CHAPTER FIVE

PERFORMING

Islamic Faith and Daily Rituals

As the sun set on a June evening in 2016 at the Yangjiazhuang Mosque in Xining’s Chengdong District, members of the mosque community began to gather in the courtyard. On this night, like every other during the month of Ramadan, the congregation waited patiently as daylight waned to break the day’s fast. Children played in the twilight, darting back and forth across the courtyard, while their parents busily handed out light snacks. One elderly man, seated on a stone bench near the edge of the courtyard, pressed a date into my hands, explaining that Muslims, following the Prophet Muhammad’s own example, always broke their fast by eating dates. Others ate slices of melon or pieces of flatbread. After a few moments, the adhan (call to prayer; translated into Chinese as both azang and bangke) sounded, calling the congregation to the first of this evening’s many prayer services. Once prayers ended, the community would join together to eat a communal iftar meal, prepared by the women of the mosque. After the joyous feasting concluded, the adults would reconvene in the large prayer hall to perform the evening’s dhikr (a ritual act, usually in the form of group recitation, for the remembrance of God), where several elderly men of the community would lead the congregation, reciting from the Qur’an in sing-songy Arabic.¹ As we waited for the evening’s celebration to begin, several congregants proudly remarked that Yangjiazhuang was the only community in Xining that ate the iftar together. In other mosque communities, families gather to eat in their homes, but at Yangjiazhuang the iftar was a community affair for the larger family of faith.²

Ritual performances like the iftar meal at Yangjiazhuang provide powerful opportunities to build the bonds of community. These celebratory moments of “collective effervescence” bring members of the community together to engage in the shared performance of identity.³ Events like these are pivotal for building and maintaining a sense of groupness by defining the boundaries of Hui identity.⁴ However, these practices have evolved in the face of urbanization and internal migration, sparking renewed contestation of the content of Hui identity and shifting boundary markers.

PERFORMANCE, ETHNICITY, AND STATE CONTROL IN URBAN SETTINGS

Public ritual performance holds an important place in an authoritarian state’s toolkit as a means of generating support, compliance, and legitimacy.⁵ Performance of public rituals allows participants to engage in symbolic behaviors that produce collective experiences and to feel bound by a sense of common belonging. Frequently, these public performances deliver messages about closely held values or integral aspects of shared identity.⁶ At the same time, events like these provide states with a vehicle for broadcasting policy goals and objectives, disseminating legitimating narratives, or presenting a politically favorable national self-image.⁷ Moreover, the state’s ability to track participation in these events provides authoritarian regimes with a means to monitor obedience and reproduction of the official tropes and narratives.⁸

Authoritarian states possess particularly strong incentives to directly control or supervise those public performances that invest symbolic meaning in ethnic identity. During the implementation of state-building and development programs, authoritarian states often attempt to exert control over the expression of ethnic identity under the premise of promoting modernization.⁹ Public rituals such as holiday celebrations or opening ceremonies provide opportunities for the state to showcase narratives about ethnic diversity or tolerance in ethnic relations.¹⁰ These performances often portray minority ethnic groups as key contributors to and beneficiaries of the state’s civilizing projects, symbolically enlisting them in the work of state-building.¹¹ Finally, by controlling the public performance of ethnicity, the state can limit the forms ethnic identity may take.¹² Such carefully managed portraits of ethnic identity intend to illustrate the state’s benevolence and minority allegiance to the state.

Despite states’ best efforts, however, such large-scale staged presentations of identity may fail to make the desired impact. Though official performances may broadcast a message aimed at creating moments of “collective effervescence” that intend to solidify the bonds of community, audiences may attach their own understandings to them or may simply choose not to pay attention at all.¹³ Thus, while performance provides opportunities for unification, it may also lay the ground for fragmentation and contestation.

This multiplicity of interpretations of the meaning and significance of public rituals indicates the important role that unofficial, daily practices play in reproducing the boundaries of identity.¹⁴ Informal, symbolic practices undertaken in private may hold more meaning and engender greater feeling of attachment to the community than large-scale, official displays.¹⁵ Unlike tourist entertainments, galas, or parades in which participants knowingly engage in performance, small acts of performance or ritual may pass without fanfare or audience. In these moments, performers may take the significance of their actions for granted, or even lack awareness they are performing at all.¹⁶ However, carrying out daily habits with the knowledge that throughout the community others simultaneously engage in similar acts allows ordinary people to feel a sense of shared identity, despite not being in direct contact with other community members.¹⁷

These dispassionate or routine performances do not inspire the excitement of more vibrant and colorful expressions of belonging, but instead act as a form of “national genuflection.” The effervescence of such moments “is not measured in moments, but in lifetimes.”¹⁸ These habits of walking, sitting, dressing, or conversing invoke shared meaning between members. Such actions convey messages about norms of appropriateness or reflect deeply held cultural values that foster a sense of shared belonging among participants.

