CHAPTER THREE

TALKING

Arabic Language and Literacy

As I entered the large courtyard in front of the mausoleum at Fenghuang Shan Gongbei in Xining, I greeted the complex’s caretaker, a short, middle-aged man who wore a white knit skullcap (baimaozi), with a friendly wave.¹ I walked up to the ornately chiseled dividing wall of stone and gray brick that separated the larger, outer courtyard from the inner courtyard containing the tomb and shrine. Peering inside, I prepared to step through the rounded archway and stand in front of the tomb. As I began to move forward, a voice from behind startled me. “Hey!” it rang out. I turned around to see the caretaker waving his arms emphatically and signaling for me to stop. “You can’t go in there!” he told me. “You’re not Muslim!” Curious, as I was unaware of restrictions against non-Muslims standing in front of the tomb, I asked how he had made such a determination. After all, I asked him, what does a Muslim look like? “I knew you weren’t Muslim, because when you walked in, you didn’t say salamu [the Chinese transliteration of the Arabic salaam],” the man replied emphatically. “That’s how we Hui greet each other.”²

Over the course of conducting my field research, the subject of one’s proficiency in speaking and reading Qur’anic Arabic became a recurring theme in my interviews. When I asked about language use in Hui communities, respondents cited a variety of ways in which Arabic impacted Hui identity. Some, like the gongbei caretaker, placed emphasis on the importance of the language for signaling shared Hui identity. Others went as far as to liken it to a de facto minority language for the Sinophone Hui. Some remarked that, as a language of faith, the ability to speak Arabic properly served as a barometer for religious piety. Others noted the language’s impact on Hui dialects—often marked by the use of loanwords from Arabic, Persian, or Turkic languages—across the country.

In each of these cases, Arabic language influenced the day-to-day conduct of life in Hui communities. For instance, while conducting interviews in Yinchuan, a local Hui university professor encouraged me to offer the Islamic greeting As-salaam-alaikum (Peace be upon you) to my Hui interviewees before shaking their hand. Doing so, he insisted, was standard among Hui in Yinchuan.³ In Xining, I was told by many respondents that greeting friends and neighbors by saying salamu was an important expression of community. They elaborated that greeting each other in Arabic at the end of services on E’id al-fitr (in Chinese, Kaizhai jie) was an important part of the festivities that marked the end of Ramadan.⁴ Throughout the country, respondents frequently suggested that the use of Arabic language acted as a kind of shibboleth or marker of belonging among Hui.

Language plays an especially important role in establishing the boundaries of Hui identity. Official state classifications regard the Hui as a Chinesespeaking minority who lack their own minority language. However, despite this status, Hui give special significance to jingwen (“scriptural language”; in this case, Qur’anic Arabic) as a language of faith. Throughout the course of my fieldwork, respondents described how, in the absence of an officially recognized, vernacular minority language, jingwen became the language most frequently associated with Hui identity. The prominent status of jingwen in Hui communities has consequences for promotion and preservation of the language in official institutions. Though the state frequently uses Arabic script on public signs and documents in Hui autonomous areas, largely as a performative gesture to showcase tolerance and diversity, Hui lack linguistic resources afforded other minzu. Unlike many minzu who are offered minority-language education programs in public schools, coursework in Arabic is not offered in public schools, even in Hui autonomous areas. As a result, most Hui living in these spaces are unable to read these signs and posters. Those Hui who do pursue the study of Arabic often do so at the expense of learning other subjects that might advance their economic interests.

Given the rarity of Qur’anic literacy or spoken proficiency among my respondents, the ability to read and, perhaps more important, pronounce jingwen became a litmus test for one’s Hui identity in the eyes of many. Additionally, multiple respondents described how the languages of the Turks, Persians, and Arabs from whom they claimed descent influenced the development of locally specific Huihua (Hui dialects of Chinese), which distinguished Hui from the majority Han. The variability of these linguistic markers from one community to another illustrates the absence of unified and coherent Huihua. Not only do these ordinary habits of speech serve as markers of Hui identity; they also serve as grounds for drawing intragroup distinctions that cut across Hui.

In particular, questions about the use of Chinese language to transcribe jingwen and recite from the Qu’ran showcase sectarian and regional divisions. Followers of the Yihewani (a Chinese transliteration of Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood) school, a reform-oriented Hanafi sect, frequently disparage other traditions, in particular the Gedimu (a Chinese transliteration of the Arabic Qadim, also sometimes referred to as laojiao) school, for their use of Chinese to read and recite Islamic texts. Such a practice, they maintain, provides evidence of the Gedimu’s inferiority and Hanification.⁵ Such divergence between sects over the importance of language frequently also aligns with regional divides. In eastern China, where Muslim literati began the practice of relating Islam to native Chinese philosophical and religious traditions like Daoism and Confucianism as early as the fourteenth century, translating the Qur’an into Chinese or reciting Qur’anic Arabic with the use of Chinese characters is common practice.⁶ However, in the northwest respondents insisted that such practices degraded the authenticity of scripture and could not be considered the proper practice of Islam. Likewise, Islamic terms derived from highly localized Hui vocabularies contribute to the salience of regional identities within the Hui community.

That linguistic habits starkly define the boundaries of Hui identity comes as no surprise. Language is fundamental for building shared identity. Even casual conversations carried out between people in the course of their daily lives can establish a sense of common belonging among members of a community.⁷ Classrooms, office breakrooms, storefronts, restaurants, playing fields, and a host of other ordinary locations become venues for everyday discourse about identity.⁸ Accordingly, habits of speech such as dialect choice, word choice, accent, and intonation are often strong markers of identity.⁹ These markers may provide the basis for inclusion, exclusion, or stigmatization.¹⁰ They may also give way to concerns about language preservation and survival in the face of assimilation. Further, written language, like that used on road signs and official buildings, may inspire and mobilize ethnonational sentiments.¹¹

FORGETTING THE MOTHER TONGUE? MINORITY LANGUAGES, ETHNIC IDENTITY, AND THE STATE IN CHINA

Linguistic rights form a crucial component of China’s ethnic minority autonomy policy. Consistent with the Marxist-Leninist principle that the state must promote the values of socialism through minority autonomy and using minority languages, the CCP enshrined linguistic rights for ethnic minorities in its founding creed.¹² These statuary and constitutional commitments to ethnic autonomy and linguistic preservation notwithstanding, the state’s policies often facilitate the Hanification of China’s minority groups. Critics argue that because the state offers only minimal or token opportunities to study their ethnic languages, minorities must choose between obtaining minority-language proficiency and pursuing other studies that would enhance their economic interests. Thus, though the minority autonomy system ostensibly intends to promote cultural and linguistic preservation, in practice ethnic minorities often perceive the policies it generates as eroding minority culture.¹³

