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BLTLDING SOLIDARITY: THE PROCESS FOR METROPOLITAN

CHINESE MUSLIMS, 1912-1949

by
Sandra Aili Green

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
In the Graduate College
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

1999

UMI Number. 9960261

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2
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
GRADUATE COLLEGE

As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have

read the dissertation prepared by

Sandra Aili Green

Building Solidarity; The Process for Metropolitan

entitled

Chinese Muslims. 1912-1949

and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation

requirement for the Degree of

Oiarles Hedtke

Doctor of Philosophy

Date

Oi
John W. Olsen

Date

James A.

Date^

^
Richard Reeves

^/

Date
Date

Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon

the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the
Graduate College.

I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my

direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation
requirement.

erDissertation Director
Charles Hedtke

Date

f ^9^

STATEMENT BY AUTHOR
This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for an advanced degree at the University if Arizona and is deposited in the
University Library to be made available to borrowers under the rules of the Library.
Brief quotations form this dissertation are allowable without special
permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for
permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in
part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate
College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of material is in the interests of
scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.

SIGNED

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to extend my gratitude to my committee; my gifted committee
chairman and dedicated educator, Charles Hedtke, who has remained a steadfast friend
throughout; John Olsen, whose erudition is all the more admirable due to his thoughtful
kindness; the thriving James Millward; and Richard Reeves whose sense of humor and
knowledge are outstanding. Without their encouragement at the eleventh hour I could not
have completed this project before the century's end. My only regret is that I did not take
better advantage of their respective talents. My work suffers as a result. More
importantly, however, it has been a learning process. I have benefited from the effort, but
were 1 to do it again, the paper would be vastly improved.
r would not have been able to attempt this project without the unswerving
love and support of my family (who have suffered beyond the call on my behalf): my
parents, Charles and Aili Green; my sister, Bonnie Stetson; and my dear uncle, Ame
Ketman. Christopher John Frayne has remained an inspiration throughout the years, as
have the marvelous Katherine and George Frayne. A number of other fiiends have been
indispensable; the Millar-Gamer family, Cynthia Calderwood, Michele and Chuck Stepkin,
Albert Li, and Phoenix Ch'ung-shu Huang. Jim Dew, Vivian Ling, Laura Casa, Vera
Kolpakova and Carrie Waara all earn awards for saying the right thing at the right time.
Donald Harper and Brian McKnight have been invaluable. I also want to extend a special
thanks to Blanche Vey Swyers and Kathy Santeford at the Graduate College, their
ongoing support and encouragement have been immeasurable. And, in the final stretch,
Colin Hughes has been a great comfort and special fnend.

ABSTRACT

In the midst of revolution as the Qing Dynasty faded into the twentieth
century, metropolitan Chinese Muslim leaders took initiatives in their communities, wliich
shaped change. As a result, a process was set in motion, one that effected the identity of
urban Chinese Muslims in more ways than one within the new political scene nationally,
internationally, and in regards to other Muslims in China. The process stimulated a
self-awareness among Chinese Muslim urban populations, which promoted new
perceptions of their identity as Hui. The process also triggered a debate among Chinese
Muslim intellectuals in which ideas of minzu-ness, ethnicity, and religiosity were argued.
The process fostered a sense of solidarity among the urban Muslim communities.
Chinese Muslim activities paralleled those of other Chinese. Chinese
Muslims took part in the New Culture Movement, many joined the army. At the same
time they focused attention on improving their communities. This dissertation examines
the activities of urban Chinese Muslims: the creation of study groups and associations, the
revamping of Muslim schools; and the publishing of books and periodicals. The
dissertation is a look at strategies used in adapting to change. The goal has been to
illustrate that the Chinese Muslims accepted change, even welcomed it, but in so doing
altered perceptions of themselves and their religion.

The metropolitan Chinese Muslims got swept up in the enthusiasm of the

early republican era. Many influential members of the community endorsed the
Nationalists' revolution and the new republic. Chinese Muslim urbanites welcomed
modernization and nationalism, seeing them as vehicles that would facilitate their efforts,
and protect them. Chinese Muslim motives were nationalistic, as Chinese they wanted a
strong China. Their motives were also parochial. They wanted a strong local community,
and they actively set out to improve conditions. By strengthening their communities they
could insure the survival of Chinese Muslim culture, just as a strong China would insure
the survival of Chinese culture.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER
I

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ISLAM IN CHINA

26

II.

NATIONALISM AND CITIZENSHIP

47

III. ORGANIZATIONS AND EDUCATION, 1912-1949

62

IV

PUBLICATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

88

V.

DEFINING ETHNICITY

112

CONCLUSION

134

REFERENCES

147

INTRODUCTION

In 1912 the founders of the new Republic of China adopted a flag that
consisted of five horizontal strips (red, yellow, blue, white, and black), each said to
represent one of China's five major groups, partners in a common enterprise. Sun Yatsen
had acknowledged the existence of four distinct minority groups Muslims, Mongolians,
Manchus and Tibetans ~ in addition to the majority Han Chinese. The groups essentially
mirrored the groups the Qianlong emperor had designated on the map of the Qing
Empire.' The Han, living in China's heartland provinces of the Pearl River, the Yangzi,
and the Yellow River basins constituted the vast majority of the population. The
traditional homelands of the other groups were regions beyond the central Han domain.
The Muslims were the Turkic-speaking tribes of Xinjiang. Mongolian lands extended
along the northern borders of the Qing Empire. The Manchu homeland was in the far
reaches of the Northeast. That of the Tibetans centered in the massive plateau beyond the
southwestern provinces.
The strategy to name five nationalities was hardly subtle since the republic
laid claim to the same domain as the Qing. After a century of foreign encroachment, the

' See James Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central
Asia, 7759-/56-/(Stanford: Steuiford University Press, 1998), 197-203.

Chinese hoped to maintain the vast regions of Xinjiang, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Tibet,
both for protection and strength. The Nationalists rallied the people of the former empire
to unite in the formation of a new nation-state. The dynastic system would be replaced
with a modem republican government asserting a leadership of citizens, who unlike
imperial subjects of old, would enjoy new rights and opportunities, and would take on a
political role. Sun Yatsen promised the republic would satisfy the needs of all groups, and
unite them in a single cultural and political whole."
Soon after the establishment of the republic Sun Yatsen admitted that
China was really one race, and the non-Han peoples were small in number, thereby
suggesting that his promise required assimilation on the part of the minorities. The
Guomingdang Manifesto of 1924, said to be the words of Sun Yatsen, stated, however,
that the government should help "and guide the weak and small racial groups within its
national boundaries toward self-determination and self-government."^ The contradiction
between assimilation and self-determination was not explained, but in 1927 the
Guomingdang, GMD, changed the national flag, replacing the five barred flag with a
design that was a variation of the 1895 Guomingdang flag.
The new flag, a white sun in a blue sky over a red ground, was endowed
with symbolism, too. The sun's twelve points represented the twelve-hour periods of the
day, and stood for a "forever-progressive spirit." The colors collectively represented
- June Teufel Dreyer, Chhia's Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities atid National
Integration in the People's Republic of China (Cambridge; Harvard University Press,
1976), 16-17.
^ Chinese Ministry of Information, comp. China Handbook, /937-/9-/i(New York:
Macmillan Company, 1947), 74.

Sun's Three People's Principles {Sanmin Zhuyi). Blue stood for equality, white for
fraternity, and red for liberty."' The changing of the flag, however, symbolized a retreat
from the ideal of the union of different groups, and was underlined by the adoption of an
explicitly assimilationist policy."^ Although the Manifesto had reiterated the right of selfdetermination, and autonomy if a group chose, the GMD chief goal was to maintain the
union. State-nationality igttoztt) and Chinese nationality (zhonghua guozu) implied fusion
of all groups into one nation.
Dreyer notes Sun disregarded, or did not know about, the numerous small
minorities that can be found in the Southwest and elsewhere. At the same time, it is
curious that Sun did not include the Chinese Muslims, today known as the Hui, among his
minority groups. The Chinese Muslims of the Northwest were a sizable population, and
their inclusion would have fit the pattern of China's different groups uniting. The Chinese
Muslims were sinophones, however, and Sun apparently did not consider their religious
difference grounds to acknowledge them as a separate group.^ This is assuming the
Muslims Sun referred were the Huibu, the Turkic-speaking Muslims of Xinjiang, the
Uyghurs. The term Huibu, however, did leave room for ambiguity. The words, htti and
huihui, meant Muslim in general, and there were more Muslim groups than Uyghurs and
Chinese Muslims alone.

Chinese Ministry, China Handbook, np.

^ Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, 16-17.
Colin Mackerras, China's Minorities: Integration and Modernization in the Twentieth
Century (Hong Kong; Oxford University Press, 1994), 53-58.
^ Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, 16-17.

11

The term Hui was used to designate being Muslim. The term's definitional
base was religion, and culturally distinct groups who shared a belief in Islam would be
referred to as Hui regardless of their differences. Muslims dwelt in all parts of China, and
thus, people as culturally diverse as Turkic-speaking Muslims of the Northwest and
Chinese-speaking Muslims in Shandong were all be referred to as Hui. More specific
terms were often used by locals to distinguish between various Muslims. For example, in
the Tarim Baisia, Chantou Hui (Wrapped head Hui) referred to the Uyghurs. Other more
specific ethnonyms included the Dongxiang Hui of Gansu and Xinjiang, the Sala Hui of
Qinghai and Gansu, and the Chinese-speaking Hanhui living throughout China proper.^
In the People's Republic of China (PRC) today, however, the term Hui has more specific
cultural and linguistic boundaries: it does not refer to followers of Islam but only to the
Chinese-speaking Muslims, the Hanhui (also called the Sino-Muslims). Others who had
previously been included in the broader definition of Hui are now known by other names.^
A number of names had been used historically for Muslims. By Yuan times
(1260-1368 AD) the terms Huihui, or Huihui ten were used to designate those who were
Muslims. The origin of the term Hui, or Huihui, is not clear. One theory traces the
earliest use of the term to the Liao Dynasty (915-1125 AD) where it appears in Jin
documents in reference to foreigners that traded along the China coast who were

^ Jonathan Lipman, "Hui-Hui: An Ethnohistory of the Chinese-speaking Muslims" in

Journal of South Asian and Middle Elastern Studies 11:1 and 2 (1987), 112-113. Also
see Dru Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic
(Cambridge, Massachusetts; Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press,
1991), 19-20.
' Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 16-20.

12

followers of Islam.'" Another theory suggests that the term Huihe was used as a Chinese
transliteration for Uyghur, who happened to be Muslim. Song officials (960-1279 AD),
however, applied the term to any believers of Islam, which would have expanded the
application of the term to make it synonymous with being Muslim. Some scholars
speculate that the character hui, to return, was used because of the Islamic practice of the
pilgrimage to Mecca -- the return to the holy center. In the same vein, others suggest that
the ritual of turning to Mecca five times a day for prayers may have promoted the use of
the word hui, which can also mean "turn back." The terms Huihui ren, Huihui, or just
Hui, were applied to those who had embraced Islam, regardless if they were Arab and
Persian merchants, or Turkic-speaking peoples of Inner Asia," and varied populations
were named co-religionists although they could hardly be seen as cultural kin.
Islam itself became known in China as the religion of the Hui, or Hnijiao,
and Chinese Muslims were also referred to as Httijiao ren or Huijiao tit, the believers of
Huijiao. Chinese called the Sanjiao, the three major beliefs (Buddhism, Daoism, and
Conflicianism), Dajiao, the Big Faith. Islam in turn was referred to as Xiaojiao, the Little
Faith. Among themselves, however, Chinese Muslims referred to Islam as the "Pure and
Taie Religion," Oingzhen Jiao. In addition, Muslims have transliterated the word Islam
into Chinese, creating a number of terms which include Yisi Ian, Yisilan jiao, and Yisa
lamu. In the same vein there are additional terms to mean Muslim, Musi Iin, Mushi Iin.

" Bai Shouyi, Huizu, Huijiao, Huimin Lunji [Essays on Hui Ethnicity, Religion, and
Nationality] (Zhongshan Tushu Gongsi, 1974), 73.
"Bai Shouyi, Huizu, Huijiao, 73.

13

and Miimm. This last term is derived from an Arabic term meaning "the faithful."
The PRC identifies fifty-six nationalities (minzu). one being the majority,
the Han Chinese nationality, and the other fifty-five being minority nationalities (shaoshu
minzu). The Hui are now one of the fifty-five minority nationalities. The government
does not consider religion a factor in the classification of nationalities. Instead the PRC's
State Commission for Nationality Affairs (SCNA) still applies Stalin's four criteria when
defining nationality: a common language, a common territory, a common economic life,
and a common psychological make-up manifested in common specific features of national
culture.

Ten of the present-day officially recognized nationalities can also be identified

by their religion, Islam (the Hui being one of them). The other nine nationalities, as
already noted, formerly grouped together as Hui or "Muslim," include Turkic-speaking
Uyghurs, Kazaks, Kirghiz, Salar, Uzbeks, and Tatars; and Persian-speaking Tadjiks; and
Mongolian-speaking Baoan and Dongxiang.'"*
The traditional homelands of these nine groups are to the north and
northwest of China proper. In these regions Han Chinese have never constituted the
majority (although present-day Han migration may be transforming population figures in a
number of these areas). Most of these other Muslim minority nationalities, did not live
under the suzerainty of the Han Middle Kingdom for centuries at a time, and they were
able to retain distinctive non-Chinese cultures. The Hui, in contrast, reside in China

'"Barbara Pillsbury, Cohesion and Cleavage in a Chinese Muslim Minority (Phd

dissertation, Columbia University, New York), v.
'^Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 66.
'"Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 18-21.

14

proper where they have coexisted with their Han Chinese neighbors for some thirteen
centuries. Hui cultural identity, in contrast to other Muslims in the PRC, has evolved
amidst the greater Han Chinese society.
It is intriguing that even where the modem Hui seem to be assimilated into
the Chinese mainstream, they are still officially and popularly considered a separate
nationality. Attempts to define this minority nationality, however, remain a challenge,
where historical perspectives clash with ideological criteria, as it were. Although the Hui
were one of the first nationalities to be recognized by the Communists in the early fifties,
Hui traits do not fit the Stalinist model. Regardless of official or non-official
categorization, Hui and non-Hui alike do not seem to dispute the validity of today's Hui
shaoshu minzu classification. Hui identity seems to be rooted in the minds of all Chinese,
regardless of academic or political dogma. Anthropologist Barbara Pillsbury suggests that
being Hui implies "membership in both a religious group and in a large, highly self-aware
ethnic group.After centuries of residing in China differences that were once
pronounced may have faded, but the Chinese Muslims remain imbued with a deep sense of
Hui identity. That identity may confound anthropological definitions, but cannot be
denied.
All cities have Chinese Muslim populations. In fact, the Hui constitute the
largest percentage of the minority nationalities in major cities. Over two thirds of
Beijing's minority population is Hui, and in Shanghai and Tianjin, nearly ninety percent of

'-pillsbury. Cohesion, 63-14.

15

the minority population is Hui.'^ The Hui usually lived in communities not unlike
Chinatowns or Little Italys in the United States. Some communities are referred to by
their mosque, such as the Oxen Street district for the Oxen Street Mosque in Beijing.
The entrance of the main streets of Muslim districts were sometimes marked by pailou-iike
archways. Sometimes plaques were posted that announced "meat from outside not
allowed inside" (wailai rou bunengjinlai), or carry the term jiaomen (meaning religious
teaching, or Islam).''
Historical records trace the entrance of Muslims from merchants to
mercenaries into China at different times and places. As a result Chinese-speaking
Muslims can be found throughout China, and their stories are not all the same. Hui
ancestors who came to China by sea migrated inland from coastal cities. Those whose
ancestors came overland into China now reside in the Northwest. By far the largest
percentage of Chinese-speaking Muslims reside in Gansu, Ningxia, and Qinghai, which
have been referred to as China's Muslim Belt. Qinghai and Ningxia were deliberately
created regarding the Muslim population.' Chinese Muslims constitute the majority
population in parts of northern and western Gansu province, and the southern section of
the capital Lanzhou is exclusively Chinese Muslim. There are also sizable Hui populations
in Guizhou, Sichuan and especially Yunnan.

^^G\2idx\e.y, Muslim Chinese, 174.

'^James Hutson, "The Sz'chuan Moslem" 'm Moslem World 10 (1920), 252.
"*Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, 26-29.

16

Hui reside in all parts of China and their livelihoods and life styles are as
diverse as those of their Han neighbors, which are as diverse as the physical geography of
China.

. . . divergent identities reflect a wide variety of Hui

Muslims in China from Sufi fundamentalists to urban
workers, from northern wheat farmers to southeastern
fishermen, from noodle-makers to Party leaders, from
smartly dressed "Western" urbanities to veiled north
western melon-sellers, from imam to cadre, hajji to atheist,
these people all call themselves Hui, and are identified by
the state as such, and strongly resent all attempts to regard
them otherwise as an insult to their heritage. That all these
different peoples could see themselves as one ethnic group
wreaks havoc on modem ethnicity theory; that they have
united together as one national unity with a growing
population, connections to the Middle East, and political
clout, makes Chinese Communist cadres give serious
consideration to many of their demands and requestion
Marxist dogma about the fading of national differences in
socialist societies. It is in the particularities of their
differences, and the shared imaginings of their similarities,
that their identity is to be locatednot in any reified notion
of what a "Hui Muslim" is, or an assumed construction of
"Chinese-ness."'^

How does one go about locating Hui "particularities" and "shared imaginings?" Where do
these imaginings come from? Is there a trajectory that can be traced, which will reveal
sources and formulae for a modem Hui national identity? Did the Chinese-speaking
Muslims think of themselves as a minzu before the People's Republic so designated them?
When the Qianlong emperor identified the five peoples (or nations, guojia)
of the empire more than a century earlier, Hui was used to designate the Muslims of
Giadney, Chinese Muslim, xi.

17

Xinjiang.-" But when Sun Yatsen beseeched the "Hui" to join the Nationalists, Muslims
in other parts of China had fair reason to believe that Sun addressed them, as well. As
confused and vague as the appellation Hui was, it had never been used solely to mean the
Turkic-speaking Muslims of Xinjiang. The label was still mired in ambiguity in the first
half of the twentieth century before the term found its present-day minority nationality,
shaoshu minzu, status in the People's Republic of China (PRC).*' The term Hui and the
idea of Hui identity would be transformed as China moved into the twentieth century.
New terms and concepts were introduced, which raised new questions
about identity, from cultural to national. A process of change was set into motion.
Questions of nationalism and ethnicity and race reflect the socio-political chaos that
riddled the subcontinent. When the ROC united China, albeit nominally, the government
laid claim to the territory of the former Qing Empire not only for international reasons of
strategy, but also to promote nationalist pride." The Nationalists relied on nationalism
and patriots for support. Nationalism was used to inspire action, but it was not the sole
domain of the GMD. Patriotic slogans and propaganda were common themes in the
movements and literature of the day. The environment invited iconoclasm. A public
forum emerged which allowed new voices to be heard, and progress became a buzz word.

For a discussion of Manchu concepts of nation/country, see Mark Elliott, "Manchu

(Re)Definitions of Nation in Early Qing" (unpublished manuscript, presented at the
Annual Symposium in Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1995). For
discussion on five nations in the Qing Empire see Millward, Beyond the Pass, 197- 203.
'Bai Shouyi, "Huihui Minzu de Xingcheng" [The Nature of the Hui Nationality] in
Guangming Ribao 17 February 1951.
-"The maps in Taiwan, the present-day ROC, still include Mongolia (Outer Mongolia).

18

The demise of dynastic rule altered everything. A modem new public

sphere emerged allowing China's city dwellers to actively explore the prospects of modem
representative government. Like their Han Chinese neighbors the Chinese Muslims sought
ways to participate in the creation of a new and improved society. Muslim leaders, like
Han Chinese, were intellectuals, students and scholars, and, in the case of the Chinese
Muslims, religious leaders. The life of Chinese Muslims dwelling in cities like Beijing,
Shanghai, Tianjin, and Nanjing was unlike that of the Muslims in other parts of China.
Chinese Muslims in regions of the Northwest and Southwest, for the most part, lived in
rural settings and were poor. The life style and culture of metropolitan Muslims was quite
different. That is not to say they were well-off. Poverty and illiteracy were common, as
was the case among all Chinese. Muslim urbanites, in contrast to rural populations,
however, were exposed to new ideas and change.
This study focuses on Chinese-speaking Muslims who lived in Beijing and
other cities with predominantly Han Chinese populations during the opening decades of
the Republic of China. In materials produced at that time, the Chinese-speaking Muslims
used the terms Hui ~ Huimin, Huizu or Huijiao ren ( Muslim citizenry, Muslim nationality
or Muslim religionists). The same terms were used when referring to all and any Muslims,
that is not only other Muslim ethnic groups in China, but to Muslims outside of China, in
addition to the Chinese-speaking Muslims. The usage could be in broad, general terms,
but the metropolitan authors usually distinguished other Muslims in ways that indicated

19

that the subject was outside of the author's community. For example, "our Muslim
brothers in Xinjiang {women hui tongxiongdi zai Xinjiang)
This dissertation centers on metropolitan Chinese-speaking Muslims.
Sino-Muslims.-"' They are Hanhui or Chinese Muslims, and 1 will use these terms in my
discussion, since the term Hui had not yet been reduced to mean the Chinese-speaking
Hanhui exclusively.

Muslims other than Chinese Muslims will be further identified by

contemporary names if need be. During the republican period the meaning of terms
combined with "hui" play a significant role in the dialogue that surfaces in the Chinese
Muslim communities.
The hypothesis of this dissertation is that in the midst of revolution as the
Qing faded into the twentieth century, metropolitan Chinese Muslim leaders take
initiatives in their communities, which shape change. As a result, a process is set in
motion, one that effects Chinese Muslim identity in more ways than one ~ within the new
political scene nationally, internationally, and in regards to other Muslims in China. The
process stimulates a self-awareness among metropolitan Chinese Muslims, which
promotes new perceptions of their identity as Hui. The process also triggers a debate
among metropolitan Chinese Muslim intellectuals in which ideas about ethnicity,
minzu-ness, and religiosity are argued. They do not resolve the debate, but it fosters a
sense of solidarity among Chinese Muslims.

^Huiwen Baihua Bao 5 (1913).

-^Lipman presents several discussions about the use of terms, such as Sino-Muslim and
Chinese Muslim, see References; also see Pillsbury, Cohesion, v-vi.

20

I think the process crystallizes in the urban centers of the eastern and
coastal regions, and parts of Yunnan. The vast majority of Chinese Muslims, however,
lived in Gansu, Qinghai, and Ningxia, but their involvement comes later. The lag time was
due to a number of factors, from geography to politics. The prevailing warlord conditions
certainly played a role in separating the Northwest from the East. The activities of the
urban Chinese Muslim communities, in contrast to the Northwest, also reflect the
politicization going on in Chinese cities.
Beijing's Chinese Muslim community, for example, becomes a forerunner
of progressive projects that included forming associations and new schools, and producing
publications, but these activities are duplicated in a number of cities. The design was to
extend projects to Hui communities throughout China, and the goal was met with varying
degrees of success. The process instilled a consciousness in urban Chinese Muslim
communities that otherwise could have been overshadowed by Han Chinese culture. By
the 1940s Chinese-speaking Muslims had developed a sense of Hui-ness, which fortified
their identity. I suggest that the PRC would not have so easily perceived the metropolitan
Chinese Muslims as an official minority nationality in the early 1950s if the process of
change had not already galvanized the Chinese Muslim community.
The voice of the urban Chinese Muslim community, like that of
non-Muslim Chinese, reflects China's struggle to become a modem nation-state. Both
peoples in words and deeds expressed the questions and issues facing all early twentieth
century Chinese as they attempted to redefine themselves and their country. Many
Chinese-speaking Muslims in Beijing and cities such as Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing and

21

Guangzhou appear to have embraced the young republic. Its flag was emblazoned on
their publications and hung in Chinese Muslim meeting halls during those years. A number
of Muslim periodicals heartily endorsed the Nationalist government. More importantly
Chinese Muslim discourse in these urban communities subscribed to the proposition of
becoming citizens in a democratic society. But what did that mean in the context of the
time? What did nationhood and citizenship mean in the Chinese environment?