Daily and synchronized enactments of ritual give structure to “timegeographies” of the regular interactions between people and create a sense of “cultural rhythm or social pulse” that members of a community partake in.¹⁹ Everyday habits reproduce structures that create predictability and reduce anxieties associated with unfamiliarity.²⁰ For example, to Muslim immigrants to the United States, establishing a daily ritual surrounding prayer and Islamic observation in the home helps to ease the challenges of adapting to living in a predominantly non-Muslim country.²¹

As another example, habits related to dress and clothing, despite being inherently functional, provide the most visible examples of the kind of dayto-day rituals that sustain identity.²² Participants in the Han Clothing Movement seek to revive traditional culture by donning a style of clothing they see evocative of a distinctively Han identity.²³ Likewise, clothing may provide a powerful means of differentiation, both between and within identities.²⁴ Many subdivisions of groups, such as the White Miao, take their naming conventions from the color of clothing they wear.²⁵

While authoritarian states may attempt to enforce an official version of ethnic identity that aligns with the regime’s broader goals, these informal actions may clash with or contradict such efforts. Even ostensibly mundane practices may hold deeper cultural or political significance. Examining how ordinary residents in urban Hui communities perform ethnic identity in their daily lives will further illustrate the importance of these actions for maintaining a sense of communal belonging.

PERMISSIBLE DIFFERENCE AND CULTURAL CONTESTATION: A CASE STUDY OF PERFORMING IDENTITY IN HUI COMMUNITIES

In the entrance hall of the Minzu Museum (Minzu Bowuguan), located on the campus of Beijing’s Minzu University of China (Zhongyang Minzu Daxue), a wall-size tapestry depicts all of China’s minzu, brightly dressed in their finest traditional costumes, standing together in harmony. At the center, in contemporary Western dress and carrying a backpack, is a young man representing the Han.²⁶ Exuberant scenes like this one serve as physical illustrations of the CCP’s embrace of ethnic diversity. Policy permits ethnic minorities to wear traditional costume or perform traditional songs and dances, provided they reinforce the harmony and unity that all minzu experience while living in China’s system of Zhonghua minzu.

In showcasing this ethnic unity, such displays serve as a manifestation of China’s official doctrine on ethnicity: China’s minzu are colorful, distinct, and diverse. The tapestry presents a family of peoples unified in their love of and devotion to the larger Chinese nation. China’s ethnic policies thus allow minorities to partake in carefully managed displays of ethnic culture.²⁷ The CCP creates official and acceptable forms of expression of ethnic identity that the regime may supervise and control in order to present a picture of interethnic tolerance and family-style cooperation among the various minority ethnic groups.²⁸

In order to perpetuate this image, the state promotes minority festivals, religious worship, ethnic costumes, and other performances—frequently in the form of highly choreographed song and dance routines at a televised, annual Chinese New Year Gala.²⁹ These public displays of minorites participating in the Chinese state reinforce narratives about the tolerance of the CCP toward ethnic diversity, while also solidifying Zhonghua minzu around a Han-centric core.³⁰ Through active sponsorship of displays of minority culture, especially festival celebrations, the CCP exercises a kind of “superscription” with which it asserts control in interpreting the meaning of the ritual on display.³¹

However, rhetorical attempts on the part of the state fail to create a unified, standardized expression of identity in fact. Ritual instead serves as grounds for further, renewed contestation and fragmentation of in-group consensus concerning the appropriate level of piety and observance and the proper content of Hui religious devotion.

PERFORMANCE OF PRAYER AND PERPETUATION OF HUI CULTURE

“Permitting” weekly prayers provides the state with an opportunity for involvement in displays of ethnic difference. This cooperation between Hui communities and the CCP is on public display during weekly Friday prayers at the Dongguan Mosque in Xining. The city government mandates that—among mosques belonging to Xining’s dominant Yihewani sect—only the Dongguan may hold Jumu’ah (Friday afternoon prayers; referred to as Zhuma in Chinese) prayers. Consequently, the prayers attract enormous crowds. A mosque employee, who served as a tour guide for visitors, estimated that on Fridays as many as sixty thousand routinely attended.³² Crowds fill the mosque’s internal courtyard and spill out into the wide boulevard in front of the mosque, packing the sidewalk and the two eastbound lanes of traffic for the length of at least two city blocks. The local government even helps the mosque deal with logistics: to ensure safety and avoid roadblocks, the city deploys police to stand in the street near the mosque and direct traffic.

