INTRODUCTION

MODERNIZATION AND HUI ETHNICITY IN URBAN CHINA

On a gray, cold day in late November 2015, I sat by the window of a small shop in the Hui Quarter (Huimin Xiaoqu) of Shandong’s provincial capital of Jinan, watching as snowflakes floated to the ground. Wisps of steam swirled up from the cup of strong green tea handed to me by the owner, a local Hui (a Chinese-speaking Muslim minority ethnic group) businessman in his fifties. I took a long sip from the piping hot cup and listened as he opined about the future of the neighborhood. Waving his arm out in the direction of the massive, three-hundred-meter-tall tower of the recently completed Lüdi Center that stood just across the street from the entrance to the Hui Quarter, he lamented that changes would be imminently visited upon the neighborhood. He remarked, “The government feels that this neighborhood is too chaotic [luan]. They’re going to build new high-rise apartments [ gaolou].”¹

He was not the first respondent to make such claims. Others with whom I spoke in Jinan made similar pronouncements about the fate of the neighborhood. Following up, I inquired, “So, what will happen to the residents of the neighborhood?” In a resigned tone, he answered, “Some residents will be able to come back, but the prices for apartments will be higher. Some won’t be able to afford it. They’ll have to go somewhere else. For instance, those migrant Hui from Xibei [northwest China] will just go home.² Others will move farther away, and the Muslim Quarter will get smaller.” We continued to sit and watch the snow fall. I posed another follow-up question: “How will this change the neighborhood?” In reply, he described in detail the centrality of the mosque to community life for many Hui. He explained that moving the community away from its place of worship would bring pervasive change:

Elsewhere, in ethnic minority (shaoshu minzu) enclaves throughout China, such dramatic programs of urbanization frequently arouse distrust, scorn, and resistance.⁴ Throughout China’s history, the state used projects of urbanization that moved people and altered landscapes as part of a mission of assimilation it saw as “civilizing.”⁵ In many ethnic Uyghur, Tibetan, and Mongol communities, the policies that promote the demolition of enclave neighborhoods and the influx of migrants into the community provoke fears of cultural erasure and often serve as flashpoints for solidifying ethnic consciousness in resistance against the state.⁶ Such grievances lie at the heart of the ethnic uprisings in Lhasa in 2008, Ürümchi in 2009, and Xilingol in 2011.⁷

The residents of Jinan’s Hui Quarter, however, offered no inclinations toward active resistance. Many residents expressed a sense of inevitability about the fate of the neighborhood. They cited the government’s intentions to develop the Hui Quarter, which stands at the heart of the “Old City” (Laocheng Qu), as part of a broader project of revitalization for the city center.⁸ As widening began along Gongqingtuan Road on the north side of the Hui Quarter in early November 2015, one woman who served as an ahong (imam) at the local women’s mosque remarked that further demolition would probably begin “within the next five years.” When asked if she was sure, she remarked, “It’s not totally certain, but it’s been planned.”⁹ Some residents even welcomed the changes, claiming it would improve the quality of life in the neighborhood. Speaking of the new buildings to be built on the site of the neighborhood, a Hui restaurateur in his sixties remarked, “They’re obviously an improvement for people’s lives, aren’t they? I think they’re fine.”¹⁰

The relative lack of resistance from Jinan’s Hui community highlights the peculiarity of the Hui’s position in Chinese society. Prior to the current era of Reform and Opening, which began in 1978, popular conceptions of the Hui in China portrayed them as restive and violent.¹¹ Such characterizations stemmed, in part, from a series of bloody conflicts between the Hui and the armies of the Qing empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.¹² Despite this history of Hui uprisings, resistance to the state authority does not define relations between the state and contemporary Hui communities. The occasional conflict with government actors emerging from Hui communities occurs because of local concerns rather than systemic, nationwide resistance to the state.¹³ Perhaps because of this history of rebellion, the Hui present the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with opportunities to tell stories of its success in ethnic politics. In fact, both China’s domestic media and international news outlets frequently invoke the Hui as examples of China’s “other,” less restive, “peaceful” Muslims, painting the Hui as part of a dichotomy in contrast to their Uyghur coreligionists.¹⁴ Such discussion of the Hui as “good Muslims” often portrays this transformation from restive rebels to model minority as one of the great successes of the Party’s ethnic policies—especially in contrast to the Party’s failures in managing relations with Uyghurs. However, these narratives usually focus on the actions of the Party and often overlook the economic, social, and political dynamics underway in Hui communities themselves. Such an oversight leaves unexamined questions about why widespread resistance is now less common in Hui communities. Put simply, why don’t the Hui rebel anymore?

Several studies examining the construction and maintenance of Hui identity precede this one. Dru Gladney’s foundational comparative ethnography of four Hui communities (Najiahu in Ningxia, the urban district of Niu Jie and suburban community of Changying in Beijing, and Quanzhou in Fujian) traces the ethnogenesis of the Hui to understand the common bonds that solidify a core Hui ethnic identity. Gladney asserts that Hui communities developed heterogeneously, and notions of Hui as a separate ethnic identity developed only after the People’s Republic of China (PRC) completed its ethnic categorization project in the 1950s (historically known as minzu shibie).¹⁵ Despite the recentness of articulations of a distinctly Hui ethnic identity, Gladney remarks that the common cultural resonance of qingzhen—which he translates as “purity” (qing, in the sense of ritual cleanliness and moral conduct) and “truth” (zhen, in the sense of authenticity and legitimacy)—hold together the Hui as an ethnic group or “nationality,” as the word minzu is translated by the CCP.¹⁶

Following Gladney’s early study, a number of scholars explored further branches of Hui identity. Historian Michael Dillon’s broad overview of the Hui community provides a detailed account of its religious traditions and historical divisions along sectarian and regional lines.¹⁷ With their anthropological study of Hui women’s mosques, Maria Jaschok and Jingjun Shui investigate the historical role played by female ahong and their status—as well as that of the mosques they serve—in contemporary communities, highlighting gendered aspects of the expression of Hui identity and the distinctly localized nature of women’s roles within Hui Islam.¹⁸ Cultural anthropologist Maris Boyd Gillette’s examination of economic modernization on the practices of daily life in Xi’an’s Hui community illustrates how the state’s development efforts allow for a reassertion of Hui identity, both through expression of Islamic modernism and through the development of a consumer culture centered around the superior quality of qingzhen (here understood to approximate halal) products.¹⁹ Similarly, in her case study of religious revival among Yunnan Hui in the post-Mao era political scientist Susan McCarthy remarks that renewed interest in Hui identity provides opportunities to both rediscover lost tradition and pursue connections with the modern Islamic world.²⁰ Matthew Erie’s study of Hui strongholds in rural, southern Gansu describes how local religious authorities reframe law in accordance with shari’a and illustrates the importance of informal relationships between clergy and state.²¹