Sun Yatsen and the Nationalist Party entreated the people of China to unite
to form the new Chinese nation-state, and former subjects would become modem citizens.
For the Party the modem state rested on nationalism {minzu jtiyi), which conditioned a
strong China and improved human well-being. This state would have a special character
as a modem "nation-state" igitojia) comprised of citizens who were "nationals" in two
dimensions; as members of the state at large and also as members of a subordinate ethnic
"nationality ." Members of these ethnic nationalities would have to accept the greater
nationality of the nation-state in order for the latter to survive. The modem nation-state
would require the consensus of its citizenry ~ of all the groups comprising it.
Nations are often made up of a number of ethnicities, as was the case of the
Republic of China. When citizens accept the nationality of the nation-state, they do not
assume they will lose their ethnicity in the name of a greater national identity. Thus, if the
pact is made, the ethnic identity of the citizen should be insured by the modem
nation-state. Defining nationalism and nationality in early twentieth century China became

22

part of the process of defining modem China and what it is to be Chinese. In this context
how did Chinese Muslims perceive themselves?
Different terms are defined in the first three decades of the republic, minzu,
guojia, race, qun, zhonglei. Minzu, for example, is used as an enticement by the
Nationalists in their rallying the people of China to unite. But the term hardly had a set
definition. Chinese identity was being re-perceived, discovered, and invented."' The
fonmulation of modem identities (intentionally or not) is a theme running through this
dissertation.

This paper will first look at an overview of the history of Muslims in China.
The focus is on the Chinese heartland where Muslims became not only sinophones, but
Chinese. Chapter Two looks at nationalism and citizenship in the new republic, and their
impact on Chinese Muslims. Chapter Three describes metropolitan Muslim organizations,
and activities that set a process of change into motion. Chapter Four looks at publications
and the translations (especially that of the Qur'an), demonstrating topics of concern in the
Chinese Muslim community. The fifth chapter elaborates on the ethnicity of the
Chinese-speaking Muslims. Revolutionaries and reformers raised questions of ethnicity
and race, in seeking to interpret modem theories, and to come to terms with traditional
concepts. Chinese Muslim scholars also questioned perceptions of ethnicity and identity in
their communities.
-'For discussion on "invention of tradition." in the formulation of nationalism, see Eric
Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality
(Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1990).

23

This dissertation centers on the activities of a subgroup, a subaltern group,

within a dominant culture, and analyzes the group's ability to adapt to the context of the
early twentieth century when China moves to modernize amid socio-political chaos. The
major theme is that the process of change leads to a heightened sense of Huiness for
Chinese Muslims.

I have used materials published during the republican period as my primary

source materials for this dissertation. The richest archival collection I used was the
Chinese Islamic Literature Collection compiled by Isaac Mason, which is housed at the
New York City Public Library. Mason, a member of the North China Branch of the Royal
Asiatic Society, lived in China for thirty-three years, from 1892 until 1925. He was a
Christian missionary and scholar who directed his efforts to preparing materials in Chinese
and Arabic for use in Christian efforts to covert Chinese Muslims. During that time
Mason amassed over three hundred samples of Chinese Muslim published materials, and
became the foremost western scholar on Islam in China. The collection was bought by the
New York City Public Library from the Royal Asiatic Society in 1940. I was also able
find a number of Chinese Muslim periodicals at the Library of Congress, and the Hoover
Institute. Another source of materials from the period is a compendium, Zhongguo
Yisilanjiao shi cankao xiliao xuan bian, of reprinted articles from the period edited by Li
Xinghua and Feng Jinyuan.
There is a large body of scholarly work on Muslims in China by Chinese
Muslims that I have also consulted. Chinese Muslim historians cover Hui histories in a

24

number of ways. Marxist historian, Bai Shouyi, of the People's Republic of China, is one
of the most prolific of the Hui scholars writing on Muslims in China. His career spans the
years from the 1930s into the 1990s. Other PRC historians, include Ma Qicheng, Gao
Zhanfu, and Ding Hongzhu.^ Jonathan Lipman warns, however, that a number of other
historians of the PRC write histories, or Jianshi, that are limited to the PRC's "minzu
paradigm."'-^ Other Hui scholars, such as Zhao Chenwu, Sun Sheng-wu, Ma Songting,
Fu T'ung-hsien and Wang Jingzhai, were writing during the republican period. These men
were participants in the activities from the 1920s on, and their writing are firsthand
accounts, albeit with their respective slants. Sun Sheng-wu, Fu T'ung-hsien and Chin
Chi-t'ang, for example, went to Taiwan after the communist victory, and their writings,
like present-day writers in Taiwan reflect the voice of non-Marxist writings of the
Republican period.-" Materials from the 1930s by Sun Sheng-wu and Fu T'ung-hsien
continue to be reprinted in Taiwan.
There has been extensive scholarship done in English by historian Jonathan
Lipman, and anthropologist Dru Gladney. Lipman's recent book. Familiar Strangers.
centering on Chinese Muslims of China's Northwest examines the military conflicts of the
nineteenth century but demonstrates misconceptions about subaltern groups of the
Northwest. Gladney's research focuses on the Hui minority nationality of the present-day

-See References for examples of these authors works.

-^See Jonathan Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), xx-xxv. Lipman and Gladney both
argue that the concept of minzu is not fully realized until the PRC.
-''See, for example, articles in the magazine Zhongguo Huibao [Islam in China], published
by the Chinese Muslim Association of Taipei, Taiwan.

25

PRC. Anthropologist Barbara Pillsbury did groundbreaking work in her study of the
Hanhui of Taiwan. All three scholars have looked at the question of Hui identity. Other
materials in English come from Christian missionaries who were in China during the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many directed their proselytizing to Muslims in
China, believing that since Muslims were monotheists already, they would be more open
to the Christian message. Like Mason, a number of the missionaries developed a sincere
interest in Chinese Muslim activities and their accounts provide another window on the
scene. Claude Pickens, for example, left a large body of material.
Members of the Grand Mosque in Taipei that was established by Chinese
Muslims from Beijing in 1948 kindly welcomed me. Staff members gave me copies of
current studies by members of the community. The Islamic Association in Taiwan
publishes a bimonthly journal that continues the tradition of Chinese Muslim periodicals
which began at the beginning of the republic.

26

CHAPTER ONE: A BRIEF fflSTORY OF ISLAM IN CHINA

In 1935 there were more than 42,000 mosques in China, with over three
dozen in Beijing itself.' Muslims lived throughout the country. In 1910 Broomhall
observed that figures for the Muslim population were uncertain, with some estimates
putting the figure at 70,000,000 in contrast with others that put the figure at 15,000,000.According to the 1937 China Handbook, a government publication, Muslims numbered
some forty-eight million, or ten percent of the population.^ The 1990 census more
accurately counted the population of the ten Muslim shaoshu minzu at 17,599,268.''

The

Hui minority makes up half that figure with over eight and half million people. The
Uyghurs are the second largest Muslim nationality, with over seven million people.' Even
though the total number of Muslims is less than two percent of the population of China,
Muslims still constitute a large number of people.
At the Bandung Conference in 1955, Zhou Enlai stated that Muslims
constituted twelve percent of the nation's population.^

Zhou's figure, although inflated,

' Sun Sheng-wu, Huijiao Liincong [Comprehensive Essays on Islam] (Taipei; Zhongguo
Wenhua Yanjiu Suo, 1963), 145.
- Marshall Broomhall, Islam in China: A Neglected Problem (New York; Paragon Press,
1910), 193-195.
^ Pillsbury, Cohesion, 9.
^ States Nationalities Affairs Commission Economic Office and State Statistical Bureau of
Comprehensive Statistics for the National Economy, comp. Zhongguo minzu tongji
nianjian (1994-1994), (Beijing; Minzu chubanshe, 1*994), 155-156.
^ Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 20.
" Fazlur Rahman, Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1979), 9.

27

demonstrates an understanding of the importance of the Muslim population in China, not

only vis-a-vis the international community but in matters of domestic stability. A blend of
tenacity and tolerance on the parts of host and guest cultures alike seems to have allowed
for the survival of Muslims in China.
In some places Muslims assimilated to Chinese culture, failing to maintain
separate traits, but, by and large, Muslim communities maintained cultural distinctions. By
the nineteenth century a once thriving Chinese Jewish community had greatly dwindled in
number, and no comparable communities of Christian sects existed, although various
groups had also made inroads into China in the past. Muslims hardly entertained a
position of great importance before the twentieth century.

In the big cities, for example,

acculturation to the greater Chinese culture meant that Chinese Muslims coexisted with
non-Muslim Chinese without much contention or portent. The modem era altered the
traditional environment, and with it came shifts in thinking about Islam and Chinese
Muslim identity, on the part of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Hui writers chronicle Chinese Muslim history a number of ways. Educator,
Sun Sheng-wu, a prominent Chinese Muslim scholar active in the early republican period,
divides Hui history into a chronology of four periods, reflecting the change of dynastic
houses and concomitant events dating from the seventh century to the early twentieth
century.' Fu T'ung-hsien was another Chinese Muslim scholar and a contemporary of
Sun Sheng-wu's. In 1937 Fu's narrative identifies three "stages" in Hui "evolution" as he

' Sun Sheng-wu, Huijiao, 142-145.

28

calls it /* The first stage marks the establishment of Muslim communities during Tang
(620-906 AD) and Song (960-1279 AD) times, which is characterized by trade and
commerce and Muslim economic success. In Fu's second stage, from Yuan (1260-1368
AD) into Ming (1368-1644 AD) times, Muslims experience more sociopolitical
involvement and influence. In Fu's third stage, spanning the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912
AD), Muslim society falls into decline but moves into a renaissance period as the twentieth
century unfolds.' Sun Sheng-wu, like Fu T'ung-hsien, sees the present (that is the 1930s,
when they are writing) as a renaissance period for Chinese Muslims. The idea of rebirth
prevails among Chinese Muslims in the Republican period, and this stance colors the
historical narratives of the Chinese Muslim writers of the period. There are more recent
methods of analyzing Muslim history in China. Joseph Fletcher, for example, traces
religious movements, or currents, in his research on Sufism in Northwest China.
Following Sun Sheng-wu's convention the first chronological period, the
period of expansion {chuatiru shiqi), marks the earliest spread of Muslims living in China.
The period corresponds to Tang times." Many Hui mark 651 AD as the date that Islam
was introduced to China because of an account in the Jiu Tang Sfm (The Ancient Record
of the Tang). It tells of a mission sent to the Tang court in Chang'an in 651 AD from
'Uthman, the third caliph. The emperor is said to have declared Islam "compatible with
Fu T'ung-hsien, Zhongguo Huijiao Shi [A History of Chinese Muslims] (Taipei; Taiwan
Shangwu Yinshu Guan, 1996, reprint), 230.
' Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 230.
"^See Joseph Fletcher, "The Naqshbandiyya in Northwest China" in Beatrice Manz, ed.
Studies on Chinese and Islamic Inner Asia (London; Vaiorum, 1995). See also works by
Jonathan Lipman listed in References.
"Sun Sheng-wu, ^M/y/ao, 144.

29

the teachings of Confucius," and although he declined to convert to Islam he gave the
Arab delegation his permission to propagate their faith and ordered the construction of a
mosque.
In the hadiths Muhanuned (5707-632 AD) is quoted as telling his followers
to go to China to carry the message of Islam. The Muslims, however, were merchants not
missionaries. They practiced their faith, but there is no notable history of Muslims
proselytizing. Arab and Persian merchants had a long history of trading along the coast
of China, even before Muhammad. As Islam spread, the traders adopted the religion
carrying it with them. Commerce flourished in Teing times. Middle Eastern merchants
gained prominent positions in the counting houses of the import-export business that
thrived in Guangzhou.'^ Arab and Persian merchants were active in other cities along the
coast, and allowed to reside in foreign communities (fanfang). The foreigners were
granted virtual autonomy, and policed themselves, therefore the Muslims could abide by
Islamic laws. The Muslims were allowed to build mosques and marry local women and
many of the traders stayed.The autonomy in the enclaves may have well served to
reinforce the foreign culture.
In addition to emissaries and seafaring merchants, Muslims arrived in Tang
China overland. The Islamic empire expanded as its armies conquered the crumbling

'Dawood C.M. Ting, "Islamic Culture in China" in The Straight Path: Islam Interpreted
hy Muslims. Ed. Kenneth Morgan (New York; Ronald Press, 1958), 344. See also
Broomhall, Islam in China, Chapter One.
"Ting, islamic Culture," 346.
'^Bai Shouyi, Huizu Huijiao, 71-73; Ma Qicheng, "A Brief Account of the Early Spread of
Islam in China" in Social Sciences in China 4: 4 (1983), 98-102.

30

Byzantine and Persian empires. Within decades its domain stretched across North Africa
into Central Asia. Islamic forces threatened to invade China from the Northwest,
approaching along routes that silk traders and Buddhist missionaries had followed in the
past. One tale explains how Chinese diplomacy managed to ward off invasion. After
being defeated in 713 AD by the Muslim general Qutaiba at the Battle of the Talas River,
the Tang emperor sent four royal princes, gifts, and a wagon loaded with dirt from the
Chinese hinterland. The story says that Qutaiba danced victoriously on the soil of the
Middle Kingdom while Tang royalty bowed to him. It is unknown if the general would
have been satisfied with a dance alone, however. He might have continued his advance
into China, if the death of Caliph Walid I had not required his return to the capital at
Bagdad. Subsequently rival factions weakened unity in the Islamic world. The general
was assassinated, and Islam never entered China in the wake of victorious armies. This
does not, however, mean that war played no part in the advent of Islam to China.
Muslim soldiers entered China as fiiend, not foe. In 755 AD the Emperor
Su Zong appealed to the Caliph Abu Ja'far for help to put down the An Lushan Uprising.
The caliph responded by sending 4,000 troops who aided the emperor in subduing the
rebels. Emperor Su Zong is said to have built barracks iying) and a place of worship for
the troops, and they stayed in China.Centuries later some Muslim villages in the
Northwest were called

or fang, the terms used for barracks or quarters, which might

'-M. Rafiq Khan, Islam in China (Delhi: National Academy, 1963), 2-3.
'"Sandra Aili Green, Islam in China (Masters Thesis, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,
1981), 7.

31

be a holdover from military forefathers.'^

Like Muslims residing in the coastal cities, the

soldiers were allowed to marry Chinese women and to practice Islam freely. Many Hui in
the northwestern and northern regions believe their ancestry goes back to the Muslim
soldiers.
Sun Sheng-wu's second historical period is called the period of florescence
(dingsheng shiqi) and spans the tenth to the seventeenth centuries. From the Five
Dynasties through Song times, Muslims migrated inland from coastal enclaves and the
number of cities with Muslim communities grew.'^ Song administrative regulations
mention "China-bom guests" and "fifth generation guests" in reference to the Muslims.
The govenunent's recognition granted a legitimacy to Muslims who were permanent
residents.'^

The Islamic way of life was integral to the administration of the Muslim

enclaves, and mosques were integral to the Islamic way of life. Many mosques were
erected in numerous cities during this period, examples include the Huaisheng
(Cherishing the True God Mosque) in Guangzhou, the Zhenjiao (True Religion) in
Hangzhou, and the Niujie (Oxen Street Mosque) in Beijing. Muslim foreign-guest (fanke)
communities could be found throughout China, from north to south, indicating that the
Muslim sojourners had found means to adapt to the Chinese world."''

'^Wing-tsit Chan, Religious Trends in Modern China ( New York: Octagon Books,
1969), 208.
"*Sun Sheng-wu, Huijiao, 145.
"Bai Shouyi, Zhongguo Yisilan Shi Cungao [Collection of Essays on Chinese Muslim
History] (Yinchuan; Ningxia Renmin Chuban She, 1983), 134.
-"Ma Qicheng and Dru Gladney, "Local and Muslim in China; The Making of Indigenous
Identities among the Uygur and Hui" (unpublished manuscript, presented at the Annual
Conference f the Association for Asian Studies, Honolulu, Hawai'i, 1996), 4-5.

32

Cities had Muslim districts. The merchants fared well, and Fu T'ung-hsien
points to the commercial successes, in his first stage of Hui development.-' The OingUng
(Clear and Clean) Mosque was built in Quanzhou in the early eleventh century. Quanzhou
became a booming port and the center for Arab trade fi-om Song times into the early
Ming times.- Ibn Battuta visited the city and spoke of its wonders, and it was the port
Marco Polo set sail from on his journey home. Quanzhou rivaled Guangzhou at its height,
but when the Ming court turned its attentions to its northern borders and the hinterlands,
and Japanese pirates ransacked China's coast Quanzhou fell victim to history. Centuries
later the stele erected in 1310 would be a reminder of another time, one in which a thriving
Muslim community contributed to the prosperity of the city.^
Fu T'ung-hsien's second stage of development emerges with the Yuan
Dynasty, and Fu sees it as a time of influence, political and social for Muslims in China.
Under Mongol rule many Muslims enjoyed favor and rose to high positions.

The

Muslim population also increased during the Yuan. A 1348 monument inscription in
Hebei reads, "The Hui are distributed all under heaven . . . from capital to the provinces
afar, there are over 10,000 mosques . . . [Muslims] all worship westward . . . and the
[Buddhist] temples are empty."-

'Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 173.

"Ma Qicheng, "Local and Muslim," 4.
^Claude Pickens, "China and Arabia Prior to the T'ang Dynasty (618 AD)" 'm Moslem
World 32 (1942), 205-209.
-"^Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 174.
^Ma Qicheng, "Local and Muslim," 6.

33

With the Mongol empire spanning the Eurasian continent a Pax Mongolia,
(ike the Pax Romana of Rome, allowed for another overland influx of Muslims into China
from western and central Asia. The Yuan court invited astronomers and mathematicians
from Bagdad and other Islamic centers to come to Beijing where they enjoyed great
prestige. The court created an intermediary bureaucracy of non-Han administrators and
merchants, collectively known as semu guan (officials of various categories) who were in
charge of keeping the peace and collecting revenues.^ Many of the semu guan were
Inner Asian Muslims and earned an unsavory reputation among the Han Chinese, which
may have contributed to negative stereotypes about Muslims.
The recent arrivals also established the ortaq, a kind of commercial
association. Unlike the guest merchants of earlier dynasties, the Muslims learned Chinese.
Some became accomplished literati, painters and poets in addition to officials. The
Muslims, even more than their Mongol overlords, adapted to China, thereby firmly
reinforcing the Muslim presence.-'
Not all Muslims who entered China at this time were of the elite and privy
to the court. Many were conquered people who had been forced from their homelands.
In China they were foreigners, but they were from widely varying cultures. Ma Qicheng
suggests that Islam became the bond for these different groups, and the religious
community {jiaofang) provided the social organization that unified otherwise diverse
people."" During the Yuan Muslim foreign guest communities grew in size and number,
Bai Shouyi, Zhongguo Yisilan, 134.
-'Lipman, "Hui-Hui," 116-117.
-'^Ma Qicheng, "Local and Muslim," 8.

34

centering around a mosque. Mosque communities (sifang) varied in size. Some were
small with the number of families a few scores, while others might consist of hundreds of
families.^ Residency in a mosque community was virtually inherited. A family's
attachment to its mosque carried a sense of belonging ascriptive kinship, and the
communities functioned not unlike Chinese clan villages.
When Mongol rule was successfully put down by the Chinese, the new
Ming Dynasty regarded foreigners with increasing suspicion. Christians were expelled,
and foreign missions were packed off to Macao. The Chinese Muslim population was still
regarded as different, but unlike others, they entertained benevolent praise from the court.
Some believe the Chinese Muslims won allegiance because of they actively participation in
the overthrow of the Mongols. Another explanation is that one of the wives of the first
Ming emperor was Muslim. The story led some proud Chinese Muslims to claim that the
emperor himself embraced Islam.

Steles and edits from the time suggest there was

respect and tolerance for the religion and its followers.

. . . fifty ingots of silver and two hundred pieces of cotton

cloth be given to each family of the Mohammedan faith;
that two mosques be built at two places, one at. . . Nanking
. . . and on in the province of Shensi; that they be allowed
to repair their mosques should they fall into ruins, and be
free to travel and trade in all districts, prefectures, and
provinces, as well as to pass through customs and ferries
without hindrance . . . inscribed . .. the third year of the
reign of the Emperor Yung Lo.^'

^Ma Qicheng, "Local and Muslim," 8.

^^'Raphael Israeli, Muslims in China (London. Curzon Press, 1980), 223.
^'Broomhall, Islam in China, 91.

35

During the Yongle Emperor's reign (1403-1425 AD) there was a short
lived age of exploration. The Admiral Zhenghe led a huge Chinese fleet to Arabia and the
east coast of Africa. Zhenghe himself was a Muslim, and it appears that he also went on
the pilgrimage to Mecca, as the Ming histories include a lengthy description of Arabia.
Mecca and Medina in particular are described. The Ka'aba is described in great detail,
along with a discussion of the Qur'an and Islamic customs.^* The court, however, feared
invasion by pastoral peoples to the north or Inner Asia, and grew increasingly xenophobic.
Within a generation the great age of exploration ended and the massive shipyards of the
Yangzi closed down. Arab embassies, like all other foreigners, were restricted to
Macao." The Chinese Muslims were no longer exposed to Muslim travellers from afar,
and they would remain isolated from the greater Muslim world for centuries to come.
During that time Chinese Muslim ethnicity would coalesce.
After generations of intermarriage and interaction with the Chinese, the
Muslims increasingly acculturated into Chinese society. By Ming times Chinese Muslims
became sinophones." Among themselves Chinese Muslims still used Arabic and Persian
terms, and a kind of Hui patois evolved, Huihui hua. Han women entering Hui
households brought with them not only Han languages, but also customs. Families began
to wear Chinese clothes and adopted Chinese cooking methods and the use of
chopsticks.^- Eating pork, however, remained taboo. Outwardly the Hui had taken on

^"Broomhall, Islam in China, 35-36.

"Broomhall, Islam in China, 35-36.
^Bai Shouyi, Huizit, Huijiao, 38.
^'Ting, "Islamic Culture," 350.

36

the trappings of the Han Chinese environment. The Chinese Muslims retained their own
traditions, but also absorbed Chinese ways.
Chinese Muslims took Chinese surnames. Most chose surnames that
sounded like their personal Arabic names, or least the first syllable. Ma is a very common
name among Muslims and it is likely because many Muslims were named Muhammad.
Some surnames are almost exclusively Hui, such as Pu, Na, Ha and Tie.^ In some cases
when a Hui man married a Chinese woman, he adopted his wife's family name. Chinese
Muslims did continue to give babies Arabic names, as Muslims around the world do, and
Hui today likewise, still have Arabic and Chinese personal names and Chinese surnames.
Chinese Muslims continued to be successful in business, and were reputed
to have a penchant for acting as middlemen in imperial times. Even today the percentage
of Hui involved in commercial businesses far exceeds that of other nationalities. Many
Chinese Muslims became jade merchants {shibao huihui). Shanghai's Hou House and
Minguo Road, for example, came to have a strip of Chinese Muslim run curio shops
(giwan pu) and Beijing's jade market (chongdongyu shi) became Muslims run. Nanjing's
Fuzi district of curio shops was also Hui run.^'
Islamic dietary laws drew a large number of Muslims into the restaurant
and inn keeping business. Muslim run restaurants and inns displayed signs with blessings
written in Arabic, stating that no pork contaminated the establishment. The signs also
commonly carried illustrations of a pitcher used for ablutions and the characters jiaomen.

^"^Chin Chi-t'ang, "Huijiao Minzu Shuo [Hui Nationality]" in Yugong 5:11 (1936), 32-35.
"Fu, Zhonggiio Huijiao, 174.

37

like seen marking Muslim districts. Other names that referred to Islam used on plaques
included kaitian gujiao (the religion that has existed from the time of creation) and zuichu
miaozhong (the most ancient and nameless).^ Any Muslim, literate or not, seeing a sign
with the ablution pitcher would know the business followed Islamic dietary laws and was
therefore hala!, or qingzhen (pure and true).