Unsurprisingly, Zhuma prayer services at the Dongguan Mosque attract international attention and serve as a showcase of ethnoreligious cooperation touted by both the local government and the local Hui community. Prayer services represent the most visible collective expression of Hui culture in Xining and are also a tourist attraction. Every Friday, onlookers, including foreign and Han tourists, and Hui women from the community who do not attend prayers at the mosque, gather on the opposite side of the street, holding up cameras to capture images of the crowd.³³

For the CCP, the public performance of prayer in Hui communities reaches audiences both at home and abroad. Domestically, images of Hui holding large prayer services aided by supportive and accommodating local police projects an image of a mutually beneficial relationship between ethnic minorities and the state. Such a message targets both Han and minorities alike to suggest that the CCP’s benevolent and protective governance allows all minzu to prosper. Further, to onlookers all over the world, the scene suggests the CCP’s success in fostering a diverse, tolerant, and multicultural China. Hui audiences also vary. One respondent, a Hui taxi driver from Xining in his mid-twenties, spoke favorably of the large crowds on Fridays, claiming, “Qinghai Hui are just more devout.”³⁴ Another, a middle-aged Salar man originally from Xunhua City, proudly asserted that Muslims all over the world spoke approvingly of the Dongguan’s Friday prayers. He suggested that the local community—Hui and Salar alike—provided a model for piety, even for those visitors from Muslim-majority countries. For many participants, the crowds that gathered each week at the Dongguan broadcast a clear message about the piety of Xining’s Hui to the larger Islamic world. However, these messages also found an audience within China. The respondent made explicit contrasts between the scenes of devotion on display at the Dongguan Mosque and what he perceived to be insufficient devotion in communities in eastern China. In this light, the performance of prayer in Xining became an expression of how to properly model religious faith, something he felt Hui communities to the east had lost touch with. He lamented, “If you go to the mosque [in eastern China], almost nobody will be there to attend prayer. Mostly, it’s just older people and retirees. Last year I went to Taiyuan, and there was almost nobody at their mosque. They have such a big, beautiful old mosque, but it was almost totally empty. Nobody came to pray.”³⁵

Thus, for multiple sets of actors, these public performances of ritual present important opportunities for establishing boundaries of Hui identity. In these moments, audiences—Han, Hui, and international—witness a highly managed effort by both the state and Hui actors to set the boundaries of Hui identity. By using the city’s resources to provide a single location for holding prayer services and promoting the ceremony as a large-scale, communitybuilding experience of “collective effervescence,” the state sets parameters on religious and cultural expression and articulates a sanctioned, monitored version of Hui culture.

The state’s superficial commitment to promoting religion does not always translate into policies that accommodate the actual practice of religion. On the contrary, residents of Hui enclave communities in cities like Jinan, where Han form the preponderant majority of the population, frequently cite practical limitations in excusing their sporadic prayer attendance. In rural communities, employers tolerate breaks or allow time off from work to accommodate prayer, but Hui in Jinan allege that in large cities employers are not so accommodating. Many respondents argued that employer inflexibility forced them to make a choice between work and faith and complained about sacrificing the practice of daily prayer in order to save their jobs.³⁶ For example, the owner of a small tea shop in Jinan cited the difficulty of dutifully praying five times a day while facing the demands imposed by employers. He reasoned, “We’re supposed to pray every day, but if you don’t work near a mosque that’s not easy to do. On Fridays, if you leave work to pray, your work unit [danwei] might fire you. You have to provide for yourself. God isn’t too serious about these things.”³⁷ A baker in his forties, also a lifelong Jinan resident, contrasted the faithfulness of local Hui to recently arrived migrants, claiming, “The Hui from the northwest go to pray more often than a lot of locals. For them, Islam is absolutely a part of their daily lives. But we local Hui are very business-minded [shangye hua]. We’re really concerned about work and don’t have a lot of time to go pray.”³⁸ A thirty-two-year-old magazine editor in Beijing remarked that because he worked on Fridays he rarely found time to leave the office to attend weekly prayers at 2:00 p.m. As compensation, he often went to the mosque alone to pray after his workday was over.³⁹