One area in which these tensions between cultural preservation and integration arise is in minority-language education.¹⁴ China’s public schools within minority autonomous regions act both as institutions for the conservation of culture and as a means for fostering loyalty to the state and reinforcing Han-centrism.¹⁵ In enshrining minority language and culture in the curriculum, public schools exert a powerful influence on the maintenance of ethnic identity. State-sponsored language instruction in schools dictates how students learn to reproduce ethnic minority culture and allows the state to supervise and shape cultural expression.¹⁶ Regarding the Hui, the CCP emphasizes the group’s Sinophone identity. For example, the overwhelming use of the Chinese language in the curriculum of the state-affiliated Chinese Islamic Association illustrates ethnic bias in the instruction of clergy in exigesis, or scriptural interpretation ( jiejing). The use of Chinese language favors the Hui over Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups that speak Turkic or non-Sinitc languages and attempts to use language and textual interpretation to shape and control ethnic and religious expression.¹⁷

Beyond the classroom, ethnic minorities must weigh matters of language preservation against economic viability. As ethnic minorities from undeveloped regions of China move to urban centers to pursue their economic interests, incentives to learn and speak standard Chinese (Putonghua) increase. One ethnic Salar interviewee in Xining explained, “I really worry that if a large number of kids live outside of their hometowns and study Chinese and slowly forget their mother tongue [muyu], how can we pass on our ethnic culture?”¹⁸ Such remarks illustrate how language acts as a transmission belt for culture. Without fluency in a minority language, members of the group fail to grasp the significance of other elements of culture. Minority-language instruction becomes the fundamental basis for cultural survival. However, the perception is strong among many minorities that the path to economic advancement demands that students learn the dominant national language and leave such traditions behind. Some may see learning a minority language as akin to choosing poverty over prosperity.

Other groups besides the Hui share these concerns. Among China’s Mongol community, loss of ability to speak the Mongol language ranks as one of the primary concerns related to the group’s cultural survival.¹⁹ Observers argue that, because Mongolian-language monolingualism has been functionally abolished in Inner Mongolia and almost all Mongols speak at least some Mandarin, the complete linguistic assimilation of Mongols in Inner Mongolia may occur in the near future, barring dramatic changes in language education and cultural preservation policies.²⁰ However, a curriculum in only the Mongol language puts Mongols at a distinct social and economic disadvantage in a Han-dominated linguistic environment. In autonomous areas some minority citizens worry that these programs harm their ability to gain highwage jobs or move up the social ladder since Chinese is the language of business.²¹ Uradyn Bulag asserts that learning only Mongol makes Mongolians “economically, politically, and even socially incompetent citizens in a Chinesedominated society that, from the 1980s onward, was increasingly market oriented.”²² These simultaneous pressures trap Mongol communities between the fear of language extinction and of economic marginalization. The CCP’s campaigns begun in the summer of 2020 to curtail Mongol-language instruction in schools in Inner Mongolia exacerbated these fears.²³ In response, Mongol activists accused the CCP of violating the principle of minority autonomous governance and running counter to the spirit of ethnic unity as envisioned by the ideology of Xi Jinping Thought. In July 2020, protests against the policy broke out across the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the government received over 4,300 petitions from activists asking the state to protect Mongol-language education.²⁴

Prior to a crackdown on Uyghur culture in the mid-2010s, Uyghurs expressed similar resentments concerning language loss and economic viability. Many complained that the local schools did not teach courses in Uyghur beyond the elementary level and that opportunities for economic advancement required them to gain fluency in spoken Mandarin Chinese.²⁵ Many of sociologist Blaine Kaltman’s respondents remarked that Uyghurlanguage-only education placed Uyghurs at a comparative disadvantage on the job market. Thus, Uyghurs are faced with a dilemma: preserving their native language in lower levels of education limits their ability to gain access to the top-level higher education needed for economic advancement, which is conducted in Chinese.²⁶ Those Uyghurs who elect to conduct their studies in Mandarin (the so-called Minkaohan) to better their economic chances must make complicated and nuanced choices about how to remain attached to their culture and cope with their position within their own community.²⁷ Some of Kaltman’s respondents even claimed that language education was a means by which the government attempted to deliberately marginalize Uyghurs.²⁸

“WE HUI DON’T HAVE OUR OWN LANGUAGE”: LANGUAGES OF FAITH AND DAILY LIFE IN HUI COMMUNITIES

Language tethers the Hui to Chinese culture, and Han culture in particular, due to their official status as a “Chinese-speaking ethnicity” (hanyu minzu). Though the Hui are a linguistically diverse group whose members speak a number of different languages—including a variety of regional Chinese dialects and dialects of Mongolian, Tibetan, Chamic, and Austronesian languages—the Arabic language exerts a heavy influence on Hui culture as a language of faith.²⁹ For religiously devout Hui, Qur’anic Arabic is the language of worship. Even among relatively secular Hui, Arabic—alongside Persian and Turkic languages—influences daily speech patterns by contributing loanwords to local Hui vocabularies.³⁰ Though Arabic is not an official minority language as recognized by the PRC, Hui often cite proficiency (or lack thereof) in speaking and reading Arabic as a boundary marker for group identity.