Non-Muslims, too, found the establishments

dependable, and Chinese Muslims became successful proprietors.

Chinese Muslims would also dominate certain other occupations, such as
the tanning industry and beef production. The network of wool traders across northern
China was also a Chinese Muslim domain.^^ The Mutton Guild in Beijing was Muslim
nin, and unlike other guilds that honored certain gods or legendary founders of their craft,
the Mutton merchants worshipped in Islamic fashion onIy."* Following in the footsteps of
their respective ancestors, many Chinese Muslims pursued military careers. Muslims had a
reputation of being excellent horsemen, too. Others adopted an agrarian lifestyle, and
whole villages grew up entirely Muslim.""
Sun Shengwu's third historical period stretches from the end of Ming times
to close of the Qing, and is called the period of weakness {shuaitui shiqi).'^- For many
Chinese Muslims in China there was great strife during the years of Qing rule. Violence
James Hutson, "The Sz'chuan Moslems" m Moslem World A (1916), 252.
'"See James Millward, "The Chinese Border Wool Trader of ISSO-IQST' in Dru Gladney,
ed. The Legacy of Islam in China: An International Symposium in Memory of Joseph F.
F/erc/ie/-(Conference volume. Harvard University, 1989).
^'John Stewart Burgess, The Guilds of Peking (New York: Columbia University Press,
1928), 180-181.
*^Huizu Jianshi [A Brief History of the Hui] (Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chuban She,
1978), 3-4.
'"Sun Sheng-wu, Huijiao, 145.

38

empted in the Northwest and Southwest where Muslim constitute large percentages of
the population. In these regions, far from the capital, fighting became endemic from the
late eighteenth century well into the nineteenth. In many cases, the violence was internal
feuding among Chinese Muslim and/or sometimes other groups. Conventional Han
Chinese and western histories refer to the fighting as the Muslim Rebellions, but most
violence was not directed toward the government or Han Chinese. The conflicts were
sometimes over power and control within a community, and sometimes over religious
issues.'^^
In contrast to the strife experienced in the Northwest, in the metropolitan
Chinese Muslim communities of China proper, Chinese Muslim lived increasingly
acculturated existences. From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries Chinese
Muslim scholars became not only experts in Islamic studies, but were also accomplished
Confucianists, capable of advancing through the official system on a par with their Han
Chinese peers. With all the outward signs of assimilation, however, there was concern
among scholars that their Muslim heritage would be lost. They began writing treatises on
Islam that illustrated how Islam was compatible to Confucianism.
Although the apologetic voice of the writings suggest that the scholars
hoped to appeal to a Han Chinese audience, the readers of the works essentially were the
Chinese-speaking Muslim community. The collective writings became known as the Han

^^See Jonathan Lipman, "Ethnic Conflict in Modem China: Hans and Huis in Gansu,
1781-1929" in Steven Harrell and Jonathan Lipman, eds. Violence in China: Studies in
Culture and Counterculture (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press,
1991); and Lipman, Familiar Strangers.

39

Kitab, the Chinese Muslim classics. The earliest known work was five volumes by Wang
Daiyu (1580- 1650?) of Nanjing. EHiblished in 1642, it was entitled True Explanation of
the Correct Religion (Zhengiiao Zhenquan). Ma Zhu (1639?-! 709?), of Yunnan, lived in
Beijing, and is most famous for his book. The Compass Guide to the Pure and True
Religion (Oingzhen Zhinan). Perhaps the most prolific of the apologetic writers was Liu
Zhi (fl 1720s), also of Nanjing. His most famous work was a biography of the Prophet
Muhammed, Tianfang Zhi Sheng Shilu Nianpu, The True Annals of the Prophet of
Arabia.'"
The apologia of the Han Kitab illustrates a strategy that emerged in the
metropolitan Chinese Muslims communities. The origins of Chinese Muslim religion and
customs were foreign, but the apologists were able to create a legitimate Chinese identity
for Muslims, raising their way of life fi"om a barbarian one. It suggests a recognition that
Chinese characteristics were now a part of Chinese Muslim culture, and that could occur
without fear of blasphemy or irreverence. Rather than deny their Chinese characteristics
the apologists sought to syncretize Chinese traits with their Muslim heritage. The
reasoning of these scholars would play an influential role among urban Chinese Muslims.
The sycretistic attitudes of the Han Kitab writers, however, was only one approach to
Islam for Chinese Muslims. In the Northwest, for example, a number of different schools
of thought arose.

"Joseph F. Ford, "Some Chinese Muslims of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries"
in Asian Affairs (New Series) 2 (1974), 145-153. Also see Ludmilla Panskaya,
Introduction to Palladii's Chinese Literature of the Muslims (Canberra: Australian
National University, 1979).

40

There had been a ban on travel to the Middle East, but once Xinjiang was
under Qing control, the ban could hardly be enforced, if it ever strictly was, and more
Chinese Muslims went on hajj/^ In their travels, Chinese Muslims were exposed to the
different practices of Muslims outside of China, and many of the pilgrims pondered the
state of Islam in China, in comparison. Some said interpretation of the Qur'an and Islamic
laws had grown lax, and they decided to correct religious practices among their fellow
Chinese Muslims. Islam needed to be revitalized. The new teaching, or new school,
{xinjiao, xinpai) emerged, or more accurately the new teachings, plural, as more than one
school appeared.^ Existing practices were referred to as the old teachings, or old schools
{laojiao, laopa 'i). The new teachings were more orthodox, and deemed the old schools to
be heterodox. Confusion over the schools was compounded since any effort to improve
on the old teachings became known as a new teaching. Sufi orders, too, would be
referred to as xin jiao. In an effort to make clear what was the newer, teachings then
became know as the new new teaching, or xinxin jiao, but attempts to differentiate
between new and old teachings grew more baffling."*^
Joseph Fletcher's approach of identifying currents, or influences, in
religious beliefs helps to clarify Islamic practices in China. The first tide would refer to the
traditions of the earliest Chinese Muslim communities, which became known as the
Gedimu (derived from qadim, Arabic for old)."** As noted above the community center

^Fletcher, "The Naqshbandiyya."

^Jiao, or pai, have sometimes been erroneously translated as "sect."
^'Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 48; and Israeli, Muslims in China, 150-188.
**Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 37.

41

was the mosque, and the ahong*^ and elders the community leaders. Dietary laws and
religious practices could be observed and old teachings maintained in Muslim enclaves.
Major outside influences were not felt for centuries. Three waves evolving over the
seventeenth to the nineteenth century, however, had an impact on Muslim communities
throughout China. The currents come from Central Asia and into the Northwest. The
first is Sufism, the second is scripturalism, and the third can be called Muslim modernism.
By the eighteenth century Sufi orders gained power among the
Turkic-speaking Muslims in the Northwest. As Sufi influence spread some Chinese
Muslims also joined the orders, and "went west" to seek teachers and texts, returning
home with not only new religious practices but reformist zeal.-' Chinese Muslim Sufi
numbers grew, and their movements gradually became more institutionalized.^- The first
Sufi leaders were honored like saints, and many of the orders were established by their
descendants. These orders were known as menhuan, or saintly descent groups. Unlike
traditional ahongs, Sufi leaders were attached to their respective mosques and became
permanent residents. The orders united disparate Chinese Muslim communities in the
northwestern regions, and leaders accrued large land holdings. Sufis were regarded with
suspicion by Qing officials and other Muslims alike. The discord arising among some of

'^'^The term ahong refers to the religious leader and mosque head. It is believed that the
word is derived from the Persian akhtmfd], meaning teacher.
"'^Jonathan Lipman, "Hyphenated Chinese; Sino-Muslim Identity in Modem China" in Gail
Hershatter, Emily Honing, Jonathan Lipman, jmd Randall Stross, eds. Remapping China:
Fissures in Historical Terrain (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1996), 103-107.
'Lipman, "Hui-Hui," 122.
-"Giadney, "Muslim Chinese," 42.

42

these groups caused some of the violence in the 1800s.

The orders held power and

influence outside of the spiritual realm, and would play instrumental roles in the
northwestern provinces well into the warlord period.
The second current, scripturalist fundamentalism, arrived at the end of the
nineteenth century. Renewed interest in Islam had generated new teachings before the
twentieth century, as Chinese Muslims learned more about Islamic practices elsewhere. In
the late nineteenth century. Ma Wanfii, of Gansu, for example, had gone overland on
pilgrimage to Mecca, where he learned of the Wahhabi movement of Arabia. Ma returned
to Gansu enthusiastic and intent on ridding Islam in China of non-Muslim (Chinese)
customs and heterodox influences from Sufism. He preached "spiritual and institutional
purification of Islamic life." Ma Wanfii relied on Arabic and Persian scriptures. The
group adopted the name al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, or AM as-Sunna, the Muslim
Brotherhood, from an Egyptian group. In Chinese the name became Yihewani. The
teachings were designed to be an anti-assimilationist, anti-Sufi "solution" to what Ma
perceived as the "decline of Muslim values and orthopraxy."^
Ma Wanfu's followers continued his effort, although the movement
transformed considerably from his original intent. Within a generation of Ma's death the
movement was transformed into one that embraced progressive ideas. It did not shy away
from educational and political policies that Ma Wanfii would have bemoaned for being
acculturationist. Supporters grew in number and the movement spread throughout China

"Lipman, "Hyphenated Chinese," 104-105.

^Lipman, "Hyphenated Chinese," 106.

43

proper, nurturing a growing sense of belonging among Chinese Muslims. The Yihewani
movement spread and transformed at the same time the Chinese nationalist movement was
growing. The new Yihewani voice advocated supporting the Nationalists' party, the
Guomingdang. Yihewani continued to maintain its anti-Sufi polemics and to advocate
scriptualistist orthodoxy, but unlike Ma Wanfii, the group relaxed its stance vis-a-vis
assimilation."
An amalgamation of a number the many new schools also took place, and a
merger of ideas and methods resulted in the third current, Muslim modernism. It did not
have distinctive roots like the Yihewani, or even the Sufi orders, but was derived from a
combination of sources. The modernists were influenced by secular nationalism in Turkey
and India, by European educated Middle Eastern intellectuals, and non-secular (especially
scientific) non-Muslim Chinese educators.'^ Modernists also turned to the works of the
Han Kitab.
Ma Fuchu (1794-1875) of Yunnan, for example, was an accomplished
student of Chinese, as well as Arabic and Persian. He admired Chinese philosophy and its
sense of moral integrity, as he did the purity of Islam. In his own scholarship he strove to
integrate these beliefs, he has been referred to as the master of syncretism. He had gone
on hajj, and when he returned he sought to apply the Qur'an and Islamic practices in ways
suitable to the Chinese environment. He maintained that interpretation of the scriptures

"Jonathan Lipman, "The Third Wave: Establishment and Transformation of the Muslim
Brotherhood in China," Etudes Orientate 13/14 (1994), 89-105.
-^Lipman, "Hyphenated Chinese," 106.

44

had to be flexible. His liberal teachings were important underpinnings in the new new
teachings that evolved into Muslim modernism.^'
Chinese Muslim leaders in metropolitan China embraced the modernist
movement, and adopted the nationalist stand. The modernists advocated western dress and
progressive Ideas, and became advocates of secular education, especially the sciences.
Leaders promoted new new teachings which encouraged improved education and social
well-being in the Chinese Muslim communities.^* Ahong and scholar. Ma Songting
explains that Chinese Muslims had "endured 200 years of repression under the Qing." As
a result they had altered their outward behavior and practices, and had "turned inward and
passive." Gradually Chinese Muslims gathered their "strength and moved to change the
weaknesses" in their community.^' They were concerned with social ills as well as
spiritual flaws, and maintained that the spirit of the Qur'an must be followed, rather than
the literal word. Thus begins the period of rebirth for Chinese Muslims, corresponding to
Sun Sheng-wu's fourth historical period, the renaissance (fuxingshiqi), which also
complements Fu T'ung-hsien's description of the period. It begins with the demise of the
Qing dynasty and the start of the republic.
Beijing grew increasingly important geographically for Chinese Muslims in
the early twentieth century. Historically Muslims in China could be roughly split into
dominant geographical areas; the Turkic groups of Xinjiang; Chinese Muslims of the
^Harold D. Hayward, "Chinese-Moslem Literature; A Study in Mohammadan Education"
\nMoslem World23 (1933), 356-377.
'Fu, Zhonggtio Huijiao, 230.
-''Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao yu Chengda Shifan Xuexiao" [Chinese Islam and
Chengda Normal School] in Yugong 5; 11 (1936), 15.

Northwest; Chinese Muslims of the Southwest; the Hanhui of China proper, rural and
urban. Many Chinese Muslims regarded Gansu as the religious center of Islam in China.
Hezhou in Gansu, for example, had long served as a destination for pilgrims, who could
not make the trip to Mecca.^ When Beijing became the capital of the new Republic of
China, however, the community there became an increasingly important center of Chinese
Muslim activities. Being in China's political heart had an impact on the Chinese Muslim
community, and its importance grew as reform and revolution effected everyone."'
On the national level, the Beijing community held a prominent position, but
links to other Chinese Muslim communities were ongoing. The Chinese Muslim
population was easily forty thousand, with a large population in the country around the
city. Chinese Muslims in other cities were equally involved in the renaissance. Tianjin
Chinese Muslims were closely involved with those in Beijing. Tianjin had thirteen
mosques, and some twenty thousand Muslim families. Jinan, the capital of Shandong, was
home to an active Chinese Muslim community that became increasingly involved with
other Muslim centers. The railroads helped link the communities to one another.

'^^Jonathan Lipman, "Ethnicity and Politics in Republican China: The Ma Family Warlords
in Gansu" m Modem China 10:3 (1984), 292.
Muslims were among the first residents of Beijing when the Mongols made it their
capital. A 1259 AD census counted 2,953 Muslim households, which at an average of 5
people per house, put their number near fifteen thousand. At that time much of the
Muslim population consisted of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Muslims who had
entered China during Mongol rule. In Ming times, however, large number of Hui
migrated to Beijing. Judging from the most common Hui surnames in Beijing G.^iu, Li,
Ma, Jin, Huo, and Hu, all surnames common in the South), Liu believes that migrants
came from the South. See Liu Shenglin "Beijing Huizu [Beijing's Hui Nationality]" in
Zhonggiio Huizu (Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chuban She, 1993), 12-13.

46

Nanjing had a large Chinese Muslim population, with more than two dozen
mosques. After the republic moved its capital to Nanjing in 1928 the population was
drawn into the political arena even more.

Shanghai's Chinese Muslim community was

influenced by activities in the foreign settlement, and was also the target of many visiting
Muslims from abroad. Guangzhou's Muslim population numbered twenty-five to thirty
thousand. Yunnan became a major center of innovation and members of its community
were involved with radical activities from the start. The Chinese Muslims of Chengdu in
Sichuan had suffered from the civil strife of the nineteenth century, but were struggling to
recover. Xi'an being one of the oldest Islamic centers remained prominent, as did
Lanzhou in Gansu, but both were farther from the political drama unfolding in the larger
metropolitan areas to the east.Activities in the urban Chinese Muslim communities and writings from this
period extoll the awakening of the Hui people."^ Many leaders seem to have been
encouraged by Nationalist ideology. A 1913 article written for Chinese Muslims approves
of the new "judicious republic" that provides freedom of speech and religion. The piece
goes on to applaud the union of the people, "if it is not Heaven's will how then could it
have happened so quickly?" Now it will be possible for the nation to advance. "We
Muslim Chinese women huijiao zhongren . . . are one of the five nationalities" for whom
all the benefits will be equally bestowed."^

"F.H. Rhoads, "A Survey of Islam in China" '\n Moslem World 11 (1921), 63-65.
^^Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 233; and Sun Sheng-wu, Huijiao, 144-145.
"^Hurwen Baihua Bao 7 (1913), 12-14.

47

CHAPTER TWO: NATIONALISM AND CITIZENSHIP

China's five peoples, our Han, Manchu, Mongolian,

Muslim, and Tibetan nationalities, unite in cooperation to
establish the Republic of China, united together to share in
harmony, the five nationalities establish their country's
flag of five colors to dazzle the world. How grand I
How grattd!'

' Huiwen Baihua Bao 7(1913).

48

The Chinese were repeatedly humiliated in their encounters with foreigners,

who rather than valuing the Chinese as possessors of the civilized culture, viewed them as
backward. Aiter decades of foreign encroachment, a fear prevailed that the country would
be claimed by the imperialists and China would be reduced "to a mere geographical
expression." In response an impassioned nationalism had emerged, one that fervently
declared its mission to save China. Saving China became the strongest element of the
"Chinese revolutionary ideology of the twentieth century ..." and the "burning desire to
save the nation'spawned passionate, patriotic sentiments among the military, the
woridng class, the peasantry, and the merchants, as well as the intelligentsia."The dynasty's inability to respond to domestic strife and foreign aggression
reflected the inadequacies of the imperial system. Attempts to reform the system and thus
save the monarchy came too late, but revolutionaries and reformers alike concurred that
what mattered was saving the country. Indeed, throughout the twentieth century the call
to save China, or protect the country (jbaogud) would remain the rallying cry, regardless
of political affiliations or aspirations. From the 100 Days Reform of 1898 to the May
Fourth Movement in 1919, through the years of the Japanese Occupation to the Beijing
Spring of 1989, Chinese have passionately repeated this mandate. Nationalism took on
the proportions of religious passion, and the incantation to save China, became a major
mantra of Chinese nationalism. Believers, or nationals, all uphold this tenet. People might

Tu Wei-ming, The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), vi.

49

exhibit their faith in a variety of ways, but this shared commandment has served to unite
Chinese citizenry in the twentieth century.
New terminology and perceptions of identities emerged as the Qing Empire
broke down and a new Chinese nation-state was taking form. Concepts of nation and
nationality, of patriotism, race and ethnicity, as well as concepts of citizenship and
individualism became increasingly important. When Sun Yatsen and his revolutionary
colleagues sought to form a modem nation-state they explained that it would unite all the
peoples of China, all the groups or minztd. The origin of the term minzu can be traced
only to the mid 1890s. Min historically referred to the people, and in Qing times it was
non-banner people, or civilians. Charlotte Furth suggests that minzu "was not intended to
indicate minority peoples, but majority peoples, . . . the 'nation' of the nation-state, . . . the
(han) Chinese of China. The combined term minzu itself was new, derived from the
contemporary Japanese word minzoht that was translated as people or nationality." The
new word related to concepts of nationality and nationalism that were fundamental to the
building of a modem nation-state.^
Revolutionaries like Sun Yatsen pointed to nationalism because of its
importance to other nations.'^ Tsang, writing in 1932, felt the Guomingdang was
convinced that China needed a foundation in modem nationalism in order to establish its
place in the "accepted world," where nationalism would serve as a stepping stone to
^ Charlotte Furth, "The Sage Rebel; The Inner World of Chang Ping-lin" in Charlotte
Furth, ed. The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican
China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 131.
^ For examples of the quantity and range of scholarship on nationalism see anthology by
John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, eds. Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1994).

50

internationalism and world brotherhood.^ Tsang saw Chinese nationalism as the "sum
total of thinking, feeling, and acting, based upon belonging in a group which is thought to
be the Chinese nation," which induced loyalties to the national group.'^ In order to
succeed as a modem nation-state, the republic presented an alternative system of
government, and nationalism was used to fiiel support. The Chinese had to replace the
dynastic system, but their mythic Central Country still functioned symbolically in
nationalistic rhetoric. But values of the past had to be disposed of if they could not be
updated for the modem age.^
It is important to clarify what is meant by nationalism. One of the first
scholars to examine nationalism, Carlton Hayes, observed that nationalism was
synonymous with patriotic passions that produced not only pride for ones country but a
willingness to die for it."* Van der Veer adds that nationalism functions like a kind of
religion of the modem nation-state.^ Kedourie notes that nationalisms demonstrate that
humanity is divided into nations "naturally" and nations are recognized by certain
characteristics, and a national self-government is the only legitimate type. In response.

- Tsang Chiu-sam, Nationalism in School Education in China (Hong Kong; Progressive

Education Publishers, 1967, first published in 1933), 4. Tsang was a retumed student who
had studied under Carlton Hayes at Columbia University.
Tsang Chiu-sam, Nationalism, 9-10.
' For discussions on nationalism in China see Prasenjit Duara, Resating History from the
Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago press,
1995); Jonathan Unger, ed. Chinese Nationalism (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe,
1996); Arthur Waldron, From War to Nationalism: China's Turning Point, 1924-1925
(Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1995).
** See Carlton Hayes, Nationalism: A Religion (New York; MacMillan Company, I960).
Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindtis and Muslims in India (Berkeley;
University of Califomia Press, 1994), 15-16.

51

Waldron stresses, when political power does not equal national power, such as the case in
colonial scenarios and traditional kingdoms and empires, nationalism becomes the force
that demands change.'"
Nation building in the modem era has been coupled with democracy, and
the ideas of self-government and self-determination and self-awareness. Nationalism,
however, is not necessarily or simply equated to these modem concepts. Connor suggests
that nations have always existed, and modem institutions and ideas are not requirements
for nationality or nation. He argues these constructs exist before modem terminology has
been created to describe them, but that there was a "self-consciousness of nation" that
emerged in the nineteenth century that altered perceptions.

Nations were always there, they had indeed been there

for centuries. But it si not the things which are simply
'there' that matter ion human life. What really and finally
matters is the thing which apprehended as an idea, and as
an idea, is nested with emotion until it becomes a cause and
a spring for action. In the words of action apprehended
ideas are alone electrical; and a nation must be an idea as
well as a fact before it can become a dynamic force."

Harrison notes that pre-modem China was a place with a distinct

awareness of itself, ". . . a ciilturalism" which embraced shared beliefs and a rich heritage,
but its structure was "not equal to a nation-state.'"" Waldron illustrates that the process
' "Waldron, From War, 269.
"Walker Conner, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton; Princeton
University Press, 1994), 4.
'-James P. Harrison, Modem Chinese Nationalism (New York: Hunter College of the City
of New York, 1969), 2.

of modem nation-state building for China has been a question of putting adequate (new )
institutions into place. Unlike Europeans, he suggests, Chinese did not need to
concentrate on creating nationalism. The sense of China's nationhood already was firmly
existent (for millennia).'^
Nevertheless, in the decades that followed "an unpredictable dialectic
between old and new, Chinese and foreign, avant-guard and popular cultural strands"
appeared in a plethora of new publications.''* A desire for self-improvement paralleled
desire for an improved nation.'^ China was still seen as being exploited and threatened by
foreign powers, but to see China as a victim unified people and created a sense of
collective identity. Sun Yatsen's united five minzu was brilliant propaganda. Nationbuilding would set the stage for a common culture, but a group's identity could remain
unique even though the groups shared a common identity with others in a greater union.'
The baoguo slogan worked well for the advancement of nationalism.
China's survival had been in peril both from the decay from within and the threat from
outside aggression. In the decade prior to the 1911 Revolution, Liang Qichao, for
example, had observed that people in China saw themselves as different groups iqtin),
formed by region, clan and custom, but, he stressed, the survival of every qun was in peril.
Unity was the necessary tactic in order to save the country. The Nationalists likewise
'^Waldron, From War, 271.
'"'Carol Lynne Waara, Arts and Life: Public and Private Culture in Chinese Art
Periodical, 1912-1937 (PhD Dissertation, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1994), 80.
'Waara, Arts and Life, 94.
'^Murata Yujiro, "Dynasty, State, and Society: the Case of Modem China" in Joshua A.
Fogel and Peter Zarrow, eds. Imagining the People: Chinese Intellectuals and the
Concept of Citizenship, 1890-1920 (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 113-141.

53

explained that the union of all the people was the formula for saving China. Many Chinese
Muslim leaders were attracted to idea. In 1908 Ding Zhuyuan, a Chinese Muslim
journalist, implored his fellow Muslims that it did not matter what one's religion was in the
effort to save China. He wrote that to defend the nation meant the same as defending
one's religioa "to cherish the nation is to cherish oneself." Ding elaborated that without a
nation-state, no religion could be preserved.'^
Liang Qichao felt it imperative that the Chinese come together "in the face
of external enemies." One's group, large or small, could be sustained only with "clear
regulatory provisions" that enforced the rule of the majority.'" Liang asserted that
survival of ones group was possible by agreeing to majority rule.