Obstacles like these that hinder the ability to observe daily prayer services present migrant rural Hui with substantial challenges when trying to adjust to their new urban surroundings. Rural migrant Hui often disparage their urban counterparts’ lack of devotion to daily prayer. A front-desk worker at the Muslim Hotel (Musilin binguan) in Xining’s Chengdong quarter recently arrived from nearby Minghe stated that, to be “qualified” (hege) as Hui, it was necessary to pray five times a day.⁴⁰ In Jinan, a nineteen-yearold chef in a lamian shop, recently arrived from rural Qinghai, groused, “[Jinanese Hui] just know ‘I’m a Hui,’ but they don’t know about anything else.” Unlike the Hui in his hometown, Hui in Jinan rarely attended daily prayers.⁴¹ Another respondent in Jinan labeled these infrequent mosque attendees “yearly Hui,” explaining, “There are Hui that pray regularly, and there are a group called nian HuiHui because they only pray once a year on Kaizhai jie [Eid al-Fitr].”⁴² For these pious respondents, ethnic identity adhered to religious faith. Disparaging those who attended only on religious holidays by calling them nian HuiHui suggests that, in their eyes, without a regular practice of faith, a person could not claim to be Hui.

Contestation occurs over not just the frequency of prayers, but also their content. In particular, the practice of commemorating deceased saints and relatives (jinian wangren), where families invite an imam to visit their home, lead prayers, and recite the Qur’an on the anniversary of a relative’s death (see figure 5.1), may spark controversy within the community. Many respondents, particularly those followers of China’s various Sufi orders (menhuan), named these commemorations as one of the major rituals of faith in which ordinary members of the community frequently engaged.⁴³ They identified such rituals as an important part of holiday ceremonies.⁴⁴ Adherents cited these practices as originating within Chinese Islam and as linking Islam to traditional Chinese culture. As one imam in Beijing insisted, such blending of Islamic and Chinese tradition was not only permissible but inevitable: “Confucius taught that people all ought to act benevolently. We Muslims say that God is the most benevolent.”⁴⁵ In Xining, one imam expressed the view that, as a product of cultural fusion, Hui culture necessarily incorporated elements of traditional Chinese ritual. Hui, he contended, needed to observe both their Chinese and Islamic roots: “The reason that the Hui are a minzu is because of our religion. Without Islam, we’re not Hui.”⁴⁶

FIGURE 5.1. Pilgrims offer incense at Da Gongbei in Linxia.

These discussions of the Hui as having equally Chinese and Islamic heritage align with the state’s call for the Hui to value patriotism on an equal footing with religious devotion, often expressed through the maxim “Love your country, love your faith” (ai guo, ai jiao).

While such commemorations play a critical part in maintaining a sense of Hui identity for those adherents who practice them, others in the Hui community—particularly those members of the non-Sufi, reformist Yihewani school of Sunni Islam—regard them as syncretic, and ultimately in contravention of proper Islamic practice.⁴⁷ Two respondents from Lanzhou remarked that these readings of the Qur’an for one’s dead relatives were influenced by the Confucian practice of ancestor worship and were essentially blasphemous.⁴⁸ Memorializing the dead in this manner broke the foundational commandment of Islam, that Muslims should worship no other besides Allah. Despite the fact that debates over the appropriateness of veneration of the dead occur in Muslim communities throughout the world, these men saw the practice as evidence of unacceptable Sinicization.⁴⁹ To these men, and others like them, Hui who burned incense in memory of ancestors did so because of the corrupting influence of Han after generations of assimilation and loss of identity.

In Xining, the growth in the number of adherents to Salafi Islam (Chinese: Sailaifeiye) provokes further challenges over whether Hui should adhere to Islamic rituals developed in China or look to emulate the Muslim community in the Middle East. Some respondents in the community express annoyance at the Salafi’s haughty lectures about the syncretic nature of local traditions or the “purity” of Salafism. For example, a twenty-five-year-old taxi driver who claimed to be Yihewani expressed his disdain for Salafi, describing them with the pejorative term Santai (literally “three raises,” a reference to the three times Salafi raise their hands during prayer). “[The Santai] come into our mosques and they tell us we’re not following Islam correctly, and we ought to do things like them. They don’t respect our differences,” he grumbled.⁵⁰

The reshaping of urban landscapes and populations causes conflicts like the one described by the taxi driver to occur more frequently. As the influx of rural Hui into urban communities continues, Hui with completely different standards for piety and practice encounter one another, causing disagreements over how often and in what manner Hui ought to pray to continue and intensify.