Each of these studies stands as a landmark in the field of Chinese ethnic politics. This book builds on their foundations by assessing the ways in which internal boundaries drawn along cross-cutting identity cleavages influence the everyday contestation of Hui identity and enable the Chinese partystate’s enactment of authoritarian control over ethnic politics. It explores the politics of Hui identity in “quiet times”—the moments of ordinary life outside of the rare outbursts of contentious politics, activated ethnic consciousness, mobilization, or resistance, which are frequently the subject of studies on ethnic politics.²² Rather than focus solely on elite actors or moments of conflict, this study assesses how ethnic actors contest the significance of daily practices that sustain ethnic identity in the midst of urban change. To do so, I examine the process of ethnic boundary formation in Hui communities in the context of urbanization. I argue that the urbanization encouraged by the Chinese party-state activates cross-cutting identity cleavages like class, region, education level, and sect and sparks contestation over the proper way to express Hui identity, limiting the amount of conflict between the Hui and the state.

Identity boundaries, though they may correspond to physical units, are a socially constructed, continually negotiated set of benchmarks used to make a distinction between those who belong as members of a group and those who do not.²³ These boundaries become meaningful as they influence matters regarding group inclusion or exclusion and the treatment of those who fall into different categories.²⁴ Boundary setting is thus a “process of social comparison” that distinguishes the group from outsiders.²⁵ While qingzhen can mark the boundary of a common Hui identity and unify diverse expressions of Huiness (as Gladney claims), these diverse expressions also establish internal boundaries along competing cleavages of class, gender, sect, and region, among others. Interactions between these groups of Hui from different backgrounds reopen the contestation of Hui identity, offering competing understandings of which daily practices define the boundaries of Hui identity and what level of importance ought to be assigned to observing them.

In promoting transformation of urban spaces and sponsoring the internal migration in Hui communities across the country, CCP policy sparks renewed contestation of the boundaries of Hui identity. Ethnic actors offering competing views of how to properly express Hui identity generate a multitude of understandings of Huiness. Because debate unfolds around internal identity cleavages that produce intragroup boundaries, conflict concerning Hui identity rarely targets the state. By allowing such competition over what ought to stand as the markers of identity, the CCP effectively manages ethnic affairs in Hui communities without drawing organized resistance to the policies it implements. Though tenuous, such conduct of ethnic politics enables the CCP to continue to promote legitimizing narratives about the unity and stability produced by the Party’s leadership.

Understanding these dynamics requires an in-depth examination of how ethnic politics unfold in the midst of the “quiet” moments of ordinary life. Pictures of ethnic politics that privilege observations of ethnic minority resistance to the state and its policies present conflict as an inevitable outcome. Those instances where states—especially those with authoritarian governments—successfully exert control over the management of ethnic politics go overlooked by the literature, leaving questions about day-to-day authoritarian governance largely unanswered. Further, cases that examine only instances of activated ethnic mobilization risk reifying or essentializing ethnic identity. If scholarship depicts both the state and ethnic minority groups as monolithic actors locked in opposition, it misses important opportunities to understand how intragroup differences exert a profound influence on the conduct of ethnic politics. To avoid reifying ethnic groups by assuming they are “real entities” rather than products of social construction, I explore how daily practices reflect the fluid, contested nature of ethnic identity.²⁶ Doing so enables me to develop greater understanding of why, how, and when feelings of attachment to the group—or “groupness”— are most salient.²⁷ This is the course taken by a growing body of scholarship in the study of nationalism and ethnic politics that focuses on the routine context of the everyday and seeks to expand observations of ethnic politics beyond these rare moments of heightened salience.²⁸

QUIET POLITICS AMONG CHINA’S FAMILIAR STRANGERS: THE CASE OF THE HUI

The small Muslim Commodity Service Shop (Musilin Yongpin Fuwubu), which sells souvenirs just inside the front gate of the Niu Jie Mosque (Niujie Libasi) in Beijing, offers very few wares of interest to nonbelievers. I was told as much by the middle-aged woman who ran the sales counter. On a particularly hot Wednesday afternoon in mid-August 2015 the mosque stood mostly empty between afternoon and evening prayers. “You can buy these things,” she gestured, surveying the shop’s array of curios, including ceramic vases, prayer beads, headscarves, commentaries on the Qur’an, and incense. “But if you’re not Muslim, they really won’t have any significance. They won’t be of any use to you.” When I mentioned that I studied the Hui, she seemed to understand my curiosity and patiently began to explain how certain items (such as prayer hats and beaded prayer bracelets) fairly self-evidently aid believers in the practice of Islam.

I turned to a set of license-plate-size tin placards that displayed the words of the Bismillah, “In the name of God the most merciful and compassionate,” in both Arabic and Chinese.²⁹ “What are these for?” I inquired. Just as she did for all of my questions, she replied in simple terms: “We put these signs in the doorways of our homes and businesses to say ‘our family is Hui.’” This struck me as unusual. Respondents frequently blurred the line between Hui ethnicity and Islamic faith. However, Hui respondents rarely used the word Huizu to mean Muslim (Musilin). In fact, most did the reverse, not differentiating Hui from all other Muslims. “What’s the difference between Hui and Muslim?” I asked tentatively. “Well, they’re more or less the same,” she answered. “Here in China, we call Muslims ‘Hui.’” I nodded my head, although still confused by the exchange.³⁰

The conflation of Hui and Muslim illustrates the peculiar status of the Hui among China’s ethnic minorities and demonstrates why the Hui present an ideal case for examining noncontentious ethnic politics. Unlike the more publicized Uyghur and Tibetan cases, where contentious and occasionally violent politics reify and harden boundaries between minority groups and the majority Han and heighten the salience of ethnic difference, an examination of the Hui case reveals subtler political processes. The absence of recent violent conflict between Hui and the party-state, along with the sociocultural heterogeneity of Hui communities, provides an opportunity to break new ground in the study of ethnic politics. Thus, the Hui represent a “most likely case,” as the state’s attempts to harden the boundaries of identity suggests a scenario where conflict is expected. Similarly, the history of tension between Hui and Han and the cultural closeness of the groups suggest that the Hui present a most likely case for heightening the salience of ethnic boundaries that differentiate between majority and minority.³¹