"If one is not subservient (w///) to the dictates of one's

qun, " Liang warned, "then one will inevitably have to be
subservient to the dictates of another <7////." Obviously, in
this world of fierce and perpetual struggles, the rationale of
following the majority or their representatives was, quite
simply, " to prevent the downfall of one's qun.'^

Chinese Muslim intellectuals like Ding Zhuyuan promoted saving China first. They agreed
that they could not afford to consider only matters of Islam or their qua, the Chinese
Muslims. The Chinese Muslim intellectuals realized the importance of religious freedom.
'^Ma Shouqian, "The Hui People's Awakening from the End of the Nineteenth Century to
the Beginning of the Twentieth Century" in Dru GJadney, ed. Legacy of Islam in China:
An International Symposium in the Memory of Joseph F. Fletcher (Conference volume.
Harvard University, 1989), 6.
"^Michael Tsin, "Imagining 'Society' in Early twentieth-Century China" in Joshua A. Fogel
and Peter Zarrow, eds. Imagining the People: Chinese Intellectuals and the Concept of
Citizenship, /590-/920 (Armonk, New York; M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 215.
'^Tsin, "Imagining," 215.

54

but that meant tolerance toward other beliefs. The Chinese Muslims should "seek
common ground while preserving differences . . . stressing unity and mutual
understanding."-''
Chinese Muslims had joined the ranks of Sun's Revolutionary Alliance, and
numbered among the "72 Martyrs" who died in the aborted uprising in Guangdong just six
months before the revolution finally succeeded in November of 1911The Qing quietly
abdicated and the ancien regime fell into shadow. China, however, remained to be
renamed a nation-state. Slogans of unity and harmony provoked imagery of the past, the
Chinese all were descendants of the Yellow Emperor. Chinese Muslim periodicals, too,
celebrated the union with fellow Chinese compatriots "of the same womb" (long bao) ~
The Chinese had become citizens overnight. Liai^ Qichao wrote:

When a nation can stand up in the world, its citizenry

igitomin) must necessarily posses a unique character. From
morality and laws to customs and habits, literature and
aesthetics, these all possess a certain unique spirit. When
the ancestors pass them down and the descendants receive
them, then the group (qun) is united and a nation-state
is formed. This is truly the basic wellspring of nationalism
{minzu zhuyi) .. .
In ancient times, we Chinese were people of villages
instead of citizens. This is not because we were unable to
form a citizenry but due to circumstances. Since China
majestically used to be the predominant power of the East,
surrounded as we were by small barbarian groups and
lacking any contact with other large states, we Chinese
generally considered our state to encompass the whole
"Ma Shouqian, "The Hui People's," 15.
'For accounts of young revolutionaries refer to Ma Qicheng, Gao Zhanfli and Ding
Hongzhu, eds. Hiiizii [Hui Nationality] (Beijing; Minzu Chuban She, 1995), 45-63.
~Huiwen Baihua Bao 7: 2 (1913).

55

world. All the messages we received, ail that influenced our

minds,... all that our ancestors passed down qualified us
to be individuals on our own, family members, members of
localities and clans, and members of the world. But they did
not qualify us to be citizens of a state. ... in an age of
struggle among nations for the survival of the fittest while
the weak perish, if the qualities of citizens are wanting, then
the nation cannot stand up independently between Heaven
and Earth.^.

A 1913 article entitled "The Principle of United Strength" appeared in a government

periodical that was designed for a Muslim audience. The publication reiterated the need
for the Muslims of China to unite together with all the Chinese people in the face of
outside enemies, "the united strength of the people can easily succeed."-^
Chinese Muslim historians explain that their society was impoverished by
the end of the Qing, but with the sense of renewal and the birth of the Republic of China,
Chinese Muslim leaders envisioned plans of improvement. The setting inspired thoughts
of development and progress, in which they exalted Chinese Muslim culture, "If we bring
our religion to life to motivate our people, there is no limit to the work we can do."-^
Ding Zhuyuan celebrated the 1911 Revolution at the time, "With one
stroke the despotic monarchical kingdom of several thousand years is turned into a
democratic republic!"-^ By the late nineteenth century, the concepts of the modem
nation-state and all its promises of popular sovereignty and equity had been debated

^Chang Hao, Liang Oichao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890-1907 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1971), 164.
-^Huiwen Baihtta Baol. 1&2 (1913).
"Tu, Zhonggiio Huijiao, 240.
-^Ma Shouqian, "The Hui People's." 26.

56

among Chinese. Ideas such as "legal limits and definitions of kingship and the state,. . .
institutional framework including parliaments and elections" coupled with "civic virtue,
national unity, [and] social progress proved enormously appealing."^ Integral to it all
would be an active press and an environment that allowed for public opinion.
New ideas such as democracy were imbued with modem western concepts
of a citizenry that called tor activism and autonomy and political responsibility.^
Dissanyake observes that once people understand political ideologies such as democracy
and republicanism, they will opt for the modem nation-state.^ Chatteijee argues that
nonwestem cultures could not simply import western constructs in order to create a
modem nation-state.^ The task was not only one of translating and adapting new ideas
and methods, but one that required psychological and intellectual shifts in order to in
embrace new concepts. The new polity carried a promise of liberation, and invited the
participation of the disenfranchised. By participating, people develop self-awareness and
a sense of agency, with the potential to remodel traditional institutions and authority the
old orthodoxy.
For individuals, citizenship meant a change in status that promised new
possibilities. The nation-state would change the relationship between the ruler and the

-^Zarrow, "Citizenship," 3.
''Joan Judge, Print and Politics: "Shibao " (the Existent Times) and the Formation of the
Public Sphere in Late Qing China (1904-1911) (PhD Dissertation, Columbia University,
New York, 1993), 181-195.
"Wimal Dissanayake,ed. Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian Cinema (Bloomington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), viii.
^ 'Partha Chatteijee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse
(London. Zed Books, 1986).

57

ruled. The people would no longer be subjects, subordinate to the ruler, and as citizens
they could expect certain rights and opportunities in the modem arena. The new
relationship would be a two-way street. The state by definition would expect political
participation on the part of the people, and the people, in turn, would expect the state to
enforce a code of rules and to protect citizens' rights. The political nature of citizenship
instilled the new found sense of empowerment for people.
Citizenship as such was a modem phenomenon found only in the modem
nation-state, "Citizenship was not an abstract ideal but a part of a dialectic between
morally autonomous individuals and constitutional orders . . . there could be no citizens
without a nation-state, just as the nation-state would collapse without true citizens."^'
Citizenship by being fixed to the state, became a kind of "coercive bargain" and a way of
"organizing commitments among strangers."^- The modem nation-state transformed the
many qun or minzu of China into a Chinese citizenry. Sun's invitation to all minzu to join
in the formation of a Chinese nation-state, was both guaranteeing the rights of the separate
groups to be different, while entreating them to accept a greater union, in which all would
benefit.
Chinese Muslim ahong and scholar. Ma Songting explains that with the
founding of the ROC metropolitan Chinese Muslims experienced a new sense of
importance. Sun Yatsen's Three Principles promised equity for all the Chinese

" Peter Zarrow, "Citizenship in China and the West" in Joshua A. Fogel and Peter Zarrow,
eds. Imagining the People: Chinese Intellectuals and the Concept of Citizenship,
1890-1920 (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 6.
^"Zarrow, "Citizenship," 8.

58

nationalities. Sun observed that the Chinese Muslims had "suffered difficult times in the
past," and he summoned them to join in the revolutionary movement for the "liberation of
nationalities." Many Chinese Muslims felt their status has been elevated in the Republic
of China." In realty the benefits under the new regime would wax and wane with the
whims of politicians, and turns of events, from the inception of the republic to the
communist victory three and half decades later.
The new century brought a new awareness of the international community.
China was not alone in its concerns about foreign encroachment. Chinese Muslims
learned that many Muslim countries ~ such as Turkey, Persia, India, Afghanistan, and
Arabia had been struggling to resist European imperialism, too. The Islamic link put
Chinese Muslims in a unique position, and some Chinese Muslim leaders saw themselves
as the middlemen who could bridge relationships between China and countries of the
Middle East." The Chinese Muslims were in a position to learn first hand from fellow
Muslims' experiences in their respective struggles against foreign imperialists in parts of
South and Southeast Asia as well, and they made an effort to maintain communications
with Muslim groups from Singapore to Cairo.
The Sultan in Istanbul sent scholars to Muslim centers in China. Urban
Chinese Muslim districts became destinations for many foreign Muslim travelers. During
the decade before the revolution, missionaries and traders had come from Turkey, Arabia,
India and Afghanistan. Turkish missionaries tried to establish schools for the teaching of

"Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 3.

^Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 3-4.

59

Arabic in some parts of China..Exchanges would continue through the coming

decades. King Farouq of Egypt, for example, encouraged Chinese Muslims to come to
Egypt and awarded scholarships to Chinese Muslim students to study at the prestigious
Al-Azhar University in Cairo.^
The Chinese Muslim relationship to Muslims outside of China was first
centered around the pilgrimage to Mecca and Islamic concerns. Once Chinese Muslim
students started to travel and study in the Middle East, however, the relationship was
transformed. Once the republic was formed the government saw their Chinese Muslim
population as an important emissary to the Muslim world. The government recruited
Chinese Muslims who had studied in the Middle East and assigned them positions in the
Arab section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China. The government
also turned to the Chinese Muslim community in Beijing with the design that they would
become a link not only to foreign Muslims, but to other Muslims within China. It would
be the beginning of a political role for Chinese Muslims that has continued in the PRC and
on Taiwan to the present day.
Events in the Muslim communities around the world could not be ignored.
In the Middle East, the young Turkish Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, launched the Pan-Islamism
movement. Islam's theocratic concepts strengthened the movement, regardless of the fact
that the Caliphate ended in the early twentieth century. In 1912, The National Review of
Shanghai featured an article that explained that Europeans were unaware that friendly
^'Anonymous, "El-Azhar University and Reform" \nMoslem World! (1911), 343-344.
^"^Zhao Chenwu, "Sanshi nianlaizhi zhongguo huijiao wenhua gaikuang" [Thirty Years of
Chinese Muslim Culture] in Yugong 5; 11 (1936), 19.

60

relations between Turkey and East Asian powers were growing, not only between leading
statesmen, but also between the "masses of the Islamic and Buddhist and Conilician
worlds . . . a fnendlier feeling has developed . . . The more China feels menaced, isolated,
and in need of alliances due to the aggression of foreign powers," the article continued,
"the more the government considers the idea of a treaty of alliance between Peking and
Constantinople." "
Pan-Islamism could have given the Chinese government reason to pause.
The movement had been bom in response to the threat of foreign encroachment, like many
nationalist movements, but it encouraged an allegiance of Muslims disregarding national
borders The potential existed to see Pan-Islamism as a source for sedition if Chinese
Muslims had chosen to affiliate themselves with fellow Muslims abroad before China.
Pan-Islamism did not appeal to the urban Chinese Muslims, however, nor did the kind of
fundamentalism that won followers in other Muslim countries.
In 1908 members of India's Muslim Federation came to China and
appealed to the Chinese Muslim community. While nationalism fomented differently for
Indian Muslims than Chinese, religious identity was an operative issue. Turkish
missionaries appealed to Chinese Muslims in the same period. Curiously, neither Indian
nor Turk, won much of an alliance with the Hui. A similar pattern was repeated when the
Japanese solicited Chinese Muslims, (not to mentioned Christian missionary failures). The

"Anonymous, untitled article \n Moslem World 5 (1914), 190-191.

61

Chinese Muslims seem to have repeatedly placed themselves as Chinese first vis-a-vis
non-Chinese, regardless of possible religious affiliations.
Nationalism can be customized for an amalgamation of various
nationalities, or sub-nationalities. Nationalism has to be tempered so that diverse
sub-nationalities can embrace the nationwide nationalism. In the case of China, where the
Han majority vastly outnumbers other groups, Han nationalism per se became the
nationwide nationalism. There are so many Han sub-nationalities at the local level that
there can be no one definitive Han nationalism. Nevertheless nationwide nationalism, or
Chinese nationalism, comes out of Han Chinese culture, which is inflicted on and shared
with other sub-cultures. For a group like the Chinese Muslims, it could embrace (Han)
Chinese nationalism, but a duality developed as the Chinese Muslim styled their own
Chinese Muslim nationalism.

62

CHAPTER THREE: ORGANIZATIONS AND EDUCATION, 1912-1937

Over the course of change and great hardship in recent

Chinese history, Hui spirituality and consciousness may have
altered for the sake of survival. It seems that Chinese culture and
civilization has lost its center of gravity, and the Chinese people 's
consciousness is very scattered today. The Hui share that problem
and in present-day China have the same ambitions as other Chinese.
Chengda's objective is to enrich learning and religion . . . [and] through
education. . . successfully build up our hitman resources. . .
with the aim of saving China.'

' Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 6.

63

In 1908 Abd-ul-Rahman Wang Haoran (1848-1918), ahong and hajji,

returned to the Oxen Street Mosque district in Beijing after years of study and travel in the
Middle East. Some believe the Sultan of Istanbul had made him a Grand Mufti.~ Wang
Haoran was one of the first of dozens of Chinese Muslims to study at the prestigious AlAzhar University in Cairo and in Istanbul. Two Turks sent by the Sultan, Ali Rizza and
Hassan Hafiz, arrived in Beijing with Wang Haoran. The Turks came to observe and
advise on the state of Islam in China.^ They did not remain in China long. Wang Haoran,
in contrast, had returned home with a mission to improve conditions in his community.
He became perhaps the most influential Chinese Muslim leader in the early twentieth
century. In 1999 he remains the subject of Hui discussion and admiration.^
Wang Haoran and other Chinese Muslims now could fi-eely travel to the
leading centers of Islamic learning, in Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and India. On their travels,
Chinese Muslims discovered vibrant political, religious and cultural movements in full
swing, from shari'a-oriented renewalism, nationalism, pam-Islamism, anti-imperialism, to
Islamic modernization. The leaders of modem movements in the Middle East shunned
Sufism and mystical Turco-Iranian practices. Instead leaders turned to Arab origins and
Arabic purity of Islam, but keeping on open-mindedness to modernity.' Chinese Muslims
- Pillsbury, Cohesion^ 23 .
^ There was an idea that the Turks were going to help the Chinese purify Islam in China, a
process referred to as sunnification. Chinese Muslim leaders were able to take on the task
themselves as their renaissance took form.
^ "Remembering Wang Haoran" in Zhongguo Huibao 243 (1997).
^ Joseph Fletcher, Mary Ellen Alonso, and Wasma'a K. Chorbachi, "Arabic Calligraphy in
Twentieth-Century China" in Dru Gladney, ed. Legacy of Islam in China: An
International Symposium in Memory of Joseph F. Fletcher (Conference volume. Harvard
University, 1989), 6-8.

64

returned to China proper enthusiastic about purifying Islamic practices, and yet embracing
ideas of progress. In contrast, Muslims in Xinjiang still related to other Turkic-speaking
Muslims of the Central Asian. As Uyghurs they were trapped in the traditions TurcoIranian tradition that were seen as superstitious and backward by the Arab revivalists in
the Middle East, and now the Chinese-speaking Muslims of China proper, too.'^
Wang had been deeply impressed by the Islamic modernists movement and
set out to improve Islamic education in his homeland.' Wang Haoran would inspire the
next generation of Chinese Muslim leaders who followed in his footsteps. Among them
were Ma Songting who founded the Chengda Normal School in 1925, and Wang Jingzhai
who translated the Qur'an from Arabic into Chinese in the late twenties. Other scholars
and educators such as Sun Sheng-wu, Ma Jian, Fu T'ung-hsien, and Chin Chi-t'ang were
among the prime movers in what they called a renaissance, and were all motivated by ideas
of progress.They reasoned that their community could not survive if it did not step up
to the challenges of the modem age.
The leaders set out to implement a three pronged agenda, calling for
religious, educational, and social reforms, and they met with admirable successes.'
Accomplishments could be tallied in five areas. The first area of success was that of the
creations of organizations. The charters of most of the associations that Chinese Muslims

Fletcher, " Arabic Calligraphy," 6.

' John O. Voll, Islam: Contimiity and Change in the Modem World (Bolder, Colorado;
Westview Press, 1982), 266.
Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 15-28.
' See Ma Qicheng and Gao Zhanfii and Ding Hongzhu, Huizu [Hui Nationality] (Beijing;
MinzuChuban She, 1995); and YugongS. 11 (1936); and Yitgongl: (1937).

65

formed during the ROC stated a goal to organize and unite Muslims, because Chinese
Muslims hitherto had lived in dispersed communities among which there had been little or
no exchange. The second feat was the development of new and improved schools. The
third area of progress was publishing and communications, from the publication of books
and periodicals to radio broadcasting. The fourth achievement was in translation, most
importantly that of the Qur'an into Chinese. The fifth target was to fight discrimination
against Muslims and advance Chinese Muslims' sense of being a part of China.. Many
Chinese Muslim leaders considered that the republic could provide the possibility (if not
the reality) to break down "mental barriers" that caused non-Muslims to misunderstand
Muslim ways.'"
Many urban Chinese Muslims believed modem concepts ought to be
applied to revitalize a languishing Muslim culture. The need for development was
interpreted as the means of survival. Echoing social Darwinian ideas of the survival of the
fittest, Chinese Muslim leaders professed that developing education was crucial if Hui
youth were to join the work force competitively. Fitness would allow the Chinese
Muslims to work better and to enrich their community. Hui industry would then grow, as
would Hui glory. Chinese Muslims then would be recognized for their contribution to
national power and prosperity. Progress was the answer, it would save the Chinese
Muslim culture, it would save China."

"^Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 239-241. See also Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 24-27.
"Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 1-4.

66

Modernity and nationalism were imbued with ideas of human progress, but
progress also meant changes in attitudes and a revamping of traditional institutions. Lee
observes that as the twentieth century began to unfold there was a sense that China had
entered a "new epoch" of world history "which rendered its destiny no longer separate but
an integral part of [hu]mankind . . . and twentieth century consciousness contained a
temporal imperative that stressed the rapidity of world change and the need to keep up."'"
Judge explains that the original infrastructure for the late Qing public
sphere was lain when three new "institutions" ~ new-style schools, study groups, and
publications ~ were created. The institutions produced networks that in turn,
intertwined with and reinforced one another, marking the beginning of modem public
opinion in China.'- Study groups and new schools were propelled by mandates that
sought ways to save China and make it prosper. The groups and schools were both the
subjects and the audiences, and sometimes the creators, of the print media. The media
fortified the emerging public forum. Organizations and secret societies were nothing new,
but the combination of an increasingly politicized setting, coupled with the new media,
stimulated an new activism in organizers.
Urban Chinese Muslim consciousness would grow increasingly politicized.
The scholars and intellectuals in the Chinese Muslim communities were schooled in

'Leo Ou-fan Lee, "In Search of Modernity; Some Reflections on a New Mode of
Consciousness in Twentieth Century Chinese History and Literature" in Paul Cohen and
Merle Goodman, eds. Ideas across Cultures: Essays on Chinese Thought in Honor of
Benjamin I. Schwartz (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Council on East Asian Studies,
Harvard University, 1990), 110-111.
Judge, Print and Politics, 49.

67

Qur'anic scriptures, as their non-Muslim compatriots were imbued with the Confucian
classics. Many Chinese Muslims were deeply religious, so the prospect of modernizing
and yet retaining authentic faith presented a sensitive challenge. The modem public forum
provided a testing ground where issues could be debated and examined.
At the beginning of the century, Chinese Muslim like their non-Muslim
neighbors, went to Japan study. In 1908, for example, there were more than two dozen
Chinese Muslim students in Tokyo studying modem subjects ranging from engineering to
commercial shipping, from political science to medicine, and teacher training. The
students also gained hands on experience in the public sphere. They organized Muslim
associations and study groups, and even published newspapers and periodicals. One early
group was the Muslim General Educational Association of East Asia.'^ Students also
formed the Society of Muslim Students in Japan (JLiudong Oingzhen Jiaoyit Hui) and
began a magazine, Muslims Awake (Xing Hui Bian)}- These groups were short-lived but
the experiences of organization and addressing issues of the day signaled a politicization
that came with participation in a public forum. The efforts inspired self-awareness and
seminal Hui nationalism, linked to an underlying sense of Chinese citizenship.
Dozens of Chinese Muslim organizations were formed between 1912 and
1949. For the most part they focused on matters that fell into one of three categories;
mosque affairs, education, or social well-being.Associations that were concerned with

'^Ma Shouqian, "The Hui People's," 2-4.

'"Derk Bodde, "Japan and the Muslims of China" in Far Eastern Survey 15:21 (1946),
312.
'^Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 201.

68

social issues or education cast broad nets, and often their mandates overlapped. Many
groups formed with the hope of gaining nationwide membership, and often statements of
purpose sounded identical. The similarities suggest shared concerns among Chinese
Muslims around the country. If that was true, however, Chinese Muslim communities
were not particularly aware of shared sentiments. Activities in the republican period
change that. Chinese Muslim leaders took steps toward improving their communities.

look at a dozen of the Hui organizations illustrates changes in approach and perspective
over the years.
Chinese Muslim study groups had existed before. In the days of the
Guangxu emperor a Tianjin ahong, ahong Yang Zhongming, established the Pure and True
Education Society {Oing zhen Jiaoyu Hui). Its high aspirations were not realized but in
the years that followed new study groups and associations appeared.'^ Individual
mosques already had their own internal organizations, neibu, which addressed the
administrative concerns of the mosque. The internal organizations collected fees, and
made sure abidance of Islamic laws was maintained. The neibu saw that the main prayer
halls were kept simple, free of chairs or exhibits. They made sure prayer mats were ample
and that the washrooms for ablutions were in order.The administrators also coordinated
social activities of the mosques.
"Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 24.
'^Over time Chinese Muslim mosque architecture had assumed the style of traditional
Chinese temple complexes, with courtyards, screen walls and pavilions. Beams and pillars
were often decorated with colorful designs and front gates would be adorned with duihua
(rhyming couplets). The main prayer halls, however, remained decoration-free, like
mosques worldwide.
'"Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 201-202.

69

In 1917 Zhang Deming of the Oxen Street community registered a new

group, the Pure and True Society (Oingzhen Xuehui). The group's mandate was to
promote the study of religious teachings and to encourage progressive studies. The group
also stated in their guidelines the responsibility of members to explain Muslim ways to
non-Muslims, and to make every effort to avoid provocation and arguments when meeting
with prejudice and insults.^' Branches of the Pure and True Society were established in
mosques throughout Beijing, and appear to have functioned as an offshoot of existing
neibu.-' The Pure and True Society denounced discrimination and negative stereotypes of
Chinese Muslims. The society sought to gain respect for Muslims in the non-Muslim
community, but the ability to act on problems was limited. A decade later, however, the
ability to monitor acts of defamation moved beyond local incidents (see Chapter 5).
In 1912, the first year of the Republic of China, Wang Haoran and scholar
Hou Songquan, along with the ahongs and elders of the Oxen Street Mosque and the Jiazi
Hutong Mosque created the Zhonggtio Hnijiao Jujin Hu, the Chinese Muslim Mutual
Progress Association, known simply as Jujin Hui (Mutual Progress Association)[also
translated as the All Advance Society or General Forward Movement]." The founders
were perhaps the first to voice the concern that China's Muslims did not have a centralized

-^'Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 23-24.

-'Xun Zhen, '"Beiping Qingzhen Side Diaocha" in Li Xinghua and Feng Jinyuan, eds.
Zhonggiio YisHanjiao shi cankao xiliao xitan bian (Yinchuan; Ningxia renmin chuban she,
1985, first published in Zhengdao [Justice], 1931), 409-411.
-"Bai Shouyi, Zhongguo Yisilan, 43; Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 206; Samuel Zwemer, "The
Fourth Religion of China" m Moslem World 2^:\ (1934), 5.