Historical accounts differ about how the Hui have balanced the use Arabic and Chinese. Raphael Israeli claims that early Chinese Muslim communities attempted to ground their faith and their origins in a Chinese context and situate Islamic terms within a Chinese linguistic environment. From the introduction of Islam during the Tang dynasty in the early seventh century up through the Yuan (1271–1368), foreign Muslims in China kept Arabic alive in daily use. However, Israeli contends that, due to their gradual assimilation into Chinese society, by the start of the Ming dynasty Chinese Muslims had adopted Chinese names and spoke the Chinese language in public spaces but maintained Islamic names and spoke Arabic among themselves, resulting in a split between public and private identity. Though virtually no contemporary Hui speak Arabic as a native language, Israeli suggests that the division between public use of local Chinese dialects and private use of Arabic-derived terms persists within the community even today.³¹

Li Juan, Ma Shaobiao, and Ma Shaohu’s account of the development of language in China’s Muslim communities largely accords with Israeli’s; they found that, despite the emergence of an elite cohort of Chinese-born, Chinese-speaking Muslim literati by the late Yuan dynasty, the majority of Muslims continued to use Arabic or Persian in their daily lives until the early Qing. The authors note that the elite among these Muslims established a number of Arabic-language institutions, such as the HuiHui Imperial College (Huihui Guozijian), and the discipline of Huihui national studies (Huihui guozixue) to promote Arabic use and study religious texts.³² Likewise, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite proposes that eighteenth-century commentaries on Islam written in Chinese by Hui literati, such as the Han Kitab (Han Ketabu), served as a means by which Hui scholars could explain Islamic theology in Confucian terms to demonstrate the compatibility of Islam with Chinese tradition.³³ Jin Zhongjie and other historians suggest these institutions also existed outside of the imperial court, in Ningxia, for instance. Jin’s account of the establishment of mosque education in Ningxia suggests that by the mid-sixteenth century Muslim scholars such as Hu Dengzhou had implemented local institutions to promote Arabic-language learning and Islamic knowledge.³⁴

Others offer an account of Hui identity that emphasizes fusion and innovation rather than bifurcation. For example, historian Ma Tong’s account of language transmission starkly differs from Israeli’s, suggesting that the diversity of cultural and linguistic backgrounds among Muslims necessitated the use of Chinese as a lingua franca, even within the Islamic community. As these Muslims intermarried and lived in China they adopted Chinese dialects as a means of providing common communication. Ma suggests that the Chinese language served an important role in communicating not just outside of the community of faith but also within it.³⁵ As these communities forged a new, distinctly Hui identity, forces of historical development rendered this kind of cultural fusion inevitable.³⁶

Jonathan Lipman contends that as Muslims integrated into Chinese society, a number of linguistic innovations allowed them to bridge the language gap between Chinese and Arabic, Turkic, and Persian. Lipman documents the use of mosque education (jingtang jiaoyu) beginning as early as the later Ming dynasty to provide instruction in Arabic for Chinese Muslim communities. In these mosque schools, imams developed systems that Chinese students could use to learn to recite religious texts written in Arabic or Persian by using Chinese characters to approximate the sounds of the original language. Likewise, the creation of xiaojing (also known as xiao’erjing), an Arabic alphabetic system to write local dialects of Chinese, allowed those Chinese Muslims who could speak but not read Chinese characters to produce texts in their native language.³⁷

These innovations allowed the transmission of Islamic religious knowledge and Muslim identity in a context where Chinese, not Arabic, was the dominant language. This system produced a community of Hui intellectuals fully literate in both languages.³⁸ However, despite the development of this localized Islamic literary tradition, the Hui community did not universally embrace such tools, and Hui identity did not solidify around these texts. Rather, the appropriateness of such innovations divides contemporary Hui. While xiaojing and phonetic translation of the Qur’an allowed for the adaptation of Islamic texts to suit a Chinese context, religious traditionalists in the Hui community decried such texts. As a result, a wide range of attitudes toward language education developed among Hui families, including those in rural areas who elected to teach their children to read only Persian and Arabic.³⁹

Even today Hui disagree about what level of Arabic proficiency should be considered sufficient for being properly Hui. As an example, two Hui men interviewed in Lanzhou boasted that ability to read the Qur’an in the original Arabic and use standard pronunciation in reciting it distinguished northwestern Hui as the least Hanified, most authentic Hui. One of the men mocked the Hui in neidi (interior China) for having to rely on Chinese characters to pronounce Arabic. “They can’t even say the words correctly!” he exclaimed incredulously.⁴⁰

A Hui scholar in his seventies from Jinan confirmed that this inability to read—and thus correctly pronounce—the Qur’an was indeed a source of shame for locals. “Because older people have learned a Sinicized Arabic, they view it as incorrect,” he said, and some felt that this illiteracy represented a failure to embody their Hui heritage.⁴¹ Others in the community expressed this sentiment as well. One man, a baker in his forties, expressed sadness at the loss of Arabic literacy in the community, confessing, “Here, we haven’t spoken [Arabic] in a long time. Only the people from Xibei can speak it. Long ago, we spoke Persian and Arabic, but now we’re all relatively Hanified [Hanhua].”⁴² A factory worker in his mid-thirties expressed admiration for migrants from the northwest whose proficiency in Arabic inspired his own rediscovery of his Hui identity. He claimed he did not feel especially strong ties to his Hui identity until he decided to start a Qur’anic study class at the Great Southern Mosque. Learning the language of faith, he explained, made him want to further explore his culture. In part, he recalled, the examples of other Hui drove his interest. The arrival of migrants from Gansu and Qinghai in Jinan provided a model for how to study and pray. Noting their devotion to the language, he remarked that unlike Jinanese Hui, Xibei Hui kept their children from learning to write Chinese characters (Hanzi) to prevent them from being Hanified.⁴³ For him, the practice seemed to be an admirable commitment to teaching children about their ethnic heritage. By virtue of their ability to read and pronounce the Arabic of the Qur’an without relying on aid from Chinese-language devices, Xibei Hui guarded against the loss of identity that he believed afflicted Jinan’s Hui.

AN UNOFFICIAL MINZU LANGUAGE? STATE PROMOTION OF ARABIC IN HUI COMMUNITIES

Though the state does not recognize Arabic as a minority language of the Hui, it does acknowledge its importance to the Hui community. An introductory sign in a museum inside the complex surrounding Yinchuan’s Nanguan Mosque described the relationship between the Hui and Arabic: “The Hui are a Chinese Islamic minzu. They don’t have their own language. Their language is Chinese [Hanwenhua]. Therefore, lots of people use the Qur’an and Arabic as Huiwen [Hui language].”⁴⁴

In recent years, the state has both promoted and restricted the use of Arabic in public spaces within Hui communities according to its strategic purposes. After the announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative, the state promoted use of Arabic script in Hui communities as part of its outreach to partners in the Islamic world. Signs containing Arabic script frequently appeared in Hui neighborhoods. For example, in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region’s capital of Yinchuan, all street signs display street names in Arabic transliteration alongside their presentation in romanized pinyin and Chinese characters. In part, these signs serve as official displays of the CCP’s benevolence toward Islam and Hui culture intended for foreign audiences from the larger Islamic world. While a sudden reversal in 2017 saw the state begin an asymmetrical, nationwide campaign aimed at de-Islamification of public space, stripping Arabic script from street signs and business placards, up until the start this campaign official organs of the state reinforced the relationship between jingwen and Hui identity.⁴⁵ The CCP promoted the Hui autonomous region of Ningxia, and Yinchuan in particular, as a nexus for Sino-Muslim (especially Sino-Arab) cooperation.⁴⁶

