by Boheng Zhang
Introduction
This project was first inspired by the news about the recent conflict between the Chinese government and the Uyghur community in Xinjiang. I express doubts about the reductive terms used in labeling diverse populations, especially minority populations in China. I see the Chinese government’s employment of the terms Hui, Uyghur, and other names of any ethnic group as a strategy to manipulate the image of the minorities for political stability, economic interests, and nationalistic agendas. One of the major ways, either popularly or officially defined, of identifying these minority groups is religion: both Hui and Uyghur are mostly Muslim, whereas the Han population mostly belongs either to a vaguely defined atheism or to a folk belief associated with Buddhism and Daoism. This generalized division is, therefore, naturally implied in every usage of the names of ethnicities; the religious identity of many Hui and Uyghur is now also implied as the identity for the entire ethnic group, and “Muslim” is also assumed as a minority identity associated with specific ethnicities.
However, this generalization is problematic because it leads to two misunderstandings of Hui. The first stems from the unclear meaning of “Hui”: whether its original signifier is religion or ethnicity. According to Dillon, the identity of Hui was, for the most part, assigned (and self-assgined before the 1954 Ethnicity Classification Project) to Muslims in China.[1] However, it is still debated whether the origin and the usage of the term covers every Muslim in China (including members from other ethnic groups like Uyghur) or a more specific population with shared ancestry and cultural heritage.[2] This confusion (with no negative connotation) was still vividly seen during my research. For instance, I met the owner of a women’s clothing store near the Dongguan Mosque in Xining. During our conversation, she expressed several times that one does not need to be a Hui to become Muslim. However, when we were talking about how some women in other Muslim countries dress (in niqab and other fuller coverage styles) differently than the majority here in Xining (mostly in hijab), she said: “they are better Hui than we are.” To not go into the other interesting implication of her comment on Muslim female fashion, she clearly does not see the two usages of the term Hui as controversial. It can mean both the smaller population in China and a bigger population of all Muslims, in this case even extending outside China. It is during this conversation that I started to doubt whether my initial idea that the association of the Hui community and their religious identity as simply reductive and politically manipulative completely appropriate. If confusion naturally exists in people’s minds, what is the value in insisting that these two meanings be separate? However, as I will eventually argue at the end of the paper, this close association of the two identities, despite its (debatable) historical origin, is not naturally maintained but constantly recreated and reinforced with special interests. Even in this case, this project demands no separation or clarification of the two identities, but only how these identities are negotiated and affecting people’s life and perception.
The second misunderstanding the strong association of the Hui identity with Islam creates is that it leaves out those who identify as Hui (or other “Muslim ethnicity”) but not Muslim. This misunderstanding is clearly shown in the news reports of the persecution of the Uyghur community, on which the initial conception of the project is based. Many articles, from their headlines, deliver a reductive message that Uyghurs are persecuted by the Chinese government simply because they are Muslim in the mainly atheist country. Loose terms, such as “Uyghur Muslims,”[3] “Muslim ethnic minorities,”[4] are used; in many cases, “Uyghur” and “Muslim” are used interchangeably as if they all refer to the same group of people. Perhaps no one really knows which precise group of people the government is after, however, these word choices, imply political intentions of the news agencies. However shocked and angry I was upon hearing about the persecution, I also had doubts about this manner of deliverance and the causal relationship between their religious identity and the government’s policies the articles provided. Even though many in the Uyghur community are Muslims, the reduction shown in the articles, I argue, have a strong western perspective in service for the trending discourses over the Muslim community in the United States and Europe nowadays. From there I started to wonder why such an association can be interpreted, innocently or purposefully, as a causal relationship and if these interpretations change the reality by sparking sentiments which might lead to policy change. I shall argue that the general misconception has made the new round of policy change more effective for it advertises a more authentic Muslim identity that is not compatible with bieng Chinese. By reenforcing the incompatibility, tensions among different groups only escalate and the fear of the government for secessionist sentiments only increase, which would only result in a more forceful implementation of the policies, rather than protecting the imaginary distinctive identity.
It seems easy to rebuke the reduction delivered by the media and the government and to conform to an academic fashion to question and deny all generalized statements and assignment of any identities. However, the interactions I have had with real people from Xining, Lanzhou, and Yinchuan suggest a more complicated situation. The relationships people have in the real world with their identities as both Hui and Muslim demonstrated to me troubled both narratives that claim either a strong causal relationship or no correlation between the two identities and deny their impact on people’s lives and self-perception. For instance, I have encountered many Hui people (the use here purely means that their government-issued ID cards, shenfenzheng, identify them as Hui) who still observe some dietary restrictions associated with the ethnic group yet claim no affiliation to Islam. Though I have conducted no formal statistical investigation, these secular Hui appear not to be small in number. When I asked the Muslim Huis who I met during the research about these secular people supposedly within their community, they seemed to not be able to identify with them; some were even critical, saying if they did not worship, they were not good Hui, or even not Hui at all. However, when I asked about stories of people who converted to Islam outside the Hui ethnicity, such as Han, Tibetan, etc, they seemed to be more excited and praised to me about how pious, faithful, and “good Hui” their converted friends were. Do their reactions suggest that they think religious identity is more important to the ethnicity of Hui? Will the more secular Hui people agree? Is this question mainly influenced by whether the person identifies more with their ethnic or religious identities? These are all questions unanswerable in the scale of this project; however, they were important to lay out before the project to remind both me and the reader of the complicated nature of this topic. It is crucial, therefore, to remain cautious and critical towards every usage of these terms: Hui, Muslim, Hui Muslim, etc; and to keep asking, what do they mean, who do they signify, and whether such questions are biased in nature.
Therefore, even though in the later sections I will discuss how the government confuses ethnic and religious identities to construct policies and how such policies influence people’s religious and secular lives, the main objective of the project is to simply observe the spaces where religious and social activities occur. My observations of how these spaces are used by people within and outside the community[5] and interacting spontaneously with the local people have indeed unveiled, as the project progressed, some aspects of how people actually conceptualize their identities as both Muslim and Hui; how people outside the community imagine the merge and the separation of the two identities; and how these conceptions may shape their social, religious, economic, and political lives in this society. In other words, the research wishes to get in contact with the real world in order to not only undo the misunderstandings discussed above but also to not ignore the inherently controversial reality for the mere sake of theoretical cleanliness or political correctness.
This paper will be presented in chronological order of my visit to three cities: Xining, Lanzhou, and Yinchuan. These three cities are the capitals of three multi-ethnic borderline provinces. They are also known to have religiously significant mosques that anchor the local Muslim, or Hui, communities. However, these cities are also distinctive from one another for they are situated in three different provinces home to three different demographics (the details of which will be provided in the following sections) that situate the subject of the research in three contexts: in a diverse province with another influential ethnic group other than Han (Xining of Qinghai), in a more homogenous Han province (Lanzhou of Gansu), and in a more homogenous Hui autonomous region (Yinchuan of Ningxia). The demographics may convey some information about the life of Hui community in these cities on an abstract and theoretical level; however, how and how much these contexts are shaping the significance of the mosques, the living spaces of the Hui and/or Muslim has no simple answer. The selection of the three sites is only an effort to provide a somewhat complete image, though it has to be noted that Hui and other gatherings of Hui are scattered all over China, making any generalized statement problematic and inherently politically biased. Each big section for the three cities will be crudely divided into the survey of the mosques where public religious activities for the Muslims occur. This organization suggests that this project will not be able to conclude in any general terms about the life of Muslims in China, for the research is location and time-specific; however, the study, hopefully, adds new data and original perspectives to the larger studies.
