Dru Gladney and the Modern Uyghur

Dru Gladney again wrote this week’s readings, and it discusses Uyghur identity, which is a constricted identity, as well as an identity that is constantly in flux to deal with the every changing situation that China’s Uyghurs find themselves in. On interesting point that Gladney arises is the idea that the Han, whose own identity is hard to define, have come to define themselves as everything the claim the minorities are – backward barbarians. So if the minorities are just that, then the Han must be the opposite. The article continues to talk about how, after the Tiananmen incident, the Chinese lost a lot of their western trading partners, who were replaced by Middle Eastern countries. In a bid to encourage more trade and better relations with these counties, the Chinese government has pushed for better treatment of their Muslim minorities. To me this seems superficial, but as the article points out, both sides are taking advantage of the other, so in a sense it balances out. But a lot of this article talked about how the Uyghurs outside of Xinjiang were using the Internet to talk about how the Uyghurs are being treated in Xinjiang. Most of the reports, Gladney claims, are unbiased, and just hope to give a history of the area, as well as a view in the life of the Uyghurs today. I find it interesting that the Uyghurs would look to the internet only now, but then again, as Gladney points out, the internet is expensive in Xinjiang proper. The most important point that Gladney shows is that these sites are not separatist movements, but merely are trying to illustrate life under Chinese rule, and many in fact are quite secular in the information they provide. The article then goes on to talk about culture and education of Muslims in China, and how in China, culture is associated with a person’s ability to read and write Chinese. That is why even those Uyghurs who were educated and can speak several languages, as long as they are unable to speak Chinese, are considered uncultured. Some of the minorities that exist within China actually have higher literacy rates than the Han Chinese, and have more members of their minority who attend university. Although the Uyghurs are not one of these groups, it goes to show that sometimes the way the government portrays the nationality is a little lacking. The last section of the article is interesting, it talks about how Gladney went around and asked Uyghurs and Muslims about their opinions of the Gulf war and of Saddam Hussein. What I found interesting about this is that most people would not think to ask, but of course these people are Muslims, and are close to the Middle East, they obviously have an opinion on the events, but as Gladney shows, their opinions actually differ depending on who he asked. This was even more intriguing, as these Muslims are obviously well informed. The point of this article, I think, was to show that the Uyghurs are not uniformed about events going on the world, nor are they uniformed about different modes of technology to help spread information about their plight against the Chinese government. The Uyghurs have members of their community who are forward thinking, educated individuals, and who know that the best way to help their own people is to get the message out, much in the same way the Dalai Lama has done for the Tibetan people.

