in total.
At the age of twenty-two, she married a man who was two years older than her, as her parents demanded. After they had been married three months, her husband had the misfortune to be bitten by a poisonous snake and passed away. Two years later, she remarried He Yuancun, who was a compulsive gambler. He was accustomed to leaving home and gambling day and night, taking no interest in his family's affairs and leaving everything to Yang Huanyi. Every time he gambled away his money, he would sell pigs and millet to pay back the debt. As a result, Yang's family was deeply indebted and had to struggle against poverty. Though Yang altogether had eight children, only two sons and one daughter survived infancy. To raise her children, Yang suffered untold hardships so she wrote and chanted Nüshu during free time to release the anguish of her heart and distract herself.

In 1990, Professor Zhao Liming, from Tsinghua University, went to Jiangyong County to conduct research on Nüshu. As soon as they met, Zhao and Yang formed an indissoluble bond. Yang donated all of her works to Zhao, consisting of over 35,000 characters. During her research, Zhao found that thanks to Yang's deficient knowledge of Chinese characters, her Nüshu works are original material of Nüshu. As a result, she determined to publish a collection of Yang's works. In the following year, Yang attended the National Academic Research Seminar of Nüshu. In 1995, she attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. In January 2004, The Full Collection of Yang Huanyi's Nüshu Works was published with the help of some experts in Tsinghua University.

About Her Age

There seems to be a mystery about Yang’s age. When a journalist of the Xinhua News Agency interviewed Yang at her home in 2002, Yang said that she was ninety-four years old. By that count, she was 96 when she died in 2004. However, on the other side, her age was recorded officially as 98 by Jiangyong County. Nüshu expert Zhao Liming believes that Yang was born in 1909.

Contributions

Yang was called one of the "Living Fossils of Nüshu", especially after Gao Yinxian and Yi Nianhua, who were also the inheritors of Nüshu, passed away. Yang's work has been preserved to let people know and understand Nüshu. Yang was a key figure in rescuing and protecting the unique cultural heritage Nüshu.

Works

The Works Collection of Yang Huanyi's Nüshu (《百岁女书老人—阳焕宜女书作品集》) collects Yang Huanyi's Nüshu works along with their Chinese translations. Works include Yang's autobiography as well as laments, songs about making friends, marriage songs, folk songs, legends, translations, letters and so on.