CHAPTER FOUR

CONSUMING

Islamic Purity and Dietary Habits

Across the table at Tongxin Chun, the famous Islamic restaurant in Yinchuan, my interviewee, the twenty-something son of the owner, took drags of his cigarette as he told me about his understanding of a qingzhen lifestyle. As the table’s automated lazy Susan whirred around, laden with numerous local delicacies made with mutton and beef, he said, “In a lot of Huis’ understanding, it’s just not eating pork that makes them Hui. In Yinchuan there are a lot of Hui like that. ‘I’m Hui, so I don’t eat pork.’ But if you ask them ‘What about God? What about speaking Arabic? What about praying?’ They won’t understand. What about fasting for Ramadan? They don’t understand. They only understand ‘I don’t eat pork, so therefore I’m Hui.”¹

Throughout my fieldwork, many respondents echoed these sentiments explicitly linking Hui identity to the observation of qingzhen dietary codes. In their view, a strict observance of qingzhen served as the primary connection to their ethnic identity. A Hui adjunct professor in Jinan remarked, for instance, “What I understand about being Hui, in terms of Islam, is that the most important thing is to not eat pork. Besides that, I really don’t know much.”²

The strength of the Islamic taboo on pork and alcohol and the visibility of qingzhen branding in Hui communities makes the observance of a proper halal diet one of the most noticeable features of Hui identity. The practice of buying qingzhen foodstuffs and eating at qingzhen restaurants is not just an act of religious observation but a means of ethnic differentiation. The Hui prohibition on eating ritually unclean items stands in especially stark contrast to the majority Han, who observe few, if any, dietary restrictions.³ Accordingly, the Chinese state seeks to promote and control the qingzhen food industry in order to showcase ethnic diversity and celebrate displays of ethnic differentiation that accord with its narrative of ethnic unity. Doing so allows the state to cast the development of the halal food industry as yet another benchmark in the state’s quest for inclusivity and progress.

However, inattention to the actual substance of creating a standardized qingzhen food certification process undercuts the state’s efforts to solidify and control the discourse over the form and expression of a qingzhen lifestyle. Instead, the lack of clear standards concerning qingzhen food opens up space for contestation of Hui identity and drawing of internal boundary lines. Hui from different regions, socioeconomic statuses, and levels of religiosity question how to properly observe and maintain a qingzhen diet and, by extension, Hui identity itself. Questions about whether Hui should consume alcohol or smoke while observing a qingzhen lifestyle, or if these practices should instead be considered haram (forbidden by Islamic law), divide Hui. While some respondents insisted that real Hui would fastidiously observe Qur’anic restrictions on diet, others were laxer. For instance, a teacher in Jinan in her late twenties, when asked what it meant to keep a qingzhen diet, shrugged and told me that she simply avoided eating pork and nothing more.⁴ The strictness of one’s observance of these dietary codes serves as a measuring stick for the strength of one’s identity, with more strict adherents labeling lenient observers as danhua, or diminished as Hui.

ETHNICITY AND EATING: DIETARY PRACTICES AND BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE

The power of food consumption to create distinct boundaries between self and other is especially strong in situations where religious faith makes impositions on dietary routines. Islam’s taboos on a number of ingredients, especially pork and alcohol, serve as bright and clear dividing lines between those who belong to the faith and those who do not. In Islam, cleanliness provides a foundation for belief and is regarded as “half of faith.” Thus, practicing Muslims regard maintaining a halal diet as not only a practical matter but also a means of ensuring a greater sense of spiritual purity.⁵ Consuming halal food serves as a clear marker of Islamic identity. Though the incredible breadth of items that may be considered halal limits entrepreneurs’ ability to establish it as a coherent brand, consumers treat halal as a brand that vouches for the quality, safety, and appropriateness of a product, especially in those Muslim communities surrounded by non-Muslims.⁶

Keeping a halal diet is a practice of consumption that requires the purchaser’s attention to specific qualities of the food, but also an act of ritual and devotion to the faith. Employing separate means of preparing and consuming food so as to avoid contaminating or making other items ritually “unclean” causes strong ideas of division between self and other to take root. The distinction between haram and halal “divides up the world for Muslims and relates to practically everything imaginable.”⁷ For instance, despite the fact that many Hui consume alcohol, jurisprudence in all Sunni schools of law unequivocally forbids drinking, regarding alcohol as impure (najasa) and considering anything it touches as contaminated.⁸ However, despite the seemingly binary nature of halal and haram, gray areas exist. Any number of items, including tobacco and shellfish, fall somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum.⁹