Muslims in Xi’an: A look at the Practitioners of Islam

This week’s focus will be the Hui living in Xi’an, China, specifically the social aspects of their life. The article was extremely detailed – I found the part about food quite interesting.
It starts with a look at what is called “the Hui quarter”, which is essentially what the name implies – the Muslim part of town. This was very interesting for me, coming from a place like Toronto. In Toronto, it seems perfectly normal to have parts of the city sectioned off for Little Italy, Little Portugal, China Town, and Little India. I think Torontonians take for granted the diversity of their city. Because when the author was discussing this aspect of Xi’an, it seemed rather normal to me, but then I realized that most cities around the world wouldn’t be sectioned off like this, let along on religious lines. So I had to consider the implications of having a section of the town for the Hui specifically. The article continues, talking about the quarter and what one might find there, including restaurants of ethnic foods, stores, homes and of course, mosques. One point the author emphasizes is that the CCP government allows the Hui to have their own section of the town, and have their holidays, but there is a reason for this, and a rather interesting one that I had never considered before: “Only China’s minorities have “nationality holidays”; the Han had none. Institutionalizing racial “customs and habits” such as “nationality holidays” was one way that the CCP supported its classification of China’s non-Han races as more “backwards” and less modern than the Han, who, under the party’s guidance, had moved beyond such “feudal superstitions” during the 1950’s”. (Gillette, 27) This just seems like such a bizarre though process to me, because nationality is something people feel regardless of whether its celebrated or not. Regardless, it’s an interesting way for the party to look at things.
The author then talks about Hui education in the quarter, and how it is in need of improvement, and most Hui try to send their children to schools outside the quarter. She then talks about the mosques in the quarter, and worthy of note is “another phrase that Hui frequently applied to themselves was that they liked to live “around the mosque”. Local Muslims often identified themselves as “belonging” to one of the quarter’s ten mosques”. (Gillette, 30) My question is, are all these mosques the same? In that I mean, are they all of one sect (for lack of a better word) within Islam? Are some mosques Sufi? This reminds me of Uyghurs identifying themselves with different oasis towns in Xinjiang. Are they doing this to identify themselves in a way that separates themselves from the Han? I think that they are, which is very important, since they see themselves as different, they should make the distinction any way they feel fit.
Gillette goes on for a multitude of pages talking about the Hui housing in the quarter, and how the government is rebuilding a lot of their homes and stores (which are usually one in the same). She mentions that a lot of the Hui are happy about this change, but reading this reminded me of the video I posted just under this, which I encourage my classmates to watch after reading this article, which talks about a similar issue in Kashgar.
Gillette then goes into detail about the “Arabization” of the Hui community. This represents a want of the Hui to learn Arabic, to build more “authentic” looking mosques, and to open up trade with the Middle East: “Arabization also incorporated elements of modernization as exemplified by the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. Arabization provides residences with an alternative ideological scale on which to evaluate themselves and a model of development that excluded the CCP government and the Han minzu”. (Gillette, 76)
Reading about the mosques was very interesting, in that they are the center of the community. Anyone is welcome at the mosque at any time, and many services are offered at the mosque, most interestingly, a facility that allows people to shower and bathe there for a small fee. They seem to keep the community together, and provide a center of identity. However, one point that author makes the point “In the mid-1990s quarter, many residents felt that to be a Chinese Muslim was to be an inauthentic or deviant Muslim”. (Gillette, 96) So apparently, there is a difference between being a Chinese Muslim and Muslim Chinese. Though I would be curious to see if this is just a Xi’an Hui thing, or a pan-Muslim community idea.
The last part of the article I found the most interesting. It was about the idea of Qingzhen, or “pure and true”. “Official involvement with qingzhen was one means by which the state disseminated its racial definition of the Hui people and institutionalized its official vision of the Hui race’s position in the national hierarchy of social development and process of modernization”. (Gillette, 115) Dietary laws in the Hui community are very interesting, because it’s not just a restriction against eating things like pork, you also can’t touch or eat off anything that might have come into contact with something impure – to the point where “Resident’s rejection of Han hospitality was all the more striking because it was unidirectional. Although Hui reused Han hospitality, Han accepted Hui food and drink, freely consuming Hui foods and using Hui cookery”. (Gillette, 121-122) This is a clear separation of Han and Hui people, and as Gillette says, you are what you eat – the Han eat pork, so they are impure. One thing that I found really interesting is the Hui claiming that all their foods were “traditional”, which in reality, had all been forgotten since times of government suppression: “Xi’an Hui knew just as well as other Chinese (if not better) that many of their food preparation techniques and other forms of knowledge ranging from religious to architectural to medicinal ad been forgotten or lost during the years of suppression under Mao”. (Gillette, 136) Yet, “by eating “traditional Hui foods” Hui incorporated the “Hui” quality of such foods…”. So essentially, “Eating served as an important mechanism for residents to affirm that they were Hui and promote their sense of continuity with Hui history”. (Gillette, 136) It seems that the Hui are very much about community and history, falling back on their need to separate themselves from the Han Chinese living with and around them. It allows them to feel a community with each other, while showing the Han and the government that they are different.
Maris Gillette’s article was very fascinating for me, because it is just in these kinds of social understandings that Islam as a practice manifests itself. It is this kind of Islam that should be studied, that of the practitioner. How do people interpret their religion and practice it within there community? I think this article gave a deep view into Islam in China, as seen from the eyes of the people who are part of that religion.