Proliferation of these multilingual signs was not limited to autonomous regions. On Niu Jie, site of Beijing’s most famous Hui community, official buildings such as the community post office also displayed both Arabic and Chinese. Even in neighborhoods where urban redevelopment relocated the historically concentrated Hui population, some official buildings used Arabic script formally. The Community Residence Center Offices (shequ fuwu zhan) on Douban Hutong in Beijing, a formerly vibrant Hui neighborhood with a famous mosque, displayed its sign in both Arabic and Chinese. Inside the office, however, none of the employees claimed to be Hui, and questions about why the sign contained Arabic script were met with puzzlement by those working at the desk.⁴⁷

These official displays of Arabic adorned not only street signs but also propaganda posters, often heralding local neighborhood or municipal initiatives. Near the entrance to Jinan’s Hui Quarter, on Gongqingtuan Lu, large wall-size posters placed there by the Luo Yuan Jie Dao Neighborhood Communist Party Worker’s Committee depicted images of Jinan’s glistening downtown. In bold red, both Chinese characters and Arabic script proclaimed the slogans “The City of Springs Is My Home! Creating a Clean City Relies on Everyone!” and “A Clean Environment Starts with Me!” Despite the prominence of the signs, no local residents claimed to be able to read the parts displaying Arabic script.⁴⁸

Even though the local Jinan residents, who are the targets of the bilingual propaganda posters in the Hui Quarter, found the language inscrutable, the government still possessed incentives for displaying Arabic prominently in Hui neighborhoods. One man in Yinchuan who worked at the Ningxia Academy of Social Sciences explained that the promotion of Arabic language on signs in public places found throughout Ningxia was the result of a government initiative to showcase the Party’s ethnic nationality policy (minzu zhengce) and highlight the official status of minority languages in an autonomous region. However, he admitted, the project made little impact because “most people have no connection to it” in their day-to-day lives.⁴⁹

Moreover, prior to de-Islamification, various local and provincial government initiatives that actively promoted public displays of Arabic language on official signs were common. In 2015–16, such promotions were especially common in areas where the Hui were the titular autonomous minority and in prominent Hui neighborhoods like Beijing’s Niu Jie. There, in the lobby of the headquarters of the Chinese Islamic Association, a sign listed the community outreach programs offered, among them, the “National Holy Qu’ran recitation competition.”⁵⁰ Similar competitions were held in Jinan at the Dikou Zhuang Mosque.⁵¹

Some respondents echoed the state in their assertions that jingwen acts as the de facto minority language for Hui.⁵² Many other respondents recognized the impact of Arabic and Persian language influences when describing distinctive patterns of speech present in conversations among Hui.⁵³ For instance, a man in his fifties who operated a Hui community charitable organization explained the need for Hui to speak and read Qur’anic Arabic by claiming, “Our ancestors are Chinese, mine included. So of course, we are influenced by Chinese traditions. But our ancestors are also Muslims, so we try to follow Islamic traditions.”⁵⁴ Often respondents carefully distinguished this language of the Qur’an, which they viewed as the language tied to Hui cultural heritage, from modern standard Arabic (Alaboyu). A teacher at Yinchuan’s Jing Xueyuan (Qur’anic Studies Institute) in his early thirties remarked that due to the importance of religious ritual, “almost every Hui can speak a little Arabic.”⁵⁵ As such, he reasoned, it was the closest thing the Hui had to a “minority language.”

However, one imam in Beijing clarified, “The Arabic we have isn’t modern, conversational Arabic. It’s Qur’anic Arabic.”⁵⁶ Some respondents suggested that their primary vehicle for learning about Hui culture came through their studies of rudimentary Arabic language as a part of mosque school education.⁵⁷ A man in his early thirties from the Hui stronghold of Linxia who moved to nearby Lanzhou reinforced the centrality of the language of faith to Hui culture: “Hui culture all revolves around Arabic.” Explaining this further, he discussed the way in which learning jingwen served as a vehicle for transmission of cultural values: “In Linxia, culture is taught in two places: at home and in the mosque. At home, we only learn the basics about Islamic beliefs and tradition. But at the mosque we learn about our culture through studying jingwen.”⁵⁸ Likewise, the teacher at the Jing Xueyuan in Yinchuan reasoned that language courses at the school provided young Hui with means for learning about the history and development of Hui identity.⁵⁹ For these respondents, engaging in the study of Arabic provided a vital lifeline to a distant cultural heritage and fabled foreign ancestors. To study jingwen was to study one’s own heritage.

Mosques proudly highlighted the classes in Arabic language as part of their program of community service. For instance, a billboard inside the courtyard of Madian Mosque in central Beijing celebrated its tradition of sponsoring language education and cultural promotion. “Previously, Madian mosque was famous for its system of jingtang jiaoyu,” the sign informed visitors. “Now, even though there are no longer khalifa [halifa, students studying to be clergy], there are still Muslim studies classes.”⁶⁰ Some respondents spoke of the importance of learning the language in a mosque setting. One imam in Yinchuan in his mid-forties proclaimed, “It’s necessary that an ahong teaches you.” He explained that otherwise, students might not understand the deep connections between language and faith.⁶¹ Thus, through jingtang jiaoyu, the mosque provides a space for passing down knowledge of Hui heritage, culture, and religious ritual alongside language instruction.

However, where the institution of jingtang jiaoyu weakens, respondents attested to feelings of cultural loss. One woman in her fifties who ran a small convenience store in Jinan’s Hui Quarter lamented the loss of jingtang jiaoyu at the city’s Great Southern Mosque. Though the mosque offered classes in Arabic in the mid-1990s, she recalled, it had long since stopped, and now the community had very few resources it could draw on to teach Hui values. She complained that, as a result, “kids [didn’t] know how to be Hui.”⁶² That the loss of mosque education contributed to a decline in knowledge and understanding of Hui culture was a common refrain in interviews. Respondents across all four cities cited the closure of jingtang jiaoyu during the Cultural Revolution as a blow that irreparably harmed religious and cultural knowledge in Hui communities.⁶³ Only once the relatively tolerant policies on religion allowed for the resumption of classes—usually for children on their school holidays—after the first few years of Reform and Opening did the community begin to recover from the damage wrought by years of neglect.

