From misogyny to mansplaining

Daniel Nelson

Hidden Letters sets the context for its examination of Nushu -- a secret text shared among women in China’s Human province – by referring to the custom of foot-binding: breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls.

It was not the only practice that repressed women at various times and in different parts of the country. Many women were forbidden to read or write. 

China’s communist revolution shattered most of the worst practices and some of the prejudice and discrimination, but in China as elsewhere in the world, misogyny has proved resistant - as this documentary illustrates.

The film is a warm, positive testament — though infused with sadness — to two Nushu (“women’s writing”) practitioners, Hu Xin and Simu Wu, trying to keep the skills alive while living independent lives. Some of the most vivid moments come when the men in their lives betray their biases.

There’s Mr Handsome, for example, who looks good for marriage to Simu. He seems modern-minded, but he quickly becomes the ultimate mansplainer. The voice in my head saying “Don’t do it” rose almost to shouting point before he disappears from the documentary. 

At work, it’s also bad. Visitors at an exhibition of Nushu writing flirt with the women dedicatedly demonstrating the art and show no understanding or empathy for the subjugation that led to its creation. One complains that the writing is too small. Male colleagues similarly strip all significance from the tradition in their rush to market it commercially. Nushu objects, such as handkerchiefs on which women wrote their secret messages, become pretty objects to sell rather than potent reminders of oppression.

In the face of this capitalist reinterpretation, Hu Xin and Simu try to keep to the underlying principles of Nushu, producing beautiful work, which itself becomes an object in its own right, disassociated from meaning. The gap is vividly illustrated by 86-year-old Huan-yi Yang, who roots the film in historical reality and casts a dismissive eye on contemporary attempts to sanitise the practice. The two younger women are only too aware that something essential has got lost between their grandmothers’ generation, for whom Nushu helped make a harsh life bearable, and daughters for whom it’s a peripheral curiosity and at best a gentle pastime.

The film gives little solid information about the real history, extent and social significance of Nushu, but it presents a touching and understatedly powerful portrait of two women (“sworn sisters” in the Nushu world) trying to hold on to their personal and artistic values in a hustling, materialistic and still sexist world.

Next screening: Saturday 17 February + Q&A with Harriet Evans, 6pm, £12.50 £10, Curzon Bloomsbury