70

associatioa, but one was needed. Such an organization couid be used for consultations on
religious matters and for the development of Chinese Muslim occupations and welfare.^
The Jujin Hui was concerned with social issues, and to that end the major
thrust of the group was to advance modem education. The goal was to establish Pure and
True elementary schools in all communities in order to make a universal education
available to all Muslim children. Wang Haoran stressed improving the quality of Arabic
studies, but the educational program was not limited to Islamic studies. The
Jujin Hui's aim was to rally Muslims throughout China. The society's creators followed
progressive methods endorsed by the modernist teachings.'"*
Wang Haoran was made chairman of the society, and Hou Songquan
vice-chairman. Other founding members include Wang Zixin, Li Yunting, Ma Songting,
An Jingxun, Chang Zixuan, and Sun Yanyi.^ The group organized a conference to which
they invited ahongs and leaders from Chinese Muslim communities in the eighteen
provinces of China proper. The organizers expressed their concern about the state of
Islam. One fear stated in the conference program was that with the demise of the Qing
dynasty "there has been a falling off generally on the part of all the Chinese in observance
of customs." Chinese Muslims, too, needed to be alerted to shortcomings in heeding
Islamic ways. The purpose of the conference was to sponsor unification of Muslim
customs and laws and to make known the advantages of Islam. The conferees sought
cooperation from Chinese Muslims in order to make the Mutual Progress Association a
^M.E. Botham, "Chinese Islam as an Organism" \n Moslem World 14 (1924), 263 & 267.
-"'Chan Wing-tsit, Religious Tretids^ 189-191.
-"Fu, Zhonggiio Huijiao, 206.

71

strong body. "We will not be doing our duty if we do not cause the truth to be spread . . .
make the principles of our faith known to all... we devote ourselves exclusively to
religious matters, avoiding all political question.^
The society proclaimed their responsibilities to include;

1) preparation of treatises in order to enlighten the

members of the society; 2) translate important scriptures,
to make doctrine known; 3) improve grammar schools and
teaching methods thus strengthening our people;
4) establish normal schools and develop teacher training;
5) emphasize the importance of lectures ~ to exhort the
people, and disseminate knowledge.*^

The topics for upcoming papers pertained to religious matters and Islamic
practices. Among the group of scholars who would be making contributions were Wang
Haoran, Wang Jingzhai, Li Yunting, Zhang Zuwen, Ma Qunyi, and Sun Sheng-wu. Titles
included "Words of Muhammad" and "The Life of Muhammad," "Most Important
Muslim Laws" and "History of the Saints." But there were also less theological subjects,
such as sanitation and hygiene. Members of the organizing committee of the conference
included Zhang Dechun, Wang Ruilan, An Zhen, and Li Zongqing.*
The society opened branches in mosques in the capital cities of the eighteen
provinces. By 1923 they claimed some 3,000 branches. Mosque doorways were adorned
with plaques painted with the characters Jujin Hui, and the association had its own Hui
""^M. E. Botham, "Modem Movements among Chinese Mohammedans" in Moslem World
13 (1923), 294-295; and Charles L. Ogilivie, trans. "Mohammedan Conference at Peking,
1916" \n Moslem World 6 (1916), 304.
-^Botham, "Modem Movements," 295.
-^Ogilivie, "Mohammedan Conference," 306-307.

72

nationality flag created. The Hui flag bore a star and the crescent moon, like the flag of
the Ottoman Empire.^ Where the five-barred design of the ROC's flag symbolized
Chinese nationalism, a separate Hui flag created a symbol for Hui nationalism. By the
1910s the star and crescent would adorn the cover of numerous Muslim publications and
the flag hung in meeting halls, providing a symbol of Muslim heritage. But the Mutual
Progress Association hung the five barred flag, too, in a show of allegiance to the
Republic of China. In another symbolic action, the association encouraged its members to
cut off their queues.'"
Different branches of the society met with varying degrees of success. In
some provinces mosques were seen to display JujLn Hui plaques, but showed little
evidence of activities associated with the movement. A mosque in Sichuan, for example,
bragged of its reading room, but upon inspection, the room was found to be a dusty
storage room.'' Mosques in Beijing, in contrast, became a centers where ideas of social
reform and modem progress were discussed. The Beijing branch of the Jujin Hui started
production on a bimonthly periodical, Muhammed's Light (A/m Guang Ban Yuekan), in
addition to holding meetings and lectures." The Jujin Hui's program expanded to

-^Botham, "Modem Movements," 295. It is interesting to note that the star and crescent
(emblems of the Ottoman Empire) became the flag design chosen by Islamic states around
the world in the years to come. A foreigner researching Islam had observed no evidence
of the star and crescent design while traveling in China before 1910 suggesting little
exchange with the Middle East, see H.M.G. d'Ollone, Recherches sur les Musidmans
C/i/>/o/5 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1911), 374.
^'^Derk Bodde, "China's Muslim Minority" m Far Eastern Survey 15:18 (1946), 283.
^'M.E. Botham, "Chinese Islam as an Organism" \nMoslem World 14 (1924), 267.
^"Fu, '"Zhongguo Huijiao," 206.

73

include questions of health and sanitation, and a commitment to combat the problem of
opium.^^
The All Progress Association endorsed the new republic and acclaimed the
advantages of the nation-state for Chinese Muslims.^ Such applause, however, was as
much a cautionary measure as anything. The association claimed to be apolitical, but it
was impossible to avoid politics in China in the 1910s. There was a law that organizations
{minzhong tuanti) register with the government. Organizations were required to submit
copies of the organization's constitution and by-laws, a list of officers, and a list of at least
forty-five members to the local police station (which in the ROC houses government civil
service offices). When Chinese Muslim leaders registered newly formed societies their
statements of purpose stressed goals to enrich the lives of Chinese Muslims "for the good
of society and the country."^Coping with the governmental requirements of organizations, put Chinese
Muslims in a balancing act. Sometimes lip service would be paid officials in order not to
jeopardize activities. For example, in the opening years of the republic, the Jujin Hui
endorsed Yuan Shikai. The aligimient put the association on shaky ground following
Yuan Shikai's attempts to restore the monarchy. Nevertheless the society did not
disappear, contrary to some accounts.^ By the mid 1930s the Jujin Hui proclaimed that it
was "in accordance with the directives of Beiping city's social office (shehui ju) " They

"R.W. Thwing, "Islam in China To-day" in Moslem World 1 (1917), 76.

"^Hiiiweu Baihtia Bao 5(1913), 1 -3.
^'Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 25.
^^Voll, Islam: Continuity, 266-267.

74

continued to open branches throughout the country, and added some branches in Qinghai
by the late thirties.^^ The society was responsible for establishing elementary schools and
taking charge of education in communities around the country .^
Organizations were formed in other cities, too. In Nanjing a Chinese
Muslim Federation was formed in 1912. In 1925 the Zhongguo Huijiao Xiiehui was
formed in Shanghai. The name has been translated as the Chinese Muslim Teaching
Society and the Chinese Muslim Literary Society, or Study Society. Hajji Jelaluddin He
Decheng was a famous scholar who had studied in India and Egypt and knew Arabic,
Persian, Urdu, and English.^"' When he returned from studies abroad. He Decheng
observed that Chinese Muslim religious studies needed to be improved. He Decheng
along with He Shafli, Ma Ganghou, Sha Shanyu, Ma Jinqing, Ma Yitang, Yang Jiashaa,
Da Pusheng, Jin Ziyun and Wu Tegong organized the Literary Society.^
The society concentrated on Islamic education and encouraged the study of
the Quran and the hadiths.^' The society's list of projects included the establishment of a
Muslim teachers' college, elementary schools, and Arabic classes. The group opened
reading rooms and established religious libraries, and created scholarships for high school
students."^" The society published a monthly periodical, Huijiao Xuehui Yuekan (Chinese
Muslim Literary Society Monthly) which focused on spreading the doctrine of Islam, and
^^Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 206-207.
^^Finlay G. Andrew, The Crescent in Northwest China (London; China Inland Mission,
I92I),67-68.
''Ting, ''Islamic Culture," 365.
^'Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 208.
*' Voll, Islam: Continuity, 267.
"'"Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 208.

75

also began a project of translating the Qur'an into Chinese. The society also hope to
increase exchanges with Muslims of other countries. Indian Muslims traveling and
proselytizing in East Asia participated in the activities of the society."*^
In 1929, also in Shanghai, He Shafli, Ma Yitang, Sha Shanyu, Wu Tegong,
Da Pusheng, and Sun Yanyi formed a new group, Zhonggtw Huijiao Gonghui (Chinese
Muslim General Association) with the profess purpose of drawing together Muslims
around the country. The organizers included in their statement the usual desire to aid and
assist the nation."" Five main goals were to train ahongs, expand eflforts to establish
schools, organize vocational education, invite prominent people to give public lectures,
and create a hospital. The group expanded the agenda from that of the Literary Society,
of which many were members. In the end, however, financial difficulties led to the
association's demise.
In 1928 in Beijing, Chinese Muslim university students formed the Beiping
Islamic Friendship Association, also translated as Brotherhood, {Beiping Yisilan Xueyou
Hiti). Their roster included members from fifteen provinces, with eighty-nine men and
seven women.'^- Members included Xue Wenbo, Lin Baoshi, Yang Jingzhi, Yang Xinmin,
and Yu Weihua. They established branches in colleges and high schools, with the hope to
extend the brotherhood nationwide. The group held discussions on religion, education
and research, hoped to promote scholarly lectures and international exchanges.^
Anonymous, "The Moslems of China through Indian Eyes" \n Moslem World 18 (1928),
307-308.
"Fu, Zhonggtio Huijiao, 207.
^"Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 26.
^Fu, Zhonggiio Huijiao, 209.

76

In 1931 in Nanjing the Chinese Muslim Young Student Association

{Zhongguo Huijiao Oingnian Xuehtti) was established. Some of the founders and early
members of this group include Wang Yi, Wang Cengshaa, Wang Yuebo, Hu Jiaoru, Tang
Kesan^ Sun Yanyi, and Ma Jizhou. The group also sought to unite Chinese Muslim
students around the country, and promote research and universal education. The members
also committed themselves to social services and the improvement of Chinese Muslim
lifestyle. Their projects expanded on earlier student groups to included: the study of
science and its relationship to Islam; vocational training for Chinese Muslim students; the
collection and compilation of books and joumds relevant to Muslim communities; and the
study of Sun Yatsen's Three People's Principles.^'
The number of youth groups grew, and in 1933 an amalgamation of these
groups was formed and called the Chinese Muslim Youth Association (JHuizu Oingnian
Hui).^

Although the name implies a membership of youthflil students, members were all

ages, most in their twenties, thirties and forties.

The Society for the Promotion of Education Among Muslims {Zhongguo
Huimin Jiaoyu Cujin Weiyuan Hui) was created in Nanjing in 1931. Sun Sheng-wu, Wu
Tegong, Shi Zizhou, and Jin Shihe were among the original group. The society was
dedicated solely to the promotion of universal education. Members sought to coordinate
their efforts to complement the government's new policy. In the effort to bring Xinjiang
into the republican fold, the government advocated a plan of bringing (male) students from

'^Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 209.

"^Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 26-27.

77

border regions, specifically Xinjiang, to study with Han boys. The plan promised to
reward students with the opportunity to pursue advance education.^^
In 1934 a new version of the short-lived Chinese Muslim General
Association (Zhongguo Huijiao Gonghui) of 1929, noted above, was revived and renamed
when Ma Zizhen, Liang Renfii, Chen Jiang, and Ma Liang gathered in Jinan, Shandong
and created the Chinese Muslim Nationjil Association (Zhonghua Huijiao Zonghui). The
group organized a large scale meeting in Nanjing of Chinese Muslim leaders from different
provinces to initiate the proceedings. The assembly drew up laws and regulations and the
new association was formally established. The success of this group proved that Chinese
Muslims could organize at the national level. Representatives opened provincial branches,
which included not only Henan, Shandong, Hubei, Jiangxu, but also Shaanxi and Gansu."^
Also in 1934, in Shanghai, Ma Tianying, Wang Yi, Lu Zhongxiang, Ma
Fuguo, and Fu Tongxian (Fu T'ung-hsien) established the Zhongguo Huijiao Wenhua
Xiehui (Chinese Islamic Cultural Society). The members desire was to examine and enrich
the state of Chinese Muslim culture. It was a new direction, moving beyond religious
matters and education. The efforts were directed toward the compilation and publication
of Muslim cultural literature, including non-Chinese Muslim cultures.-'
Most every organization stated goals to improve education and Chinese
Muslim well being. The earlier groups such as the All Progress Association and the
Beiping Student's Brotherhood focused expressly on education. But the later groups such
^''Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 210.
^'Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 207; and Chan Wing-tsit, Religious Trends, 191.
'Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 211.

as the Chinese Muslim National Association and the Chinese Islamic Cultural Society
indicate that members began broadening their aims. This is a shift from 1912. The idea of
creating hospitals, and vocational training, and cultural centers indicates that leaders saw
their role as one that was not limited to religious matters. The original effort of the Jujin
Hui. to link Chinese Muslims around the country began to be realized.
The local branches offices of most associations were housed in mosques.-In addition to the prayer hall, a mosque might house lecture halls, conference rooms, study
rooms, and offices, depending on the size of the mosque. In 1930 there were 34 mosques
in the center of Beijing, and well over 40 counting the outlying districts. The Oxen Street
and Jiazi Hutong mosques lay outside the old city walls to the southwest. A look at the
mosques in Beijing in 1930 exemplify the activities going on in different mosques. A list
of some of the groups and activities include; a branch of the Jujin Hui; a branch of the
Pure and True Society; a local branch of the Anti-Smoking Association {jieyan hui), and
winter charity rice bowl committees. The publication of the bimonthly, Muhammed's
Light {Mu Guang) was done on mosque grounds. The Jujin Hui established some twenty
elementary schools in the city's Muslims districts, as well as the Northwestern public high
schools. Mosques also housed chapters of the Union of Traveling Mutton Salesmen and
the Huimin Gong/mi.

"Mosques had long been called Oingzhen Si (Pure and True Temples). In the 1930s a
number of Chinese Muslim communities began to use the terms Libai Tang or Libai Si
(Worship Hall, or Temple).
-"'Xun Zhen, "Beiping Qingzhen Si," 409.

79

Traditional Chinese Muslim schools, jingxue, were attached to mosques.

The name came from the fact that the schools focused on Quranic studies, gulan Jingxue.
Students studied the Qur'an and Arabic and Persian languages and literature. For most
Chinese Muslims that would have been the only education they would ever receive. If
students had studied Chinese they did so outside of the mosque schools. Traditional
mosque education was limited to religious subjects, essentially training students to become
religious leaders. '^ By the end of the nineteenth century curricula generally were courses
in Arabic that consisted of the Qur'an and theology, and language and literature. Subjects
in Persian included religious doctrine and philosophy. In many cases Chinese Muslim
students spent years laboring over Arabic texts, only to have the lessons committed to
memory, but never mastering the language. Their actual linguistic abilities were often
poor. Passages of the Qur'an were memorized with no sense of the meaning.'^
Chinese Muslim students were not forbidden from studying Chinese or in
Han schools, but it was not customary. There were accomplished Chinese Muslim
scholars who followed the arduous path to officialdom in dynastic times, but, for the most
part, it was a difficult career choice if one hoped to be true to the tenets of Islam. The
social and ritualistic importance of dining in China, for example, placed a Muslim who
followed strict dietary laws in a compromising position. By the close of Qing times, very
few Chinese Muslims were literate, in Chinese or Arabic.^ New schools, with modem
curricula were growing in number, but Chinese Muslims were reluctant to attend, again
^Bai Shouyi, Zhongguo Yisilan" 45.
"Ma Jian, "A Comprehensive History of Islam in China" in Yugong 5:11(1936) 72-73.
^"Huhven Baihua Bao (1913)

80

because of the dietary problems as well as a concern that students would get no religious
instruction, so Chinese Muslims set about establishing their own new schools.^^
In the following decades Chinese Muslim educators would institute three
kinds of schools; teacher training schools, or normal schools (Huimin shifcm xuexiao);
mosque schools (siyuan xuexiao); and new general education schools (putong xuexiao).
Mosque schools set out to raise the standards of Islamic studies, and also add courses in
Chinese language, and history, geography and math. The community would allocate funds
for education, and in some cases the government of the republic would also contribute to
Chinese Muslim schools.'^ Chinese Muslims educators tried some innovative methods,
such as the use of volunteer instructors. At the beginning of the republican era there was
great optimism about the advancement of education.- Three of the best known schools
founded for religious educaton include Chengda Normal School in Beijing, the Islamic
Normal School in Shanghai, and the Mingde High School in Kunming."^
Ma Songting came to prominence with his work in setting up Chengda
Normal School, Chengda Shifan Xuexiao, in 1925 in Jinan in Shandong province. The
school was housed on the grounds of Mujia Chemen mosque, with a mandate to produce
"robust and strong" teachers who would promote "Hui citizenry's knowledge and enlarge
the field of Muslim culture and teachings, and to renew staunch Islamic spirituality ."
Originally courses were traditional courses in Arabic and Chinese. Arabic course work

"Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 15-18.

"'*Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao,
'Ma Shouqian, "The Hui People's," 20.
^Ting, "Islamic Culture," 372.

81

included language classes, Qur'anic studies, and Islamic studies ranging from moral, ethics
and philosophy to Muslim society and history.^'
The normal school curricula were created due to contemporary concerns
and problems "facing the Chinese Muslim community," and was perceived of as a
"progressive means for enabling nationalism."" Chinese course work included Chinese
literature, history and geography, and society. As the school grew the methods and
courses adjusted to suit the demands of contemporary society. There were also courses in
the natural sciences and math, as well as courses in education. The student body steadily
increased. There were scholars and students visiting from Egypt, too."
The school was moved to Beijing and became the foremost Chinese
Muslim teacher training school. In Beijing Chengda continued to thrive. By 1929 the
school published magazines, books and teaching materials.^ It began publishing a
monthly magazine, Yue Hua, which eventually became an independent operation. The
school also published Chengshi Shao Kan, the campus magazine that focused on school
services and student work.'
One of the first modem schools was established in Zhenjiang in Jiangxu by
Tong Zhong who had studied in Japan, where he had belonged to the Chinese Muslim

"'Ma Songting, "Zhonngguo Huijiao," 1-5.

""-Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 4-6.
"^Liu Shenglin, "Beijing Huizu," 28. After the establishment of the PRC, Chengda and
two of the middle schools set up by in the 1910s were joined together to form the Hui
Institute {Hui Xtieytian). In the years after 1963 it changed again into a middle school,
with its name changing with the times.
"^Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 12-14.
"'Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 13.

82

General Education Association of East Asia, mentioned above. Another one was
established by An Ming in Wanping County of Beijing. Ma Linyiu opened the Muslim
Jiejing Primary School in Shaoyang, Hunan. A Chinese Muslim language normal school
and the first Muslim public primary school were established in Beijing by Ma Linyi and
Wang Kuan.^
Wang Haoran came from Shandong, as did Ma Songting. Shandong
Chinese Muslims had had a reputation of being liberal among the study groups in Japan
before the revolution, and their attitudes became influential in education in the years that
followed.Wang Haoran and Wang Yousan worked together with the ahongs of the
Oxen Street and Jiazi Hutong mosques under the auspices of the Jujin Hui, and established
Pure in True Elementary schools in mosques throughout Beijing. They also were able to
transform the Northwest High schools.
Under the republic Chinese Muslims founded more than a thousand
elementary schools and several high schools for general education.*^

They added modem

subjects to the list of traditional courses of Islamic doctrine and literature. The efforts
marks the begirmings of new style Chinese Muslim schools. Chinese began to used for
teaching in the classroom with the goal that it would be used for general education. The
target established was to create elementary schools in all Chinese Muslim neighborhoods
and thereby achieve universal education.^^
^Ma Shouqian, "The Hui People's," 20-22.
'Pang Shiqian, "Zhongguo Huijiao Siyuan Jiaoyu zhi Yange ji Keben" [Church Education
in Chinese Islam] in Yugottgl: 4 (1937), 101.
^'^Ting, Islamic Culture, 373.
'Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 15-16.

83

Some conservative Chinese Muslims maintained that the use of Chinese in

schools and the study of Chinese books betrayed their religion.^ Others claimed reading
too much would lead one away from religion. Older ahongs held on to more conventional
methods, and shunned modem curricula contending that traditional learning was an
important factor in preserving the self-identity of the faithful amidst Chinese society. The
older faction was behind the times/' however, and their influence all but faded when Wang
Haoran and others like him introduced new schemes. The modernists explained that it
was not more reading that would damage religion, but the opposite. Study, and
progressive education, was the best way to promote religion.
Modernists stressed the need to incorporate useful everyday Chinese
learning in the curriculum, so that students would have better opportunities. An article
appearing in a 1913 magazine in Beijing underscored the need for Chinese Muslims to
study Chinese. "While the Han people (hanzu) are able to reach high honors in their
scholarship, we Hui people {women huiren) are also able to, . . . our vested rights are
equal . . . but we cannot read Chinese books; it is a great weakness."^
For Chinese society on the whole, revamping the educational system did
not come easily. The formation of new schools ignited anti-foreign sentiments in a
number of people, but, as in the Chinese Muslim community, the progressive voices
prevailed. An article appearing in the newspaper Shibao in 1906 argued that universal
education was mandatory for China because "a minority of citizens were not capable of
^"Bai Chongxi, "Zhongguo Huijiao" in Huijiao Wenhua 1 (1957), 3.
^'Hayward, "Chinese-Moslem Literature," 367-368.
^Hurwen Baihua Bao, 7 (1913), 23.

84

revitalizing the nation."^ Tsang explains that schools became centers for developing and
promoting nationalism. In 1912 the RCX^ promoted practical courses and there were still
ideas of "moral education" that breed "wholesome and balanced personalities."
Educators became more sensitive about nationalism after World War I. The first modem
educators were strongly influenced by thinkers like John Dewey, who advocated
separation of politics and education, but popular education was believed integral to
democracy.
When Chiang Kai-shek took the reins and moved the capital to Nanjing the
government's stance on education shifted. The Nationalists figured that education was to
be used to national ends. The system could be designed according to the Nationalists'
program, and Sun's Three Principles. It would become the model of Guomingdang styled
education {dangfa jiaoytt).^* The GMD regarded education as a means to facilitate the
government's policy of assimilation, and school curricula were laden with courses about
Han Chinese history and culture."

The government helped fiind Chinese Muslim schools

but not because of ideals about self-determination and religious fi'eedom.

In 1927 the Nanjing government decreed that all schools, like organizations
and publications, should register with the government, and any religious curriculum was
proscribed.' The government had already instituted a modem curricula for elementary
and high schools. The Chinese Muslims educators had been executing that program in

Judge, Print and Politics, 221.

"Tsang, Nationalism, 30-54.
'"Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, 17-18.
''^Elizabeth Pickens, "Moslems in China" m Moslem World 24 (1944), 255.

85

their new local schools, but they also had retained courses in Islamic studies and Arabic
and Persian languages and literature. When the ban on religion went into effect, Chinese
Muslims saw no recourse but to close their schools. Students could attend Han Chinese
schools, but the old problems of dietary laws upset many, and they sought another
solution.
General Omar Bai Chongxi, had been a member of the Guangxi Clique, one
of the serious military contenders to the Nationalists. Bai was a Chinese Muslim. When
he sided with the Nationalists it was much to their advantage. Chinese Muslim leaders had
appealed to the government to grant them freedom to include religious studies in their
educational programs. One story goes that Chiang Kai-shek needed to propitiate General
Bai Chongxi, and so Chiang conceded to the demands of the Chinese Muslims. Bai, in
turn, remained a loyal and most trusted general." When the government moved to Taiwan
Bai continued to have a prominent career in the ROC's government, and was held in high
esteem by Chinese Muslims there. ^
When the ban on religion was lifted, Chinese Muslims students once again
attended Chinese Muslim schools. Students studied modem curriculum in the mornings
and received religious instruction in the afternoons. Leaders claimed that by expanding
education it would benefit "the foundations of the work force" which would "benefit
"Pickens, "Moslems in China," 254.
^^When General Bai died feuding arose as to how to proceed with his funeral. Many felt
that the general ought to lie in state because he had been an important government figure,
but others maintained that such ritual was highly inappropriate for a Muslim. It created
quite a rift. In the end the general's body was embalmed and displayed in a Han funeral
parlor (contrary to Muslim custom), before finally being laid to rest in Muslim fashion a
week late. See Pillsbury, Cohesion. 185-195.

