Unique clothing design granted national patent

A 19-year-old female college student in Hunan Province who designed five qipao, traditional Chinese dresses, with nüshu, special characters used only by women in her hometown, was recently granted national patents for her unique work.

Zhou Jingjing, who studies at Changsha-based Hunan Women's University, is from Jiangyong county, Hunan Province. In her birthplace and its neighboring Daoxian county, special characters called nüshu have been in use for generations, but only by women.

There are nearly 2,000 of these mysterious characters, which can only be read by female speakers of the local dialect, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.

Traditionally, nüshu could be found on written on paper or embossed on books, fans and handkerchiefs. In order to spread knowledge of nüshu, Zhou came up with the idea to sew nüshu on qipao.

After two months of work, Zhou designed five qipao in different colors, decorated with large or small nüshu characters. Her works are now protected by design patent certificates from the State Intellectual Property Office, said Xinhua.