ISLAMIC GARMENTS AND WEARING HUI CULTURE

Measuring faithfulness and devotion often entails other practices besides merely going to the mosque to pray. Many respondents cited dressing in a manner consistent with Islamic religious dictates as a key indicator of Hui identity. Head coverings worn in Hui communities cover a range of styles. In general, men wear either a knitted skullcap or a pillbox-style rounded cap, both referred to as bai maozi. Women’s head coverings come in a far more diverse array. Cultural, social, political, and other influences mediate choices about whether and which kind of head covering to wear. Despite standardized descriptions of ethnic costume in both scholarly and official accounts, the choice remains highly personal.⁵¹ Some women wear headscarves referred to as shajin; increasingly, women in religiously conservative Hui communities wear hijab-style veils (gaitou) resembling those worn in Malaysia or Indonesia that cover the hair, ears, neck, and shoulders. Older women may wear more boxy cloth prayer hats, usually in shades of pale blue or purple, that cover the hair but leave the ears and neck exposed. Such garments are local to China and are viewed as old-fashioned. Less commonly, women may elect to wear niqab-style veils that cover the face below the eyes. And some Hui, especially those who are less religiously observant, may choose to forgo head coverings altogether.⁵²

These differences in practice reflect competing understandings of how Hui ought to dress. By wearing—or choosing not to wear—traditional ethnic costume, or Islamic garments such as headscarves and bai maozi Hui perform ethnic identity. The state too stresses the connection between costume and distinctive ethnic identity. Official documents on minzu policy frequently use images of minorities in ethnic costume, suggesting the strength of China’s diversity and tolerance. Indeed, the vibrant minority costumes on display are upheld as having “rich cultural connotations which convey deep meanings,” and are thus vital purveyors of culture. State-produced depictions of “official” Hui costume usually show Islamic clothing, such as the long-sleeved garments and hijabs at the exhibit at Minzu University in Beijing. The museum also contains a collection of bai maozi as part of an exhibit on religious headgear.⁵³

Despite these official displays of ethnic clothing, many urban Hui respondents remarked that limitations placed on them in the workplace prevented them from routinely wearing hijabs or bai maozi. While the CCP did not enforce a nationwide policy on veiling at the time of my fieldwork in 2015–16, the Party had already begun to restrict wearing religious garments in cities within Xinjiang.⁵⁴ None of the municipal governments of my case sites imposed such extreme limitations as formal bans, nor did they actively campaign against wearing religious head coverings. My respondents suggested that—outside of Hui-run businesses—employers frowned upon wearing such attire. As a rule, respondents said, work units tended to prohibit their employees from wearing religious garments.⁵⁵ The owner of a store in Jinan cited these workplace limitations as a major reason why most local Hui chose not to wear hijabs, even if they felt religiously obligated to do so. She expressed frustration with those recently arrived migrants who acted dismissively toward those who did not cover their head: “A lot of people who have moved into this neighborhood might be Muslims, but they don’t really behave like Muslims should. Maybe they don’t think I dress properly. They’ll ask ‘Why don’t you wear a hijab? How can you really be a Muslim if you don’t wear a hijab?’ And I say, ‘I know I should wear one, but I don’t.’ But here we just don’t wear them except to go pray. In fact, a lot of work units will forbid you to wear a hijab, so people don’t wear them.”⁵⁶

The restrictions against headscarves imposed by work units require Hui to weigh economic against cultural incentives. The store owner’s explanation that Hui fear they might suffer economic consequences for choosing to wear head coverings reflects the kinds of anxiety that inform these decisions. Worries about cultural estrangement provide a counterbalancing set of apprehensions, leaving respondents like the shop owner caught between the threat of sanction from secular institutions and scorn from the more pious members of the religious community. In response, Hui feel they must prioritize either their economic interests or their cultural and religious heritage.

Observing the incompatibility between these choices, a twenty-four-yearold public school teacher from Xining explained the choice to wear a hijab as a choice between two lifestyle paths. Those who wore them limited their prospects for attaining higher education or engaging in professional employment and instead tended to marry young and work low-wage jobs.⁵⁷ Framed in these terms, many respondents portrayed the choice to wear a hijab or bai maozi as a choice to limit economic opportunity. As a response to such economic realities, a thirty-seven-year-old restaurant owner from Yinchuan told me that wearing a prayer hat or a hijab was reserved for special occasions: “I feel that wearing a hijab is becoming more formalized. Many people who work in cities, like entrepreneurs and other jobs like this, they seldom wear them. In Yinchuan there are few people who wear hijabs or prayer hats.”⁵⁸ As a result, urban residents working in professional jobs rarely wore traditional religious dress. One woman in her early twenties who grew up in Jinan noted that migrant Hui from the northwest were far more likely than locals to regularly wear prayer hats or hijabs. “Nobody in my family wears [a headscarf],” she claimed.⁵⁹ To secular Hui like her, who rarely attend mosque, wearing a religious head covering—regardless of style—may seem like an alien practice rather than a part of their own cultural heritage.