“WHEN I SPEAK WITH HUI, WE OUGHT TO SPEAK HUIYAN”: HUI DIALECT AND DAILY LANGUAGE USE

Though mosque education provides a space for Hui to engage with Arabic language, not all Hui are able to do so. For instance, one interviewee in Beijing, a cab driver in her fifties originally from Shijiazhuang, upon learning about my research exclaimed, “If you study Hui, then you surely must be able to speak jingwen?” She excitedly mentioned that she had only recently begun to study the language herself and felt obligated to use it when conversing with other Hui. She professed, “When I speak with Hui, we ought to speak Huiyan. Like, just now, when I spoke to that waiter in the baimaozi, I said Anseliangmu alaikong [the Chinese transliteration of Al salamu ‘alaykum, or Peace be with you] to him.”⁶⁴ Like the cab driver, many Hui undertake Arabic-language learning only later in life and instead speak various Hui dialects influenced by Arabic and Persian loanwords.

Local dialects provide linguistic markers of Hui identity as Han do not use such vocabulary. As one respondent in Lanzhou remarked, in the multiethnic religious environments of community mosques, “language is how you can tell if someone is Hui, Bao’an, Salar, or Dongxiang.”⁶⁵ However, as many respondents explained, these dialects resulted from the mixture of loanwords from various languages—Arabic, Turkic, and Persian—blending with regional dialects. The owner of a small electrical appliance store in Yinchuan explained how that city’s Hui dialect incorporated expressions derived from Arabic words: “For example, we won’t talk about how someone ‘passed away’ [qushi]. We don’t say the word si [death] because it’s not respectful to the deceased. Instead, we use Arabic words for this.”⁶⁶ A Xining businesswoman in her late thirties explained, “You can hear it. It’s all Qinghai dialect, but if a group of people from Qinghai are talking, you’ll know it just from talking. It’s all the same language, but there are a few pronunciations that will allow you to hear you’re a Hui, he’s a Han. It’s really pretty clear.”⁶⁷ However, these dialects remained purely local; no unified Huihua existed. Rather, each community possessed a distinct local Hui dialect. The imam at Madian in Beijing reasoned, “In China, every place has their own local dialect [difanghua], and so every place has their own Jinghanyu [Islamic Chinese dialect], and they’re all spoken differently. This makes it easier for people to understand and learn, but it also means that there are different pronunciations. Beijingers have Beijing Jinghanyu, and people from Hebei have their own.”⁶⁸

A display placard in a Xining museum described the particular features of a localized Huihua this way: “Qinghai Hui usually use Chinese, specifically Qinghai dialect. Within the minzu and in religious life, we preserve the use of Arabic and Persian vocabulary.”⁶⁹ Nearby, a wall-size governmentissued poster outside an elementary school on the north end of Ledu Lu adjacent to the Dongguan Mosque elaborated on the features of this Huihua. While the poster fell short of labeling these linguistic differences a “dialect,” it highlighted the distinction between word usage in Hui and Han communities. In particular, it described how the Hui’s observance of Islamic customs led them to favor certain words and avoid others, especially in regard to matters of eating and diet: “With regard to language, when speaking about food like poultry and livestock [Hui] avoid saying fei [fatty] and instead say zhuang [robust/strong]. They avoid saying sha [kill] and instead say zai [slaughter]. They avoid saying rou [meat] and instead say cai [dish] for example niu cai [beef dish] and yang cai [lamb dish].”⁷⁰

However, Huihua differs from community to community, reflecting their different histories. An official, originally from Lanzhou, who worked at the Chinese Islamic Association in Beijing illustrated these differences by comparing the way imams in different communities pronounced the Qur’an. He claimed, “Beijingers have their own recitation of the Qur’an which sounds like Beijing Opera [jingju]. In the northwest, we’re more influenced by Saudi Arabia. When you go there, you’ll see. You can hear it.”⁷¹ In his estimation, unlike Beijingers, for whom assimilation had contributed to a distortion of the original language, Hui from the northwest recited the Qur’an faithfully, in a more accurate Arabic pronunciation.

Elsewhere, in Jinan, respondents noted that the local Huihua borrows more heavily from Persian and medieval Turkic languages than in other communities. A Jinan Hui scholar in his seventies explained that the large number of Persian and Turkic Muslims that originally founded the city’s Islamic community strongly influenced the localized Huihua, which borrowed numerous loanwords from these languages more than from Arabic.⁷² Another respondent cited the Jinan Huihua word digaizi (a term for non-Muslims) as an example of a loanword, claiming that it derived from digr, a word of Persian origin.⁷³ He noted that this word was one he heard used only by elderly Hui, and that younger Hui rarely used such vocabulary.⁷⁴ Despite the decline in usage of Persian or Turkic loanwords, the scholar maintained that the influence of these early Muslims could still be seen in local Hui surnames. As examples, he cited Ma (from Muhammad) and Fa (from Fathallah/Fethullah) as common local Hui names with Arabic and Turkic origins.⁷⁵

“MUSLIMS NEED TO KNOW ARABIC TO PRAY”: (IL)LITERACY AND IDENTITY IN HUI COMMUNITIES

The gap between the prominence of the Arabic in official displays and the ability of residents to comprehend the meaning of these words illustrates an important dilemma: while Arabic language is important to the practice of Islam and strongly associated with Hui identity, few Hui are able to speak or read it. Indeed, for many Hui this connection to Arabic seems no more than vestigial. Respondents claimed that the extent of their ability to speak Arabic was to recite the shahada.⁷⁶ An engineer in his early fifties in Jinan remarked that the Hui had gone through a high degree of linguistic assimilation due to association with Han Chinese. “Of course, the Hui aren’t a Chinese nationality,” he reasoned, “but they’ve been influenced to a really large degree by the Han, and they speak Hanyu [Chinese language]. So currently, I certainly can’t speak Arabic.”⁷⁷ Particularly among secular Hui, responses like this were common. Though their Muslim ancestors may have relied on Arabic to worship, those who did not regularly attend mosque saw little use in learning the language.