Xining
Introduction
Xining, the first city I visited, is the capital of Qinghai province, and most of it is located on the Tibetan Plateau, resulting in its close affiliation with Tibet. Consequently, Tibetan is the major and much more influential minority ethnic group in Qinghai. Most land of the province is divided among six Tibetan autonomous regions leaving only two cities, Xining and Haidong (a nearby sub-city of Xining) that are more ethnically diverse. All governmental buildings and documents are presented in two languages, Mandarin and Tibetan. The language symbols of the Hui people, Arabic, and other forms of their representation are mostly absent. However, interestingly, the center of Xining, the political capital of the province, houses more Hui (16.2% of the city population) than Tibetan (only 5.5%); Hui also occupies about 80% of the population in the central and historical district, Cheng Dong District (Xining Government Report, 2019). I have visited five mosques in Xining: Xining Dongguan (East Gate) Mosque (西寧東關大寺), Xining Nanguan (South Gate) Mosque (西寧南關大寺), Xining Nanshan Mosque, which is a Sufi mosque (西寧南山拱北), Xining Beiguan (North Gate) Mosque (西寧北關清真寺), and Xining Yudaiqiao Mosque (西寧玉帶橋清真寺). In the following sections, I will describe some of the mosques in terms of their locations, surroundings, architecture, decoration, how they were used and engaged by people at the time of my visit, and how people interacted with me. Before the descriptions, I should first describe how I appeared at each mosque because this study does not aim for “the placeless objectivity;” to not become an absent researcher, I am acutely aware that the way I dress, walk, and talk influence people’s interactions with me.[6]
Out of respect, when I visited mosques, I dressed in simple colors, mostly black and grey. I wore only long pants and long-sleeved shirts, which were still very different from the local women’s fashion and helped people to spot me as a traveler from elsewhere. I also purchased a hijab from a local women’s clothing store that sold mostly to local Muslim women (this is how I met the owner mentioned in the introduction). Therefore, for most of the staff and worshippers in the mosques, I probably looked like a female traveler who might be a Muslim or a Hui. Because wearing a hijab is not required for tourists visiting the mosques, it could be argued that my wearing of the hijab was more of a purposeful disguise than just respect. Admittedly, it was because I wished to approach the community more easily that I decided to appear in a modest style. Still, all my clothing (except for the hijab) belonged to myself, I did not purchase any new pieces to deliberately fit in. More importantly, whenever I was asked about my identity, I always reported honestly that I was neither Hui nor Muslim and that I was a Han from Beijing studying Religion and visiting for an academic project. Interestingly, I did not always receive the questions, which means my identity was either assumed or trivial for those who did not question. If it was the former, it might be argued that the identity of Hui in this city can only be distinguished through fashion; any other indicators that might be at work in reinforcing the racial or ethnic divisions such as skin color, facial features, and even language cannot be applied here. In other words, just through appearance, one cannot definitively identify a Hui (without the symbolic clothing) from a Han, and vice versa. If it was the latter, it might suggest that religious and ethnic boundaries do not play a significant role, or least that such boundaries are not enforced in any substantial ways, at these mosques. Again, these are only speculations; the reasons why my identity was questioned and why it was not might be more complicated and specific. However, the fact that my consistent style and manner received different questions and reactions suggests that my presence was an active factor affecting the way people acted around me. Still, it is impossible to definitively understand to what extent and how my presence and, in fact, the presence of everyone in the space, affected how the space was being used at the specific time. This uncertainty is, therefore, one of the biggest biases this study must build on; all the descriptions and the unavoidable generalization and theorization attached to them must be read critically with the understanding that they are time and location-specific.
Xining Dongguan (East Gate) Mosque
Knowing the challenge of bias and misunderstanding, I arrived at Xining Dongguan Mosque, located in the center of the city. The mosque is surrounded by a busy commercial area, composed of small shops like clothing stores and small bakeries and restaurants, almost all of which were run by women wearing hijab or men with taqiyah (usually entirely white with weaved patterns in many cases soft and fitted on the skull. This special headgear is referred to in colloquial Chinese as a little white hat, 小白帽). The little white hats are, exclusively, the symbol of Hui because Muslim men from another ethnic group have a different headgear fashion. In other words, the stores around the mosque are almost exclusively opened by Muslim and mostly by Hui. The mosque is, therefore, used by the people who live and work nearby. Many neighborhoods in the Chengdong district have their own mosques, serving the residents; however, Dongguan Mosque is the largest and the oldest, and receives the most worshippers daily. For Jumu’ah, according to a clothing store owner, a halal noodle restaurant owner, and a staff member from the mosque, almost all residents of and outside of the district come to Dongguan. Each Friday, Dongguan often host around 10,000 worshippers, leaving smaller mosques relatively empty. I was fortunate to arrive at Dongguan on the day of Jumu’ah (July 19th, 2019) to witness worshippers praying on the street blocking some traffic on the main road in front of the mosque. This situation was, to me, shocking because a religious event of such scale is rare in more secular areas in Beijing. However, the women’s clothing store owner did not express any shock; it was only a normal Jumu’ah for her and for many. “Wait ‘til you see Eid al-Adha,” she said, “many roads in the city will all be blocked by worshippers from all over Xining and some pilgrims, too.” Unfortunately, I would not be able to witness the celebration of Eid al-Adha; however, her words described the significance of Dongguan Mosque to the local Muslims.
Tourists are usually allowed into the mosque after Jumu’ah. However, on the day of my visit, the gate of the mosque was guarded by two staff, preventing any tourists from entering. They explained that the mosque would be closed for conservation for about two months. I stood next to the crowd of tourists trying to get in and listening to the staff trying to send them off. I did not join the tourists trying to get in; however, upon hearing that the mosque would be closed for two months, I was confused where the regular worshippers go for daily prayers and Jumu’ah during the conservation. Therefore, I approached one of the staff without any intention to get in. He listened to the question, looked at me, and without answering the question, he said in a substantially softer voice: “you can go in, just don’t say anything.” I was, with no obvious reason, given a privilege to go into the mosque as it was being cleared out after Jumu’ah and before the conservation. (Perhaps my head covering made him think that I was a Muslim; however, he had previously made clear that even worshippers would not be allowed into the mosque during the conservation.) With this special luck, I entered the Dongguan Mosque complex, with administration buildings, including rooms for Wudu and Ghusl, in the front and the prayer hall in the back. Green tents covered the entire courtyard with rolled-up mats piled up and scattered around, indicating a full crowd during the Jumu’ah that had happened moments ago. There were still worshippers lingering in the courtyard, on the stairs of the inner gate and before the administration offices, talking to the Ahong. The prayer hall and a side building were already wrapped by scaffolds and blue canvases with workers carrying tools in and out. However, the architecture style of the mosque could still be distinguished. The administration buildings are typical Islamic styled whereas the prayer hall is traditional Chinese style; however, instead of dragons and other animals carved on the roofs, the prayer hall is decorated entirely using traditional depictions of plants to avoid idol worship and to conform to Islamic tradition and aesthetics.
The visit was limited because of the conservation and the time allowed for my “sneaking-in.” I left without conversing with any staff or visitors. The guard that let me in was occupied with sending more tourists (almost all coming from other parts of China) off, and I caught his words explaining quite cautiously to the tourists, who were mostly, if not entirely, non-Muslim, that the reason for the rejection of their entry was not related to any ethnic conflict but simply the conservation project. Many of the tourists were using arguments that hinted to the ethnic conflict, perhaps trying to intimidate the guard to let them into the mosque to prevent the potential attack on him for sparking ethnic conflicts. The conversation or, rather, exchange of arguments was another living example that the concepts of religion and ethnicity are clearly intertwined in people’s minds. Even though one can conprehend that the two can be separated, the mosque at this time of uneasiness did not, for the tourists, represent the religion alone, but also the ethnicity of Hui: the mosque was the place of Hui, not Han or any other ethnic group. Perhaps the tourists understood clearly that the situation had nothing to do with any inter-ethnicity conflict; however, the fact that they were comfortable with provoking such arguments almost immediately after being informed they could not enter demonstrated the popular narrative that weaves the identity of Muslim with that of Hui in the society.
Such a narrative is not only readily available but also constantly reinforced by signs issued by the government. As the tourists crowded in front of the mosque borrowing arguments as mentioned above, slogans that promoted “the unity of different ethnic groups (民族團結)” supported them on the back. Slogans as such were printed in big fonts all over the walls surrounding the front yard: “Build the cognition of the unity of all Chinese ethnicities firmly! All ethnicities should stand tightly together like pomegranate seeds! (鑄牢中華民族共同體意識，各民族要像石榴籽那樣緊緊抱在一起!).” In fact, slogans and signs as such were found in every mosque I visited during the research. Some used smaller fonts and more modest and generic wordings, some used even bigger fonts and more extravagant designs. The purposes of these signs clearly exceed simply reinforcing the tie between Islam and Hui (which will be discussed later in the paper). Still, it is undeniable that the presence of these signs, which address ethnicity directly, at the religious site only strengthens the confusion between the two concepts in people’s minds.