86

society." By the mid 1930s efforts to modernize education included schooling for girls.
Students and disciples in Beijing also created an educational network between mosques.
For example, they picked a central location where teachers and masters could participate
in joint seminars.^'' By the 1930s many Muslim communities could boast Pure and True
elementary schools and more high schools opened.
Educational improvements came from within the community. A major
imperative had been to improve and modernize educational facilities for every mosque in
the land. A further aim was to use Chinese for instruction. At the same time Chinese
Muslim schools still taught Arabic and Persian and Islamic studies.^'

Leaders shared the

belief that it was imperative for Chinese Muslims to study Arabic. The modernists and
Yihewani followers alike had been impressed by Arab renewalism in the Middle East, and
they reckoned that true appreciation of Islamic culture required Arabic.'^"
The experiences of leaders such as Wang Haoran, Wang Jingzhai, Ma
Hongdao and Ma Songting, who traveled and studied in Egypt and Turkey recognized
that Islam was important.^' Islam was important not only because it was their faith, but
because it was the faith of so many millions of people in the world. With that knowledge
Chinese Muslims understood that their faith was not just a "little teaching" {xiao jiao) as
it had been called in China, but major religion of the world. Islam was on a par with

^Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 7.

*'Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 18.
Liu Shenglin, "Beijing Huizu," 27.
''"See Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 1-15; and Isaac Mason, "Arabian Stories for
Chinese Readers" \n Moslem World II (1921), 70-76.
''^Zhao Chenwu, "Sanshi nianlai, 18-19.

87

Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Christianity. In the same vein, Chinese Muslims
were on a par with their fellow non-Muslim Chinese brethren. Chinese Muslim identity
had been expanded by the modem age, and the opportunity to explore beyond Beijing.

88

CHAPTER FOUR: PUBLICATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

The route for Muslims going on pilgrimage to Mecca shifted. In the past
pilgrims traveled overland by caravan though Central Asia. It was an arduous journey that
took many months. Modem steamers, in contrast, could carry pilgrims from the coast of
China to the port of Jiddah much quicker. The change prompted an increase in the
number of Muslims going on hajj. Between 1923 and 1934 some 834 pilgrims sailed from
Shanghai to Mecca. Others made their way to Southeast Asia and departed from
Singapore' It was costly, and many Muslims were poor, nevertheless hundreds made the
journey.
Returning pilgrims brought back sacred waters from the well of Zamzam,
but more importantly they brought with them stories of new experiences and books."
Chinese Muslims were eager to leam about the Middle East and other Muslims, and there
was a large demand for Arabic and Persian books and materials. Muslims in China had copied
old copies of old Arabic and Persian materials over the centuries, but after years of little
contact with the Middle East, Chinese Muslims were eager to get different and updated

' Claude L. Pickens, "The Challenge of Chinese Muslims" in The Chinese Recorder 68
(1937), 414-417.
Virginia Vacca, "The Views of a Chinese Moslem" \n Moslem World 24 (1936), 71

89

materials/ At once, modem technology brought the Middle East closer, and teachers
and students could get new dictionaries and textbooks. At the same time, modem print
technologies also had arrived in China, and the urban centers experienced a flood of
publishing.
Modem print technology was readily embraced in the land which had
produced the earliest printing presses. Yet Chinese print technology had not undergone
the kind of mechanization seen in the West, nor had the media been a force outside official
circles; the introduction of foreign publications and their genre, however, stimulated
changes. "The journalism of the West, the technical, commercial and financial press, and
the notion of free political discussion, all corollary to the whole Baconian philosophy,
were ushered with it into China.""* As the nineteenth century closed Chinese publishers
had begun to borrow from the foreign format at the same time that new political concepts
took root as traditional ones lost their luster
Print technology began to change in all ways, from production and
distribution, in addition to content and format. As Dirks observes, "The movement fi-om
annals to chronicles to historic narrative is the progression from different forms of
kingship to the rationalized reality of the nation-state.'" The change in printed materials
themselves reflects the ongoing changes in society, and how people perceive themselves.
^ Shi Chenzhong, "Hailifa Bixu Hui Zhizhi Xiejing Hua Baba Xiejing Zui Chuming" in
Zhenzong Bao Yuekan (1939), reprinted in Li Xinghua, Zhongguo Yisilanjaio, 1088-1089.
^ Roswell S. Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press, 1800-1912 (Taipei: Cheng-wen
Publishing, 1966, original edition Shanghai; Kelly & Walsh, 1933), 16.
' Nicholas Dirks, "History as a Sign of the Modem" in Public Culture Spring (1990),
25-33; see also Lydia Liu Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and
Translated Modernity, China,
7 (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1995).

90

The print media do not present formal historical narratives, per se, but provide records of
the process and some of the dialogues of the time. The media become a forum for public
discourse. At the same time as a human construct, the media constitute artifacts that
become tools used in society's reconstruction, and serve to influence attitudes, which alter
cultural institutions.^
The power of the press grew. There was a push to create a solidarity by
repeating that the Chinese were 400,000, 000 (si wanwan) that are "uterine brothers"
{tongbao). Articles hammered away at the problem of the Great Powers, and they
delivered a barrage of international news. The influence in the cities was tremendous. "In
China readers rule. It matters little that few can read. Those who can inform those who
cannot, and sooner or later the masses know what the classes have learnt."^ The Chinese
newsstands increased as the of number periodicals and dailies swelled. In the opening
years of the republic an average of one hundred periodicals were started annually, and this
trend continued." Throughout China, "it was a day for the popularizing and broadcasting
of ideas and slogans, and for the production of vast quantities of propaganda literature of
all kinds.'"'

For discussion about modem publishing in China see Britton, The Chinese Periodical
Press; and Lin Yutang, A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1936).
^ Charles Bone, "The Secular Chinese Press: Its Tone and Teaching" in G.H. Bondfield,
ed. China Mission Yearbook, 1912 (Shanghai: Christian Literature Society for China,
1911), 346.
P. deVargas, "Some Elements in the Chinese Renaissance" in The New China Review'
4:3 (1922), 243.
' Harold D. Hayward, "Chinese-Moslem Literature: A Study in Mohammedan Education"
\x\ Moslem World 22 (1933), 366.

91

In 1919 some 400 magazines appeared as the New Culture Movement

flourished. While most magazines were produced by students and short-lived, they
represent the pulse of the times. It can "truly be called a magazine movement."'*' NonMuslim writers such as Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun and Hu Shih were intensely
nationalistic, and they sought to make a new China. Their discourse was full of political
nationalism coupled with cultural iconoclasm. People were rethinking Chinese tradition,
and little escaped attack. There was a backlash in the 1930s that regaled the past, but
China would never be as it was. and it was impossible to not think of the country and its
place in the modem world."
The print media wrestled with the juxtaposition of elements that upheld
cultural values of the past that were carried into the present, and those elements that
enforced the imperatives of the present. New Chinese printed materials emerged, hybrids
of inherited art forms and newly introduced methods. Publications could reach a broader
audience and be of greater influence. Traditional newspapers experimented with change.
The Peking Gazette (Jingbao), for example, was a late Qing official news page that was
inserted in modem newspapers, such as the Shenbao. By changing the "environment" of
the paper, the traditional state was forced to enter into the public arena.Experiment
ation did not require rejection of the past, as in cases like the J/zigbao just the
juxtaposition of traditional media with the modem altered their stature, and periodicals
"MeVargas, "Some Elements," 244.
"Harrison, Modem Chinese Nationalism, 27-29.
'"Barbara Mittler, "Making the Chinese State Go Public: Peking Gazette {Jingbao)
Reprints in the Shenbao (1872-1912) " in Association for Asian Studies : Abstracts of the
1996 Annual Meeting {Aim Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1996), 52.

92

took on a new voice. Dissanayake's comments about cinema in Japan could just as easily
be said of Chinese printing materials; "... the imported art. . . was very quickly
transformed into an indigenous medium .. . capable of representing various facets of the
national experience and sensibility," which soon would be "inscribed with cultural
legitimacy.'"^
The idea of progress and rebirth was not unique to the Chinese Muslims.
The names of Han Chinese newspapers and journals demonstrate the same sentiments.
When the students at Beijing University published a magazine in 1918 they named it
Xinchao (The New Tide), but they chose The Renaissance as their title in English. New
magazines were printed on stronger paper that could be printed on both sides, unlike the
thin old-fashioned paper. By 1920 the vernacular {baihua) and modem punctuation were
used in magazines, and sometimes texts would be printed in horizontal lines from left to
right .Technology and technical changes all contributed to the sense of progress.
A few years before the revolution, Chinese Muslim students in Tokyo
published the magazine, Muslims Awake (Xing Hui pian), which, like their study groups,
addressed educational and religious concerns. The students who returned from overseas
played a crucial role in the progressive activities in their communities. In 1904, for
example. Ding Baochen returning from studies in Japan, founded the Orthodox Patriotic
Magazine {Zhengzong Aiguo Bao) in Beijing. His brother. Ding Zhuyuan, started the
Zhuyuan Baihua Bao (Zhuvuan Vernacular Magazine') in Tianjin three years later. Both

'^Dissanayake, Colonialism, xv.

'^deVargas, "Some Elements," 244-245.

93

used slogans of the day such as "truth will save the nation" {zhenli jiuguo) and "education
will save the nation" (jiaoyu jiuguo). At the same time, an effort was made to utilize the
vernacular in order to reach a larger audience.'Anderson suggests that print languages lay the basis for "national
consciousness" by creating a sense of unity "unified fields of exchange" for
fellow-readers who would be connected through print, thereby forming "the embryo of the
nationally imagined community

He illustrates, for example, that early European

nationalists came fi-om lesser gentry and academics, and were tradesmen and businessmen
who were not versed in Latin, the language of the literati. The use of colloquial languages
the vernacular served to build a sense of belonging for linguistic groups, and literacy
opened the door to belonging to a larger community. Linguistically a group shared a
heritage, "myths, poetry, newspapers, and ideological formation ... [as well as] money
and marketing." Anderson calls these fellow-readers "missionaries of nationalism," whose
numbers increased with literacy.'^
The growing acceptance of the use of baihua among Chinese writers
promised larger audiences as well as greater literacy. In the Chinese Muslim community
the use of the vernacular coupled with the educational drive made the public forum more
accessible. Periodicals, newspapers, and a variety of printed materials were available in
shops in Chinese Muslim districts. At the same time associations like the Jujin Hui, the
Chinese Muslim Literary Society, and the Chinese Muslim National Association were
'-Ma Shouqian, "The Hui People's," 6.
'"Anderson, Imagined, 47.
'^Anderson, Imagined, 76-77.

94

setting up reading rooms and libraries.'^ Chinese Muslims were given the opportunity to
read about their heritage, one shared with fellow Chinese Muslims who lived in other
communities around the country.
Anderson suggests that the new style global imperialism that grew out of
industrial capitalism gave rise to the wave of nationalist movements seen in the twentieth
century, and capitalism gave rise to a commercial press. Modem economic changes,
socio-scientific discoveries and changes in communications led to a "new search for ways
to link fraternity, power, and time . . . and the emergence of print capitalism" in which
people could find new ways to see themselves and their relationship to others. Within
such a setting a nation becomes popular.The printed word becomes a source of
information and the creation of popular vernacular. This leads to what Anderson identifies
as popular-vernacular based nationalisms that undermine the old dynasts and their "official
nationalism."-" Such a setting allows for a group to reexamine their past culture as well
as their fiiture politics.
An article in a Hui magazine entitled "The Usefulness of Newspapers"
explained that China was not only the birthplace of printing and moveable type, but of
newspapers. The art flourished in China, but it was essentially used by the courts. In time
however, the west learned from China, and took advantage of the media. Now the
progressive West utilized the newspaper as a major means of communication and people

"*Zhao,"Sanshi nianlai," 24.

"Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London; Verso, 1991, revised and expanded version of 1983 text), 40-41.
-"Anderson, Imagined, 127-128.

95

read papers daily. It is, the article continued, essential for Chinese to borrow this habit
(that is indirectly of Chinese origin) in order to understand progress and to participate in
the modem world. The piece could have appeared in any Chinese publication of the
period. It both reflected admiration for China's rich heritage and the need to adjust society
and peoples' attitudes.-' The message complements Hobsbawn's discussion that nationals
use the past to invent traditions that will apply to the present in the eflforts to fortify
nationalism.~
Few Chinese Muslims were literate before the drive for universal
education. There is no known existent Chinese Muslim body of literature prior to the
seventeenth century. Aside from a few stele and monuments found on mosque grounds,
there is no written record to speak of before the seventeenth century.^

No record of any

Chinese Muslim literature exists that predates the writings of the Chinese Muslim
apologists, dating from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Their works, the
Han Kitab, constitute the Chinese Muslim classics.
Isaac Mason spent thirty-three years in China. The last ten of those years
he spent in Shanghai where he prepared materials in Chinese and Arabic for Christian
missionaries who worked among Chinese Muslims. Mason also collected Chinese Muslim
published materials and amassed a collection amounting more than three hundred items.

Huhven Baihua Bao, 1913.

"See Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism.
^See Ford, "Some Chinese Muslims," 144-156; and Ludmilla Panskaya, Introduction to
Palladii's Chinese Literature of the Muslims (Canberra: Australian National University
Press, 1979).
'Isaac Mason, "The Future of Islam in China" va Moslem World 40 (1940), 84.

96

The collection contains a sampling of materials from the late 1800s, but most of the
publications come from the period between 1904 and 1925. A cursory read of the
collection's catalogue indicates that most of the works pertain to religious topics. There
are books about Islamic history, religious practices, myths, and accounts of pilgrims and
Mecca. Most notable, however, is there are scores of reprints from the classics, the Han
Kitab.
There are reprints of Wang Daiyu's A True Explanation of the Correct
Religion of 1642. There are numerous reprints and rewrites of the works of Liu Zhi (fl.
1720), and more than two dozen reprints of Ma Fuchu's (d. 1875) works and those of his
pupil. Ma Anli. The rewrites were shortened and simplified versions of the classical
works, translated from the classical Chinese into the vernacular. There are also dozens of
magazines listed, but Mason notes that in half the cases the publications are short lived.
The collection also includes calendars and charts.^ The Mason collection illustrates the
array of publishing going on in the urban Chinese Muslim centers.
Chinese Muslims set up their own publishing houses. In Beijing one
company listed some 76 books in Chinese and bilingually in Chinese and Arabic, along
with stock of over 125 titles in Arabic and Persian.^ Beijing became one of the most
important Muslim publishing centers. Other important centers included Shanghai,
Nanjing , Changsha, Chengdu, Kunming, and Tokyo. The new schools created the need

-'Isaac Mason, "Notes on Chinese Mohammedan Literature" 'm Journal of the North
China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 54 (1925), 172-215. Also refer to the listing
for the Collection of Chinese Islamic Literature (New York City Public Library).
-^Botham, '^Modern Movements," 296.

97

for new teaching materials {zuopiri) for the variety of new course work. Publishers set
out to meet the demands of compiling and editing texts, and new science materials.
Chinese Muslim publishing houses experimented with new technologies.
Among the most successful were the Shanghai United Prosperity Company (Shanghai
Xiexing gongsi), the Shanghai Chinese Muslim Books Company (Shanghai Zhongguo
Huijiao shtiju), the Shanghai Muslim Classic Books Company {Shanghai Mumin Jingshtt
Ju). and the Beijing Chengda Publishing House (Beiping Chengda Shifan chubanbu).
Companies imported dictionaries and books from India, Egypt, Syria and Turkey,
Students returning from the Middle East brought back Arabic and Persian volumes and
books about Islam. Many were reprinted by the new publishing houses.-
Compilation of Chinese and Arabic dictionaries also meant importing of
Arabic typesetting. Companies also provided photo lithographic copies of western books,
and reproduced old wood cuts. Beijing's Chengda Publishing House made photo lithos of
original dictionaries and records, as well as its most recent works on Chinese Muslim
culture. Other important publishing houses were Chengdu Jing Shu Liu Tong Chu in
Sichuaa Yunnan Chang Xue She in Yunnaa Beijing Oingzhen Shu Bao She in Beijing,
and Xi'an Moushu She in Shaanxi."^
The companies published a wide range of books from easy to understand
Arabic readers and Arabic grammar texts, to Sacred and Holy Meanings. The Chinese

-^Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 19.

-^See Charles L. Ogilivie, "A Classified Bibliography of Books on Islam in Chinese and
Chinese-Arabic" \n Moslem World 6 (1918), 74-78.
-''Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 20-22.

98

Muslim practice of translating and compiling started from Ming times, and during the early
republic, the practice continued. Translations of important Islamic v/orks, for example,
included titles such as Haaieut ad-Divana al Islamiwa by Hussain al-Jisr, and Outline of
Islamic Monotheism by Muhammad Abduh, both translated by Ma Jian. Ma Jian also had
studied in Egypt, and in 1936 he began work translating Chinese classics into Arabic for
Muslim audiences in the Middle East.^ Ma Jian became widely acclaimed for his
erudition. Works by contemporary Chinese Muslims also hit the presses, and subjects
included histories of Islam in China, Islamic rites, Arabic astronomy, Arabic grammar.^'
The market for leaflets and booklets of twenty to thirty pages, and "sheet"
pieces such as illustrations and diagrams thrived. Half of the literature produced by the
modernists was of this genre. One example of charts was a genealogical chart of the
descent of Muhammed from Adam, another is a chart of the Ka'aba (kaerbai

One

sheet piece produced by the Oxen Street Pure and True Book Publishers was called an
"amulet." The amulet is an illustration of Noah's ark, which had "theophoric power, as it
consists of Allah's message and the words of His Prophet Mohammed. In true Islamic
style the drawing of the hulk, masts and sails is made up of calligraphic arabesques
quotations from the Qur'an are drawn with elongated strokes, in order to form the
contour of the boat .^^

The Oxen Street Muslim Bookstore carried large numbers of the

popular small books. These editions were often digests and written in the vernacular.

^"Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 239.

^'Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 21.
^"Mason, "Notes on Chinese," 214.
^^Samuel M. Zwemer, "A Chinese-Arabic Amulet" xnMoslem WorldlS: 3 (1935), 217.

99

They were an important contribution, for they provided easy to understand versions of
difficult classical works.^

In the opening decades of the republic scores of Chinese Muslim

periodicals were also published. A list compiled in the mid 1930s provides a sample of
over sixty titles, a third of which came out of Beijing.^' In some cases no more than one
or two issues of a given magazine were even produced, although some publications lasted
for years, like Yuehtta. Distribution was never large, but the voice became an important
mechanism in the Chinese Muslim community. Many of the associations published their
own journals and those would be avail at branch offices housed in mosques, where in
many cases there were reading rooms.
The regular Chinese Muslim monthly magazines and journals {dingqi kati
U7/) offered a wide variety of topics. Articles fell roughly into four categories. One type
focused on religion, and emphasized promoting Islam. A second group was dedicated to
Muslim culture, which covered topics ranging from history to short stories. A third
variety centered on "specialized research" on the non-metropolitan Muslims of China, and
the border regions. The fourth category concentrated on educational issues.^ Chinese
Muslim periodicals not only targeted local matters like education and religious doctrine.

'^Hayward, "Chinese-Muslim," 365-366.

'"Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 22-24. Lowenthal puts the total at one hundred, with a third of
those coming out of Beijing, see Rudolf Lowenthal, The Religious Periodical Press in
China (Beijing: Synodal Committee on China, 1940), 211-250.
-"Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 226-227.

100

but they also became a source of information and disseminated important news and
current events/^
Covers usually carried titles in both Arabic and Chinese. Some examples
of titles include Mu Sheng Ribao (Muslim Voice Daily). Muyin (Sound of MuhammadV
Hiiijiao Oingniait Yuebao Muslim Youth Monthly). Huijiao fVenhua rMuslim Culture).
The names of two magazines, Yiguang published in Tianjin, and Huikuang of Shanghai
can both be translated as Light of Islam. "Pure and True" (Oingzhen), being synonymous
with "Islam," became a popular title for at least a half dozen magazines, one example was
published in Yunnan, Oingzhen Yuebao (Islamic Monthly). A few other titles reflect
popular topics of the times, not exclusive to Chinese Muslims: Gaizao (Reconstruct) and
Rendao rHumanitarian). both published in Shanghai. A successful Nanjing monthly was
Chenshan (Momine's Virtue).
The Huiwen Baihiia Bao is an intriguing magazine for a number of reasons.
It appears just as the republic is taking form. The title can be translated as Arabic
Colloquial Magazine.Each article is written in Chinese and Arabic, while the Arabic
versions were written in the vernacular, the Chinese text was still written a classical wenIi
style and not in the vernacular {baihiia). Instead of a modem typeface the publication
utilized what appears to have been a wood block typeface done in a traditional elegant
calligraphic style. The Arabic, too, had an elegant calligraphic face. Sections were

"Zhao, "sanshi nianlai," 22.

^''Fu, Zhonggito Huijiao, 230; Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 22-24; Zwemer, "The Fourth
Religioa" 1-12.
^'^Isaac Mason, "Notes on Chinese Mohammedan," 195.

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separated by traditional still life renderings, and every page was bordered with decorative
designs. The cover was adorned with a pair of the striped flag of the republic crossed
over the bilingual title and masthead. The artistic elements of the publication bore a
distinctive flavor of the belle epoque in China. It exemplifies how the years just prior to
WW! were on the cusp of traditional and modem.*"
The magazine was published by the government ministry, the Meng Zsang
Yuan (the Mongolian and Tibetan AiTairs Bureau). The publication was directed to
China's Muslim population and the voice of the articles was presented as a Chinese
Muslim one. The essays and reports featured a wide variety of subjects. Each issue
includes essays about the new republic, explaining it embodied freedom and that it was
compatible with Islam. An article in 1913, for example, explained that the new Republic
of China advocated equality, and it was against slavery, concubinage, smoking and
gambling. "Of all the laws, . . . not one is incompatible with Muslim doctrine."^' The
writers lauded the definitions of citizenship enhanced with the promise of equity. "We
Muslims know . . .[that this] is a judicious republic, ... in accord with a harmonious
citizenry.""*The magazine received an endorsement from the Jujin Hui. One issue was
devoted to the newly formed government and the inauguration of Yuan Shikai. The
magazine called for a harmonious union of the nationalities of China. Issues usually
included pieces about fellow Muslims in Xinjiang and Mongolia, and the publication also
"^'See issues of Huiwen Baihua Bao, 1913-1916.
*' Huiwen Baihua Bao 5(1913).
^-Huiwen Baihua Bao 7 (1913), 13.

102

had a question and answer section, and featured short stories. Articles also discussed the
need for modem education and encouraged daily reading, and its importance in the
modem age.
Another early effort that appeared in 1916, was a periodical called The
Canons of Islam in Translation {Oingzhen Xueli Yizhu\ edited by Wan Pingwan. It was
intended to have been a monthly, but like many periodicals, it only appeared once. It
openly approved of Yuan Shikai's attempt to become emperor, describing it as "one of the
fruits of the wise policy of allowing equality to the races and religions of China" and a
proclamation was given respecting the monarchy and "promising to care for the liberties of
the races." The muddled reasoning suggests that the publication may have received fiinds
from Yuan's quarter. Another article tells of the difficulty of translating the Qur'an,
explaining that the chief problem was the ahongs. Another piece countered some
arguments put forth by Christians, and some important regulations of the Faith are
included. Muslim hygiene and diet are also written about.
Perhaps the most successful Chinese Muslim periodical was Yue Htia
(Lunar Corona). Yue Hua was not affiliated with the government or any politicians.
Originally it was an organ of the Chengda Normal School in Beijing, but functioned
independently after a few years. The magazine enjoyed a long life, well into the 1940s,
and was the most widely distributed and successful Chinese Muslim periodicals. Yue Hua
articles presented a great array of discussions about Muslim culture and civilization.