EATING “PURE” AND “TRUE”: HUI IDENTITY AND THE CENTRALITY OF QINGZHEN FOOD

In Hui communities the concept of qingzhen lies at the heart of debates concerning diet and identity. Though the term is frequently translated as “halal,” and Hui often use the terms qingzhen and halal (halali) interchangeably, some scholarly discussions draw distinctions between them. Several studies employ the more literal “pure and true” to define qingzhen in a way that encompasses more than just dietary codes and describes a more complete lifestyle.¹⁰ Gillette contends that to Hui respondents in Xi’an, qingzhen “transcended simple dietary restrictions” to govern matters such as how to prepare food, whom to share social spaces with, how to interact during business transactions, and how to conduct religious rituals.¹¹ As such it became a clear means of distinguishing Hui from others. Gladney interprets qingzhen as a framework that orders the moral universe and governs the lives of believers. Viewed this way, qingzhen is better understood as ritual and moral purity and authenticity that dictates how Hui should eat, pray, marry, trace their descent, and live their daily lives.¹²

In daily usage, however, the term usually refers to dietary matters and implies that food is permissible for Muslims to eat, due to either the ingredients used or the manner of food preparation. Starting in the early 2000s, as a result of extensive promotion by both local governments and Hui entrepreneurs, qingzhen became a byword for halal. In seeking to promote qingzhen as an international halal brand, these actors solidified the word’s associations with food preparation, establishing it as an easily replicable, recognizable signifier.¹³ In fact, the connections between halal and qingzhen run deeply enough that some companies vending qingzhen items attempt to harness the associations between the words to educate non-Hui consumers via their marketing and e-commerce and other online platforms.¹⁴ As a consequence of these sustained marketing efforts, qingzhen has become a category of food on par with other regional styles, such as Sichuanese and Hunanese. Hui frequently contrast qingzhen with Hancan (Han food).

However, as a practical matter, very little consensus exists around what should be considered qingzhen and what must be avoided. Despite its regular use as a signifier of food that is safe for Muslims to eat, some non-Hui Muslims—especially Uyghurs—regard the designation of qingzhen with skepticism due to this unevenness of standards.¹⁵ Even Hui disagree about basic aspects of observance. Respondents I spoke with differed over whether simply avoiding pork sufficed for maintaining qingzhen, or if proper observance required eating only food blessed by an ahong. Questions about whether alcohol and cigarettes count as qingzhen divide Hui.

Given that dietary restrictions play such a central role in the daily lives of Hui communities, the relationship between mosque and marketplace is usually close. In China’s largest cities, small businesses and restaurants catering to Hui clientele frequently adjoin or surround community mosques and provide local Muslims with everything needed to maintain a strictly halal community.¹⁶ In Xining’s Chengdong District, behind the famous Dongguan Mosque in a narrow alleyway appropriately named Qingzhen Alley (Qingzhen Xiang), vendors sell fresh produce, qingzhen meat, fried street snacks, and other Islamic sundries out of small, tented stalls or from flatbed carts attached to the back of pedal bikes.¹⁷ Removed from these mosque- and market-centered communities, Hui identity wanes. Many urban Hui living outside of concentrated Hui enclaves complained about the arduousness of maintaining a qingzhen diet while residing in predominantly Han neighborhoods. One longtime resident of Beijing’s Dongcheng District in his seventies lamented that being distant from a predominantly Hui community made even simple acts like buying groceries difficult. “On Niu Jie it’s easy to eat qingzhen,” he opined. “You can close your eyes and eat anything and not worry. It’s all clean and healthy. In this neighborhood its difficult. There aren’t places to buy beef or mutton. There aren’t qingzhen restaurants.”¹⁸

Before the enactment of de-Islamification policies in many Hui communities at the start of 2018, Hui entrepreneurs created a cottage industry surrounding the purveyance of halal food.¹⁹ Signs for qingzhen restaurants frequently used green and white or yellow (colors associated with Islam) and contained symbols related to Islam: stars and crescent moons, the silhouettes of Arabesque domes, and minarets. These signs were nearly always emblazoned with the word qingzhen, often placed alongside Arabic script that read halal.²⁰