One of China’s largest ethnic minority groups, the Hui are often the most prominent minority group in the Han-dominated, eastern, coastal regions of the country. The 2010 census indicated a total Hui population of over 10.5 million dispersed throughout the territory of the current PRC (see table I.1).³² The Hui differ from other groups designated by the CCP as minzu in several ways.³³ Unlike the nine other Islamic minority groups recognized by the Chinese government,³⁴ all of which possess some other unifying marker of identity, such as language, which differentiates them from the majority Han in formal ethnic categorizations, the Hui are distinguished by religion alone. By contrast, the party-state considers the Hui a “Chinese-speaking ethnicity” (Hanyu minzu)—a quality they share with the Han—officially setting them apart from the rest of China’s minority groups.³⁵

The position of the Hui relative to the majority Han, as well as to other Islamic minzu—such as Uyghurs, Dongxiang, or Salar—reflects both longterm distancing from the majority and historical uncertainty regarding relationships to their coreligionists. Prior to solidification of Huizu as a category by the CCP, the designation Hui Hui encompassed all Muslims, regardless of ethnicity. The first recorded use of Hui Hui in Chinese sources dates to the late eleventh or early twelfth century.³⁶ Later, under the ethnic class system imposed by the ruling Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), Muslims who intermarried with Chinese and their descendants fell into the category of semu (a broad caste whose approximate meaning translates to “assorted categories”), a designation that encompassed other non-Han subjects of the Mongol court, including Central Asian Turkic troops and others.³⁷ Though such distinctions separated them as something other than simply “Chinese,” Hui Hui did not become a consistent term for Chinese-speaking Muslims until the late thirteenth century.³⁸

By the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), Islam frequently appears in records of the time as Huijiao or “the teaching of the Hui.”³⁹ However, records from the late Qing, most especially those from Xinjiang, suggest that despite the broad label Hui, clear linguistic and cultural divisions separated Sinophone Muslims and Turkic speakers of Chaghatay.⁴⁰ Elsewhere Hui served as an overarching category, with subgroups using a variety of terms to distinguish themselves along linguistic lines.⁴¹ Thus, the status of Hui during the late Qing does not appear to be a solidified ethnic identity but rather a term whose meaning varied relative to context.⁴²

TABLE I.1. Hui population by province

Note: AR = autonomous region.

Source: People’s Republic of China, National Bureau of Statistics, “Sixth National Population Census of the People’s Republic of China, 2010,” Beijing, 2013.

During the Republican era (1911–49), the successors to the Qing held political ambitions to build a Han-centered Chinese nation-state, a more formal ethnic classification system.⁴³ Accordingly, the new state portrayed China as the “Republic of Five Peoples” (Wuzu Gonghe Guo), reapplying the broad designation of Hui for all Muslims.⁴⁴ As defined by Sun Yat-sen’s wuzu model, Hui primarily implied Turkic-speaking Muslims.⁴⁵ Debate ensued ever the status of Sinophone Muslims, whom some Muslim intellectuals regarded merely as Han converts.⁴⁶ Others argued for their inclusion in a separate, distinct category.⁴⁷ Under the rule of the Beiyang government (1912–28), established in Beijing after the fall of the Qing under the military leadership of Yuan Shikai and his clique of generals, demands grew to treat Hui as two categories of identity: one that denoted ethnicity and was primarily composed of Turkic-speaking Muslims from Xinjiang, and another that denoted religious identity made up primarily of Sinophone Muslims from Inner China.⁴⁸ Later, after the Nationalists (Kuomintang) led by Chiang Kai-shek regained control of the government in 1928, state policy denoted Chinese-speaking Muslims as Han, owing largely to Chiang’s Han-centric ideological nationalism, which stressed assimilation.⁴⁹

After the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, the category Huizu gained further legitimacy as the newly empowered CCP expanded the classification system and recognized differences within China’s Islamic communities. Catering to minorities by offering recognition—and in some cases autonomy—became a key part of CCP strategy.⁵⁰ Thus, under the CCP, Hui sought and were granted status as a nationality distinct from both the Han and other Muslims.⁵¹

The CCP’s ethnic propaganda frequently exalts the Hui as model patriots whose contributions to the construction of the current Chinese state evidences their devotion to the unity of all of China’s minzu. The Chinese state frequently invokes historical examples, like that of Zheng He (1371–1433), the legendary Muslim admiral of the Ming dynasty who sailed tribute voyages on the Indian Ocean, as testament to the long-standing devotion of the Hui to the Chinese state. Even more complex Hui historical figures, such as Ma Bufang (1903–75), the Nationalist-aligned warlord who served as governor of Qinghai from 1938 to 1949, are often presented by the CCP as patriotic heroes for their efforts in fighting the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45).⁵² As recently as 2016, Hui mosques throughout the country displayed state propaganda imploring the Hui to ai guo, ai jiao (love your country, love your faith), rhetorically placing devotion to the state on an equal footing with devotion to Islam. As a result, many Han regard the Hui as essentially assimilated. This perceived closeness of the Hui to the state, and the notion that the Hui receive favorable treatment by the state as a reward, frequently earns scorn from their Muslim coreligionists. Some Uyghurs use the word watermelon as a slur against the Hui, maintaining that the Hui are “green (i.e., Muslim) on the outside but red (i.e., communist) on the inside” and implying that Hui loyalties lie first and foremost with the state rather than with Islam.⁵³

Such one-dimensional depictions of the Hui sweep aside a much more complicated historical picture marked by rebellion and resistance. Throughout the nineteenth century, sectarian conflicts between Hui groups led to violent unrest in both the northwest and the southwest, ultimately resulting in forceful, bloody suppression by the armies of the ruling Qing dynasty.⁵⁴ During the Beiyang period, the clique led by the family of warlord Ma Qi and other elite Hui generals enmeshed themselves in the Nationalist leadership structure and actively participated in the nation-building efforts in the northwest.⁵⁵ During the ensuing Chinese Civil War, the Ma generals’ loyalty to the Nationalists and their ideological commitment to promoting the fusion of Islamic reformism and Chinese nationalism made them dogged opponents of the CCP.⁵⁶ The Communist victory in 1949 again fractured Hui communities and complicated relations between Hui and the state. Some, like Ma Liang and Ma Hongkui, staged insurgencies against the CCP in the northwest and along the Sino-Burmese border, liaising with Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists as late as 1954.⁵⁷

In the early days of the PRC the CCP’s ethnicization of Hui identity caused disruption and stirred up discontent by decoupling Hui identity from religion.⁵⁸ The intensity of the Party’s hostility toward the Hui increased such that by 1957, the danger of severe repression made openly practicing Islam prohibitively costly.⁵⁹ While heavy-handed suppression of religious expression largely muted Hui resistance to the state, a few notable outbursts occurred during the late stages of the Mao era. Notably, the Shadian Incident of 1975 saw the state’s People’s Liberation Army clash with Hui villagers in the southwestern province of Yunnan in a bloody conflict that left hundreds dead.⁶⁰