^'Oingzhen Xueli Yizhu (1916), Isaac Mason, comp.. Collection of Chinese Islamic
Literature, Book 73 (New York: New York City Public Library, 1940).

103

Some articles discussed the evolution of Chinese Muslim culture, history, and discussions
about Islam. There was news about current events, and excerpts from works of the Han
Kitab.
Well known scholars contributed to the periodical. There were a series of
articles about Chinese Muslim communities in different locales. Wang Mengyang, for
example, wrote about the condition of Islam in Beijing. Mu Yigang contributed an article
about Chengda and Chinese Muslims in Tianjin, and Shi Yang wrote about Muslims in a
district in Hebei."" Chin Chi-t'ang wrote numerous articles, one of which, for example,
was entitled "Miscellany on the Teachings of Isleun" (Jiaomen Zazhi).''^
Mingde Yuekan rBright Virtue Monthlv^ published in the mid-twenties
came out of Tianjin. It serialized "The History of Muhammed" {Zhisheng Muhan mode
Shi) that was translated by Wang Jingzhai. Another issue contained an article that
declared the world is round, in order to edify those who still believed other wise. Another
article opposed the practice of having many wives, and went on to explain, "Muslims must
follow the movements of the times; as the times change, religion must also change;
moreover the law of a country is greater than the laws of a church; if the law of the
country does not allow a man to several wives, then he should discard the rule of his
church and observe the law of the country .""*^ Articles such as these sought to attack
^See examples; Mu Yigang, "Tianjin Huimin Gaikuang"[Hui People's Situation in
Tianjin]; Shi Yang, "Cangxian Huimin Gaikuang" [Hui People's Situation in Cang
District]; and Wang Mengyang, "Beijingshi Huijiao Gaikuang" [The Condition of Islam in
Beijing] all in Yue Hua, reprinted in Li Xinghua, Zhongguo Yisilanjiao, 1322-1355.
^"See for example Chin Chi-t'ang, "Jiaomen Zazhi"[MisceUany on the Teachings of Islam]
in Yue Hua, reprinted in Li Xinghua, Zhongguo Yisilanjiao, 320-327.
"^Mason, "Two Chinese," 385. See Mingde Yuekan [Bright Virtue Monthly Magazine] 4

104

parochial and outdated customs, and like so many of the Chinese publications of the time,
the voice was progressive.
Like Bright Virtue, the magazine was deemed radical by older,
conservative Chinese Muslims. It was progressive in outlook, "lamenting the somnolent
condition of Chinese Moslems, and hoping to stir up activity in the Far East, and carry the
campaign into Japan and Korea." Articles surveyed the history of Islam, which was a
popular topic. Attention was also paid to events in Muslim lands, and conditions of
Muslims in Europe and North America. One issue, for example, notes that the greatest
opponents to Islam in the past had been the white race, but now there were mosques in all
the capitals of Europe. One account claims that a mosque in London, England now
boasted 15,000 worshippers."*^
Another fairly successfully Beijing Chinese Muslim magazine, Zhengdao
(Justice), featured a range of topics. An issue from 1933, for example, carried leading
article discussing religious education in primary schools. A short editorial warns Muslims
about associating with kqfirs (infidels), who include not only "idolators" but also
Christians. In a question and answer section, a prospective pilgrim asked if there would
still be merit in his pilgrimage if he combined the trip with business. The pilgrim was told
that "trading is permitted, so the pilgrimage would be meritous." Another question
wondering if it were permissible to use a toothbrush and other brushes for ablutions that
were bought on the street, wis told if the brushes were made of vegetable bristles or horse
(1924), Mason, Collection, Book 36/218; and Mingde Bao {Bright Virtue Magazine] 2
(1924), Mason, Collection, Book 37/219.
*^Mason, "Two Chinese," 386.

105

hair, they were acceptable. If any doubt lingered about the toothbrush, however, the user
need only rinse out his mouth after using it. Boar bristles, of course, were forbidden.
There was also an article about unrest in Xinjiang which explained that the people feared
pressure from Soviet Russia and Japanese encroachment at the same time."*^
The Light of Islam, published in Shanghai, first appeared in 1924. It was
an organ of a group going by the name of the International Muslim Association in the Far
East. In keeping with its international claim, the magazine carried articles in Japanese and
English as well as Chinese. The editor of the magazine was Sakuma Teijiro, a Japanese
who had converted to Islam. At the same time he established an organization in Shanghai,
the Light Society. The group was mandated to promote Islam. Sakuma wrote that
organizing Muslims in China was the first step in creating a pan-Islamic union, that would
put a check on Russian Communism expansion. Sakuma implored Chinese Muslims to
seize political power, and to proselytize in Japan. Muslim missionaries had come to Japan
in 1906, from Egypt, Iran and Turkey, and Sakuma's ideas reflect some of the stirrings in
these other countries."*
There is some question as to how much of a free agent Sakuma may have
been, or remained, as the Japanese government did send Japanese Muslim missionaries to
China in the hopes of promoting support for the Japanese Greater East Asian CoProsperity cause.

By the late thirties a number of magazines were produced in Beijing

^Zwemer, "The Fourth Religion," 7.

Anonymous, "An International Moslem Association in the Far East" in Moslem World
16 (1926), 192-193; Mason, "Two Chinese," 385-387.
^'^Bodde, "Japan and the Muslims," 311-312.

106

under the auspices of Muslim organizations that had been created by the Japanese
occupying forces. Some publications include Zhenzong Bao Yuekan (Awe Inspiring
Religion Monthly), Huijiao Yuekan fMuslim Monthly"), and Zhongguo Huijiao Zonglian
Hehui Nian Bao ("All China Muslim League Weekly)/'
Many articles and all the editorials strongly praise the Japanese intentions in
Asia. A number of the articles, however, were contributed by well known Chinese
Muslims scholars, which allowed for a number of apolitical articles about Islam. Tang
Zhenyu wrote a piece called "Collected Talks on Chinese Islam" {Zhongguo Huijiao
Congtan) that discussed various Islamic teachings that had arisen in China. Tang
Zongzheng authored an article about Beijing mosques, Beijingshi Oingzhensi Diaochaji
("Facts about the Mosques of Beijing).'- One issue devotes a whole section to passages
of the Qur'an in Chinese and Arabic, while another includes an article about the pilgrimage
to Mecca with photographs.-^
There were a number of Chinese Muslim newspapers. The Musheng
Zhouhao (Sound ofMuhammed) was published in Beijing in the mid 1920s. It was a
four-page newspaper that was issued every Friday, the Islamic Sabbath. The paper
appeared at the same time that there were anti-Christian demonstrations in Beijing, and
the paper contained pieces upholding Islam and attacking Christianity. The newspaper

-'Copies of these publications can be found at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
-"See Tang Zhenyu, "Zhongguo Huijiao Congtan" [Collected Talks on Chinese Islam] in
Zhenzong Bao Yuekan 5:4 (1939) reprinted in Li Xinghua, Zhongguo Yisi/an, 778- 784;
and Tang Zongzheng, "Beijingshi Qingzhensi Diaochaji [Facts about the Mosques of
Beijing] in Huijiao Yuekan 6 (1938) reprinted in Li Xinghua, Zhongguo Yisi/an, 414-423.
"See Zhenzong Bao Yuekan 4 (1938) and 6 (1940).

107

also included articles on events in Turkey and Egypt, as well as education and industry.^

The importance of the written word for Chinese cannot be overstated.

Literacy and scholarship have been held in the highest esteem throughout the history of
the civilization. The very word for civilized, wenhua, utilizes wen, the character for
"literary." The civilized man ~ the cultured gentleman was one who was literate.
Growing understanding of early cosmological uses of the Chinese characters complements
the traditional admiration of the writing system's complexity and beauty, and contributes
to the aura of mystery that the written language evokes. In a similar vein Arabic is revered
by Muslims. For Muslims the Arabic language in both its spoken and written forms ~ is
regarded as sacred because it was the language used by Allah when revealing the Holy
Qur'an to Muhammad. For Muslims around the world both written and spoken Arabic
remain hallowed, and for Chinese Muslims both Chinese and Arabic are laden with
symbols of the sacredness.'^
For centuries translation of the Qur'an was considered taboo by Muslims
around the world. Ever since translations were made, translators were the first to state
that theirs was a vain attempt, for it is deemed impossible to duplicate the glorious beauty
of the original text delivered in Arabic. A long tradition of copying the Qur'an in the
original Arabic existed among Chinese Muslims. An ornate gilded paper was used in
^Musheng Zhoubao (1925), Mason,. Collection, Book 40/226.
-Christian missionaries found that anything in Arabic sold like "hot cakes" to the Chinese
Muslims, and the missionaries translated many of their tracts into Arabic. One missionary
alleges that an Arabic version of a bible was missing after an ahong was seen admiring it at
length. See Botham, "Moslem Women of China," 8.

108

prized editions.'^ The Qur'an was venerated, but few Chinese Muslims had a command of
simple Arabic, much less the formal Arabic of the Qur'an.
One of the most notable accomplishments of this period is the translation of
the Qur'an into Chinese. Ma Fuchu is believed to have worked on a translation, but all
that survived into the twentieth century were five of twenty units. Many scholars believed
the existent Ma Fuchu translation was of questionable scholarship and must have been the
work of Ma's students or some lesser scholar. Nevertheless the Chinese Muslim Literary
Society {Zhonggito Huijiao Xuehui) published the pieces in 1927 under the title Hanyi
Baoming Zhenjing ("Chinese Translation of the Divinely Decreed True Scripture"'). "^
The first completed version. The Qur'an (Kelan Jing), was by Li Tiezheng,
a non-Muslim of Beijing, and was published in 1927. Li did not translate fi^om Arabic into
Chinese, he relied on a Japanese version of the Qur'an translated by Sakamoto Kenichi and
Rodwell's English version. A year later one S. A. Hardoon, a wealthy British Jew residing
in Shanghai, sponsored a translation that was managed by Ji Juimi, a Buddhist scholar.
The translation was published in 1931 as Han Translation of Koran {Hanyi Kulan Jing),
and was translated fi-om Arabic and English versions.
The first complete translation by a Chinese Muslim was by Wang Jingzhai
of the Oxen Street mosque community. His first effort was a translation into colloquial
Chinese. In 1926 instead of publishing it, however, Wang Jingzhai began another version,
this time translating the Arabic of the 1608 Constantinople edition into Classical Chinese.
'^Shi Chenzhong, "Hailifa Bixu," 1088-1089.
"Fu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 222.
-Tu, Zhongguo Huijiao, 226-231; Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 19.

109

The Chinese Muslim Mutual Progress Association published the translation in Beijing in
1932 under the title, GulanJing Yijie, and it was well received. Another version
translated from Arabic was by Tian Zhen of the Chinese Muslim Literary Society in
Shanghai. Sections of Tien Zhen's translation were published in magazines in 1928. In
Tianjin Yang Zhongming began work on a version in auspices with the Taiyuan Islamic
Buddhist Association (ra/>7/a//K/5/7aAi fudaohui).^ In 1945 Wang Jingzhai made
another translation into colloquial Chinese, also called Gulcm Jing Yijie. Ma Jian also
produced a version in colloquial Chinese in the late forties.^

The dual nature of the publications ~ the concrete and the abstract ~ are
intertwined. Examination of both aspects reveals cultural traits and historical experiences,
and provides illustrations of the process of modernization and redefining the nation. In
addition to reportage, accounts of events and beliefs and ideas, publications provide an
array of symbols and imagery. The tangible, material artifacts are at once aesthetic art
forms as well as vehicles of information. As an art form the print media includes artistic
choices. Visual messages are replete with decorative images as well as symbolic ones, all
of which constitute cultural choices.
Chinese Muslim publications were adorned with images that are
distinctively Chinese Muslim. An array of the covers of a dozen magazines illustrate some
of the characteristics. Titles were always written both in Arabic and Chinese. Common

-'Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 19-20.

'^^Chan, Religious Trends, 196.

110

images were scenes of the pyramids and people on camels and domed mosques with tall
minarets. The illustrations suggest that the Chinese Muslims felt that the Middle Eastern
imagery relayed an aspect of their Muslim heritage. The use of Arabic calligraphy carries
a deeper meaning than that of aesthetics. In addition to the religious importance of Arabic
for Muslims, there was also its symbolic tie to the ancestral homelands. In this regard the
use of Manchu in the Qing court comes to mind.
For a minority like Chinese Muslims or Manchus, the ancestral written
word could carry powerful symbolism. A 1934 article in a non-Muslim magazine, Meishtt
shenghuo (Arts and Life), expounded on the importance of art and beauty in the
fortification of people's spirit. The author explained that the decorative arts are a means
by which civilizations express their greatness and glory, and can be seen as important
contributions to national pride.^' The calligraphic arts constitute high art in China, and
the entitlement to the use of a non-Chinese script, replete with an aesthetic beauty on par
with that of Chinese, can provide a powerful source of pride for a sub-nationality. The
court's use of Manchu symbolically strengthen their authenticity. Having a separate
language, as Anderson observes above gives members of a linguistic group a sense of
belonging. Arabic provided a source of authenticity for Chinese Muslims. The use of
Arabic in prayer and Huihui hua within the community also furnished a distinctive trait,
and a symbolic source of solidary.
As a vehicle of information and knowledge, printed artifacts function as a
record of ones heritage. They can serve to illustrate, perpetuate and authorize existing
"^'Waara, Arts and Life, 221.

Ill

traits. The media can also transmit new concepts, thus helping to forge new perceptions
and create new traits. People are able to communicate and reflect upon their beliefs and
feelings through the media, making them a wellspring of images of ethnic and cultural
identity. By providing a forum for thoughts about China and being Chinese, the media can
be used to trace sources of nationalism and national identity.

112

CHAPTER FIVE; DEFINING ETHNICITY

In the late 1920s a (non-Muslim) paper in Nanjing published an article that

described the ancestors of Chinese Muslim as pigs. Chinese Muslims leaders protested to
the government and got results, the paper was closed down and the editor punished.'
Eliminating non-Muslim misunderstanding of Muslim ways was a major goal that had been
expressed with the founding of many Chinese Muslims associations. The Pure and True
Society was not alone in mandating the effort to fight defamation.* Sometimes examples
of slander were trivial, but the subject was not. The fact that such incidents occurred was
a reminder that aside from apologetic eloquence and patriotic fervor espoused on the part
of Chinese Muslims, and aside from political slogans of harmonious minzu heralded on the
part of the government, Chinese Muslims were still regarded as different.
Muslims had been the subject of ridicule is the past. One persistent story is
that Muslims refrained fi^om eating pork because their ancestors were pigs and they
worshipped pigs. In 1936 a Chinese Muslim periodical enumerated twenty-four instances
of slander against Muslims and Islam, which had appeared over the years in numerous
(non-Muslim) Chinese publications. Chinese Muslims were able to obtain public apologies

' Elizabeth Pickens, "Moslems in China" m Moslem World "^6 (1944), 256.
- Fu, Zhonggno Huijiao, 201-202.

113

and formal withdrawals of the remarks in eighteen of the cases/ As long as the
government maintained a pledge of equity and justice, Chinese Muslims could demand
recourse when attacked.
The goal to feel a part of China, came out of the modernist camp/ There
had been a fear of assimilation in the past, but the modernists believed the fear unfounded.
The urbanites who had joined the Yihewani movement no longer retained Ma Wanfii's
anti-acculturation stance.^ The popular demand for the works of the Chinese Muslim
apologists suggests that many in the metropolitan Chinese Muslim community were
comforted by the syncretistic reasoning of the Han Kitab. They could be Chinese and they
could be Muslim simultaneously.
The urban Chinese Muslim identity emerges centuries ago. and their
ethnicity developed in the process. The interpretations of their history by Chinese Muslim
scholars in the twentieth century reflect ethnic pride. Hui scholars are quick to point out
that Muslim scholars contributed to mathematics, medicines, and the study of astronomy
in China. Hui narratives explain how the Chinese Muslim way of life has been
compatible with that of non-Muslim neighbors. On the one hand, Chinese traits became
part of the Chinese Muslim make up. On the other hand the Chinese Muslims celebrate
their foreign, Muslim ancestry.

^ Bodde, "China's Muslim Minority," 282.

"* Fu, Zhonggiio Huijiao, 239-241.
' Lipman, "Hyphenated," 106.
^ Ma Qicheng, "Local and Muslim," 20.

114

In her study of Subei people. Honing explains that through a historical

process a people gain a common heritage, but that ethnicity depends on context. Who are
the players and under what circumstances do they live? There is no ethnicity if a group
does not perceive cuhural distinctiveness. That distinctiveness emerges due to the
"exigencies of survival and the structure of opportunity in the environment." A group
forms solidarity, thus producing agency and the ability to respond in relationships of
dominance and subordination.^ In the case of the Subei people. Honing observes that if
there had been no Shanghai, there would be no Subei.^ Chen Yongling argues that "Islam
exists, the Huihui exist; if Islam becomes extinct, so do the Huihui."''
Shanghai does not equal Islam, but can the process Honing describes that is
triggered by experiences of Subei people in Shanghai be likened to the process triggered
by experiences of Muslim foreign guests who took up residence in China? Islam alone
did not define the Chinese Muslims. The practice of Islam, however, was a source of the
"exigencies of survival" for Chinese Muslim forefathers. The "structure of opportunity" in
the Chinese environment did provide a setting in which a historical process unfolded that
led to the formation of Chinese Muslim ethnicity.
By the time the Guomingdang invited China's minzu to unite, Chinese
Muslims shared a sense of group that concurs with definitions of ethnicity. Amid the
^ Emily Honing, Creating Chinese Ethnicity: Subei People in Shanghai, 1850-1980 (New
Haven; Yale University Press, 1992), 8-9.
Honing, Creating, 14.
' Chen Yongling, "The Significance of the Hui Nationality: Origins, Formation, and
Development within Islam and Their Special Evolution as an Ethnic Identity in China" in
Dru Gladney, ed. The Legacy of Islam in China: An International Symposium in Memory
of Joseph F. Fletcher (Conference Volume, Harvard University, 1989), 9.

115

debates over the definition of ethnicity, Steven Harrell presents a definition that may
satisfy most arguments. In the case of the Chinese Muslims, Harrell's description serves
aptly. Ethnic consciousness is the awareness of belonging to an ethnic group. An ethnic
group can be defined as having two characteristics.

First, it sees itself as solidarity, by virtue of sharing at

least common descent and some kind of common custom or
habit that can serve as an ethnic marker. . . Second, an
ethnic group sees itself in opposition to other such groups,
groups whose ancestors were different and whose customs
and habits are foreign, strange, ... to the members of the
subject group.

A Jesuit missionary at the close of the Ming made the following

observation.

There is no occasion to speak of the Mohanunedan sect,

settled above years ago in divers [sic] provinces, where
they live in quiet, because they take no great pains to
extend their doctrine and make proselytes. In ancient times
they increased their numbers solely by the alliances and
marriages they contracted; but for some years past they
have made a considerable progress by help of their money.
They everywhere buy up children, whose parents, unable to
educate, . .. sell them. During a famine which wasted the
province of Shantung they purchased above ten thousand.
They marry them, and either buy or build a considerable
share of a city, and even whole country towns to settle them
in. Hence, by little and little, they are grown to such a head
in many places as not to suffer any to live among them who
goes not to Mosk; by which means they have multiplied
exceedingly within these hundred years."
"^Steven Harrell, Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1995), 28.
"Broomhall, Islam in China, 7.

116

The tone of the Jesuit's comments might well give grist to the mills of discrimination
against Chinese Muslims, but on the whole the Chinese response to Muslims was often
indifferent. It is the recognition of the Muslims as a thriving element in the Chinese
landscape, however, that is significant.
The Han Chinese environment tolerated the diasporic communities which
gradually began to absorb Chinese ways. The Gedimu mosques developed into unique
organizations. Community elders and members picked their ahongs for three year terms.
The ahongs in turn became the mosque's top leader. The ahong were itinerant in theory,
''a monk comes from afar to chant the scriptures {yvailaide heshang hut nian jing), " but
leaves local affairs of which he is ignorant to local elders {xianglao)}- CommorJy ahongs
did remain longer with a given mosque, and with the local leaders resided over the affairs
of state as well as religion in the Chinese Muslim neighborhoods without interference from
the Chinese government.
What emerged was a mixture of Chinese and Muslim ways.'^ Ma Qicheng
calls the process the "indigenization" of the Hui. The process included a diffusion and
development of Islam in China, which played a key role in the formulation of Chinese
Muslim identity.'"* Islam served as the glue for Muslims who came to China from
different places. They shared a socio-political environment in China, and their common

'See Chapter One, 34-35.

'^Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 1-3.
''Ma Qicheng, "Local and Muslim." 1-4.

117

religion promoted a "psychological ethnic consciousness."'^ Chen Yongling says there

was an amalgamation allowing Chinese Muslims to develop a "stable ethnic identity" and
enjoy an improved economic and political situation.'^
In the Muslim world a mosque is an independent unit. Islam as a religious
institution has no church hierarchy. Local leaders do not answer to a central church or
head priest. Given the absence of a church infrastructure that would dictate procedure,
coupled with an overall tolerance toward religion in China, ahongs and local elders were
free to develop their own methods.Thereby the Chinese Muslim system that evolved
over the centuries was allowed to function in, and at the same time enabled by the Chinese
environment.
Chinese Muslims had retained distinctive customs. Community leaders
settled community matters from marriage to property according to Islamic law. The
mosques were important centers for everything from social congregation and the
dissemination of information to arbitration and religious functions. Ma Qicheng observes
that mosque communities were able to adapt to Chinese society, aiid yet retain Islamic
practices. Religious rites and practices became "symbolic ties" for Muslims, which
promoted a sense of group among Muslims in China.Muslims travelers and traders
could fmd mosques throughout China, which enabled them to abide by Islamic customs

'-Chen Yongling, "The Significance," 2-4

'^Chen Yongling, "The Significance," 4.
''Ma Songting, "Zhongguo Huijiao," 1.
'*Ma Qicheng, "Local and Muslim," 9.

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and rites when on the road. Mosques also provided shelter and members took care of
fellow Muslims.
Imperial edicts such as one that appeared in 1720, promoted tolerance and
respect for Chinese Muslims.

They [Chinese Muslims] are accordingly all children of

our country and discrimination against them is not to be
tolerated.
For some years past men have submitted Memorials
stating that the Muslims are all adherents of one religion,
speak a strange language and wear strange clothes, are
fierce, perverse and lawless; and it has been requested that
they be strictly punished and placed under restraint.
I am mindful that the religion of the Muslims was be
queathed to them by their ancestors. . . . the Muslims' use
of mosques, different clothes and a different language
should be regarded as arising from different custom. Any
thing such as the religion of Muslims which is not
traitorous, lawless or seeking to delude and lead people
astray, need not give cause for concern.

The edict notes that Chinese Muslims were fulfilling the dictates of Confucian filial piety
by upholding the Islamic practices of their ancestors, such piety would prevent them from
losing their Muslim heritage.
The tolerance encouraged above, however, had been motivated in part
because the Chinese Muslims were the target of ridicule. Although they had adapted to
Chinese ways, they retained differences that puzzled non-Muslim Chinese, prompting
insults such as the Muslims performed ablutions because they were dirty. Unlike followers

'^Pillsbury, Cohesion, 58.

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in Muslim societies elsewhere, Chinese Muslims did not pray in public, which might have
spared them the attention of an undesirable audience. Even the written word was not free
from rudeness, an offensive practice had taken hold of altering the character hui by adding
the radical element for dog to it. When the same sort of prattle reappeared in republican
publications, Chinese Muslims responded. That response, as Honing suggests, came out
of a "solidarity" that had been developing over time.
The display of urban Chinese Muslim solidarity in response to slander took
place amid ongoing debates about the Chinese race and what it meant to be Chinese.
When the republic was first established ideas of ethnicity or race were part of the new
concepts brought to the fore in the public sphere. The Nationalists decried that the
Chinese had limited their loyalties to their families and clans, for it was time to pledge
loyalty to the nation as a whole. Sun Yatsen elaborated in his lectures and writings that
China had been developing a single state out of a single race since the Han Dynasty ~ the
Chinese people were the Han or Chinese race with common blood, common language,
common religion, and common customs. Thus it was time to extoll love of country and
form a Chinese nation-state.
The white race had become the strongest and wealthiest race, dominating
more of the world than any other. But it was infused with the poison of imperialism. Sun
explained that China had to restore its ancient virtue and superior wisdom and ability.
Nationalism was the means, he elaborates:

'^C. Martin Wilber, Sun Yat-sen: Frustrated Patriot (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1976), 200-204.