A number of respondents noted that some clergy may not fully understand jingwen even when they have learned to recite it.⁷⁸ For example, an ahong in his forties at a prominent mosque in Yinchuan remarked that his experience learning Arabic language was typical of many who became imams in rural communities. Rather than study Arabic formally in school, most of his education came from studying with imams in country mosques near Guyuan. Thus, he memorized the Arabic of the Qur’an and the hadith, but his understanding of the language was constrained by this context. The shopkeeper of an Islamic goods store in Yinchuan explained the consequences of this informal, rural education: “Ahong don’t necessarily speak Arabic. They can recite from the Qur’an, but they can’t use Arabic to communicate.”⁷⁹ As such, being able to pronounce and read Arabic matters not for communicative purposes, so much as it does for signaling that the speaker has not been completely Sinicized, unlike more secular Hui.

In communities that lack minority autonomous status, gaining access to Arabic language requires pursuing alternative paths. Young men may choose to take up full-time formal study with an ahong at a mosque with the intent of becoming clergy. In these classrooms, students study the Qur’an and hadith from textbooks filled with bilingual commentary and learn to read and write Arabic. However, choosing this type of study comes at the cost of other education. In the town of Weizhou in Tongxin County outside of Yinchuan, these young halifa rose before sunrise to study at a local mosque before 6:00 prayers. The young men studied this Qur’anic curriculum all day in place of other schooling.

In recent years, the CCP has enacted further limitations on this type of education. A fifty-six-year-old professor of history in Yinchuan described some of the legal restrictions that made formal study of Arabic difficult for most Hui: “The government has rules and limitations. Mostly you’re not allowed to attend mosque education until you’re eighteen.”⁸⁰ In some cases, private institutions provide education that skirts these obstacles. At the Islamic school for girls founded by a wealthy local woman in Weizhou, students study the Qur’an and Arabic language alongside the standard curriculum.⁸¹ Schools like these may provide the basis for learning Arabic but suffer from lack of resources.

Opportunities to study at private institutions are rare, and increased restrictions and oversight on religious education present even greater obstacles. Since the conclusion of my fieldwork in 2016, government bans on Qur’anic study at mosques limited already scarce language-learning resources.⁸² Even before such impositions, however, many respondents cited the lack of educational opportunities and resources for learning Arabic as a reason for illiteracy in Hui communities. The loss of local institutions dedicated to the promotion of Arabic language and Qur’anic study, like mosque schools devoted to jingtang jiaoyu, hindered the ability of residents to pass down Huihua. Only a handful of cities possess such institutions. For example, in Yinchuan, the city’s status as the capital of a Hui autonomous region opens avenues to formal study of Arabic language that may not be possible elsewhere. The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region’s Jing Xueyuan affords college-age students the opportunity to study a Qur’anic curriculum and, by extension, the Arabic language, in a formal, degree-granting setting.⁸³ However, even with institutions like the Jing Xueyuan, residents of Yinchuan noted the paucity of options for language learning in public schools. An imam in Yinchuan remarked, “There aren’t really many places to learn Arabic. Ningxia University has an Arabic department, and there’s the Jing Xueyuan, but there aren’t really that many options.”⁸⁴ Those who do elect to study Arabic at a university level may do so only in a program designed for those going into the field of international business and finance.

Xining provides a more successful picture of how informal Arabic classes affect a community. A professor in his fifties remarked that unlike other provinces, Qinghai did not place legal restrictions on Arabic-language classes, and as a result these classes flourished in Xining.⁸⁵ The city’s prominent Dongguan Mosque offered daily classes in Arabic, which draw large crowds that fill classrooms and spill out into the surrounding courtyard (see figure 3.1). The classes, which occur just prior to the start of the midday zuhr prayer, consisted of mostly retired men repeatedly echoing a single instructor as he pronounced the sounds of Arabic letters. As he spoke, he pointed to the words written on a chalkboard. On some days, when instructing upper-level classes, the instructor taught larger passages of the Qur’an. He intoned phrases like bismillāhi r-rah. māni r-rah. īm (In the name of God the most gracious, the most merciful) a line at a time in sing-songy Arabic, encouraging students to repeat after him.⁸⁶ One retiree who attended these classes remarked that while they primarily catered to seniors, young people attended as well, though the classes generally served a wide range of the community.⁸⁷ As a tour guide at Dongguan Mosque explained, the classes were deemed necessary for the basic observance of faith: “We have this class because Muslims need to know Arabic to pray.”⁸⁸ For pious Hui like the guide, speaking and reading Arabic is a definitive marker of Hui identity because it forms an integral part of the practice of faith. To traditionalist believers, without proper Arabic language the Hui will lose the very core of their identity: their observance of Islam.

Elsewhere fewer options to study Arabic exist. In Jinan respondents noted that, though a school in the Hui Quarter called itself the Hui Elementary School (Huimin Xiaoxue), it offered no classes in Arabic or Qur’anic education.⁸⁹ A retired volunteer worker at the offices of the Jinan Islamic Association explained that the city had a small Qur’anic school that was founded in 1984 and attached to the Great Southern Mosque to coincide with its reopening after being shuttered for over a decade during the Cultural Revolution. However, recently the school was suddenly closed and had not reopened.⁹⁰ Aside from mosques in the community offering a few informal weekly classes, the neighborhood provided few ways for residents to study Arabic. A woman who served as one of the ahong at the women’s mosque explained that one of her responsibilities as a leader at the mosque was to run informal Qur’anic study groups. These classes, she told me, not only served the purpose of commenting on the Qur’an but also provided lessons on the basics of Arabic language and learning about government policies on religion and ethnic minorities.⁹¹ However, these classes were sparsely attended. One imam in the neighborhood complained that, of late, young people showed little interest in learning, causing the age of attendees to increase and the size of classes to dwindle.⁹²

FIGURE 3.1. Men study at an adult Arabic-language class in the courtyard of the Dongguan Mosque in Xining.