Many respondents used wearing hijabs or prayer hats as an outwardly visible measure of devotion. The Qur’an provides an ambiguous set of standards surrounding dress and veiling.⁶⁰ Only broad instructions from a number of passages provide sartorial guidelines for both men and women. In one passage (33:53), the Qur’an advises, “When you ask his wives for something, do so from behind a screen: this is purer both for your hearts and for theirs.” Elsewhere (33:59), the Qur’an dictates, “Tell your wives, your daughters, and women believers to make their outer garments hang low over them so as to be recognized and not insulted.” And in yet another passage (24:30–31), the Qur’an lays out more specific guidelines for both men and women, including the mandate that women “should let their headscarves fall to cover their necklines” except in the presence of husbands, fathers, and other family members.⁶¹ These competing instructions, as well as those handed down through different traditions of hadith or added by rulings from rival schools of Islamic jurisprudence, result in a wide array of interpretations about what the Qur’an requires in terms of dress.⁶²

These divisions are echoed in the Hui community. A number of respondents associated manner of dress with level of faithfulness and associated wearing Islamic clothing with being more authentically Hui. Dressing in Islamic fashion, one respondent assured me, was a minimum qualification for being Hui.⁶³ One man, who sold yak butter products in the Hui Quarter in Xining, explained how wearing a hat served as a means of broadcasting ethnic identity. Citing the fact that I had initially inquired whether his product was sanctioned by Islamic dietary law, he remarked, “Just now, when you came in, you didn’t know that I was Hui and so you asked about whether or not this was qingzhen. But if I was wearing a bai maozi you’d certainly know that I was Hui.” He concluded, “If you wear a bai maozi it just shows that you’re a Hui.”⁶⁴

Other interviewees expressed a similar religious obligation to wear a headscarf or dress in a more conservative fashion.⁶⁵ During one interview, a twenty-nine-year-old woman in Xining apologized for meeting me wearing only a loose shajin. Normally, she said, she wore a niqab, covering everything but her eyes. Reflecting further on the matter of appropriate dress, she told me, “The Qur’an explains how people are supposed to dress. They’re not supposed to wear tight clothes or show hair or show the skin on their shoulders.”⁶⁶ Unsurprisingly, these respondents pointed to those Hui who routinely donned hijabs and prayer hats as exemplifying the proper manner of dress and behavior. Especially when speaking to migrants from rural Hui communities, invocations of the fact that greater numbers of Hui wore white hats and headscarves in the village served as proof of superior faith. Many of these respondents looked with disapproval on the scarcity of Hui wearing white hats in urban communities. A middle-aged entrepreneur from Yinchuan asserted the superior devotion of Ningxia Hui on the basis that they wore Islamic dress with greater frequency than Hui from elsewhere.⁶⁷ These remarks associated a decline in visual expression of Hui identity by wearing religious headcoverings with a waning of Hui identity. Those who didn’t wear headcoverings were presumed to have lost touch with their faith, and therefore to have become Hanified.

ISLAMIC HOLIDAYS AND THE PERFORMANCE OF HUI ETHNICITY

Islamic holidays like Eid al-Fitr (Kaizhai jie) and Eid al-Adha (Gu’erbang jie) offer the state an opportunity to promote an official, sanctioned version of Hui culture. For many Hui, Kaizhai jie marks the only occasion in a calendar year that obligates mosque attendance. These celebrations bring members of the community together to engage in the practice of faith and extend the bonds of the Hui community. In large cosmopolitan communities, such as Beijing’s Niu Jie, Kaizhai jie prayer ceremonies attract Hui from every region of China and every sect or school of thought.

Accordingly, the state accommodates official observance of the holiday in many ways. On the morning of Kaizhai jie on Niu Jie in Beijing, traffic police erected barriers in the middle of the street, turning the avenue into a pedestrian thoroughfare. The Beijing Cuisine Association (Beijing Pengren Xiehui) hosted the Ninth Beijing Halal Culinary Culture Festival (Beijing Qingzhen Meishi Wenhua Jie), for which it erected a row of white tents that lined the avenue opposite the mosque, housing vendors selling snack foods. The morning’s festival atmosphere gave the city government a channel for broadcasting its own message: over the avenue a bright red banner, hung especially for the occasion, read, “Raise high the great banner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics! Build a prosperous, civilized, harmonious, and livable new Xi Cheng District!” Signs for the food festival likewise declared, “Spread nationality policy and promote interethnic cooperation.”⁶⁸