Thus, even though uprisings largely ended during the era of Reform and Opening (1978–present) and the Hui—to a large degree—have been assimilated into Chinese society, as descendants of foreign Muslims they have rarely been truly accepted as countrymen by the Han. Instead, the group’s current designation as Huizu—an ethnic identity distinct from other Islamic minorities and implying Sinophone Muslims—is the final product of centuries of sustained cultural evolution that began with the Hui being conceived of as “foreign guests” ( fanke). After generations of intermarriage with local Chinese, the Hui have come to be conceived of as “familiar strangers,” an institutionalized “other” at once similar to and distinct from the majority Han.⁶¹

Beyond the CCP’s whitewashing of a much more complicated past, such monolithic depictions of the Hui neglect the high levels of sociocultural diversity within the Hui community itself.⁶² Unlike China’s other ethnic minority groups, the Hui do not share a common territorial homeland. Similarly, as descendants of Muslims who blended into Chinese society through generations of intermarriage, Hui claim descent from people of a number of different linguistic backgrounds and ancestral places.⁶³ Because of these disparate points of historic origin, Hui communities exist in all corners of the country. However, the northwest, in particular the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu and the autonomous regions of Ningxia and Xinjiang, hold the most numerous populations.

Given such wide geographic dispersion and disparate ancestral origins, the Hui encompass a broad and diverse array of cultural and linguistic traditions. Some Hui communities bear the stamp of Sinicization as the product of generations of cohabitation with Han and the efforts of Hui intellectuals to demonstrate the compatibility of Chinese Islam with Daoist and Confucian traditions.⁶⁴ Elsewhere, however, the cultural and linguistic traditions of the Hui reflect the group’s heterogeneity. Pockets of Tibetan- and Mongolianspeaking Hui scattered on China’s western periphery belie the oversimplified characterization of the group as “Chinese-speaking Muslims.” For example, communities of Tibetanized Hui in northwestern Yunnan and eastern Qinghai (where they are referred to as “Tibetan Hui,” or Zang Hui), speak Tibetan dialects, wear Tibetan costume, and in some cases have adopted Tibetan surnames.⁶⁵ Nor is Hui religious tradition uniform. Many Hui claim they are nonpracticing and essentially secularized. Among observant Hui sectarian differences divide the community. In Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in southern Gansu, Hui belong to a plethora of different Sufi lineages, while only a few hours away in Xining, the majority of Hui identify as belonging to the strictly non-Sufi, Yihewani (Ikhwan) sect.⁶⁶

Such great differences in understanding what it means to be Hui are illustrative of the great diversity within the Hui populace. The incredible heterogeneity of the Hui demands that scholars problematize and investigate the significance of these internal differences and move beyond sweeping generalizations.⁶⁷ This study provides a thorough examination of Hui in search of a greater understanding of how this broad, multifaceted community defines the boundaries of its identity.

CASE SELECTION: EXAMINING EVERYDAY ETHNIC PRACTICES IN URBAN HUI ENCLAVES

Hui neighborhoods present ideal cases for studying the impact of daily ethnic politics in the context of urbanization because, in many Chinese cities, Hui neighborhoods function as important loci of interaction and boundary setting for the group and supply resources for the observance of a faith-based lifestyle. The neighborhood itself provides the group with social resources necessary for the reproduction of the imagined community.⁶⁸ I identify Hui enclave neighborhoods as culturally defined spaces, usually surrounding one or several community mosques and comprising residences and businesses that facilitate the daily observance of Islamic religious and cultural practices (e.g., halal grocers, restaurants, prayer goods stores). In some cases, street names—such as Xining’s Qingzhen Xiang (Qinghzen Alley), Jinan’s Libaisi Jie (Mosque Street), and Beijing’s Jiaozi Hutong (Religious Education Alley)—may reveal the area’s ethnic significance.⁶⁹ The physical boundaries that mark these areas may be imprecise or frequently shifting, but they remain clear to the residents, who often explicitly name the area the Hui Quarter, as in Jinan and Xining. As Gillette suggests of Xi’an’s Huiminfang, despite a lack of officially recognized borders, locals are nonetheless able to identify the overlap of cultural and geographic boundaries and intuitively understand where the neighborhood begins and ends.⁷⁰ Close proximity to other group members imparts a sense of comfort and convenience to those who reside in such communities.⁷¹ Thus, enclaves become crucial sites for preserving cultural traditions and sustaining connections to ethnic identity.⁷²

The proliferation of Hui enclaves in cities occurs largely to accommodate the observance of Islamic lifestyle habits. In the Hui community on Niu Jie in Beijing, the concentration of co-ethnics within the same neighborhood enables Beijing’s Hui community to maintain their Islamic identity by keeping a halal diet, patronizing businesses that sell ethnic goods, finding partners from within the group to marry, and sending their children to Islamic schools.⁷³ The streets adjacent to Niu Jie Mosque—the largest and most famous mosque in Beijing—are lined with halal grocers, bakeries, and restaurants, and department stores that cater to Muslim clientele, reinforcing the importance that ethnicity plays in residents’ daily lives.⁷⁴ Enclave communities also create economic opportunities for entrepreneurs whose goods and services provide vital resources in relatively protected economic opportunity structures where they are in high demand.⁷⁵ In Xining, the city’s Hui enclave spawned a number of ethnic restaurants, hostels, and transportation businesses and allowed Hui locals to continue in traditional occupations as traders and entrepreneurs.⁷⁶

The spread of these Hui “ethnopreneurs” increases the visibility of Hui communities nationwide.⁷⁷ A mark of successful ethnic branding and widespread cultural diffusion into mainstream Chinese society, Hui restaurants serving halal dishes, in particular the famous niurou lamian (handmade beef noodles), sprout up in nearly every city in the country.⁷⁸ Prior to a nationwide campaign of de-Islamification in 2018, the typical green signs adorned with Chinese Islamic calligraphy used by Hui restaurants made them instantly recognizable.⁷⁹ Even in heavily Han Chinese eastern cities, like Shandong’s capital, Jinan, Hui ethnic businesses and places of association clearly distinguish enclave communities. Jinan’s Hui Quarter encircles the Great Southern Mosque (Jinan Qingzhen Nandasi), one of the oldest and most important in eastern China. Despite the mosque’s prominence, the local populace knows the neighborhood mostly as a place where they can get barbecued mutton. Indeed, Jinan’s taxi drivers, when asked to transport passengers to the neighborhood, frequently confirm that those passengers want to go to “the place where you can eat barbecue” (chi shaokao de difang).⁸⁰

