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The 'Hui people' (, Xiaoerjing: حُوِ ذَو ) are a Chinese ethnic group, typically distinguished by their practice of the Islam. They form one of the 56 ethnic minority groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They are concentrated in Northwestern China (Ningxia, Gansu, Xinjiang), but communities exist across the country. Most Hui are similar in culture to Han Chinese with the exception that they practice Islam, and have some distinctive cultural characteristics as a result. For example, as Muslims, they reject the consumption of pork, the most common meat consumed in Chinese culture, and also do not eat dog, horse, many birds, and other animals considered delicacies in Chinese cuisine. Their mode of dress also differs only in that adult males wear white caps and females wear headscarves or (occasionally) veils, as is the case in most Islamic cultures. They also reject gambling unlike many Han Chinese - especially in mahjong.
In modern usage, the definition of Hui does not include ethnic groups such as the Uyghur, who live in China and practice Islam, but are Turkic people and are thus different culturally from Han Chinese. For example, in Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region, where about 10 percent of the Hui of China reside, the Hui have a distinct ethnic identity from that of the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz, who are Turkic peoples.

Included with Hui Chinese are other Islamic Chinese in Chinese census statistics are some who are dissimilar to Han Chinese but are not officially recognized as a separate ethnic group, such as several thousand Utsuls in southern Hainan province who still speak an Austronesian language (Tsat) related to that of the Cham Muslim minority of Vietnam and are said to be the descendants of Chams who migrated to Hainan.
A traditional Chinese term for Islam is 回教 (pinyin: ''Huíjiào'', literally "the religion of the Hui"), though the most prevalent is the transliteration 伊斯蘭教 (pinyin: 'Yīsīlán jiào'', literally "Islam religion").

Contents

Origins

Definition of Hui

Hui in Malaysia

Surnames

Prominent Hui

Related group names

See also

References

Origins

The Hui Chinese have diverse origins. Some in the southeast coast are descended from Muslim traders who settled in China and gradually intermarried and assimilated into the surrounding population keeping only their distinctive religion. A totally different explanation is available for the Mandarin Chinese-speaking Yunnan and Northern Huis, whose ethnogenesis might be a result of the convergence of large number of Mongol, Turkic or other Central Asian settlers in these regions who formed the dominant stratum in the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. However, even Cantonese Muslims, of the southeastern coast, typically resemble northern Asians much more so than their typical Cantonese neighbours.
It was documented that a proportion of these nomad or military ethnic groups were originally Nestorian Christians many of whom later converted to Islam, while under the sinicizing pressures of the Ming and Qing states.
This explains the ethnonym "Hui," in close affinity with that of "Uyghur," albeit Sinicized and contradistinctive from "Uyghur" in usage. The ethnonym "Hui," though for a long time used as an umbrella term (at least since Qing) to designate Muslim Chinese speakers everywhere and Muslims in general (for example, a Qing Chinese might describe a Uyghur as a "Chantou" who practiced the "Hui" religion), was not used in the Southeast as much as "Qīngzhēn", a term still in common use today, especially for Muslim (Hui) eating establishments and for mosques (''qīngzhēn sì'' in Mandarin).
Southeastern Muslims also have a much longer tradition of synthesizing Confucian teachings with the Sharia and Qur'anic teachings, and were reported to have been contributing to the Confucian officialdom since the Tang period. Among the Northern Hui, on the other hand, there are strong influences of Central Asian Sufi schools such as Kubrawiyya, Qadiriyya, Naqshbandiyya (Khufiyya and Jahriyya) etc. mostly of the Hanafi Madhhab (whereas among the Southeastern communities the Shafi'i Madhhab is more of the norm). Before the "Ihwani" movement, a Chinese variant of the Salafi movement, Northern Hui Sufis were very fond of synthesizing Taoist teachings and martial arts practices with Sufi philosophy.
In early modern times, villages in Northern Chinese Hui areas still bore labels like "Blue-cap Huihui," "Black-cap Huihui," and "White-cap Huihui," betraying their possible Christian, Judaic and Muslim origins, even though the religious practices among North China Hui by then were by and large Islamic. Hui is also used as a catch-all grouping for Islamic Chinese who are not classified under another ethnic group.