Popular understandings of the meaning of qingzhen reflect the triumph of ethnic branding campaigns. Qingzhen has become a byword in connection with quality and cleanliness. In recent years, scandals concerning consumption of tainted milk, food cooked in previously used cooking oil (known colloquially as “gutter oil,” digou you), and cheap or unpalatable cuts of meat altered by chemicals and sold as premium cuts, created increased attention throughout China to food safety and cleanliness.²¹ Several respondents claimed that eating a qingzhen diet allowed them a high degree of certainty in the safety and cleanliness of the product.²² One woman interviewed in Jinan simply stated, “I think qingzhen food just is clean and pure.”²³

The association of qingzhen and purity is strong enough for some Hui respondents that they expressed sensations of physical discomfort when in the presence of non-qingzhen food. While walking through the Tongxin Lu meat and produce market in Yinchuan, a Hui professor remarked that the odor and sight of pork made him feel physically ill. “I know that this is all psychological, that it’s all in my head, and that it’s all through conditioning, but all the same I can’t help it,” he told me. “When I’m around pork, I get the feeling that I might throw up.”²⁴ Such intense reactions to non-qingzhen for some Hui mean that the practice of eating only in qingzhen eateries or buying products exclusively from qingzhen markets arises not out of mere preference but out of necessity.

Even some Han attach associations of cleanliness to qingzhen. Niu Jie’s reputation for butcher shops selling superior beef and lamb brought a middle-aged Han couple to the street from their northern suburb of Beijing, almost an hour and a half away. When asked what would justify such a long commute for grocery shopping, the man answered, “The people who live here on Niu Jie are all Muslim. They eat a lot of beef and mutton. So the beef and mutton here is very tasty [haochi] and safe to eat [baozheng].”²⁵ The belief in the superiority of qingzhen beef, even among Han customers, reflects the success of extensive efforts from both the CCP and Hui entrepereneurs to brand qingzhen products as an ethnic specialty product (minzu techanpin). The willingness of even Han to travel far for an ordinary and prevalent item indicates the pervasiveness of the association between quality and safety in the case of qingzhen food.

INTERNATIONAL EXPOS AND IMPOSTER QINGZHEN: STATE POLICY AND AMBIGUITY IN HALAL CERTIFICATION

The linkage between qingzhen food and Hui culture forms one of the most visible aspects of the government’s attempts to present an official version of Hui identity. Many official displays of Hui culture showcase qingzhen food as a crucial element of the Hui community and celebrate the Hui’s vibrant culinary traditions. Especially in northwest China, where Hui and other Muslim minorities are more numerous, local governments actively promote qingzhen food as an aspect of local culture. In part, the CCP achieves this objective by turning qingzhen items into a branded commodity that can be sold as “Hui specialties.”

In Xining, the Qinghai provincial government went to great lengths to promote qinghzen foodstuffs and other goods during the annual Qinghai International Qingzhen Food and Ethnic Products Fair (Qinghai Guoji Qinghzen Shipin Jiminzu Yongpin Zhanlanhui). The carefully staged event broadcast an image of global interconnectedness, thriving commerce, and cutting-edge development. Signs posted outside the hall boldly displayed the motto for the event: “Innovation, Coordination, Greenness, Opening Up, Sharing” (chuangxin, xiediao, lüse, kaifang, gongxiang). The expo’s main attraction, held in a hall the size of an airplane hangar, brought together vendors from eleven provinces throughout China, as well as thirteen foreign countries, including Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Malaysia, and Iran, selling everything from halal instant noodles to yak butter, hand-woven rugs, and intricate metalwork tea sets and statuettes. Elsewhere, individual counties of Qinghai erected booths and displayed their vision for future development efforts, including scale models of new convention centers, slick videos advertising new roads and highways, and other expressions of prosperity.²⁶