To assess how changes to the geographic and demographic makeup of these enclave spaces affected the daily practice of Hui identity for those living within them, I undertook extended fieldwork in urban Hui neighborhoods. I took careful steps to ensure my fieldwork sampled a broadly representative and theoretically relevant collection of Hui communities. I conducted in-depth case studies in four cities—Beijing, Jinan in Shandong, Xining in Qinghai, and Yinchuan in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region—between July 2015 and July 2016. I chose these sites (shown in Map I.1) with care following preliminary field research conducted between July and August 2014. In addition, I made ethnographic observations in Nanjing in Jiangsu, Weizhou township in Tongxin County in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu, and Xunhua Salar Autonmous County and Hualong Hui Autonomous County in Qinghai. In total, I conducted 154 semistructured interviews. (See appendix A for details.) These sites were selected because they each meet a set of common criteria. Each city is a provincial capital or province-level municipality and thus may be considered urban centers. In each community the Hui have a strong historical presence and are the second most populous ethnic group behind the majority Han.⁸¹ Additionally, each city is home to a notable and important mosque around which the Hui community has traditionally been centered.⁸²

MAP I.1. Maps of case study sites. (a) Beijing case study site; (b) Jinan case study site; (c) Yinchuan case study site; (d) Xining case study site.

These cases present variation in several key aspects. First, the selected cases vary in terms of demographic configuration, falling into one of three categories: (1) isolated Hui communities, (2) titular autonomous Hui communities, and (3) multiethnic communities. Isolated communities are those in which the Hui represent the only substantial minority ethnic group and comprise less than 5 percent of the total population. In these communities, Hui culture is implicitly held up as “other,” in contrast to the majority Han culture, and Hui cultural visibility remains low. In titular autonomous communities, however, the state permits Hui limited ability to make preferential policies on the basis of ethnicity. In these communities, the state affords prominence of place for public (if superficial) displays of Hui culture, privileging Hui identity vis-à-vis other groups, especially the Han. In multiethnic communities where the Hui are one of two or more ethnic minority groups that comprise greater than 5 percent of the total population, contrasts are drawn not just between Hui and Han but between Hui and those other ethnic groups. In these communities, the Hui may be grouped with others as part of a highly visible, broadly construed, generalized “minority” in comparison to the majority Han. Of these three types, isolated Hui communities occur most frequently throughout China. While Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Yunnan all contain Hui autonomous communities at the subprefectural level (i.e., government-designated autonomous counties or districts), much of China’s Hui population does not live in an autonomous community. Likewise, while Hui communities in Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Yunnan coexist alongside various other ethnic groups, Hui in most other parts of China are surrounded by the majority Han.

In addition to demographic diversity, the selected case sites also provide substantial geographic variation between eastern and western China. Historically, Chinese ruling dynasties regarded the west as not just peripheral in physical distance from the coastal provinces, but also as culturally distant.⁸³ Thus, east and west are still often read, even in contemporary China, as markers for closeness to Chinese civilization. The sites selected for this study exhibit this geographic range: Jinan and Beijing are eastern Chinese cities; Yinchuan is situated between the central plains and the northwest; Xining lies out on the northwestern periphery.

OVERVIEW OF CASE SITES

In Beijing, the heart of the Hui community lies on Niu Jie, located to the southwest of the city’s center at the edge of Xicheng District.⁸⁴ Built around the Niu Jie Mosque—Beijing’s earliest, built in approximately 916—the neighborhood shows evidence of concentrated Muslim inhabitation since at least the twelfth century.⁸⁵ Then, as now, the neighborhood stood on the periphery of central Beijing. By the early seventeenth century, the city had developed other prominent Muslim enclaves, such as the community at Madian, located just to the north of the former imperial center in today’s Haidian District.⁸⁶

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw large-scale alterations that dramatically transformed much of the city.⁸⁷ Since the early 2000s, reconstruction plans have altered the makeup of both the Niu Jie and Madian communities. On Niu Jie the construction of new apartment buildings was undertaken to replace single-floor pingfang-style homes. The project was undertaken with the intent of allowing locals to stay in the area, and well over half of the original residents have moved to new housing in the neighborhood. Buildings constructed since 2002 feature Islamic motifs and intend to solidify the neighborhood as a Muslim area. On Madian, by contrast, road-widening projects dispersed the Hui community, and now the mosque is the only space in the area that reflects Hui heritage.⁸⁸ Respondents in the neighborhoods note that, with the decline of Madian’s cultural vitality, the axis of Beijing’s Hui community now tilts strongly in the direction of Niu Jie.⁸⁹ Though many of the Hui living in the Niu Jie enclave consider themselves local Beijingers, in recent years in-migration of Hui from rural areas changed the demographics of residents.⁹⁰ The neighborhood attracts Hui from throughout China who have come to the capital to conduct business, to do temporary work (dagong), or to work in the government. While former Hui spaces like Madian, Douban Hutong, and Dong Si decline, Niu Jie is an isolated island of Hui identity in the midst of Beijing’s cityscape—one in many ways defined by traditional Han culture.

Likewise, in Jinan the Hui Quarter represents the city’s only substantial, concentrated, ethnic minority population center. Historically, additional pockets of Hui residences appeared in Dikou Zhuang in the northwest of the city, but development undertaken in the past thirty years dispersed them.⁹¹ Though small enclaves of ethnic minorities exist throughout the city, Han comprise the overwhelming majority of the city’s population.⁹² As Jinan is a far less cosmopolitan city than Beijing, the city’s Hui Quarter provides the only space in which Han residents routinely encounter non-Han culture.

Shandong has grown rapidly over the past thirty years, becoming one of the country’s most economically developed, wealthy, and cosmopolitan provinces.⁹³ Though the city’s population is overwhelmingly Han, Jinan is also home to a long-standing Hui community that, according to some sources, dates back to the Song dynasty (960–1279).⁹⁴ At the turn of the twentieth century, Jinan’s Islamic Association served as a locus for the production of important Islamic scholarship.⁹⁵

In Yinchuan, by contrast, the Hui comprise roughly one third (36.8 percent) of the total population.⁹⁶ The city lies just inside the far western reaches of the Ming dynasty Great Wall, close to the edge of the Mongolian steppe. As such, cultural interchange between China and Inner Asia has defined the city’s culture.⁹⁷ In the contemporary context Nigxia serves as a nexus for Chinese and Muslim cultures, with exchanges flowing in both directions.⁹⁸