Thanks to:

Gillette, Maris Boyd. Between Mecca and Beijing: Modernization and Consumption     Among Urban Chinese Muslims. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Kasghar: A Lost City?

I found these two clips, which are a together a news report about how the Chinese government wants to “remodel” the old city of Kashgar. Uyghers are interviewed as to their opinion, and gives an interesting look into Kashgar’s inhabitants.

(A very brief look at) The Sinification of Islam

The readings this week had an interesting theme – looking at how Islam in China has changed as it fits into Chinese society and culture. The readings all look at a different aspect of Islam that has changed or been modified over time. I found them all very interesting, since, being a western scholar, I tend to put things in little boxes and assume that time does not change them; they stay the same. So I imagined mosques and calligraphy to be the same as they were in the Middle East. Of course, this is totally and completely not the case – just brain photoshopping.
One article deals with how Chinese Muslims dealt with building mosques, and how over time the mosques took on Chinese elements. Mosques went through a period of integration: “…one can see that great efforts were made to integrate functional requirements, cultural expressions and building techniques from the Western Region with the characteristic local architecture, producing results which would be respected by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.” (Frishman, 211) The author then goes on to list changes that were made to integrate mosques into Chinese society. He also gives a lot of examples of mosques in China that show the changing face of Muslim architecture. I have always found mosques so beautiful and interesting in terms of layout and decoration, so this article was much appreciated.
The second article was a little more confusing as far as I was concerned – it talked about a book written by an Islamic scholar, that touched upon issues (and had a similar title) to a Confucian work. It seemed to be a text that uses both Confucian and Islamic ideas, but is mainly an Islamic text that seems to agree with Confucian ideals. This is very interesting; as Islam has come a long way to have a similar thought process to Confucianism. The reading actually gives a translation of the text, and at points you can see the East Asian influence.
The last reading for this week was a quick article about calligraphy, and how it has changed and the different styles it has. This article I found the most intriguing, since I have always found Islamic calligraphy to be so beautiful. There is a style that has been modified and is usually found in Xinjiang province, which is part of the theme of these readings
Sinification of Islam has and is taking place, just as Buddhism went through a similar process and is going though that process. These articles are just the tip of the iceberg, in that there are so many other changes that happen to Islam to make it unique to china. This doesn’t make is any less that Islam from other countries or places, just different, unique, and worth taking a deeper look into.

(p.s to my readers (all 4 of you) – sorry for the formality of this blog entry, as it was at short notice, and so it sounds a lot more academic than I would have hoped, but enjoy.)

Thanks to:

Murata, Sachiko. Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light: Wang Tai-yu’s Great Learning of the Pure and Real and Liu Chih’s Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm. William C. Chittick, trans. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000.

Frishman, Martin, and Hassan-Uddin Khan, Ed. The Mosque: History, Architecture Develpment and Regional Diversity. Thames and Hudson, 2004

Garnaut, Anthony. “Islamic Calligraphy in China”

<http://www.chinaheritagenewsletter.org/features.php?searchterm=005_calligraphy.inc&issue=005>

What’s in a History?

When I first learned that there were Muslims in China, my first thought was “Oh, how awesome the Silk Road is, bringing something like Islam to China.” I had this mental image of a middle east –Chinese syncretic tradition that was uniform all over China, that in my mind were just there, separate from the native Chinese and yet part of their culture, to some extent. I guess I think like a western scholar, because boy was I wrong. As I learn more and more about the Muslim groups in China, it because clear that its not as simple as I first imagined. History is messy, really really messy, worse than a college dorm messy, and Islam in China does not fit into any neat little box. It too, is really really messy. Not messy in a bad sense, more, its extremely complicated depending on the time period, the people involved, the political issues of the time, and seems to vary from town to town, sect to sect, and, dare I say, individual to individual.

One little thing I want to point out before I get to my real blog, is how amused I was when I found out the character for Hui – 回, which I learned means “to return somewhere. So one would use Hui to say that they were going home, for example. I thought this was amusing, but I don’t really see a connection, though there might be. I can’t really think of one.