In imbuing the qingzhen food industry with the sheen of prosperity and innovation and providing it a showcase, the provincial government painted a picture of inclusion in which minority culture and minority entrepreneurship are central to the province’s development strategy. However, outside of these showy displays of support for qingzhen foods, the local government’s commitment to developing standards for promoting the quality of qingzhen foodstuffs and eateries remains only superficial. Despite attempting to market qingzhen to consumers, the CCP makes very little effort to standardize the production of qingzhen goods or regulate their quality. Wavering quality occurs in part because no national standard exists for certification of qingzhen foods. The responsibility for policing and overseeing these industries falls to individual provinces, many of which implement their own certification processes. Though Ningxia pioneered an approach to qingzhen certification by publishing a written guide in 2010, and the five provinces of northwest China entered into a confederal agreement for certification in 2013, no single set of guidelines for certification exists on a national level.²⁷ The lack of a national oversight process results in uneven standards for halal food.²⁸

The patchwork of regulations for food certification that results from the lack of a national standard offers opportunities for the state to consult and cooperate with local Hui communities in developing policy. Laws governing halal food and restaurant certification have been among the most prominent and successful examples of Muslim autonomous communities implementing Islamic law. Qingzhen certification laws were the only laws enacted by the government of Linxia Hui Autonomous County that found roots in the Qur’an. However, even though Islamic autonomous units such as the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region possess some means of enacting law in accordance with Islamic law, these areas still face limitations.²⁹ While provinces often develop qingzhen certification standards through some form of collaboration with local Islamic associations, most certification processes were developed by bureaucrats in the state-run industries rather than religious experts.³⁰ As such, standards vary in their stringency of observation of Qur’anic standards.

In Yinchuan, for example, qingzhen restaurants are policed through a fairly standard system of certification and inspection. In order to display a qingzhen sign, restaurants must ensure that all food served in the restaurant has been purchased from qingzhen vendors, all kitchen staff preparing food are Hui, and at least half of the wait staff serving diners are Hui.³¹ Vendors selling qinghzen meats must display certificates attesting to the authenticity of their products. These certificates list the name of the imam responsible for overseeing the slaughter of the animal and, in some instances, contain QR codes that patrons may scan with their phone in order to receive the imam’s contact information.³²

Elsewhere, however, a lack of similarly stringent enforcement may cause problems with authenticity. A rash of fake qingzhen products and poseur qingzhen restaurants plagues Hui communities and makes many Hui skeptical about the provenance of the food served there. These concerns are heightened as businesses relocate in the midst of urban renewal. Providers of qingzhen goods may be among those displaced as neighborhoods transform. With the dispersal of concentrated Hui communities, vendors may no longer find their businesses economically viable. As the physical spaces that define Hui neighborhoods change, so too must the consumer habits of residents living in these spaces. On Dikou Lu in Jinan, the renovation of the neighborhood’s Hui community centralized a number of qinghzen butcher shops and restaurants. Whereas many of the vendors had been previously dispersed, the new market allowed for them to be concentrated in a single space. While this change made shopping easier for residents, it also brought in new vendors from outside the community.³³ Several interviewees told me that the influx of new restaurants and the opening of new market spaces like these came with a proliferation of impostor halal restaurants. A growing market for qingzhen goods, they explained, created opportunities for Han entrepreneurs to capitalize on the demand from the Muslim population.³⁴

The proliferation of fake qingzhen eateries causes anxiety for Hui that they might unwittingly violate the dictates of their dietary code. With so many establishments posing as qingzhen, the likelihood of consuming improper or unclean food increases. A Hui shopkeeper in her mid fifties in Jinan’s Hui Quarter explained that many of the neighborhood restaurants proclaiming to be qingzhen were actually run by Han. The problem, she noted, began with landlords seeking to help their tenants increase their profits. “A lot of landlords don’t pay attention to who they rent to,” she said. “They rent to a lot of Han. Their methods for preparing food are definitely not qingzhen, but these shops still put up signs that say qingzhen. The landlords give them these signs.” When asked if the tenants would go as far as to put pork or other taboo items in their food, she replied, “They wouldn’t dare do that. But they don’t pay attention to whether or not their meat is properly qingzhen. And they also go home and eat pork and handle pork. This is unavoidable. But they come back to the restaurant afterward and so it’s not properly qingzhen.”³⁵ Even in Yinchuan, a respondent informed me, Han entrepreneurs may use forged documents or borrow a Hui friend’s documentation to cheat the system and gain a qingzhen certification.³⁶