Definition of Hui

The definition of Hui Chinese poses some interesting issues. The obvious definition of the Hui as being Islamic Chinese poses two problems. The first is that the People's Republic of China is nominally atheist. The second is that if Chinese Muslims are entitled to ethnic group status, then there is uncertainty about the status of Chinese Christians and Buddhists. In defining the Hui, the government has sidestepped this issue by defining them in terms of their group identity and ignore the fact that their group identity is based on religion. However, many Hui and others believe that the label is appropriate because the Hui have a history and culture that would not be such without their being Muslim, and thus setting them apart from other Chinese groups. In contrast, the cultural differences between Han Chinese Christians and other Chinese are much more subtle, and the boundary between the two is much more fluid, especially considering the level of Crypto-Christianity among the Han population. In addition, many say that a person that is Hui is quite different from a Han Chinese who simply converts to Islam.
Huis anywhere are referred to by Central Asian Turks and Tajiks as ''Dungans.'' In its population censuses, the Soviet Union also identified Chinese Muslims as "Dungans" (дунгане) and recorded them as located mainly in Kyrgyzstan, southern Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. In the Russian census of 2002, a total of 800 Dungans were enumerated. In Thailand Chinese Muslims are referred to as ''chin ho'', in Myanmar and Yunnan Province, as Panthay.

Hui in Malaysia

There is evidence that Chinese Hui migrated to Peninsular Malaysia in the influx of Chinese labourers during the nineteenth and late twentieth century. Chinese who have the surname Ma are suspected to have Hui ancestry. A number of them settled in the region of Lumut in Peninsular Malaysia. It is speculated that these Muslims assimilated with the local non-Muslim Chinese and now most of them are no longer Muslims. Nonetheless, there are those who still maintain their Islamic faith. A famous Chinese Muslim missionary in Malaysia has the surname of Ma.
There are increasing numbers of Chinese converts to Islam. If they are married to Muslim Malaysian indigenous persons, their offspring are officially accepted as part of the "Bumiputra" (indigenous people or "sons of the land"). Otherwise, the society might treat them as party of the large Chinese minority group. However as Islam is also an ethnic marker in Malaysia (Islam = Malay race), many Chinese converts in Malaysia tend to adopt and assimilate into the indigenous culture. However, there is a trend since the 1900s for Chinese converts to retain their original pre-Muslim Chinese surname, probably to maintain their cultural identity

Surnames

These are surnames generally used by the Hui ethnic group:

★ Ma for Muhammad

★ Ha for Hasan

★ Hu for Hussein

★ Sai for Said

★ Zheng for Shams

Prominent Hui

★ Bai Chongxi (白崇禧), a general of the Republic of China

★ Bai Shouyi (白壽彝), prominent Chinese historian and ethnologist

★ Hui Liangyu (回良玉), a Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China

★ Li Zhi (李贄), a descendant of Persian merchant and famous philosopher, would perhaps be considered a Hui if he lived today

★ Ma Dexin (马德新), Islamic scholar in Yunnan

★ Ma Hualong (马化龙), one of the leaders of the Muslim Rebellion of 1862-77.

★ Shi Zhongxin, mayor of Harbin from 2002 to February 2007, whose ancestors came from Jilin

★ Zhang Chengzhi (張承志), contemporary author and alleged creator of the term "Red Guards"

★ Zheng He (鄭和), a Semu Muslim, probably the most famous Muslim in Chinese history, would perhaps be considered a Hui if he lived today

Related group names

★ Dungan (in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan)

★ Panthay (in Burma)

★ Utsul (in Hainan Island; speakers of a Malayo-Polynesian language, but officially classified by the Chinese government as Hui)

See also

★ Hui pan-nationalism

★ Islam in China

★ Hui Minorities' War

References

★ Dru C. Gladney, "Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Minority Nationality (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)", 1997, ISBN 0155019708.

★ Dru C. Gladney, "Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects", 2004, ISBN 0226297756.

★ Dru C. Gladney, "Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic". 1st ed. 1991; 2nd ed., 1996. ISBN 0-674-59497-5.

★ "CHINA'S ISLAMIC HERITAGE" China Heritage Newsletter (Australian National University), No. 5, March 2006.