Accordingly, for many Hui, Arabic has become a language of business rather than faith. Most young people who study Modern Standard Arabic do so in order to work for companies doing trade in the Middle East, usually serving as translators or intermediaries for Arab partners. Even in Yinchuan, the incentives for engaging in Arabic study have changed. A teacher at Yinchuan’s Jing Xueyuan explained, “The purpose of the school is to train imams, but we also have students who become translators and do other jobs.” Due to a surplus of students trained as imams, the teacher remarked, it was unlikely that all students would find gainful employment as clergy: “Only about ten to twenty-five percent of students become imams. Why? Because Ningxia has four thousand mosques and over eight thousand imams. So imams are numerous but mosques are not. Many graduates wouldn’t be able to find a job at a mosque. So yes, there are some students whose fathers were imams and so they feel like they also have to become imams. But most students will try to find work as translators or doing business because it’s easier to find [that kind of] work.”⁹³ The teacher’s remarks illustrate that students undertaking formal study of Arabic increasingly do so for economic reasons. In part due to the increased focus on economic and political outreach to majority-Muslim countries as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, students now elect to learn Arabic in order to take jobs in global finance or trade.⁹⁴ As a result, Hui draw distinctions between contemporary Arabic for the purposes of doing business with Arab states and jingwen.

Just as the ability to speak and read jingwen has declined across communities, residents across all case sites expressed concerns about the decline of localized Huihua. As changes in urban landscapes reconfigured Hui neighborhoods and dispersed concentrated Hui populations, concerns arose among residents about the preservation of these Hui dialects. A twenty-nineyear-old publisher in Beijing explained, with a tinge of regret, “It’s like this. We Hui don’t have our own language. What Hui use, what we speak in our daily lives, some words are from ancient Persian. Some words we use in our religion come from Arabic. So, in the midst of our lives, of course maybe we’re able to use some of these words, but the majority of them we’re unable to use. The people who really grasp Arabic, they’re all about sixty years old, and they all have ties to Qur’anic language.”⁹⁵ The man’s discouragement about the loss of Persian and Arabic loanwords reflects a greater fear about the blow that losing distinctive local Hui dialects might deal to Hui identity writ large. As the daily use of specialized Hui vocabulary waned, only a few elderly community members were able to maintain connections to the Hui’s linguistic, cultural, and linguistic heritage.

In another example, the Madian neighborhood in north-central Beijing was once a deep pocket of Hui culture. Residents reported, however, that the redevelopment of the neighborhood in the 1950s and again in the 1990s led to dispersal of the original residents and precipitated a decline in usage of the local Hui patterns of speech. An imam at the mosque in the neighborhood lamented, “Here at Madian, we had our own Hui dialect. It used Arabic words and Chinese words. But now, there’s nobody who can speak Huihua. It’s already been lost.”⁹⁶ In the Chaoyang neighborhood of Beijing, during an interview with the owner of a lamian restaurant who had moved to the city from the Zhangjiachuan Hui Autonomous County in Tianshui City of Gansu, the owner’s teenage son who was sitting in interjected that the local dialect, Tianshuihua, contained a number of words derived from Arabic. He admitted, however, that unlike the older people in the community, he knew only a handful of phrases in the dialect.⁹⁷

That young Hui no longer use the Persian- and Arabic-tinged Huihua spoken by elders is one way in which language concerns activate age cleavages in the community. Younger Hui are educated primarily in standard Mandarin in secular schools; with reduced opportunity to study Qur’anic Arabic, they view proficiency in that language as a skill primarily possessed by the clergy and the elderly. Especially in communities where opportunities for mosque education are scant, older Hui express concern that younger generations lack the resources and the will to learn Arabic and local religious vocabularies. As such, some older Hui despair that younger generations lack an understanding of how to be truly Hui.

“THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO THINK WE SHOULDN’T STUDY CHINESE”: LANGUAGE USE AND HUI IDENTITY CONTESTATION

The success of classes like those at the Dongguan Mosque and the scarcity of Arabic-education resources in cities like Jinan, reinforce the commonly expressed notion that Hui from the northwest, particularly those from rural villages, are more competent in reading the Qur’an in Arabic are thus more devoted to the faith. One thirty-two-year-old man Beijing who had moved to the city from Harbin highlighted the language difference between east and west. He argued that, unlike Hui in his northeastern hometown, “these Hui, which is to say those from places like Xibei, Yunnan, and Xinjiang, can read a little bit more. Also, they start to study at an earlier age than we do.”⁹⁸ In Jinan, an imam at one of the Hui Quarter’s mosques echoed these sentiments, estimating that fewer than 5 percent of the people who attended his mosque had any competency in Arabic.⁹⁹

Respondents painted a very different picture of the status of jingwen in the northwest. They commonly cited the availability of methods to learn the language outside of publicly provided classes as one of the major differences between eastern and western Hui communities. Noting the differences in Arabic proficiency between cities and rural villages, a history professor in Yinchuan pointed out, “In the countryside almost every mosque will have a class that teaches young students.” An imam in a mosque in the rural suburbs of Jinan contrasted the habits of young students in the northwest with those in his community: “In the northwest, they spend a lot more time studying Arabic. Over school vacations and holidays, they’ll go to the mosque like regular school.”¹⁰⁰

Despite these perceived differences in Arabic proficiency, respondents across all locations admitted that, even if they could read Arabic letters, they could not understand the words they formed.¹⁰¹ As such, comprehending the meaning of the text mattered less to Hui that the ability to recite it in a “more accurate” pronunciation, without the aid of Chinese characters. Thus, many of the divisions that arose concerning use of language in Hui communities concerned the appropriateness of using Chinese characters to aid in pronunciation of Arabic texts. Those urban Hui, particularly those in eastern China, said they recited the Qur’an using Chinese characters to approximate the sounds of Arabic words (see figure 3.2).¹⁰²

One eighteen-year-old college student from Shanxi studying at a university in Jinan described this system: “[In my hometown] our Qur’ans all have Chinese characters beside the Arabic, but I’ve forgotten all the Arabic I learned when I was young. When I memorized [the Qur’an] I just memorized the Chinese characters.”¹⁰³ A retiree from Tai’an, near Jinan, described how, in her youth, she learned how to recite Arabic phrases using Chinese to approximate the sounds: “I’ve forgotten how to say the qingzhen yan, but when I was young, I could recite it all. But what I recited was the Chinese style, and the pronunciation was different.”¹⁰⁴

While learning to recite the Qur’an through such a different means of pronunciation and study may ease the process of learning about faith for some Hui, others scorn the method. More conservative Hui often viewed this use of Chinese characters as a language aid as a marker of assimilation or insufficient commitment to Islamic heritage. For the more devout, often more rural Hui, the use of Chinese to read the Qur’an signaled secularization and Hanification (expressed as danhua, or Hanhua). A forty-eight-year-old teacher in Xining who was born in the nearby town of Huangyuan to a Salar father and Hui mother stated that many northwestern Hui “refuse to read the Chinese version of the Qur’an.” When asked why, he replied, “There are a lot of people who think we shouldn’t study Chinese, that it’s just the rubbish language that’s left over from a heathen religion. So it’s possible that this attitude can create some problems.”¹⁰⁵ As these rural Hui migrate to cities seeking work, they express frustration with their urban co-ethnics’ lack of Arabic proficiency. An eighteen-year-old migrant from rural Qinghai, recently arrived in Jinan, cited this as one of many reasons the city’s level of Islamic observance fell short of matching his hometown’s.¹⁰⁶

FIGURE 3.2. Qur’an with alternating Chinese and Arabic. Hualong Hui Autonomous County, Qinghai.