Xining Nanguan (South Gate) Mosque
Xining Nanguan (South Gate) Mosque is another example of using highly visible red propaganda slogans. The mosque is only an eight-minute walk from Dongguan Mosque; however, due to less fame, a shorter history, and smaller scale, there was hardly anyone besides small children playing in the small field in front of the prayer hall when I arrived right after visiting Dongguan Mosque. Though Nanguan Mosque is in the vicinity to Dongguan Mosque and the commercial area, its surroundings are significantly quieter, partially because it faces an old residential area. However, the road in front is also occupied by small businesses operated by the local Muslim community. Perhaps for more exposure to the local community, the statue of a big red flag with a communist symbol and a slogan that promotes, again, the unity of different ethnicities and the Chinese Dream[7] does not face the prayer hall but rather in the back of the mosque facing the road leading up to the building.
In addition to the signs, Nanguan Mosque also has bulletin boards on the side of the main building for all kinds of government-issued information, from public health to recycling to religious piety (another sign that the mosque is used not only as a site for worship but also neighborhood gathering and information exchange). Among these randomly mixed bulletin boards was one that published quotes from the speech given by the Ahong of Nanguan Mosque, Jin Biao, during a meeting of all officials of significant mosques in Qinghai hosted by the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee of Qinghai Province in September 2018. The speech first delivered that peace was the significant value of Islam. Then it moved to argue that Islam taught people to love their nation and denied all secessionist thinking: “different opinions are natural among people with different beliefs and traditions; however, division and splitting the nation should not be allowed.” Even though Jin did not speak specifically of conflict or disagreement of any certain nature, religious or ethnic, that would lead to division and split, the vagueness of the statement, again, left room to relate religious matters to ethnic ones. Jin referred to both The Qur’an and The Analects of Confucius to support this argument, with each piece of evidence, perhaps purposefully, misinterpreted to construct a coherent argument. From there, he spoke of the significance for Islam to become sinicized, an idea proposed by the president of Chinese Islamic Association, Yang Faming, in the Two Sessions[8] of 2018, half a year before Jin’s speech (I will talk about this speech and what it has sparked in the later sections). To achieve such a goal, Jin claimed that it was the responsibility of him and his fellow Ahongs to continue studying the classics of Islam and traditional Chinese literature and to interpret them in accordance with “the core values of Chinese Socialism (社會主義核心價值).” Such a claim reveals the political nature of mosques in China; they not only serve religious purposes but also support a political cause. In other words, the confusion of the two identities has already been happening at and to mosques, making them readily sites for new policies to take place to shape the identities of both Hui and Muslim.
Other Mosques
The other mosques I visited in Xining are smaller compared to Dongguan and Nanguan Mosques. Beiguan (North Gate) and Yudaiqiao Mosques are located in more secluded neighborhoods, probably serving a smaller, more stable and local population. When I arrived at Yudaiqiao Mosque, a group of about 30 men, all wearing the little white hats, were chatting across the street from the mosque. They seemed to be planning something, but the dialect was hard for me to clearly recognize. After a few minutes, they walked across the street and entered the mosque as I did. They did not rush; the formation of the group was loose. They were clearly frequent visitors to the mosque. As I was talking to the guards by the gate, I witnessed them entering the rooms of wudu and/or ghusl together and walking out individually or as pairs. They walked up the stairs into the prayer hall across the courtyard from the preparation building with some looking around but no talking. It took about 20 to 30 minutes from the first to the last person to enter the prayer hall. They did not wait for each other; while the first to enter was finishing up the prayer, the last few people were still walking up the stairs to start.
This observation shows that mosques are used for both collective and individual religious activities; in fact, the religious experience at the mosques can never be entirely individual. Frequent visitors are acquaintances of one another because they probably often visit the mosque in the loose organization like described above. According to the guard at Yudaiqaio Mosque, most of those who visit the mosque regularly during the day work in nearby shops and restaurants. The prayer in early afternoons, zhuhr, is probably amid their lunch breaks and a chance to not only fulfill their religious commitment but also to eat and rest with friends who are in many cases already neighbors at work or at home. It is hard to know whether members of the group described above became acquainted because of the daily prayer or vice versa; however, the mosque undoubtedly had been and seems to continue to be an important site for strengthening the bond among individual members of the existing local Muslim community and reinforcing their religious and likely ethnic identities daily. I shall argue later that the formation and persistence of these local groups of stable ethnic and religious identities both protect and expose the members facing ethnic and religious specific policies; in fact, the presence/absence of these groups and the concentration/distribution of these groups may have determined the local policies toward them.
Lanzhou
Introduction
To experience a different Hui community, I traveled to Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province. The Hui population in Lanzhou is significantly smaller than in Xining; according to the statistics provided by National Religious Committee in Lanzhou City, only around 3.4% of the city population are ethnic minorities, including Hui and other groups.[9] Even though Lanzhou has a small Hui population, their presence is still significant for the Hui communities within Gansu province (in Hui autonomous regions and counties like Linxia) and even outside the province. According to the report, Lanzhou has 138 sites for Islamic religious affairs and over 200,000 Muslims, more than all other religions in Lanzhou (“Lanzhou Religion Overview”). The statistics alone already show that the Muslim population exceeds the total population of ethnic minorities in Lanzhou with over 66,000 people, which suggests the existence of a Han Muslim population. The statistics alone are, again, show that the correlation between Islam and Hui problematically generalized.
Because Lanzhou has a much smaller Hui population, the city lacks a clear Hui concentrated district. Therefore, unlike Chengdong district in Xining, the streets in Lanzhou, even in Chengguan District, where the historical and politically significant mosque, Xiguan (West Gate) Mosque, is located, show fewer signs of the habitation of any distinctive group. The neighborhoods around the mosques are residential or commercial areas that can be found in almost all other cities in China. Though people with little white hats and hijab still appear, they are no longer the majority as in Chengdong District in Xining. By mere appearance, “the other” changed from those with no religious clothing in Chengdong to those who show their religious identities through clothing and ornaments in Lanzhou and in most places in China. Because of the concentration and distribution of the Muslim population, the sense of otherness attached to the identity also changed. A Muslim resident in Chengdong District and one from Lanzhou would most likely have different perceptions of their identities because even walking on the streets every day reminds them of the boundaries between themselves and the other who have a different ethnic appearance. According to Stephen Spencer’s book, Race and Ethnicity: Culture, Identity, and Representation, we are constantly constructing and adjusting our subjectivity by monitoring the environment and establishing reference points, which, in this case, are the presence or lack of religious clothing, to include and exclude people in and out of our own community.[10] In other words, just by walking on the street, one has to constantly negotiate her identity as either Hui or Muslim, assessing her identity and forming her perception of her position within the society. I shall argue later in the section of Yinchuan that such assessments not only affects how people appear in public (for many Muslim Hui have chosen to not wear hijab or little white hats for work to hide not their religious identity but ethnic identity) but also how the identity becomes perceived both popularly and politically.
I visited seven mosques in downtown Lanzhou: Lanzhou Xiguan (West Gate) Mosque (蘭州西關清真大寺), Lanzhou Qiaomen Mosque (蘭州橋門清真寺), Lanzhoufang Mosque (蘭州坊清真寺), Lanzhou Shuishang (On the Water) Mosque (蘭州水上清真寺), Lanzhou Nanguan (South Gate) Mosque (蘭州南關清真大寺), Lanzhou Nantan Mosque (蘭州南灘清真寺), and Lanzhou Xiuheyan Mosque (蘭州繡河沿清真古寺). I will describe in detail my experience at Xiguan Mosque, Nanguan and Nantan Mosque, and Xiuheyan Mosque.