Anyways, as I was saying, the history of Islam in China is really, really messy. There is not some neat introduction the way books like to put it. But it seems that through all this history, the same problem is still around – where do these Muslims fit into Chinese society or culture? The reading mentions that the Muslims were thought to deny filial piety, which meant they were a danger to society. The author further states “…that this [denial of filial piety] made it difficult for Muslims in China to play a full part in the social life of the community but the historical evidence suggests that in fact they participated fully in their own communities and in the wide communities when they were permitted to do so”. (Dillon, 6) I find this interesting – maybe this is not a case of Muslims in China not participating in society and culture – maybe they are just not allowed to do so. The whole issue of whether they are Chinese Muslims or Muslim Chinese seems a little arbitrary now. Clearly these people are both, when allowed to be both and giving them a name to put them into a neat little category is grounded in nothing.
Dillon continues, “The degree of integration into mainstream Chinese society varied from community to community and from individual to individual”. (Dillon, 6)
This issue is a little more complex than meets the eye, and I find it difficult to sit here, and think about where these Muslims fit into Chinese culture – clearly this is not just one thing we have to look at, it is individuals, and people and communities. These are individuals with lives and family, not statistics. It is obvious that these people participate in Chinese culture when and if they can, and it is the choice of the individual, not a group or a minority.

The history of the Muslims in China is just as messy as the answer to the question “where do they fit into Chinese society”. There are mentions of visitors in China during the Tang dynasty; whether they are Muslim or not is not indicated, but they could be. With the Mongols come Muslims having a rather high status in society, but being used as scapegoats. Regardless, they still had a place in society, and clearly they participated in culture. Many settled in China, and became integrated in Chinese society. One thing I found really interesting was that there are records of Muslims passing the civil service examination, which to me seems like there are Muslims who really felt they were Chinese first and then Muslim; to pass these exams one had to have extensive knowledge of the Confucian classics, so Muslims must have read them, which is more that most everyday Chinese did. As Dillon says, “…Whereas not long after they had settled in China, Yuan dynasty Muslims were already considering themselves to be Chinese citizens”. (25) With the establishment of the Ming dynasty, the status of Muslims was lowered, and there seems to be a slow process of sinification (Dillon, 26). But at this point there is obviously a large number of Muslims living in China and who consider themselves Chinese. The numbers in China grow until the present day, where they were categorized and named by the CCP. But the Muslims have not be sideliners for Chinese history; they have been active participants, and surely after reading this article, one would have no doubt in saying that the Muslims of today are indeed Chinese, just as much as their Buddhist or Daoist counterparts. (I am aware that these classifications are too, complex and with a complicated history, but for the sake of an analogy, lets use it)

Dillon goes further into the kinds of Muslims living in China, where they live, how they got started, and who some of the founders are. The picture it paints is one of complexity, that makes me want to just give up in trying to understand Muslims in China – its way to complex to just term with one word or sentence.

The point I want to make with this blog entry is that without a doubt the history of Muslims in China is very messy, and it cannot be broken down unless at the micro level – that is, individual groups, or even individuals themselves. Can we really assume a Chinese Muslim, or a Muslim Chinese’s opinion or experience based on these information? Can we really lump all these people together in one group? I don’t think we can. I think this is not something that can be summed up in “Hui” or “Uyghur”. It is more in depth and personal than that.

Thus, I find it hard to talk about things in a group sense, just because when we learn something, it seems to get filed away in a nice little box. Islam in China is not simple, and it doesn’t fit into any box known to man. I think Islam in China should be put down to the individual level, since it’s the individual who chooses their sect, who chooses their language, and who chooses how to relate themselves to the Muslim community they are a part of, and to the larger world Muslim community.

Thanks to:

Dillon, Michael. China’s Muslim Hui Community: Migration, Settlement and Sects. Curzon, 1999.

Geography, What a Jerk.

