Hidden Letters

A woman in an audience declares with a smile that “we understand nothing, but it makes me happy.” She’s responding to what it’s like to hear or read Nushu, a language devised by women of their grandmothers’ generation in Jiangyong county within China's Hunan province to communicate with one another at a time when only men were literate.

Kept behind closed doors, where it eluded men for decades, today there is a Nushu museum, and younger women like the subjects of this film, Hu Xin and Simu, attempt to keep the language and its history in the cultural consciousness. As this documentary attests to though, trying to keep a language alive, and foster awareness of its value within a climate of irrepressible commercialisation where men seem to pull the strings, can be a battle.

Hidden Letters isn’t a documentary about academia or education, fields where you might expect a documentary about an old language to be rooted, but whether the conditions that created Nushu are still relevant today, as seen through scenes featuring Hu Xin and Simu and conversations they have with other women, and in dealings with the often clueless men they meet, whether at trade fairs, professionally, or in their relationships.

Directors Violet du Feng and Zhao Qing show Nushu’s meaning to these women to be more than linguistic, historical, or aesthetic (many of the songs have a plaintive power of their own), but for the meaning and purpose it gives to their lives. When Simu’s partner, after instructing her on how “the plan” for their married life would involve her working more, and leaving her “hobby” behind, the disappointment on her face is palpable. Modern Chinese women, the directors seem to be saying, no longer have to communicate in secret letters, poems or songs “mostly about misery”, as one puts it, but gendered expectations still dictate the sacrifices that have to be made.

Presenting a diverse panorama of modern Chinese women, from those who agree with men on women’s place in society to those like Hu Xin who expect more, Hidden Letters finds voices in villages and cities where former residents of the former like Simu have escaped to experience the freedoms of urban life. It’s in the villages though where the film is most scenically beautiful, and where the history of Nushu is passed down by elderly practitioners like He Yanxin who acts as a kind of steward of the language.

If a little more detail about Nushu itself and its differences with other Chinese languages or dialects might have been welcome, Hidden Letters is a timely, moving, frequently beautiful multi-layered portrait of 21st century Chinese women that also uncovers an intimate, fascinating history and its practitioners’ attempts to pass it on to a younger generation without completely forgoing its essence. This supple documentary should help them out.