Yinchuan’s political status as the capital city of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region reflects this position of in-betweeness. Within the Autonomous Region, the Hui ostensibly retain some rights to self-governance, and as the region’s capital Yinchuan acts as a showcase for Hui culture. In principle, ethnic minority cadres cooperate in the creation of policies that would accommodate local ethnic or religious traditions. In practice, however, avenues for genuine autonomy are limited. Visible markers of Hui identity, like monuments or street signs in Arabic, are dispersed throughout the city, but often in superficial, patriotic ways. Moreover, critics assert that opportunities for genuine representation for the Hui in local government amount to little more than symbolism. Minority cadres are expected to toe the Party line.⁹⁹

Farther west, in Xining, the dynamics of interethnic relations become more complicated, as a multiplicity of ethnic groups stand in contrast to the Han majority. Located in Qinghai on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, the city falls within the geographic northwest. The region traditionally marked the edges of the Chinese civilizational and administrative sphere. Well into the Qing dynasty, the Chinese understood the Ganqing (a colloquial portmanteau of Gansu-Qinghai) region in which Xining sat as a culturally alien border region. Throughout much of its history the region served as a node of interaction between empires.¹⁰⁰ The multicultural diversity and economic vitality of trade-route cities in the northwest, like Xining, ensured connection to vital trade networks and allowed these outposts to remain influential despite their peripheral locations.¹⁰¹ To the Han, however, Xining represented a remote point on the edge of empire. Incorporation of the northwest occurred largely through conquest and annexation.¹⁰² Han viewed these boundaries as cultural as well as geographic. Small differences in lifestyle between different groups of Han arriving from the east paled in comparison to those differences that separated them from the nomadic pastoralist communities of the Plateau. Such contrasts leveled the cultural distances between Han and increased them between Han and others.¹⁰³

In the early twenty-first century, Xining’s ethnically diverse demographics reflect the city’s historic status as a place of exchange. In addition to its sizable Hui community, the city is home to communities of the Tibetan, Salar, and Tu (Mongour) ethnicities, as well as the majority Han. The eastern Chengdong District not only contains a prominent Hui Quarter centered around the Dongguan Mosque but is also home to a small Tibetan enclave and Qinghai Nationalities University. Thus, while the interethnic relations in Jinan and Yinchuan primarily unfold in interactions between Han and Hui, Xining presents an ethnic mosaic with many different components, creating a more complex picture.

MAP I.2. Location of case study sites within China.

The geographic range of these cases provides variation in physical landscape and level of economic development but also cultural proximity to “civilization” as historically defined by Han scholars and administrators. Map I.2 shows locations of these cities within China.

Providing variation on a number of dimensions such as these allows for a theoretically significant and broadly representative account of the everyday ethnic politics of Hui enclaves in the context of rapid urbanization, while still allowing for nuance and contextual richness. Table I.2 illustrates these characteristics.

TABLE I.2. Characteristics of case studies

BETTER CITY, BETTER LIFE? STUDYING EVERYDAY ETHNIC POLITICS IN THE CONTEXT OF URBANIZATION

Urban spaces provide two distinct advantages for conducting ethnographic observations of everyday ethnicity.¹⁰⁴ First, cities provide an especially illuminating context for observing daily ethnic practices. In concentrating people in large numbers, cities serve as “repositories of cultural identity.” In these spaces, identity and physical boundaries often overlap, as identities become mapped onto specific parts of cities. Where associations between space and ethnicity develop, differentiation—both physical and cultural—between self and other may become more starkly pronounced.¹⁰⁵ Enclaves with high concentrations of ethnic minority group members act as a forum for contestation of the content and boundaries of groups, creating spaces for consumption of, performance of, and participation in identity. Urban development, as it changes and alters the physical landscape, becomes a field for the assertion, negotiation, commodification, and redefinition of ethnic boundaries, making them more visible. Second, because states frequently use programs of urban development to centralize state power and increase the state’s ability to exercise control, choosing case sites where urbanization is ongoing allows researchers to study interactions between ethnic actors and the state. The deeply political nature of urbanization makes urban renewal and city planning powerful tools in the hands of the state. Throughout history, centralizing states have frequently implemented such measures as tools for increasing the power of the state to exercise control.¹⁰⁶ Rendering a city more “legible” is thus a primary objective of states.¹⁰⁷

In addition to centralizing authority by reshaping urban space, states may attempt to exert control by reconfiguring urban populations. Migration therefore makes up a second, powerfully transformative facet of urbanization. The state often incentivizes migration through economic means. It may provide migrants—especially those moving to regions where ethnic minorities comprise a majority of the population—with incentives in the form of jobs, housing subsidies, and preferential language policy.¹⁰⁸ In this sense, migration occurs neither as a purely strategic, individual choice nor as the inevitable result of macrosociological phenomena, but instead because of a combination of both.¹⁰⁹

In China, programs of urban transformation take two primary forms: chai qian (demolition and relocation style urban renewal) and the migration of the liudong renkou (transient population). Both of these types of urbanization form a backdrop against which everyday ethnic politics unfold. (See table I.2 regarding how these conditions unfold across various case sites.) This context informs the conduct of ethnic boundary formation and the practice of daily ethnic politics in China.

“CHAI QIAN” AND “CHAI NA’ER?”: PROCESSES OF URBAN RENEWAL IN CHINA

As I strolled down the gravel path that cut through the construction site, wind blew clouds of dust through what remained of the Beida Huaishu neighborhood, located just west of Jinan’s central train station. A few years prior to that afternoon in November 2015, clusters of small, aging pingfang houses dotted the neighborhood. Now a forest of high-rise apartments stood in their place, many still without tenants. In the center of the scene, green scaffolding covered the just recognizable frame of a mosque, its minaret and domes not quite finished. As I approached the site, the foreman of the construction crew approached me. When I asked what had happened to the old mosque that stood on the site, a building dating back to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), he remarked that it, like all the other houses in the neighborhood, had fallen victim to the widening of the adjacent thoroughfare, Jing Shi’er Lu, a few years prior. The site’s previous mosque would be replaced with the larger, “Arabicstyle” building currently under construction.¹¹⁰ I asked him if the residents of the neighborhood, a small Hui enclave on the city’s western edge, would be able to return after the buildings were complete. “Yes,” he responded, seeming somewhat unconvinced by his own answer.

The scene at the site of the former Beida Huaishu Mosque recurs throughout urban China. Over the past few decades, the country’s transformation into a primarily urbanized society captured the attention of policymakers, journalists, and academics alike. As China builds modern infrastructure in its cities, observers scrutinize the means and methods of construction to an increasingly high degree. As in the Beida Huaishu community, urban renewal frequently comes in the form of demolition and relocation, in which old or dilapidated structures are dismantled in order to clear space for new residences or commercial property. This kind of destruction and rebirth of neighborhoods occurs in nearly every urban center in China.