Lanzhou Xiguan (West Gate) Mosque
Xiguan Mosque is located at the end of the busiest commercial pedestrian street in the center of Lanzhou. In front of the mosque is a large-scale bus station with a big and chaotic bus parking lot. Buses and people are constantly entering and exiting the station. The mosque is a sizeable Islamic-styled architecture that can be seen from far away. The gate of the mosque, however, when I arrived, was completely blocked by cars and the crowd. Despite the noise at the transportation hub and commercial area, the inside of the mosque was rather quiet. I arrived at Xiguan Mosque an hour before zhuhr. A group of elderly men was sitting under the shadow of a big tree in the center of the courtyard. Women sat in another circle next to the men. Another group was sitting in the shadow of the administration building facing the prayer hall across the courtyard. I thought this might be a daily gathering of the local Muslim community before zhuhr, so I sat with the women in silence and waited. I did not wish to spark any conversation; however, an old lady who did not seem to know Mandarin suddenly took my hand and started to walk me into the area blocked for construction behind the prayer hall. She must have thought I was someone else for she kept saying that she would lead me to see my mother. With hesitation, I walked with her and bumped into a man about 30 years old. He knew the lady and asked her what the matter was, for he was also confused why his relative (perhaps, his aunt) took a stranger into the blocked area. I did not explain for I hardly understood the situation either; it became more confusing for me when I looked at him and saw his eyes were red: he clearly had just cried.
I felt sorry for disturbing him, even though I did not know why and intended none of it; I fared him and the group of ladies well and started walking towards the gate of the mosque. After reading the billboards all around the administration building, I was stopped by another lady from the group in front of the building and was asked to sit with them. From them, I learned that all of the three groups are relatives of someone who had recently passed away; they were waiting for Ahongs who were coming from five other mosques to host the burial ritual. I sat with the last group by the door of the cafeteria and waited for the body of the passed-away to arrive and the ritual to start. They were very interested in my purpose of travel and chatted with me about all kinds of things, from the details of the burial ritual to how their children were doing in school. In the middle of the conversation, a speaker right above the circle started playing the call for prayer. Some people went into the mosque for the early afternoon prayer while the group of men around the tree kept waiting. Some people came and greeted the men and offered condolences before entering the prayer hall for their own zhuhr. Others seemed surprised by the big crowd gathered for the burial ritual; however, they did not intervene or spare an extra look and went straight into the prayer hall for prayer. The lady who sat next to explained what the speaker was saying; seeing the people coming in, she seemed eased by the fact that the mosque was used just as usual, even with the special occasion happening. She said with a sense of pride and agreement that, unlike the majority Chinese, who are immersed in the native folk religious tradition and favor loud, extravagant, and emotional funerals, Muslims favor simplicity and purity. “You see,” pointing to the people quietly coming in, she said, “Islam is really a quiet, orderly, and peaceful religion.”
Indeed, I cannot fully explain how Muslims understand and deal with death; however, my uneasiness upon hearing the news was quite different from how the ladies and people coming in acted. I felt that I was an intruder, someone who might have been disrespectful. I did not understand whether I should take the news as lightly as the people sitting around. I seemed alien among the ladies and also among those who, like me, also had no previous knowledge of the occasion yet kept carrying out their daily commitments. Even at the time of the funeral, the mosque was a shared space without any group dominating it; despite the special occasion, the fundamental role of the mosque remained. My experience at Xiguan Mosque shows that mosques are used for all occasions, extending the role of religion and the weight of the space from purely religious use to more civil purposes like burial rituals.
During these more civil occasions, the identities of Hui and Muslim meet again and complicate how they divide and intertwine. According to one of the ladies, usually all relatives of the deceased attend funerals, which was why so many people gathered. Even though they were from the same extended family, it was clear, from appearance, that they belonged to different social classes: while the women in front of the administration building carried Gucci bags, the old lady had a hard time communicating with me in Mandarin. Different social classes probably also determined their different perceptions of their identities as Hui. The lady who commented on the quietness of the mosque also admitted that it was common for some members of an extended family, especially the younger generation, to grow out of the religion. However, on an occasion like a funeral, they would still attend and put on the hijab and little white hats again to show respect and to meet the family’s expectations. In other words, the religious identity of a Hui can be quite fluid depending on the occasion and individual level of identification, which again magnifies the confusion over the two and demands closer examination.
Nanguan (South Gate) Mosque and Nantan Mosque
The visits to the next two mosques showed another major use of mosques: education. Nanguan and Nantan Mosques, located on the same street, are only a five-minute walk from one another. Despite their distinctive architectural style, both are used as schools that offer classes on the Quran and other classics, traditions, Arabic, and related topics.
Nanguan Mosque is another known historical mosque in Lanzhou. Its gate faces a pedestrian street featuring the local minority culinary culture, a poorly curated tourist attraction that houses many qingzhen (similar to halal) restaurants operatedmostly by the local Hui and Muslim community. Part of Nanguan Mosque was under conservation/construction, like most other mosques I visited during this trip; however, the functioning of the mosque was not disturbed. The mosque is divided into two sections: one is the main building of a cafeteria and two prayer halls, one for male and one for female; another is the administration building with various classrooms and offices. The two buildings are connected by the stairs. When I arrived, I was greeted by a staff member: he welcomed me and asked if I was there for the prayer. I explained that I was visiting from Beijing and that I understood I couldn’t go into the prayer hall and I only wished to sit outside for some time to observe. He was quite amused by my statement and led me to the second floor: “there’s the entrance to the female prayer hall,” he said, “you can also sit here and wait,” pointing to a row of bench facing the main prayer hall, “please take your time and you can go into the female prayer hall if you want to.” I thanked him, waited with several other elderly men on the benches and went into the female prayer hall, which is located on the right side of the main hall, when people started to trickle in.
The female prayer hall was divided by a glass wall from the main hall; one could observe the situation in the other room. Other than the glass division, what first caught my attention was the books that lay open on the tables in the front row and the blackboard covered with questions and answers about the teachings of the Quran. The books were the Quran in Arabic and a book about Islamic practices and traditions, including instructions on how to pray, how to fast, etc. The female prayer hall, according to my conversation later with the previous staff, was used only occasionally for prayer, even though it was open daily and welcome people for praying. In fact, local Muslim women rarely come to the mosque for prayer: “women usually pray at home.” More often, when the female prayer hall was occupied, it was for classes offered to the female Muslims, mainly elderly women who came for the service.
I sat in the female prayer hall waiting for zhuhr. When the clock moved towards one in the afternoon, people started walking into the prayer hall; however, the female prayer hall remained empty. After many had finished a Rakat, a young man stood in the front of the gate and sang a call. The Ahong, then, entered, followed by a group of younger men wearing a different style of headwear than the little white hat. It was a certain style of head wrapping with a long rope hanging from behind the head. They also wore long white robes, rather than the regular clothes like the other men who probably came from work. They came directly from the administration building; however, they did not look like staff but rather more like students. I have not yet encountered a similar situation in which a group of young men followed the Ahong ,uniformly participating and, in a sense, leading the daily prayer in the previous mosques. I suspected that these young men were students at the mosque, perhaps training to be administrators or ministers or for higher education in related fields of Islamic studies or theology.
The nearby mosque, Nantan Mosque, also seemed to have a similar function, but for younger children. Nantan Mosque is a modern and commercial architecture (which looked more like a luxury hotel on the outside) with a grand lobby on the first floor, a restaurant and cafeteria on the second, offices, classrooms, and reading rooms on the third, prayer preparation rooms on the fourth, and the main prayer hall on the top. There is no elevator: one has to walk up the stairs and encounter every aspect of the mosque before reaching the prayer hall. The third floor had a long hallway with various doors on the sides. In the darkness, I saw two children about 12 to 14 years old sitting outside a door on the floor with books in their hands, clearly reciting something, perhaps a passage from the Quran. The mosque did not seem to get many visitors like me: upon seeing me, the older of the two went into the room. Later, a man who looked like their teacher came out and asked my purpose of visit. Again, I explained that I was only visiting and is not looking for anybody in particular. He welcomed me but warned me that classes are in session and that I should not take any pictures of the students. Then, the three went into the classroom, leaving an empty hallway behind them. Clearly, the mosque was used as a school; however, in what form, by whom (the mosque or the government), and for what purposes the classes were open at both Nanguan and Nantan Mosques were not clear. However, from these two examples, my understanding of the function of mosques and their meaning to the local community expanded. They are not only places for worship, information exchange, community gathering, and civil services, but also education. They are places where parents can send their children to immerse in and continue the family religion, which allows the younger generation to maintain and strengthen their religious identity, and provides the local community with more educated Muslims, future scholars and ministers who will continue to foster the growth of the religion and, in a sense, the existence and distinctiveness of the Hui.