Similarly, impostor restaurants may take advantage of the universality of qingzhen branding symbols to present products that appear to be certified qingzhen. At the new food court on Xining’s Limeng pedestrian shopping street, qingzhen and non-qingzhen vendors occupy different floors but follow a similar color-coding scheme: green signs for qingzhen, red signs for nonqingzhen.³⁷ This kind of color-coded system recurs throughout China and usually allows patrons to easily identify qingzhen establishments. However, in some instances, slick entrepreneurs seek to take advantage of such strong color associations with food and use green for the signs on their own restaurants in hopes of luring diners who fail to notice the lack of a qingzhen certification. In Yinchuan, a forty-year-old Hui professor leading me on a tour of the market pointed to one such restaurant sign, green with red characters, advertising Hangzhou-style meat buns (baozi). “The people who run that restaurant are Han, but if you’re not looking closely, it looks like a qingzhen restaurant,” he observed.³⁸ Similarly in Xining, a Han butcher on the bustling Mojia Jie market street branded his store as vending “green meat products” (lüse rou pin), a common label on halal butcher shops. The shop, however, lacked a qingzhen label. When asked if the meat he sold was qingzhen, he admitted the sign was intended to convey that message. Further, he confessed that he selected the colors of the sign and the name of the shop to evoke qingzhen and Islamic dietary standards. In the end, he reasoned that, because his meat was slaughtered by local Hui, it was fundamentally the same as branded qingzhen meat. He explained why he could not label his store as qingzhen: “If we Han put out a sign that says qingzhen there would be Hui who would oppose it.”³⁹

The prominence of these impostor halal restaurants leads many devout Hui to express skepticism about the cleanliness of even supposedly qingzhen establishments. A twenty-one-year-old Hui butcher, originally from the nearby town of Wuzhong, working at the open-air market on Yuhuangge Bei Lu in Yinchuan explained that many Hui avoid even restaurants with halal signs: “There are a lot of qingzhen restaurants that we don’t dare eat at. You go there and it’s dark and the restaurants aren’t necessarily that clean. Who’d dare to eat there?” When asked what made these ostensibly qingzhen eateries unfit for eating, he elaborated: “You know we Hui have strict dietary restrictions. You can’t necessarily trust that the people working there are Muslims. Maybe the food isn’t really qingzhen. A lot of Han open up qingzhen restaurants even though you’re supposed to be Hui. A lot of Hui won’t even go out to eat. Like my grandfather, who’s eighty. He doesn’t trust restaurants. He won’t even agree to eat lamian. He doesn’t eat outside of the house. A lot of Hui, when we travel, we carry our own pots and cooking gear.” Asked to describe an acceptably clean and safe restaurant, the butcher named the family-run restaurant connected to his butcher shop. “You can go to our restaurant and see the difference,” he insisted, adding, “Our restaurant is bright and clean, and everyone wears baimaozi or shajin [headscarf]. You can be sure it’s qingzhen.”⁴⁰ Given the ambiguities surrounding qingzhen certification, the young man sought other means of confirmation of purity relying on overt displays of Isalmic piety to serve as visual cues of a restaurant’s standards of cleanliness.

This lack of oversight by some provincial governments and the high propensity for fraudulent qingzhen products compel some Hui ethnopreneurs into action, driving them to press for more thorough, more universal standards for certification of qingzhen products. In Xining, the Qinghai Qingzhen Food Production Association (Qinghai Qingzhen Shipin Hangye Shehui) seeks to resolve these ambiguities with the creation of an institutionalized standard for certification of foodstuffs. A representative from the Association, a visiting consultant from Malaysia, explained, “We want to create a standard that other places can follow. We want it to be a kind of brand that stands for halal.” The consultant added, “People will see our certificate as a sign of quality, and the places that don’t have them will fade away.” Ultimately, the consultant remarked, the goal was to have the process become so widely accepted that the Association could petition to have it become adopted into national law, thus resolving any disputes about what is and is not certifiably qingzhen.⁴¹

THE BOUNDARIES OF BARBECUE: MARKET FORCES AND CONTESTATION OF QINGZHEN STANDARDS

Currently, the absence of a universal standard allows the definition of what is “necessary” or “proper” for the observance of a qingzhen diet to become the subject of internal contestation. Despite the centrality of qingzhen dining to the daily rhythms of Hui life, within the community different levels of religious observance and different notions about the very meaning of qingzhen spur internal debate.⁴² Nowhere is this dilemma more pronounced than in debates about the sale of alcohol in halal establishments.⁴³ While the Qur’an prohibits the consumption of alcohol, provincial-level authorities in many provinces do not deem a prohibition on alcohol sales to be necessary for receiving qingzhen certification. As a result, the disjuncture between state policy and scriptural law causes renewed contestation regarding whether Hui should observe a taboo on alcohol.