It seems to me that humans are slaves to geography. We dictate many things about ourselves based on where we are, and who happens to be around us. And as in the Millward and Perdue article, a piece of land and bring forth such fierce feelings of nationalism that people will do anything to retain a piece of land. And yet it’s not just a piece of land. It’s a home, with historical significance, not just for a people, but more importantly for the individual.  I think that is what makes the Uyghurs – and all the other ethnic groups in China’s Xinjiang – so interesting. They are slaves to their geography and rightly so, with a rich history such as theirs. Yet they also seem to be somewhat free from its bonds. Not by choice of course, between all the issues that have gone on.  With a history as complex and diverse as theirs, it’s not wonder they have a geography to match. If the Uyghurs had settled in any other area, would they have the same rich, abet difficult, history? The point of these articles it seems, is that the Uyghurs, or the Chinese, were not the only people to occupy Xinjiang at any one point in time. Xinjiang really is the crossroads of many different groups, with all these groups vying for power of the area, and the Chinese claiming power on paper only.

One thing I found interesting about these articles is I found out what Xinjiang actually means. Unfortunately, reading pinyin doesn’t always reveal what the word means, its only in the characters that one is able to figure out the true meaning. I actually knew the character Xin, which means “new” (新)(Millward & Perdue, 28). I learned it over the summer in Mandarin 100 at the university. I happened to learn it in a unit of clothes vocab, so it took me a while to figure out that it could be applied to things that were not wearable. Like friends for instance. Or in this case, a territory. I find it interesting that the Chinese would refer to Xinjiang as “new”. It’s always been there, if you think about it, just not part of the so-called “nation-state” that is today’s PRC China. (Millward and Perdue, 27) So what if it wasn’t always part of China, it was once the crossroads of Asia, doesn’t that guarantee it a better name than “new territory”?

But as Millward and Perdue say in their article, “Thus, the often-repeated assertion that all Xinjiang was Chinese during the Han dynasty is an oversimplification arising from later historians selective readings of a rather mixed record. In this case, historians have proven more powerful than armies”. (30) I find that so compelling; as my dad says, theirs three sides to every story, yours, mine and the truth. How true he is.

What I find the most compelling after reading these articles is that Xinjiang has a very rich, bloody history, spanning almost 2000+ years, with many different ethnic groups participating, from the Chinese, Xiongnu, Mongols, Uyghurs, Persians, and other Central Asian peoples.  What is ironic is that today’s Xinjiang is going through issues that seems to have plagued it since, well, ever – who has the right to call it theirs, to call it the illustrious “home”. Today’s issues between the Uyghurs, Han Chinese, and other groups seems to just be history continuing, we are watching history in the making. And we live in the modern world, right? No, I think it’s a case of North Americans living in bizarro world.

To sum up, these articles were really intense, not for their content, which was fascinating and detailed, but for the bigger picture they painted – Xinjiang has a rich history, and although many people think simple actions can be taken to solve the issues there, the point is these issues are not “simple”. Clearly they have been going on for some time now. These issues will always exist in some form, because sometimes, we all have issues understanding things from other perspectives. Geography is not just land, and these are not just “other people”. This is not an issue of religion, of Muslims being “violent”. These are individuals with families and homes. We need to look at the Other, and for us living in North America, that means everyone in Xinjiang, Chinese included.

Thanks to:

Lipman, Jonathan. “Introduction” and “Frointer Ground and Peoples of Northwest China” in Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997)

Millward, James and Peter C. Perdue. “Political and Cultural History of the Xinjiang Region through the Late Nineteenth  Century” in Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Boarderland (London: M.E Sharpe, 2004)

Welcome!

Hi! 你好！ I’m a student at the University of Toronto, and this blog, set up for one of my classes, will be to explore issues in China and Central Asia, in hopes to better understand the relations and history of the people and the region itself. I have particular interest in how these people from different groups interact and deal with one another, and understand each other – hence the idea of “otherness”. Please check out the “About” section, and check out my videos and links!

I will be posting as much as I can, so please check it out!