Xiuheyan Mosque
However, not all mosques are used as education centers; some are not even open to the younger generation. About a 15-minute walk towards the north, on the other side of the commercial zone mentioned in the section of Xiguan Mosque, stands another historic mosque, hidden in a residential neighborhood, called Xiuheyan Mosque. To enter the mosque, one needs to enter the Xiuheyan Neighborhood and walk through a narrow street with small qingzhen restaurants on the side and a wall occupied solely by the same slogan of the pomegranate seeds, but a longer version of one in front of Nanguan Mosque of Xining. After being greeted by the overwhelming presence of propaganda, I was immediately welcomed by another warning that prohibited the entering of anyone under 18 years old. Contrary to Nanguan and Nantan Mosques, Xiuheyan Mosque does not allow children or teenagers in. What needs to be noted is, however, this policy was, in fact, not initiated by the mosque. It was the will of the government (almost everyone I have talked to on the trip mentioned this new policy, many expressed concern and cynicism towards it) to prevent young people from participating in religious rituals and affairs; which contradicted what I have seen in both Nanguan and Nantan Mosques. The reason for the contradistinction is that the new policy has been initiated for only a year; many mosques have not been affected and the policy has not been enforced strictly or universally (I shall discuss the difference in regional policy in the later section).
Excluding the younger generation from the religious community is part of the new set of policies implemented last year around the time when the Uyghur issue in Xinjiang broke out in media and after Yang Faming’s speech at the Two Sessions. The other policies include hanging national flags and slogans about ethnic unity at all mosques, advertising Chinese style architecture for mosques, banning all public displays and expressions written in Arabic, introducing classes about traditional Chinese culture (the mainstream Han Chinese culture) into mosques, etc. Xiuheyan Mosque seemed to be a leading mosque in proudly adopting the new police. When I entered the mosque, extensive billboards issued by the United Front Work Department of Lanzhou Municipal Committee of the Communist Party and National Religious Affairs Committee in Lanzhou City about the achievements of the recent policies blocked all the walls of the administration building. The message conveyed by the billboards is that Islam in China, other than having the values of its own, needs to also serve greater political goals. In other words, the only way the religion can serve the community in beneficial ways is for it to guide people towards unity among different ethnicities, towards the united front under the leadership of the Communist Party and the socialist values the Party recognizes; these pursuits and responsibilities of the religion are what give Islam merit within the society, rather than limit its growth within the supposedly atheist governmental system. The growth of religion is, in other words, deemed outside the liberal value system that upholds freedom for individual interpretations and religious activities. Even though actions depicted in the billboards, such as shutting self-organized churches and taking over “illegal” religious publications, can be readily recognized as the violation of freedom of religion, the open and proud display of them as achievements towards another value makes one doubt whether directly dismissing the new policies as freedom-violating helps understand the situation. I shall not express any judgment on these new policies to sinicize religion; whether they are just or not, their political nature is undeniable. However, the political nature should not be the only reason for one to dismiss them and to deny assessing them fairly. It is, I believe, more important to focus on individual events, sites, and stories and to reflect on them, without overgeneralizing or falsely politicizing, how the policies are influencing the life of people spatially, socially, economically, and politically. Moreover, the mosques, the community they serve, and the society they are situated in share an entirely different value system; the Western liberal political value system cannot be directly translated in this case and there is no preoccupied understanding of an ideal/free/liberal relationship between the government, the religious institution, and the religion itself. Such a standard and expectation should also not, I believe, be based on a Western imagination of freedom and equality; rather, they should be defined by the people and be put on their valuing spectrum to assess these values significance.
Through various conversations I have had along the trip about the recent change of policies, no clear pattern of opinions can be concluded; some people were cynical while others were supportive. However, no matter what the specific opinions were, none saw the government or the policies as detrimental to their religious lives; even though some foresaw a future of Islam in China as much different than what they had grown up with, they did not seem to worry if such turns are good or bad (perhaps because these judgments rely on another set of values unfamiliar to them) as long as they have access to mosques, real qingzhen food, security, etc. The attitude of the people towards this governmental intervention in religious affairs shall not be quickly deemed indifferent or ignorant; before passionately trying to awaken them to the unquestionable value of freedom, we need to understand them not only as Muslims or minorities (which are inherently political terms that predetermine their stance for them in the Western political context) but also as citizens in a functional society where they eat, sleep, travel, get married, do business, educate children, take care of parents, meet strangers, etc. Religious life, for many, are only one aspect of their lives. All aspects of life are always subject to being intervened by the society, the government, and the community. I am in no way defending the policies nor the government; however, I firmly believe that simple condemnation does not help our understanding of the policies themselves, of the role of the mosques in carrying out the policies, or of the people influenced by the policies. To understand them, the least I can do in this project is to recognize the presence of these policies in mosques which shows an intertwined relationship between the government and the religious institution without easily casting my own opinion or conforming to another set opinions directed by a certain political interest, be it mainstream Chinese or Western liberal media, assigned to a specific group of people.
Yinchuan
Introduction
Yinchuan is the last city visited for the project. Despite its smallest population (2,225,391 people in total[11]), Yinchuan, being the capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, has the largest Hui population out of the three cities: according to the Government Work Report of Yinchuan on Population and Labor Resources, there were, as of 2017, 573,371 Hui permanent residents in Yinchuan, which makes up over a quarter of the total population. Yinchuan has a higher concentration of Hui population than any other cities in China. Based on the statistics, I expected Yinchuan to have a more vibrant and dominant minority culture than Xining and Lanzhou, for instance, more people wearing identifiable clothing, whether religious or not, to form a distinctive identity in their own autonomous region where they no longer need to conform to a different set of social norms built by the dominant population of Han; however, the reality is much more complex than my imagination.
Perhaps my imagination was stereotypical, which made the reality more disappointing than it needed to be; Yinchuan appeared just like any other cities in China with no special city planning, distinctive architectural styles, or a regional fashion. Even though like in Lanzhou, people with little white hats and hijabs were present, what appeared in Chengdong district in Xining was not seen, even though Yinchuan has the most Hui population out of the three cities.[12] The explanation of the mismatch might be simple: unlike Chengdong District in Xining, which concentrates a large portion of the city’s Hui population into one small geographical area, which makes the Hui the majority of that district, there is no district in Yinchuan with a Hui majority. Yinchuan has three districts, the old town, Xingqing District, had, in 2017, 747,648 people in total and 149,2165 Hui, the other newer districts, Xixia and Jinfeng Districts, also have around 20% of the population being Hui. In other words, contrary to Xining where the Hui are separated from the rest of the population, the Hui population, despite its large total number, is diluted and evenly distributed among the Han in Yinchuan, which results in Hui’s persisting minority position. Even though in both situations, concentration and even distribution are neither completely purposeful by design nor a natural formation, they have caused different local policies towards the Hui and the Muslim population. In this section about Yinchuan, therefore, I wish to build upon the situations in all three cities and focus on how mosques and another site in Yinchuan reflect the new policies imposed on Muslims and, in a sense, the minority population.
I have visited four mosques and a complex of museums, theaters, and cultural park dedicated to represent the Hui culture in Yinchuan: Yinchuan Nanguan (South Gate) Mosque (銀川南關清真大寺), Yinchuan Yuehai Mosque (銀川閱海清真大寺), Yinchuan Xincheng (New City) Mosque (銀川新城清真大寺), Yinchuan Xinhua Mosque (銀川新華清真寺), and The Park of Customs and Culture in the Homeland of Chinese Hui People (中華回鄉文化園/寧夏川民俗園, shortened as themed park in the following). I will mainly compare Nanguan and Xincheng Mosques and discuss my ghostly experience at the themed park.