Unsurprisingly, when asked to describe the changes in their neighborhoods over the past ten years, Chinese residents often mention demolition and relocation among the first differences from the past. In the postreform era, demolition (chai) was so pervasive that Beijing was likened to “a city of chai.”¹¹¹ Similarly, Peter Hessler notes in his memoirs of his time in Beijing that demolition was so prominent during the early 2000s that residents began to quip that their country was called Chai Na’er?, or “Demolish Where?”¹¹²

At first, the local government relocated displaced residents from these neighborhoods to new apartments in a different location. However, as the process of urban renewal became more responsive to market demands, the government abandoned the practice of relocation and replaced it with a policy that paid displaced residents a stipend for the purpose of purchasing new homes.¹¹³ Such tactics suggest a form of “repressive assistance” in which the regime uses the targeted distribution of compensation as a warning against resistance meant to preemptively stifle dissent that might cause instability.¹¹⁴ This shift from relocation to compensation illustrates a larger dialectic between notions of community and property and mirrors the tensions between state planning and market economics present throughout the Chinese economic system.¹¹⁵

Often, official propaganda heralds demolition and relocation projects as intrinsically linked to the realization of a better, more beautiful, more livable cityscape. Such slogans frame the process as one of beautification that requires mutual cooperation in order to yield mutual benefit. For example, a large billboard near a construction site in the northern suburbs of Shandong’s capital of Jinan proclaimed, “The purpose of demolition and relocation is to allow the construction of a better place.”¹¹⁶ The residents of redeveloped neighborhoods often lack the financial resources to share in or benefit from the “better places” built in place of their former homes. The compensation that most of the lower-income residents living in redeveloped neighborhoods receive fails to cover the cost of the upscale or luxury residences that replace their old homes. Consequentially, the process of demolition and relocation effectively brings about the gentrification and increased economic stratification of the neighborhoods in which it occurs.¹¹⁷ Furthermore, the relocation of poorer residents to outlying suburbs and wealthier residents to redeveloped areas in the urban core results in increased class differentiation between neighborhoods throughout China’s cities.¹¹⁸

Increasingly, urban renewal is a flashpoint for social protest among residents unwilling to leave their homes.¹¹⁹ The emergence of “nail houses” (dingzi hu)—those belonging to citizens who refuse to vacate, even while foundations for new construction are dug out around them—has captured international attention. Faced with no clear legal recourse, citizens are often forced to take extralegal action to defend their property rights.¹²⁰

In ethnic minority communities, urban renewal programs often seek to standardize non-Han culture, crystallizing it in a politically correct form that compliments the state’s narratives. For example, a pervasive modernization campaign begun in the early 2000s transformed the Uyghur-majority Old Town neighborhood of Kashgar, enabling further state supervision of ethnic politics and regulation of Uyghur identity. By demolishing traditional buildings, widening and straightening streets, and repurposing buildings (e.g., turning community mosques into cafés) the project formally established state control over the expression of Uyghur identity and sought to prevent the proliferation of nonapproved forms of local culture. Unsurprisingly, locals met the campaign with antipathy.¹²¹

BUILDING NEW CITIES FOR CHINA’S “TRANSIENT POPULATION”: MIGRATION AND URBANIZATION

In addition to the physical reshaping of cities through chai qian, the state changes China’s urban landscape through the movement of people. Over the past forty years, internal migration in China has precipitated a massive shift in the country’s demographics. By 2011, the percentage of the population living within cities surpassed those living in the countryside for the first time ever.¹²² The flow of migrants arriving at the field sites fluctuated in the decade prior to my fieldwork. (See appendix C for specific figures.) Across sites, the inflow of migrants hit high marks in the middle years of the 2000s, slowing somewhat by the time I entered the field in 2015. In Jinan, migration peaked in 2006 with over 150,000 migrants arriving in the city and declined to just under 50,000 by 2016. In Xining, rates of arriving migrants moved up and down: over 120,000 migrants arrived in 2006, marking a high point for the city, which saw rates decline below 50,000 within the next two years. A spike in migration occurred in Xining in 2013, with almost 70,000 arrivals, but the number fell to about 36,000 by 2016. In Beijing, rates of migration remained between 150,000 and 200,000 arrivals per year between 2006 and 2016, with a high of over 210,000 in 2011. Though the rates of migration began to slow by the middle of the 2010s, across field sites people I spoke to described the net effect of such large numbers of migrants moving to their cities. In total, over 2 million migrants arrived in Beijing between 2006 and 2016, while over 830,000 arrived in Jinan and 569,000 arrived in Xining. Such a massive shift of people from small, primarily agricultural villages to cities brought with it dramatic socioeconomic changes. Many studies conducted over the past few decades document the challenges posed by the so-called transient population engaged in migration from China’s villages to its cities and from its periphery to its coast.¹²³ These studies detail the struggles migrants face finding places of residence, receiving social service provisions, providing for the care of their children, finding steady sources of income, and surviving on the margins of urban society. However, the impact of migration on ethnic identity in minority communities, from which many migrants originate, remains comparatively unexamined.

Indeed, even though ethnic minorities constitute a lower percentage of the population than Han, they migrate at higher rates in similar demographic categories, especially at the lower end of income and education spectrums.¹²⁴ Migration among ethnic minorities occurs mostly when rural migrants move to urban settings, usually leaving the peripheral west to arrive in cities on the comparatively developed eastern coast. Mandatory or state-compelled relocation does not drive minorities to migrate as much as the dictates of the market and the availability of economic opportunities. Moving from rural, primarily agricultural communities to urban spaces where more opportunities to engage in wage labor or entrepreneurship exist affords minority migrants the promise of upward socioeconomic mobility. Once they reach new, urban environments, minority migrants depend upon ethnic networks to secure jobs and housing and to establish themselves in unfamiliar settings.¹²⁵

After arrival, migrants face difficulties in dealing with prejudice and discrimination from locals. Much of this conflict arises from the wealth gap between migrants and locals and often overlaps with differences in ethnic identification. “Sons of the soil” conflicts occur more frequently in locations where economic discrepancies exist between locals and migrants of different ethnic groups. In China, where locals are usually majority Han Chinese and migrants often belong to ethnic minority groups, migration may lead to conflict over job opportunities, land rights, cultural status, and government policies.¹²⁶ Beyond discrimination, minority migrants also frequently express fear of cultural degradation as they leave their homes to live in Handominated communities. After moving to the city many migrants lose touch with cultural institutions or their mother language.¹²⁷

These difficulties affect both those who move outside of their home province to far-flung destinations like Beijing or Shanghai and also those who move from small villages to provincial capitals. For example, a respondent in Yinchuan observed that Hui migrants who came to the city from rural villages within the province often struggled to adapt to life in the region’s capital. He explained that for rural migrants whose lives in the village revolved around the habits and routines of single-story courtyards, living in high-rise apartments was disorienting. Being disconnected from the ground, he reasoned, caused many of them to feel as if they had lost the roots that held them in place.¹²⁸ Even when migrants move within the province, they still may feel alienation in the place of their arrival.