Similar celebrations take place throughout the country, and local governments play a role in staging large-scale holiday observances. The large crowds that gather at these celebrations present the state with a vital opportunity to endorse and display its control over the expression of Hui culture and Islamic faith. Respondents in Xining remarked that attendance at the Dongguan Mosque grew exponentially for morning prayer services on holidays. Some estimated that the number of worshippers on these occasions surpassed 200,000.⁶⁹ In Yinchuan, the government of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region declares Islamic holidays public holidays and gives civil servants three days of vacation time to accommodate worship.⁷⁰ Even in relatively isolated communities, such as Jinan’s Hui Quarter, Kaizhai jie draws larger crowds than regular weekly prayers. A twenty-two-year-old woman from Jinan described a similar scene at Kaizhai jie observances at the city’s Great Southern Mosque: “Last year for Kaizhai jie, I went [to the mosque] and there were so many people. Not just local Muslims from Jinan, but people from all over the country all attended.”⁷¹

The holiday provides an important opportunity for the state to join with and promote mosques’ efforts to build and strengthen the Muslim community. As one imam in Jinan explained, on Kaizhai jie the local mosque committee engaged in acts of charitable donation and distribution of goods like cooking oil and fried oil cakes (you xiang) to the neighborhood’s poor.⁷² In facilitating and overseeing the celebration of the holiday, and providing logistical support for the prayer services, the state gains the ability to monitor its tone and transform the celebration into a platform for its own agenda.

However, state support for celebrations remains uneven. While local governments in some areas promote public holiday events, elsewhere a lack of support prevents full participation within the community. A fifty-two-yearold Hui receptionist at a weekend English prep school in Jinan complained that local holiday celebrations lacked vibrancy because residents received no time off from work to celebrate. “Right now, the government doesn’t give a holiday,” she observed. “It’s not like in the northwest, like in Xi’an or Shaanxi or Gansu, where everyone can take a vacation. We here in Jinan don’t get a vacation.”⁷³ Her remarks reveal distinct regional divisions that adhere to cultural rather than physical geographies. In taking leave from work to observe Muslim holidays, northwestern Hui established themselves as different from locals. In Jinan, however, residents faced a choice: they might take time off to observe the holiday, but doing so might cost them their job.

For many respondents, the most important observations of the holiday occur outside the purview of the state. Away from the pomp and circumstance surrounding official holiday celebrations, the most important aspects of Kaizhai jie involved informal gatherings with family to eat a large meal and to express holiday greetings. For many, these informal, family-oriented observances of holiday traditions represent a more relevant expression of Hui culture, and indeed matter more than the official, carefully messaged, state-sanctioned events. Multiple respondents, when asked to identify holiday activities, immediately mentioned gathering with family to fry oil cakes and cook large meals to share.⁷⁴ On Niu Jie, after the morning prayers ended, attendees spilled out into the streets, filling the neighborhood’s many halal restaurants to celebrate with family and friends.⁷⁵ Even for those relatively secularized Hui who skip prayers at the mosque on Kaizhai jie, the act of celebrating the day by eating fried oil cakes provides a connection with a sense of Hui identity and a feeling of belonging in the Hui community.

Recent migrants complained that traditional holiday celebrations in urban communities lacked the vivacity of the countryside. One imam in Yinchuan remarked that Kaizhai jie celebrations in the city weren’t as “festive” (nuanhuo) as those in his rural hometown of Pingluo because in the countryside entire villages came out to celebrate together, whereas in Yinchuan celebrations were small and private.⁷⁶ A professor at Yinchuan’s Jingxue Yuan (Institute of Qur’anic Studies) shared these sentiments. In the countryside, he explained, celebrations of Gu’erbang jie (Eid al-Adha, derived from the Persian name, Qurban) took place in single-story courtyard houses where the community could gather together to slaughter sheep and cattle and roast whole goats to share with neighbors, in keeping with Islamic tradition. In the city, where everyone lived in cramped apartments, no communal space existed for gathering to celebrate the holiday together.⁷⁷

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SHAJIN AND SECULARISM: NEGOTIATING PERFORMANCES OF HUI IDENTITY IN CITIES

Though holiday events like the prayer services on Kaizhai jie provide a statesponsored—and state-monitored—forum for performance of Hui identity and bring together members of disparate and diverse backgrounds, they do not always serve to unify the community in a single moment of collective effervescence. In fact, such ceremonies often achieve the opposite effect, by turning performances into sites of contestation. Certainly these public celebrations fill city streets and provide visible expressions of Hui culture and target numerous audiences, both in China and abroad. The CCP uses these celebrations to project an image of tolerance and benevolence to other ethnic minorities as well as to foreign observers. In Hui communities these performances broadcast the strength of Hui faith to the global Islamic community. However, such signals also target other Hui, sending messages of how Hui identity ought to be observed. As such, these displays seek to mark what the performers deem the proper boundaries of Hui identity.