Nanguan and Xincheng Mosques
Nanguan and Xincheng Mosques are two politically significant representatives of the hundreds of mosques scattered around the city. Nanguan Mosque is a historical mosque located in the center of the old town, only a walking distance away from the city government. It has always been a famous tourist attraction and a significant pilgrimage site for Muslims who live in the other parts of the province or of the country. Many political figures have also visited the mosque to show their care for the Muslim community. However, in July 2016, when President Xi visited Yinchuan, he broke the tradition and visited Xincheng Mosque instead. Xincheng Mosque is located in what was a newly developed district at the time, Jinfeng District. When I visited the mosque, the pictures of President Xi’s visit and the speech he gave at the mosque were printed and displayed in front of the main prayer hall. The speech not only touched upon the routine content about unity among different ethnicities and peace among different religions, but it also stressed on the significance for the Muslim community to continue to participate in economic activities and enrich the community and the city.[13]
The message sent by the visit marked the turn of Yinchuan’s city planning. In 2017, a major project called “China-Arab Axis (中阿之軸)” was built, which is now the main road in the central business area in Jinfeng District. The road showcased various architectures and sculptures to represent the friendship between China and the Arab states. In fact, many, if not all, were built in an Arabic and Islamic style; one of the central sculptures depicted the crescent moon symbol. At the end of the road was the conference center for future sessions of China-Arab States Cooperation Forum and the China-Arab States Expo. The Axis became, at the time, a famous tourist attraction and many had believed that the neighborhood around the axis would become the next city center and experience exponential economic growth. However, in March 2018, the new policies changed the dynamic around the Axis and the future that was planned for it. Although Jinfeng District remains the fastest growing district of Yinchuan and new shopping centers, residential neighborhoods, and business districts continue to be built, construction projects around the Axis remain unfinished and the area is slowly starting to become abandoned.
In March 2018, the president of the China Islamic Association, Yang Faming, spoke during the Two Sessions in Beijing about the significance of sinicizing Islam. Yang argued that the Chinalization of Islam would lead to peace and prosperity. Besides the routinely praising language of Chinese Islam under the leadership of the Communist Party, one sentence in his speech revealed his core intention when he criticized that “some detrimental phenomena appeared in the Islamic community in recent years: for instance, the architectural styles of some mosques are blindly emulating the foreign model; the idea of qingzhen has been overly generalized; religion is intervening the social and secular life; many people only respect religious laws as believers while overlooking the laws of the country and ignore their identity as Chinese citizens.”[14] Yang acted as the representatives of all Muslims as the president of the Islamic Association and warned that “we must maintain a high degree of vigilance” towards these phenomena. He then proposed an initiative that included five specific ways to foster the Chinalization of Islam: “1. ‘The core values of Chinese Socialism’ should be taught at mosques. 2. Traditional Chinese culture should be taught at mosques. 3. Muslim Patriotism Course[15] should be taught at mosques. 4. All religious rules, cultures, and architectures should be in Chinese style or at least have Chinese elements. 5. Preventing Islamic extremism should be the most urgent and significant job of the Islamic community.” [16] Even though the speech itself might be the mere result of many political and economic forces, it was a sign for the local governments and marked the beginning of the implementation of the new policies. In fact, all these five aspects can already be observed in all the mosques I visited during the trip.
Two days after the speech, the project of reconstructing the China-Arab Axis started. The crescent moon was taken down and replaced by a giant jade ring, a traditional Chinese symbol of unity. Other Arabian-styled architectures were also rebuilt into Chinese-styled ones. The name of the road also changed to “Unity Road (團結路).” This reconstruction, in fact, was only a small portion of what has been happening since March 2018: the signs of qingzhen food on every restaurant in Yinchuan, which originally had Arabic letters on top, were replaced almost overnight with a new design with only Chinese characters and pinyin. The policies started to hake hold on the local level since then: children and teenagers are no longer allowed into certain mosques; flags and Terms on Religious Affairs (a decree of the state council that was issued in August 2017 and became active since February 1st, 2018) must be hung; reconstruction projects of mosques were initiated, which was happening in over half of all mosques I visited during the trip. However, mosques are also not the only sites under the influence, perhaps, they are even the least affected; in other places, the political incentive for implementing the policies and the change they caused showed more vehemently.
The Park of Customs and Culture in the Homeland of Chinese Hui People
The Park of Customs and Culture in the Homeland of Chinese Hui People (I will call it Hui Culture Park for short), is a theme park opened in 2005 and located in the near-rural area of Yinchuan. The park, since its opening, has always been an important site for both tourists and political figures to visit, including ambassadors from Pakistan, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, etc. It was recognized as an AAAA tourist attraction site and was awarded as a progressive leader in supporting the unity of different ethnicities, a model site for Muslim patriotic education, a conservation site for Hui cultural heritage, etc. Over more than a decade, the park, despite being owned by a private company, has been supported by the government; however, the situation changed rapidly after the Two Sessions in 2018.
Having heard of its fame, I planned to visit. However, the taxi driver was quite surprised, saying that he has not taken anyone there in a long time. He warned me that it would be hard to get a ride back because there would be nobody there. I was extremely surprised because what the driver described was the opposite of what I have heard. The driver was confused why I wanted to go and suggested another tourist site that had become increasingly popular in the past two years, Western Xia Imperial Tombs: “it’s way more interesting and you basically see the same thing,” he said. An archeological museum of tombs would, of course, be much different from a culture theme park. We arrived at a large empty parking lot after thirty minutes from Yinchuan old town. The front building of the park looked like the castle from Disney’s Aladdin movie; the gate was covered in elaborate carvings with Arabic calligraphy surrounding it. The alone-standing complex was surreal among its surrounding empty open fields. Only the giant display of President Xi’s words on the shoulder of the front building and three national flags (though the color of all of them had faded and one of them was rigged) reminded me that I was still in rural China. Despite the eerie emptiness, the architecture still impressed me with its enormous size and elaborate design. Surreal was the only word that came to mind.
I was surprised that there were still people selling tickets. When I asked the cashier what happened to this place and why there was nobody there, she looked emotionless and simply said that most of the park was closed, only the mosque and a temporary museum was open. I thanked her and walked into the ghostly city. Facing the main entrance building was another castle-like building with less ornamentation. That was the main hall built in the extension project specifically for a play called “Arabian Nights (夢迴·一千零一夜 Dream Back to One Thousand and One Nights)” in 2012. According to the Baidu Baike (Encyclopedia) page about the park, the play was about traveling along the ancient silk road: “the Park strives to create the world’s first large-scale performance with a panoramic view about the Silk Road and the civilizations along it.”[17] Why does a park of Chinese Hui culture strive to replay other civilizations? It is, in fact, not so out of the place, as the encyclopedia page continues to explain: “this performance focuses… on the spirit of the ancient Silk Road inherited by the ‘The Belt and Road Initiative.’”[18] This sentence reveals another factor that has been influencing the policies towards Hui and other ethnicities generally seen as Muslim: economic cooperation with Arabic and other Muslim countries, which has been increasingly significant after the recent proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative. In fact, the economic significance of Hui and Uyghur identities has been pointed out by Michael Dillon in 1999, even before the Initiative. In the later sections of his book, China’s Muslim Hui Community, Dillon asserts that since the 1980s when the relations with the Islamic World became more important to China, “the Muslim community has acquired a new significance.” The five northwestern provincial governments (Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Shaanxi) had looked “directly to both the Middle East and the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union for trade and investment;” Yinchuan was even proposed to the State Council as an Islamic Special Economic Zone, like Shenzhen, serving the nearby provinces where large amount of coal and electric power reserves would appeal and open to Islamic countries.[19] Not surprisingly, a similar cooperative relationship between these provinces and the Islamic world has been kept until this day. Ambassadors have been invited to visit the theme park. Landmarks such as the Axis and the conference building are built after the name “China-Arab.” The fourth China-Arab Expo will be held from September 5-8th, 2019 in Yinchuan. In other words, in order to maintain the economic relations, Islam and the identity of Muslim must be celebrated, and both diplomatic and popular communications must be kept.