In the absence of a definitive policy, market incentives may sway Hui merchants’ decision about whether to sell or prohibit alcohol. Many conservative Hui view the sale of beer and liquor as a violation of the qingzhen dietary code. Strictly observant Hui treat this as disqualifying; if a restaurant elects to serve beer, it cannot truly be considered qingzhen because it is in violation of the laws of God. As a twenty-six-year-old receptionist at an Islamic hotel in Xining explained, “The only real qingzhen restaurants are the ones that forbid the sale of alcohol. Real qingzhen restaurants use only clean [ganjing] ingredients.”⁴⁴ A forty-seven-year-old imam of a relatively large mosque in Yinchuan remarked that restaurants that sold liquor and claimed to be qingzhen “weren’t truly halal restaurants.” He told me that these types of restaurants “don’t pay attention to jiaofa [religious doctrine, or fiqh].”⁴⁵ In rural Hui-majority communities, merchants realize that selling alcohol will lose them customers and money. In Weizhou, a small Hui-majority town in Tongxin County in rural Ningxia, a twenty-year-old student giving me a tour of the community remarked that previous merchants who attempted to open a liquor store found themselves quickly out of business due to lack of sales. Pious Weizhou citizens could not tolerate having such a presence in their community.⁴⁶ A university administrator in Xining echoed these sentiments in explaining why most qingzhen restaurants in that city refrained from selling alcohol: “If you served alcohol in a qingzhen restaurant it would be closed the next day because nobody would agree to come ever again.”⁴⁷

In response to demands for a dining experience that abides by strict Qur’anic interpretations of qingzhen, some entrepreneurs elect to embrace the prohibition on alcohol as a means of distinguishing their restaurant from the scores of competitors whose dietary cleanliness does not hold up. In so doing, these ethnopreneurs establish strict adherence to the guidelines as a brand associated with Hui identity. In Yinchuan, restaurants like the famous Tongxin Chun or the self-serve hotpot buffet on the top floor of Ningxia’s Muslim Hotel choose to cater to Hui seeking a qingzhen meal without having to encounter alcohol, tapping into a niche market of devoutly religious diners.⁴⁸

However, market demands may also encourage entrepreneurs to sell liquor. In Yinchuan and Jinan, most restaurants selling barbecue lamb kebabs also sell beer and baijiu (a Chinese liquor distilled from grain, very often sorghum). In this context choosing not to serve alcohol may put owners at a relative disadvantage. A thirty-five-year-old Yinchuan restaurateur who originally came from the predominantly Hui community of Wuzhong complained that he felt he had no choice but to serve alcohol in his restaurant. The space, which was connected to a large business hotel, served both Hui and Han patrons. He lamented that despite running a halal restaurant that served homestyle dishes from Wuzhong, he had to serve beer and baijiu in order to please his Han guests, though his personal reservations about the sale of alcohol made him hesitant to widely advertise this fact.⁴⁹ Another Hui restaurant owner who ran a traditional Hui restaurant adjacent to the Hui Culture Park in the Yinchuan suburb of Najiajhu noted that in the winter most of his clientele came from Yinchuan or nearby Yongning County to hold business lunches. These men, primarily Han, usually preferred to conduct business over beer or baijiu. Although he refused to sell alcohol, he was unable to stop guests from bringing their own bottles.⁵⁰ He regretted this practice he felt it was necessary to sustain his business.