As these performances open the process of boundary contestation, they contribute to the fragmentation of Hui identity as much as they do unity and integration. Limitations on the ability to wear headscarves at work or to take time off for weekly prayers force some Hui to weigh religious observance against economic self-preservation. Migration highlights the way in which Hui from different ages, classes, and regional and professional backgrounds weigh these choices differently. Many Hui on urban work units feel unable to sacrifice their employment in order to observe religious norms, while more pious Hui view this choice as evidence of secularization and lack of seriousness about being Hui.

Differences of opinion over the significance of wearing a hijab or prayer hat or how often to pray illustrate the fact that rituals do not impart universally accepted meanings, but instead may be a cause for contestation and debate. Previous studies of religiosity among the Hui observe that these discrepancies in mosque attendance and regularity of prayer often overlap with distinctions in which rural Hui are held up as more pious and urban Hui as more secular.⁷⁸ However, as migration brings Hui from different geographic regions and social environments into contact, other cleavages, such as social class, level of education, and age, also become salient as urban environments foster the kind of interaction that renews contestation of Hui identity.

Internal migration only amplifies differences between different groups of Hui and perpetuates further contestation. By bringing Hui from different regions and different social environments together, mass migration sparks new discussions about the proper ways to be Hui. Debates over how to properly practice and observe Islamic ritual are essential to defining the boundaries of Hui identity. This renewed contestation activates cross-cutting identity cleavages and draws intragroup boundaries, calling attention to the differences that exist within the Hui community. Even though the ethnic identity of Hui may provide common ground for these disparate groups, other identities may supersede it.

Migration also serves to revive interest in Hui identity. As more devout Hui come into contact with more secularized Hui, renewed interest in Islamic practice sometimes blossoms. The arrival of migrants from the northwest impacts the daily habits of residents of Jinan’s Hui Quarter, and in many cases galvanizes local Hui to rediscover their religious and cultural roots.⁷⁹ Many residents observe that increased contact between Hui from the northwest and local Hui revitalizes mosque communities. The qingzhen baker in Jinan remarked that, after seeing how much more piously rural migrant Hui behaved than locals, he too began to go to the mosque more often in an effort to follow their example. To him, the presence of new Hui in the community offered him an opportunity to learn how to be properly Muslim for the first time.⁸⁰ Many others expressed the belief that these migrants model proper Islamic behavior and adhere more strictly to religious orthodoxy. Locals assert that northwestern migrants more regularly attend prayer services and often make up the majority of the attendees at daily prayers.⁸¹ One interviewee noted that the arrival of migrants in the community led to increased visibility of Hui as the number wearing white prayer hats increased: “There are still some men who wear bai maozi, but over the past few years, I feel like the number of Hui wearing bai maozi around here has increased. There are also more who wear hijabs. When I was young, you never saw anyone else wearing a hijab. But these last few years there are quite a few.”⁸²

Moving to urban communities affects migrant Hui in their daily habits as well. Respondents in Yinchuan noted that, in a city comprised primarily of recently arrived migrants, the Hui community was defined by a blending of traditions.⁸³ For example, a Hui academic in his sixties remarked that as migrants moved into the city from elsewhere, more people within the Hui community began to celebrate the Chinese New Year. This, he contended, resulted from the dilution of the strength of Hui identity as migrants from rural Islamic strongholds in the countryside found themselves surrounded by Han in new urban settings.⁸⁴ Without the kind of community present in the countryside, rural migrants lapsed in their observance of faith and began to assimilate into Han culture. The Islamic goods store owner in Jinan also observed a loosening in the strictness with which recently arrived Hui observed dress codes: “I think these Muslims from the northwest also have become a bit more relaxed. In the northwest they cover their entire heads and don’t allow any hair to show. But here you see women who still wear the hijab but have a little hair showing through because they think it’s prettier to look this way. So they also have relaxed a little.”⁸⁵

Ultimately, ritual performance provides a vehicle for the creation of new understandings of the boundaries of Hui identity. These interpretations of Hui identity may draw on sources of authority other than those sanctioned by the state and may not conform to the template of Hui identity held up by the CCP.

As the contact between Hui groups triggers Islamic revival among some secular Hui and increased cosmopolitanism among some conservative Hui, new understandings about the essential nature of Hui culture emerge. This process of contestation and renegotiation happens outside of the control of the state, through informal processes. Though state policies seek to channel ethnoreligious expression into a state-sanctioned path, daily interactions in the context of urbanization and migration achieve the opposite effect. Rather than consolidation of Hui identity around the narrative of the state, debates over performance of Hui identity reveal the heterogeneity within the Hui community and illustrate the limitations of the state’s ability to control how ethnic boundaries are set and maintained.