However, the need for economic cooperation does not guarantee any specific policies towards the Muslim community because diplomatic and economic relations are ever-changing and other factors complicate the situation. What has caused the speech by Yang and the new policies it brought is hard to determine; however, what is certain is that the Axis is no longer in the center of Yinchuan’s city planning. No lights are lit at night, which leaves the conference center a giant dark hole, and the lives of those who depend on trading with Islamic countries or simply selling suitable goods under the previous economic and social situation are now under threat. I encountered a Han woman and her son in front of the entrance of the temporary museum at the Culture Park. She owns all the souvenir stores in the building and sells little white hats, hijabs, saris, books about Hui culture and history, and all other related small items from sculptures to magnets. I asked to try on some hats, and we started a conversation. Her store has been open for a decade; it had been extremely profitable, since thousands of people visited the park every day for the first nine years. She was able to raise her son up just by maintaining the shop. However, after the Two Sessions, without any sign or notice, the number of visitors started to decline. Almost overnight, the park became emptier and emptier. Shops started to close and then parts of the park. I asked why she had not left; she said that it was easy for other businesses to leave for most of them sold snacks or had a smaller shop that can be moved anywhere. She, on the contrary, had a big inventory, and, more importantly, “there is basically no other place where I can sell these souvenirs. Some of them,” she pointed to a set of potteries with Arabic calligraphy on them, “are now banned. I shouldn’t even show them on the shelf.” In fact, over half of her storage was filled with things no longer allowed on the market: anything with Arabic letters, even the Qur’an. She seemed proud yet desperate when she talked about her Quran inventory: “I have some extremely beautiful bilingual Qur’ans, very nice paper and delicate printing, very heavy too.” But they have now become a burden. She said she wanted to stay to try to clear the inventory as much as possible, though, with no visitors in the park, such a goal seemed unreachable. She did not know what would happen and what she and her son could do next; all she could do was wait and see.
Such is the current situation of many who have believed in the policy of Unity and went along supporting the trend of celebrating the distinctive culture of the minorities with the government. Perhaps, they have themselves to blame that they did not recognize the inherent controversy between the two, and they have been now sacrificed to another round of policy change. However, exactly why the policies, suggested by the Islamic Association on religious affairs mostly conducted within mosques, should affect a park on Hui culture the most is an intriguing question; and this seemingly appropriate result reveals the unspoken entanglement of the two identities: Hui and Muslim, ethnicity and religion.
Another strange phenomenon at the park continues to reveal the effect of such entanglement and perhaps suggests why the park was maintained and even encouraged throughout the years. After talking to the woman, she encouraged me to at least see the museum, even though there was nothing in there. Her description was no exaggeration. The temporary museum was empty; no artifacts or curation, only plastic boards with no real information pasted onto the walls. Many walls had no boards at all, only patches of white glue; boards had been stripped off the wall and no one had bothered to even repaint the walls. Almost all boards left had tapes blocking part of the information, as if asking the visitors to fill in the blanks. What was blocked was hard to see through; however, it was quite obvious that it was the information related to Islam and the Arabic world. It would be hard to believe that a Hui Culture Park with a mimic of a mosque in the center would have no information about Islam at all. Yet, that was the case; the only complete boards were about the Hui soldiers who fought along the Communist Party during WWII.
Even the park, which purposefully tried to detach Islam from Hui history, found it so hard to talk about any aspect of Hui culture without touching upon the religion that they had to leave walls empty and rretrieve all the artifacts from displaying. Perhaps it was simply easier for them to not show anything controversial in order to reduce financial loss and avoid political risk. However, if there were ways to go around the policies, to show Hui distinctive culture without referring extensively to Islamic or foreign elements, it is hard to imagine that the private company that owns the park would be opposed. Yet, the park did not seem to even try to revive itself. Perhaps the company had assessed that it would no longer be profitable to reconstruct the entire park. Indeed, the park had been long profiting from the entanglement of the two identities and contributing to the generalization of Hui’s identity as Muslim. When the tie had to be broken, when the image they created was no longer acceptable to the government, there left no reconstruction plan for neither the park nor the identity of millions of people. The enormous golden dome of the mosque mimic shined alone in the abandoned park.
Discussion and Comparison
The consequence of the long-time confusion is the lack of cultural symbols that the ethnicity of Hui may register under. Religious symbols are cultural symbols; however, when the religious aspect of the identity is taken away, the lack of other defining elements results in the collapse of the identity. Because “every culture uses signs and symbols to represent concepts, ideas, values, and feelings,” with distinctive and independent cultural symbols, “Hui” can no longer signify any real community without another dominant factor of regional, religious, economic, and political affiliations.[20] Though it cannot be argued that such a result or the initial entanglement of the two identities was politically purposeful, maintaining the confusion and suddenly taking it away, indeed, make both political goals for the unity of different ethnicities and for the Sinicization of Islam more convenient for the government. Depending on one’s perspective, such a change can mean either a more assimilated future for the next generation of Hui, which will give them more opportunities to ascend the social ladder, or it can mean a violation of religious freedom and elimination of a minority culture. However, I shall offer no judgment on neither the nature of these goals nor the change of the Hui identity because the purpose of this project is to simply observe how people are living with their identities being defined by local communities, religious institutions, and the secular government and society.
To touch on another aspect of regional differences, the different population distribution in the three cities needs to be addressed to assess how local situations affect the implementation of the policies and the effect on people’s perception of identity. One reason for the regional differences in policies (even though Yang’s speech was made on the national level and the policies will most likely be enforced nationwide eventually) may depend on, according to Dillon, the government’s assessment of people’s secessionist sentiment. Even though the policies affect the ethnic identity, they need to specifically target religious matters in this regard not only because of the existing entanglement but also because, especially by exploiting their religious identity for economic cooperation with other Muslim countries, the government has more reason to doubt the loyalty of the religious.[21] Still, how such an assessment is made is unclear, one obvious contradiction to Dillon’s reasoning is that even though the religious atmosphere in Chengdong is much stronger than the other two cities, it seemed to receive less attention from the policies.
Another reason for the different levels of enforcement is, I believe, related to the concentration and distribution of the Hui population. I asked the owner of a bookstore in Yinchuan why there were fewer people wearing the little white hats and hijabs if there were still a large number of religious people. In fact, the taxi driver who took me from the airport admitted to me that he was religious, tried to keep to his religious commitments, and believed Islam to be the only true religion for him; however, he still decided to not wear hat for the sake of his work. To the bookstore owner, the explanation to such seeming controversy was simple: “people will always do what works best for them.” There used to be more people willing to expose their religious and ethnic identities by personal fashion in Yinchuan; in fact, in more Hui concentrated counties like Tongxin, people are still willing and tend to prefer to display their identities in public. However, when such exposure is no longer beneficial, people are less willing to do so. The reason why such exposure is no longer preferred, I suspect, relates to Spencer’s theory of ethnicity and the appearance of “the other.” When one can avoid appearing as the other in the society by simply not wearing a certain type of clothing without serious social or religious consequences and when more and more people choose to avoid such an appearance, “the other” disappear in public, allowing the original “other” to readjust their subjectivity accordingly. However, whether such a disappearance, which is determined by the dominance of the majority over the minority, is good or bad is a judgment one needs to decide for herself.
To complicate the question further, I argue, the concentrated situation in Chengdong District, an oasis where the Hui is the majority, is not an ideal situation for preserving the identity. Another way of describing the oasis is to say that, in there is no other place in the city left for Hui to live. For instance, I visited the Wanda Plaza, the biggest shopping center, in the fastest developing district in Xining. Even though it was only a 15-minute drive from Chengdong District, it felt like another country. I encountered nobody in Islamic clothing nor any restaurant that offered qingzhen food. In other words, one could see Chengdong as a preservation site reserved for the Hui, but, on the other hand, its concentration may be the result of the other parts of the city denying living opportunity for the Hui, offering no facilities like mosques, qingzhen restaurants to allow Hui gathering and living. A Muslim Hui has to either live in Chengdong district, which offers less developed living conditions and less diverse job opportunities, or hide her religious identity and live in the increasingly secular environment. In reality, many are not even granted the opportunity to choose. Many who grow up in Chengdong district remain religious and have careers or lifestyles like their parents, not because they choose to but because many are less educated than their peers in the other districts and, therefore, have fewer career choices. Many people, especially women, have only completed middle school. Early marriage, which is encouraged by the religion, is also very common, despite its restriction under the law. In other words, for a Hui who grows up in Chengdong district to be able to have access to a better life in Xining, she has to have a wealthy enough family (which is hard because many Hui residents in Chengdong district own small businesses and only serve the local community that lacks opportunity to grow) to send for her higher education. She also has to break the tradition of getting married early. Even after achieving these things, if she wants to have a mainstream job, such as working for the government, she has to deny her religious identity and the identity of her family in order to be accepted. Even so, her shenfenzheng will continue to recognize her as Hui, an absolute minority among a Han and Tibetan majority city. It is not easy for anyone to break these unseen social barriers, not to mention enough population to change the fate of the community. Even though, as Safran mentioned, there are the benefits offered by the government to the minority such as “preferential educational policies, including larger budgets, more lenient standards of admission to universities, and tuition waivers,”[22] for many growing up in a socially isolated community like Chengdong District, these benefits are not as meaningful as they seem because people’s lives are already contained by the religious and ethnic identities defined by the local community and environment. Perhaps because of these existing barriers (and, if one is willing to argue, segregation), the religious policy in Chengdong remains less strict because the regional culture and its political and economic influence have less potential to spread, and the entanglement of the Hui and Muslim identity will deepen, even without much explicit political reinforcement.