Similarly in Jinan, demographic changes in the city’s Hui Quarter affected the market for qingzhen food. Many longtime Jinan residents remarked that in the aftermath of the first wave of demolish-and-replace urban renewal in the early 1990s, the makeup of the neighborhood changed. Longtime local residents dispersed to live outside the quarter. In their place, newly arrived Hui from the northwest began to fill apartments in the neighborhood, opening up new restaurants and stores.⁵¹ In particular, the arrival of restaurants and stalls selling lamb kebabs appealed to a wider customer base. One Jinanese Han respondent explained that the city’s Hui and Han quickly adopted eating kebabs as a summer pastime, paired with a long-standing Shandong summer tradition of drinking local keg beer.⁵² For most Jinanese residents, the Hui Quarter is synonymous with eating barbecue and drinking draft beer out of plastic kegs.⁵³

Absent national regulations that provided definitive answers on points of contention such as the permissibility of the sale and consumption of alcohol, the standards for qingzhen developed heterogeneously, often in response to local market demand. While Hui entrepreneurs in cities like Xining have succeeded in creating a qingzhen brand that emphasizes strict adherence to Islamic guidelines, the market in Jinan dictates that prohibiting alcohol sales cuts against the economic interests of restaurateurs.

The tendency of some Hui to decry restaurants that serve alcohol as being inauthentically qingzhen, or as evidence that a community is Hanified, illustrates the degree to which the degree of religious observance, region, or social class creates internal boundaries within Hui communities. Despite the government’s celebration of qingzhen food and its attempt to make it a unifying symbol of Hui culture, the lack of any clear standard for certification leaves matters of diet up for contestation and highlights the heterogeneity of Hui communities throughout China.

RECONTESTING QINGZHEN ONE BOWL AT A TIME

Food undoubtedly plays a pivotal role in marking the boundaries of Hui identity. The combined efforts of Hui entrepreneurs and the state turned qingzhen into an ethnic brand through strategic promotion. The prominence of qingzhen largely defines Hui culture and identity in the public sphere. For most Han and even some Hui, observing qingzhen dietary habits represents the defining feature of Hui ethnic identity. Symbolically qingzhen carries unmistakable connotations, about not just the sanitary and culinary quality of the food it describes but also the lifestyle of those who consume it. The symbolic power of qingzhen and the ease of its replicability as a brand provide ethnopreneurs with potentially lucrative opportunities to attach their business to the booming qingzhen food industry. Yet, as the remarks of many interviewees attest, the prominence of qingzhen also presents opportunities for counterfeit or knockoff halal food items.

The efforts of groups like the Qinghai Halal Food Production Association to standardize or create uniformity in qingzhen food certification point to an interesting dilemma arising from an era of mass-market branding and global consumption. Without a nationwide standard for qingzhen certification, consumers can’t be certain of the provenance of the goods they consume. However, as illustrated in this chapter, the differences in the degree of dietary rigor and devotion to the faith across Hui communities throughout China make establishing a single, standard system for qingzhen certification difficult. Currently the patchwork system of halal certification leaves much to the individual consumer. As the qingzhen brand continues to spread across the country, even to communities that historically lack a sizable Islamic population, the dialogue between different groups of Hui concerning the precise meaning and standards connected with qingzhen food consumption will inevitably continue.

However, putting a nationwide standard into place necessarily involves yet another, different authority: the state. While establishing a set of standard practices for the certification of halal food may settle legal questions on the matter, it does not guarantee popular acceptance. In fact, placing the external constraints of state institutionalization around the processes of contestation of such crucial elements of Hui identity may deepen the concerns of some Hui about the disjuncture between the official state guidelines and those derived from the Qur’an.

Thus, even something so foundational to Hui identity as maintaining halal dietary codes becomes the subject of significant in-group variation. While some Hui express their belief that any food not containing pork can be considered qingzhen, others accept only food that has been processed according to strict Qur’anic standards, overseen and certified by a religious authority. As China’s urbanization continues to draw rural Hui to urban centers, spreading qingzhen food to previously unreached markets and bringing Hui from different regions into constant contact, contestation about the precise meaning and regulations surrounding qingzhen will continue.

Differences in the level and manner of the observance of qingzhen now also mark important distinctions among Hui, potentially creating internal boundaries and sparking debate about which is the most valid or correct way to maintain a proper diet. Though changes in China’s urban landscape may bring disparate parts of the Hui community closer together than ever before, the gulf between the ways in which these Hui from different backgrounds experience and understand the daily practices of production and consumption of goods associated with living a Hui lifestyle—to say nothing of the interpretations of the Islamic principles underlying them—remains as wide apart as ever.