Nüshu 女書, literally ＂women's writing,＂ is a script developed and circulated exclusively among women in Jiangyong County of Hunan Province in south China. Referring to both the script and the literature written in it, Nüshu is the only writing system known thus far that is female-specific, a script that men cannot read or understand. By using Nüshu, Jiangyong women, mostly illiterate in standard Chinese hanzi 漢字 characters, construct sisterhood networks, write wedding missives, and compose narratives to reflect on their own situations, comment on certain incidents, or even solicit support from the divine realm. Although possessing different writing foci, all the Nüshu carry a biographical tinge of ＂lamenting one's misery,＂ su kelian 訴可憐. The generic sentiment of Nüshu, su kelian, however, has undergone a change since Nü shu became part of academic research agenda in the 1980s just as it was on the verge of disappearing. To explore the historical implications of Nüshu as women's expressive tradition and its cultural practice in changing rural China, I use two women's experiences with Nüshu for illustration, namely Yi Nianhua 義年華(1907-1991) and He Jinghua 何靜華(1939-). Approached from textual and practice analyses and complemented by my own field investigation conducted since 1992, I illustrate how su kelian as Nüshu's generic sentiment is capable of developing into meta-sentimental discourses and also speaks to women's multifaceted perspectives, perspectives that may be obscured in, or even contradict, mainstream male-written historical documents. As well, I demonstrate how scholarly research, especially publication, has shaped a new poetics of Nüshu: while salvaging this endangered tradition, it has redefined, if not confined, the practice of writing Nüshu in contemporary China.