Conclusion and Evaluation
In this project, I have visited mosques and other related cultural sites in three cities in Northwestern China, Xining, Lanzhou, and Yinchuan. I have explored how the mosques are used by the local people; how the local and national policies have influenced the mosques; and how these places demonstrate how people perceive their identities as both Hui and Muslim. Along with the descriptions of my observations and experiences, I have also discussed the origin of the new policies issued in March 2018, the effect they had on the identity of Hui and Muslim, and complicated nature of the issue. Even though this paper has pointed many phenomena, especially the initial confusion of the two identities and the current policies that aim to distance the two, that can be seen as the problematic result of political manipulation, the paper does not aim to cast an opinion on these phenomena depending on any certain value system. Instead, the paper only wishes to observe the sites and people encountered during the trip without extensive generalization of their presence and experiences. No matter how one may opinionate on the policies, social phenomena, religious activities, it is important to let individual sites and people decide for themselves how to live under the policies and how to negotiate their identities among the local and wider society.
This paper is only an attempt to address the issue of ethnic and religious identity sparked by recent news. It could be done better with more meticulous planning, precise language, clear organization, and extensive academic research. There are also many other factors that need to be addressed in the issues raised. If more time and length are allowed, I wish to continue the topic by exploring how gender affects one’s perception of both ethnic and religious identity; if and how the policies influence different genders differently. I also wish to expand on a clearer and localized definition of ethnicity in the context of Hui and Muslim entanglement, which I found extremely hard to put forward in this project.
I want to thank my advisor, Gregory Erickson, Professor Kimberly DaCosta, and Professor A.B. Huber, who have helped me in creating, designing, and critically assessing the project. The project also would not be completed without all my friends and families and especially the strangers who were willing to share their personal stories and political opinions with me, to welcome me into their personal spaces, to express their love by introducing me to their religion and culture, to sacrifice their time to help familiarize me with the city. Therefore, my project is most dedicated to all these individuals: the noodle shop owner who shared his love of Islam, the district, and his support of the government; the clothing store owner who invited me to her house; the book store owner who voluntarily gave me a tour of Yinchuan and spared a large chunk of time for me to discuss regional political situations; the restaurant owner who led me for zhuhr prayer with her in Yinchuan, the souvenir store owner, the women at Lanzhou Xiguan Mosque, guards and staff who guided me at all mosques, and all those who I have encountered, however briefly, on the trip.
***
[1] Dillon, Michael. China’s Muslim Hui Community. Curzon Press, 1999.
[2] Dillon, Michael. China’s Muslim Hui Community: Migration, Settlement and Sects. Curzon Press, 1999.
[3] “China’s Treatment of Uyghurs Called ‘Stain of the Century’ by US Secretary of State.” ABC News, July 18, 2019. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-19/pompeo-calls-china-uyghur-treatment-stain-of-%20the-century/11323946 .
[4] “China Thanks UAE For Supporting Crackdown On Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province.” EurAsian Times: Latest Asian, Middle-East, EurAsian, Indian News, July 23, 2019. https://eurasiantimes.com/china-thanks-uae-for-supporting-crackdown-on-uyghur-muslims-in-xinjiang-province/.
[5] “Statistical Bulletin of 2018 National Economic and Social Development of Xining City (西宁市2018国民经济和社会发展统计公报).” Xining Government, published on March 13th, 2019, http://www.xining.gov.cn/html/58/401629.html
[6] Harvey, Graham. Food, Sex, and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life. London: Routledge, 2014.
[7] A term promoted by Xi Jinping in 2013, referring to the set of ideals and ethos of any Chinese individual and, more importantly, the set of shared ideals and goals set out by the government, which often evoke prosperity, unity, progress, and other nationalistic sentiments.
[8] The annual meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), hosted in every March in Beijing.
[9] “Lanzhou Ethnicity Overview.” National Religious Affairs Committee in Lanzhou City, January 28, 2019. http://mzw.lanzhou.gov.cn/art/2019/1/28/art_3952_541431.html.
[10] Spencer, Stephen. Race and Ethnicity: Culture, Identity and Representation. Routledge, 2006.
[11] (2018 Yinchuan Yearly Statistics Summary, 2019)
[12] What needs to be noted in my use of statistics of population is that it might read as if I am carelessly mixing up the concepts of Hui and Muslim. Little white hats and hijabs are all, to be accurate, symbols of the religion, not the ethnicity. However, the symbol of the ethnicity is lacking, which might be the result of many misunderstandings, which I will address later in the paper. Another reason for my misuse is that the government of Yinchuan does not offer statistics of religious personnel in the city; the government only provides the population of Han, Hui, and other ethnic minorities (without specifying) and no population of any religions. This lack of information might be the result of many factors, which cannot be known for sure; however, it might suggest a certain lack of interest, neglect of the religious scene, or a thought that the Hui population can fully (or at least, satisfyingly) represent the Muslim population.
[13] Wang, Jiquan. “Xi Jinping Visit to Yinchuan Xincheng Mosque (习近平参观银川新城清真 寺).” People’s Daily, July 19, 2016. http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2016/0719/c1024-28567687.html.
[14] Guo, Jianwei. “Yang’s Faming Speech on the Chinalization of Islam (杨发明：扎根中华文化沃土 坚持我国伊斯兰教中国化方向-新华网).” Xinhua Net, March 10, 2018. http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2018lh/2018-03/10/c_1122516862.htm.
[15] A book published by China Islamic Association and Religious Culture Publication in 2006. The book first claims that loving one’s nation is a tradition promoted by Islam. Then it gives extensive examples of Muslims who have contributed to the nationalist cause, which has two subsections specifically dedicated to Uyghur Nationalist Muslim and Hui Nationalist Muslim. Later, the book introduces the history of Islam in ten specific ethnicities, Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, etc. Then, the book goes into specific professional areas, in which Muslims have made significant contributions, from agriculture to business, from astronomy to medicine, from military technology to geography, from philosophy to art and literature, etc. Lastly, the book outlines the modern history of China from the Revolution in 1911 until recent events such as Open Door policy and the campaign, Open Up to the West, including a section specifically on Islamic extremism and foreign relations (Yu 2006).
[16] Guo, Jianwei. “Yang’s Faming Speech on the Chinalization of Islam”
[17] “The Park and Customs and Culture in the Homeland of Chinese Hui People(中华回乡文化园).” Baidu Baike, May 29, 2019. https://baike.baidu.com/item/中华回乡文化园/2332937?fr=aladdin.
[18] Baidu Baike
[19] Dillon, Michael. China’s Muslim Hui Community: Migration, Settlement and Sects.
Curzon Press, 1999.
[20] Spencer, Stephen. Race and Ethnicity: Culture, Identity and Representation. Routledge, 2006.
[21] Dillon, Michael. China’s Muslim Hui Community: Migration, Settlement and Sects.
Curzon Press, 1999.
[22] Safran, William. “Introduction: Nation, Ethnie, Region, and Religion as Markers of
Identity.” In Nationalism and Ethnoregional Identities in China, 1–9. London:
Frank Cass, 1998.