While religiously devout, rural Hui who migrate to urban spaces look at their dedication to learning Arabic as a mark of superior devotion to faith and evidence of a purer expression of Hui identity, secular, urban Hui, particularly those in eastern China, view this commitment less favorably. In Jinan, many longtime residents of the Hui Quarter described recent migrants from Qinghai and Gansu as unwilling to allow their children to study Chinese. Pointing to a difference in attitude between local Hui and recently arrived Hui who came to Jinan to open noodle shops, one shop owner maintained, “Many of the people who sell lamian can speak Arabic. That’s because of how things are different in the northwest. There they teach their kids how to read and speak Arabic from a very young age. They forbid them to read and write in Chinese characters because they only want them to use Arabic.”¹⁰⁷ Another longtime Jinan resident, a thirty-six-year-old factory worker, echoed these observations about the perceived difference between Jinan and the northwest. He remarked, “They [northwestern Hui] oppose everything to do with the Han, including using Chinese characters, and so they don’t let their children study Chinese. There was a period of time, before Liberation [jiefang, the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949], when the attitude was to not allow study of Chinese characters.”¹⁰⁸ Though such statements were largely rooted in hearsay, Jinanese Hui internalized these cleavages that juxtaposed a supposedly more pious group of Hui from the northwest with their own perceived laxity in embracing their identity, as evidenced by a lack of proficiency in Qur’anic Arabic.

Increasingly, the prioritization of learning Islam over more standard education has come to be seen as a choice made by rural Hui who lack other educational opportunities. Children who struggle in the public school system may be channeled into mosque education when other career options have failed. A retiree in his sixties from Xining explained, “Some parents who have children don’t do that well in school may send their kids to study the Qur’an. Mostly they go to Yinchuan or to Linxia to study where there are more formal schools. But if the kids do well in school, then parents encourage them to go to college to keep learning.”¹⁰⁹ Linxia in southern Gansu, long a Hui stronghold and the birthplace of numerous Sufi orders and Muslim saints, attracts numerous northwestern Hui seeking religious education. With its plentiful resources, including Islamic bookstores and numerous mosques, the city functions as an intellectual hub for religiously observant Hui.¹¹⁰

However, negative stereotypes follow those that travel to Linxia or elsewhere to pursue Islamic education. Indeed, popular perceptions of those who elect to pursue a course of religious study frequently emphasize their failing public schools. Urban Hui tended to look at those Hui educated in rural mosques who had Arabic literacy but less formal education in Chinese as lacking the intellectual capability to succeed in other paths. Secular Jinanese Hui looked down on recently arrived migrants, regarding their lower socioeconomic status and level of education as indicative of their being religious fundamentalists or rural bumpkins. In response to such perceived educational deficits of jingtang jiaoyu, one imam in Xining said he made special efforts in teaching the mosque’s manla to ensure they were functionally literate in Chinese as well as in Arabic. He emphasized, “Of course we teach them Arabic and how to read the Qur’an. But there are also other subjects. Teaching them Chinese is also important.”¹¹¹

LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNAL BOUNDARIES OF HUINESS

These divisions over whether or not reading the Qur’an in Chinese is acceptable and whether or not teaching children to be literate only in Arabic is backward are illustrative of the ways in which language draws internal distinctions between Hui. Respondents’ remarks frequently highlighted regional and sectarian differences based on language use. Residents in Jinan and other eastern cities repeatedly cited proficiency in reading and pronouncing jingwen as a marker that set migrant Hui apart from locals. Likewise, Hui from more conservative Islamic traditions disparaged those who used Chinese to read and recite the Qur’an as practicing syncretistic or degraded Islam that belied their Hanification. Many such judgments also displayed inherent reflections on social class. Migrants who prioritized study of the Qur’an in Arabic often were characterized as economically and socially backward by those more secular Hui who placed less importance on such matters. These judgments reflected not only attitudes about religious and regional matters but also inherent judgments about educational and economic status. Thus, the subject of what should be considered proper language use begets a multiplicity of expressions of Huiness. Despite the state’s attempts to promote and standardize minority languages, disparities in the availability of Arabiclanguage-learning resources across China and economic incentives to educate children in a state-sponsored compulsory curriculum rather than through jingtang jiaoyu have renewed contestation over the boundaries and content of Hui identity.

In cities like Xining, where the Hui are one of many different Islamic minority groups, including small communities of Salar and Dongxiang, these questions may be bracketed into debates about Islamic piety and sectarian difference. In cities like Jinan, however, these differences may be equally as salient as those between Hui and the majority Han.

Whether or not Hui should consider Arabic a mother tongue and whether Hui should prioritize learning spoken and written Qur’anic Arabic form important internal distinctions among Hui. As Hui migrate from the countryside to the city, interaction between Hui from different regions and social environments activates a number of cross-cutting cleavages and ultimately draws internal boundary lines within the Hui community. Associating Arabic-language competency with lower literacy in Chinese and lower social status overlays the issue with class distinctions and activates economic cleavages. Attributing proper Arabic pronunciation to the superiority of one Islamic school over another activates sectarian cleavages. In overlapping these notions about the necessity for Hui to speak Arabic or the acceptability of speaking a Chinese-Arabic pidgin with cross-cutting cleavages that precipitate judgments about level of education, social class, or religiosity, Hui increase the salience of internal rather than external boundaries.

Internal migration increases contact between these disparate groups of Hui, and interaction between them brings these internal divisions concerning language into sharper relief. By highlighting differences in attitudes about the position of Arabic in Hui identity, the CCP’s attempts to use language to promote integration and standardization achieve the opposite. Rather than smoothing over linguistic differences, these policies increase contestation and create divisions concerning everyday language use.