Both urban renewal and migration exert profound and transformative effects on ethnic identity. Given the importance of the cultural institutions at the core of most Hui neighborhoods (e.g., halal butchers, mosques), the urban landscape provides an illuminating backdrop against which everyday ethnic politics may unfold. Hui neighborhoods provide an excellent case for examining the conduct of ethnic politics in the context of urbanization.

METHODOLOGY: STUDYING CHINA’S ETHNIC POLITICS ETHNOGRAPHICALLY

Unlike studies of contentious politics, where relevant evidence occurs in easily discernable bursts of intense action, documentation and analysis of everyday politics requires special considerations. Taking the framework of everyday ethnicity seriously entails reconceptualizing what scholars should consider a basic unit of observation. Rather than focusing on individual actors or institutions, everyday ethnicity allows researchers to examine ethnicity via observations of practices.¹²⁹ Sociologists Jon E. Fox and Cynthia Miller-Idriss envision the nation as a “cultural construct of collective belonging realized and legitimated through institutional and discursive practices,” such as “talking,” “choosing,” “performing,” and “consuming” the nation.¹³⁰ Thus, observations of everyday ethnicity are practices that maintain ethnic boundaries. Table I.3 lists practices associated with each of Fox and Miller-Idriss’s categories.

TABLE I.3. Examples of everyday ethnic practices in Hui communities

Following Fox and Miller-Idriss’s example, my observations of Hui ethnicity focus “on the ways in which ethno-national idioms—once in circulation—are enacted and invoked by ordinary people in the routine contexts of their everyday lives.”¹³¹ To this end, my fieldwork sought to find the “micro-interactional moments” and “institutionally embedded and repetitive routines” that maintain ethnicity in quiet times.¹³²

However, when attempting to observe these types of practices, researchers must use caution. Studies that seek to measure the influence of ethnicity on a set of social phenomena (or vice versa) often suffer from a paradoxical condition: ethnicity is nowhere, and it is also everywhere. The ethnic significance of a particular event may be buried in hidden transcripts that prove difficult to unearth. In these cases, even the most sensitive and careful questioning may fail to yield an understanding of an event’s ethnic significance. Conversely, as Rogers Brubaker et al. caution, “Ethnicity is all too easy to find if one goes looking for it.”¹³³ Careless observations may imbue almost any action with ethnic significance.

I conducted observations in a variety of official and unofficial spaces where quotidian replications of ethnicity occur. While my status as a foreign non-Muslim perhaps most closely matches anthropologist H. Russell Bernard’s model of the participating observer—a category of ethnographers he characterizes as “outsiders who participate in some aspects of life around them and record what they can”—my identity limited my ability to embed in the community.¹³⁴ In particular, taboos on non-Muslims entering religious spaces in devout communities prohibited me from full participation in the manner usually described under the banner of participant observation. While I did eat, converse, walk, and live in the same communities as my respondents, my religious identity meant that I did not worship alongside them but rather observed from respectful distance. Though studies that gain participant access provide keen insight on the interaction of religious doctrine and ethnic identity, my observations yield insight related to more mundane, daily practices.¹³⁵ I also observed local institutions that provide official venues for the maintenance of ethnicity: mosques, schools, and museums. Additionally, I observed informal spaces where practices of consumerism and leisure reproduce and maintain identity: Hui restaurants, department stores, marketplaces, shops, and other businesses.

Verification of the insights I gained from field observations required targeted conversations with local residents.¹³⁶ Assessing the impact of urban renewal in Hui neighborhoods depended upon my ability to speak directly with local elites and important figures in the community. Local government officials and prominent community figures like imams, heads of local Hui or Islamic associations, and teachers provided vital perspectives that helped to confirm my account. Likewise, ordinary residents of the neighborhood, local entrepreneurs and small business owners, and members of the neighborhood’s working and professional community offered outlooks on daily ethnic practices that differed from those of elites. To provide a satisfactory account I strove to interview a diverse sampling of people and represent the wide diversity of opinion and difference in perspective that occurred even within the space of a small neighborhood.

Interviewers must be cautious about asking questions that might prompt interviewees to respond in ethnic terms. Thus, when formulating queries, I avoided making presuppositions about how respondents might view or understand subjects, particularly regarding abstractions like ethnicity. Purposefully invoking ethnicity threatened to skew respondents’ answers or lead me to interpret remarks in a way that a respondent would deem inappropriate.¹³⁷ Instead, I attempted to treat interviews as learning experiences in which I might encounter new or surprising information. This posture of “deliberate naiveté” prevents priming respondents to answer in a particular way.¹³⁸ Rather than imposing my own presuppositions on respondent’s remarks, I sought to listen for the significance offered by the interviewees, themselves.¹³⁹ Through careful probing and follow-up questions, I allowed the ethnic significance of responses to emerge naturally. Rather than directly questioning residents about their conceptions of their own ethnicity or how it is impacted by urban renewal, I tried to elicit such information indirectly. Posing questions that asked respondents to describe their daily habits, consumer purchases, relationships with neighbors, changes in the neighborhood over time, and other ostensibly nonethnic matters allowed for ethnicity to emerge organically, without prompting.¹⁴⁰ Analyzing the way in which ethnic frames were imposed or not imposed on these discussions yielded insights about the role played by ethnicity in the community. This approach produced a more nuanced account than the kind of rote or overly practiced answers that I might have gained through direct questioning.

In total, I conducted 154 semistructured interviews across all case sites. Through the use of snowball sampling, in which an initial respondent recommended and put me in contact with further respondents, I was able to speak with a diverse array of respondents from different regions, professions, genders, and age cohorts.¹⁴¹ Interviews were informal and conversational; in addition to set, planned questions I asked probing follow-up questions as interviews progressed. The conversations were conducted in standard Chinese (Putonghua; Mandarin) and ranged in length, some as brief as ten minutes, while one lasted over two hours. Where respondents consented, I recorded these interviews on my smartphone, and in all other cases interviews were reproduced from notes taken during the conversation or immediately afterward. These respondents represent a broad sampling of the Hui community and provide a thorough picture of the diversity of expressions of Hui identity.

The following chapters describe the everyday practices that maintain the boundaries of ethnic identity in urban Hui communities, as well as assess how China’s rapid urbanization impacts the way residents identify and contest these practices. These everyday practices represent the spectrum of ways in which ordinary urban Hui residents choose, talk about, consume, and perform identity in the course of their daily lives.