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We shall 'govern the country rightly and bring peace

to the world.' To do this we must first restore our
nationalism and our national standing, and then unify
the world on the basis of our distinctive morality and
peace, and create a government of Great Harmony.-'

With allusions to a classical Utopia (datong) modeled on traditional Confucian principles'

coupled with ideas of modem nationalism, Sun's cultural pastiche represented an early
attempt at a rational transformation of a civilization out of place with twentieth century
demands.
Dikotter explains that the revolutionaries touted a byproduct of modem
western science, "racial nationalism." Once western science and ideas encroached on the
Middle Kingdom, the idea of race (zhong, or zhonglei) were taken very seriously by a
number of scholars. With Darwin's ideas being tossed around, people developed all
manner of theories about race in the name of science. The pseudo-science of eugenics,
and the social-Darwinian ideas of the fittest, coupled with ideas of nationalism, caused a
redefinition of ideas of race and superiority for many in China.^ The guidelines for
defining nationality and minority nationalities would not formally be delineated until the
People's Republic adopted Stalin's model. Nonetheless, variations of these concepts were

'Wilber, Sun Yat-sen, 204.

-For discussion about Utopia see Kung-chuan Hsiao, "In and Out of Utopia; K'ang
Yu-wei's Social Thought" in The Chung Chi Journal nd,101-149.
^Frank Dikotter, The Discourse of Race in Modem China (London; Hurst and Company,
1992), 97-126.

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examined and played a significant role in defining the Republic of China, and what it meant
to be Chinese.
According to traditional thinking, race and ethnicity were intrinsically
linked to culture and civilization. During the imperial age learning and behavior were the
paramount gauges of one's standing and identity. This yardstick was no longer adequate
in the nationalist arena, where it was asserted that Chinese-ness could be measured
scientifically, as some people twisted foreign theories for their purposes. One such
exercise in empirical reasoning gave China a new place in the international scheme of
things, a place for the yellow race vis-a-vis the white, black, brown, and red races. One's
standing and identity were adjusted to a racist paradigm of the superiority of whites over
other races. As one interpretation explained, the yellow race had once been white but was
defiled by brown people, to make it yellow; yet it was closer to the white race than all the
others and thus superior to them.-"
Not all Nationalists embraced this racist philosophy, nevertheless Chinese
self-perception was tested and altered as the discourse unfolded. The lexicon had
changed. It was no longer enough to have grace and erudition, and "good breeding" took
on a whole new meaning with the borrowed scientific concepts of race and ethnicity.
Science even reinforced the ancient foundations for the New China as archaeology and
anthropology opened old vistas anew. Archaeological findings such as Peking Man and
the Shang Dynasty archives fortified national pride. China's rich history grew richer still

-"'Dikotter, The Discourse^ 80-82.

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with the new discoveries. Nonetheless, the idea that the Chinese are the prodigy of the
Yellow Emperor, for some, would mean more than inheriting an ancient culture.
Tu examines the changing meaning of being Chinese. While being Chinese
is cultural, that "encompasses and transcends" the ethnic, territorial, linguistic and
religious boundaries that normally define Chineseness. Tu argues that a salient feature of
being Chinese is to belong to a biological line traceable to the Yellow Emperor. At the
same time by being bom in the "Central Country" and sharing the same progenitor, implies
the ability to speak the language, and hence one can;

participate in the Chinese linguistic world . . . [which]

implies the practice of a code of ethics . . . [with] common
ancestry, homeland, mother tongue, and basic orientation
. . . race may be a biological reality, but ethnicity, as
experience and consciousness, is mediated by a complex of
social and political factors, and thus cannot be reduced to
mere empirical facts. Similarly, territoriality in itself may be
seen as a solid, objective reality; but [when] it is
experienced or imagined as fatherland, it can engender great
psychic energy. The potential for language especially in its
incarnation as the mother tongue, to evoke sympathetic
responses or great indignation is even stronger.^

Sun preached that the Han Chinese had developed over the centuries into
one race, one pure blood. Nevertheless, he appealed to five separate minzu of China to
unite to rebuild a strong China. Later Chiang Kai-shek repeated the sentiment, but not
without reworking it. Chiang asserted that all the minzu shared Chinese blood. The
minority nationalities were not different races, but simply practiced different habits and
"^Tu Wei-ming, The Living Tree, v-vi.

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customs due to religious differences and varying geographical environments.^ When the
Nationalist government was in Chongjing during the Japanese Occupation, on occasion
Chiang Kai-shek presided over meetings of the Muslim organization, the Chinese Islamic
National Salvation Federation (Zhongguo Huijiao Jiuguo Xiehui), and he elaborated on
earlier party policies. In 1939 Chiang explained that the government would no longer call
Muslims the Hui minzu (Hui nationality), but instead would call them the Huijiao ren (Hui
religionists). Chiang suggested that to use the term minzu implied racial differences, but
he had explained that all the people of China were Chinese, regardless of habits and
beliefs, and therefore there could be no separate Hui nationality. The republic considered
the Hui to be Chinese by blood and race.
The importance of one's bloodline, of course, predates the eugenicists'
post-Darwinian discourse on race. In the Muslim world, for example, the sayyids are
people who claim to be descendants either of the Prophet Muhmmad or of the first
generation of his followers, known as the Companions of the Prophet. Sayyids enjoy
prestige because of their bloodlines. Many Chinese Muslims think that a domed tomb in
the graveyard of one of the mosques in Guangzhou is that of a Companion of the Prophet,
Said Ibn Abi Waqqas, who some believe headed the first delegation fi-om the Islamic
empire to China in 651 AD. Although Arab historians maintain that Said returned to
Medina where he died, Chinese Muslims claim that Said died in Guangzhou and was
buried there.Whether or not the grave in Guangzhou is really Said's becomes a moot
-'^Chiang Kai-shek, China's Destiny, and Economic Theory (New York; Roy Publishers,
1947), 39-40.
-'Broomhall, Islam in China, 111-115.

124

point. It is the story of a noteworthy sayyid coming to China just two decades after the
death of the Prophet that is important. It adds prestige to the origins of Chinese Muslim
ancestry and, at the same time, legitimizes Chinese Muslim historical identity. The tomb
becomes a symbol of venerable ancient origins.
Lineage also plays a crucial role in families. Traditionally, for Han Chinese
and Chinese Muslims alike, a woman would become "part of a lineage ... by virtue of
giving birth to a male child who, at birth, is automatically part of the lineage."-^
Ajithropologist Pillsbury suggests that Chinese Muslims developed an idea of "Muslim
blood." Chinese Muslim marriages, like those in the Middle East, were preferably
endogamous, unlike the Han Chinese who normally adhere to exogamous marriages.
Chinese Muslim women are still strongly urged only to marry other Chinese Muslims.
Pillsbury suggests that the lack of widespread proselytizing may have led Chinese Muslims
to feel more exclusive than Muslims in other parts of the world by encouraging an idea
that being Hui is not just a religious identity, but rests on an inheritance by which identity
is transmitted in the blood passed down from esteemed ancestors."
Keyes suggests that the sources of ethnicity can be located in two ways.
One is found in the cultural heritage shared by a group. The second is the form of social
organization that functions to achieve certain common ends of a group. He observes that
there are certain "givens" at birth: locale, gender, and physiological features. These
provide one with biological inheritance and social links with forebears. Ethnicity is

-"Pillsbury, Cohesion, 74.

-'Pillsbury, Cohesion, 27 and 74.

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derived from a cultural interpretation of descent, or shared descent. Cultural

characteristics are not predictable, and those which serve to define one group may not
apply when defining another group. Cultural characteristics depend upon what Gladney
refers to above as "shared imaginings," that is the memories and interpretations of the
experiences and actions of mythical ancestors and/or historical forebears.
Well into the twentieth century when asked, " Where is your hometown^ or
homeland, laojia?'" many Chinese Muslims would reply Dashi. In Tang annals Muslims
were called Dashi, a name for a foreign land to the west. Some scholars believe the term
applied to Arabia, while others conclude that it was the name created for the Abbasid
Dynasty (750-1258 AD).^ Hajji Yusuf Chang explains that one of the first emissaries to
the Tang court came from Ta'if, a city near Mecca, and a transliteration of the city name
may have been Dashi. Other possible sources of the term may have been a Persian word
for trader {taguir), or the name of the Central Asian people, the Tadjiks.^' The variety of
western Asians that Dashi could refer to illustrates the variety of foreign ancestors that
Chinese Muslim believe constitute Hui forefathers. Chinese Muslim scholar Chin
Chi-t'ang observes that there were numerous ancestral countries of origin for Chinese
Muslims, which only strengthened the belief of the uniqueness of Chinese Muslims, and

'"John Lawton, "Muslims in China; The People" in Aramco World Magazine: Muslims in
China, A Special Issue 36: 4 (1985), 45.
''Hajji Yusuf Chang, "Chinese Islam and the Hui Minority: Past, Present and Future" in
Dru Gladney, ed. The Legacy of Islam in China: An International Symposium in Memory
of Joseph F. Fletcher (Conference volume. Harvard University, 1989), 2-3.

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"Hui blood."^- The reply "Dashi" exemplifies a shared belief, imagined or not, among
Chinese Muslims.
A group's history and shared experiences form the wellspring of the
group's cultural heritage ~ from customs and traditions, to artistic expression and
distinctive symbols. Ritual grows out of one's heritage, and serves to access and to
preserve the cherished practices and traits through the use of symbols. Once the symbolic
is "appropriated and internalized by individuals" it becomes a major source of ethnic
identity, manifested in life's cycle, rites of passage and crises." Shared bonds and beliefs
become the foundation for a group, and the symbolic becomes intrinsically linked to the
group's identity. Thus the flag with crescent and star that the Chinese Muslim's chose for
themselves, images of camels and minarets in magazines, along with the continued study
of Arabic, all contribute to symbols of Chinese Muslim ethnicity.
Another inherited symbol for Chinese Muslims was a phrase, '^Tianxia
Huihui shi yi jia (all Muslims under heaven are one family)." The Islamic faith concludes
that all Muslims are brothers and sisters in a great egalitarian family. Common
membership forms a bond between them. Thus one Chinese Muslim will render assistance
to any member of this family who is in need, regardless of social status or reciprocity.
The concept echoes the tenets of 'umma. Umma is the community of Islam, which is
opened to all who embrace Islam. Muhammad defined the conditions for a universal
brotherhood on the basis of faith. In seventh century Arabia this was designed to replace,
'"Chin Chi-t'ang, "Huizu minzu Shuo" [Hui Nationality] in Yugong 5; 11 (1936), 29-30.
"Charles Keyes, "The Dialectics of Ethnic Change" in Charles Keyes, ed. Ethnic Chcmge
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 7-9.

127

or displace, old blood-ties and tribal loyalties. Anyone is welcomed to be a Muslim;

Muslim identity recognizes no border, no race, no clan, and the concept of'umma became
an important principle of solidarity for Muslims.^ During a campaign in 1958 Communist
officials pointed to the expression as evidence of Hui "local ethnocentrism." As a result
"nationalities unite" {minzit tuanjie) replaced "tianxia huihui shi yijia" in the PRC.^^ The
Communist Party's reaction suggests that the concept does reflect more than religious
beliefs. As Pillsbury suggests above, the religious trait became an element in group
identity (and solidarity) for Chinese Muslims and thus served as an ethnic marker.
A basis of ethnic classification depends on perceived differences between
people who live in proximity to one another.^ Constable illustrates that Hakka ethnicity
thrives in a Christian Hakka community in Hong Kong^ but that members of the group do
not demonstrate, or promote, "differences" vis-a-vis the Punti, or local Cantonese
population. Rather, the differences are exclusively observed among the Hakka
themselves." Barth notes that identity is in the minds of the holder, and not the beholder.
Thus it is possible for a seemingly assimilated group to retain a separate ethnicity.^* Keyes
expands the possibilities by observing that a person can belong to more than one ethnic
group just as he or she might belong to more than one descent-defined kin group.
^Rahman, Islam, 25.
"'Yitzhak Shichor, The Role of Islam in China's Middle-Eastern Policy" in Raphael Israeli
and Anthony H. Johns, eds. Islam in Asia vol. II (Boulder, Colorado; Westview Press,
1984), 305-317.
'"Keyes, "The Dialectics," 4-7.
"Nicole Constable, Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: A Hakka Community in Hong
(Berkeley; University of California Press, 1994), 15-20.
^''Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cidtural
Differences (l^onAon: Allen and Unwin, 1969),

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The duality that Keyes refers to is worth remembering when trying to

define Chinese Muslim ethnicity. Seemingly conflicting layers of such a definition for
Chinese Muslims led to numerous opinions. The writings of the Han Kitab had already
shown how Chinese Muslim scholars reasoned that Islamic ideas of virtue and morality
complemented those of Confucianism. The scholars demonstrated that Chinese Muslims
had not only been able to embrace Chinese civilization without denouncing their Islamic
heritage, but had done so without fear of assimilation. Syncretism could be seen as a
means of survival for Chinese Muslims, not of annihilation. While there were shared
cultural traits between Chinese Muslims and Han Chinese, this does not mean that among
themselves the Chinese Muslims were quick to reinvent themselves as synonymous or
unquestionably compatible with Han Chinese culture.
Metropolitan Chinese Muslim intellectuals debated terminology and
theology in defining what it meant to be "Hui." Writers in Chinese Muslim periodicals
referred to Han Chinese as Hanren, and to themselves, Chinese Muslims, as women
huijiao ren or fniiren or hiiimin. Throughout the republican period a debate continued
about whether Chinese Muslims were the Hui nationality or Hui people {httizti or htti
minzu) or believers of the Hui religion (huijiao ren or huijiao tu). The discourse included
discussions of nationality and race, but at the time the question of religion still played an
operative role.
In an article in Muslims Awake, the publication of one of the Chinese
Muslim student groups in Japan before 1912, Huang Zhenpan argued that the name Hui
was a religious designation and that it was not suitable to use as a nationality name. At

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the time of the Revolution of 1911, Ding Zhuyuan observed that when the Nationalists
used the expression, Hui minzu, they probably meant the "//m/Am " or Muslim "tribes" of
the Northwest that the Qianlong emperor had labeled as one of China's five groups. In
which case, the believers of Islam (xinyang yisilanjiao de ren) who dwelt in China proper
could hardly be grouped with the various ethnicities of Xinjiang.^^ Many other urban
Chinese Muslim, however, felt Hui applied to them. They used the term Huimin -- Hui
people in reference to themselves. In the decades that followed an argument had
developed that supported the Hui minzu concept for the urban Chinese Muslims.
In 1936 Chin Chi-t'ang articulated the position in support of minzu-ness.
Chin explained that the Chinese Muslims did constitute a separate nationality as Hui
minzu. He stressed that the Hui minzu were not the non-Chinese-speaking Huihe (or
Huibu) of Xinjiang, but the sinophones of China. At the same time the Hui minzu ought
not be considered Han people who simply believed in Islam. Chin Chi-t'ang claimed that
the Hui could not be the same as the Han Chinese race because the ancestors of Chinese
Muslims had come from many foreign lands to the west. The diverse backgrounds meant
that the origin of Hui people emerged from many races. Hui origins could not be regarded
as being from one sole race, much less the Chinese race with only Chinese blood. Only
after centuries of coexisting in China, did the coreligionists coalesce into group.""
The minzu argument explained that religious beliefs alone did not lead to
the creation of a nationality. No one considered the idea of a Buddhist, Daoist, or

^^Ma Shouqian, "The Hui People's," 16-19.

"^^Chin Chi-t'ang, "Huizu minzu Shuo," 29-30.

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Confucian minzu. The Hui minzu did existed in part due to dictates of the Islamic way of
life, but fundamental to that was Chinese Muslims' foreign heritage. The problem with the
point was that Chinese Muslims, for the most part, hardly appeared to be foreign, and
supponers of this line of reasoning had to go to great lengths to stress their foreign
forefathers. One example illustrated that no non-Muslims had certain strange surnames
that many of Chinese Muslim have because the names had been fabricated at the time that
Muslims changed their foreign names to Chinese surnames during the Ming.*"
When Sun Yatsen invited the Hui to join the republic the political motive
was to secure control over a unified China."*- In his Sanmin Juvi Sun explained certain
criteria for minzu status, and those supporting the idea of Hui minzu status argued that
Chinese Muslims fit all the criteria, such as common blood and distinctive habits in the
areas of food and clothing. A distinctive language was another qualifier, Huihui hua and
the Chinese Muslims' continued study of Arabic fit the bill. Sun Yatsen's requirement of a
distinctive religion, and unique fengsu xiguan (customs and habits) were easily defended."*^

"Chin Chi-t'ang, "Huizu minzu Shuo," 30-34.

""Crossley demonstrates that Manchu ethnicity took form when Chinese nationalism
emerged in the final years of Qing rule. Her argument suggests that the Chinese attack on
the Manchu dynasty did much to instill separate "racial histories" for the Manchu and the
Han Chinese peoples. The Manchu court had fashioned a sense of a "grand unified culture
and racial identity," but a true source of Manchu unity and identity came from "intemal
strength" in urban Manchu communities and can be regarded as a product of imperial
disintegration. When Manchu commoners faced the downfall of Qing rule and its
repercussions, they discovered an "ethnic consciousness" (gongtongxinli sitzhi). By
targeting the Manchu, Chinese revolutionaries promoted Chinese nationalism, but the
method also promoted Manchu identity. See Crossley, "Thinking about," 10-11.
^^Chin Chi-t'ang, "Huizu minzu Shuo," 31-34.

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When Chiang Kai-shek insisted that the Hui were just Chinese with special
customs and habits, however, many Chinese Muslims concurred, or acquiesced. They
agreed that Chinese Muslims were Chinese who believed in the Hui religion Huijiao ren
or Hui religionists, and a number of periodicals and organizations changed Huimin in their
names to Huijiao. The ROC no longer officially considered a Hui minzu. Nevertheless
the government still exacted compliance from Chinese Muslims with claims of equality for
sub-nationalities.
The Chinese Muslim public voice supported the government. That voice is
exemplified in the rhetoric of General Bai's response to overtures from Muslims in India
who were seeking to form Pakistan, a separate Muslim state in South Asia. The Indian
Muslims invited Chinese Muslims to visit in support of their cause, but the general
responded on behalf of the Chinese Muslim organization he headed.

[Our federation] has its twofold objective the salvation of

the nation and the propagation of Islam, but for the present
the nation comes first. There can be no religious freedom to
speak of when the freedom of the nation is not assured.

Bai explained that two million Chinese Muslims had participated in the nation's dual task
of resistance and reconstruction."" The government, of course, encouraged the
nationalism.
An article by a Chinese Muslim appearing in Chongqing reiterated Hui
loyalty to the central government, however, the writer went on to state that fellow Chinese

"Pickens, "Moslems in China," 257.

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Muslims among themselves were "not fully satisfied with present conditions." Chinese
Muslims felt that the government had a few Hui figureheads that it could show off, but
government support in education and training within the Chinese Muslim community was
lacking. Furthermore the prominent General Bai had made proposals that the government
had approved, but failed to implement. Some Chinese Muslims leaders had tried to
institute a Muslim political party, but the government refused."'
In 1946 government promises to the Chinese Muslims were formalized in a
special clause that was added to the republican constitution. The clause designated the
Hui as a shenghtto xiguan teshudi minzu ( a people with special habits and lifestyle). The
constitution guaranteed seventeen positions in the National Assembly and some in the
Legislative and Control Yuans.^ In the Republic of China, Taiwan, today, the Chinese
Muslims are still considered Huijiao ren, Chinese who are adherents of Islam.
In contrast to the Nationalists' legacy in Taiwan, by the early 1950s the
leaders figuring the PRC criteria for minzu status, reasoned that Chinese Muslims do
constitute the Hui ethnic group, or nationality. The religious faith of the Hui was not
unique to them, however, and therefore did not factor into their ethnicity. Djamal al-Din
Bai Shouyi explained that Islam ought to be transcribed asyisi/an Jiao, and no longer be
referred to as huijiao. The Hui are believers of Islam, yisilan jaio, not the religion of the

^'Yang Ching-chih, "Japan Protector of Islam," in Pacific Affairs 15:4 (Winter 1942),
479.
^Pickens, "Moslems in China," 257. In the late 1940s thirty-six State Councilors were
Chinese Muslims, and two were in the Legislative Yuan.

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Hui, huijiao. Furthermore, one could be Hui in the People's Republic, and yet not
presumed to be a Muslim.
Keyes explains that cultural formulations are essential in the establishment
of ethnic identity, but in inter group relationships cultural traits are not suflScient in and of
themselves to maintain ethnicity. In social activities, ethnicity can be seen as a provider of
survival tactics vital to the preservation of a group.^ As social interaction between
Chinese Muslims and non-Muslims increased over the centuries, the Chinese Muslims
residing in urban areas increasingly assimilated to Chinese society. Chinese Muslims made
accommodations, and by modifying strategies, Chinese Muslims could function as both
Chinese and Hui. Not all ethnic groups have survived close contact with the predominant
Han population. China has seen the demise of ethnic groups that arrived in China fi-om
other lands, as well as groups whose territories were absorbed by Han expansion. Yet
while some groups faded away, the Chinese Muslims have endured.

"'^Bai Shouyi, "Huihui minzu," 134.

^Keyes, "The Dialectics," 9.

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CONCLUSION

The publishing flurry seen during the early years of the republic was
dampened in the late thirties, due in part to the war and in part to a disillusionment that
crept in as the Nanjing Era aged. Habermas theorizes that the public sphere is radical in
the beginning, only to become bourgeois with time, losing the vitality that characterizes it
in the beginning. Waara suggests that that is what happened to publications by the end of
the thirties.' By 1936 half the Chinese Muslim periodicals Zhao Chenwu tallied had
ceased publishing, and a third of those had never produced more than two issues. Several
of the publications that continued were organs of the Japanese puppet government in
Beijing. At the same time, Chinese Muslim journals coming out of Chongqing guardedly
sang the praises of the Nationalist government.Masud warns that the press is often controlled by governments and thereby
dependence on it as a source is suspect.^ So it is necessary to question how authentic the
printed voice is. In Qing times, for example, publications had been limited and censored,
but Judge argues that as the dynasty weakened, oflRcial governmental controls slackened.
' Waara, Arts and Life, 230.
- Zhao, "Sanshi nianlai," 22-25.
' Muhammed Khalid Masud, "The Limits of Expert Knowledge" in Dale F. Eickelman, ed.
Russia's Muslim Frontiers: New Direction in Cross-cultural Analysis (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), 196.

135

This opened the door of opportunity for freer speech, encouraging a new genre of public
opinion/' The emergence of the new press, schools, and organizations would suggest that
early Republican China also enjoyed ample freedom of expression, but magazines and
organizations did have to register with the government. Although the 1910s and early
1920s saw unfettered demonstrations, the mechanics for enforcing censorship were well
forged by the Nanjing era. China's civil society had fostered a public sphere, which
allowed for many voices, "each embracing the press in an attempt perhaps to produce their
own hybrid ... in a creative attempt to define themselves and the state of change in
China."- But the free flow of opinion and ideas seems to have met blockades by the late
1930s. Internal strife and foreign aggression again marred the progressive efforts of the
previous decades.
By 1938, in Beijing for example, the Japanese occupation altered the
setting. Organizations soon reflected the change. The Japanese sponsored the All China
Muslim League {Zhongguo Huijiao Zonglian Hehui). The Japanese curried favor with
the Chinese Muslims. The Japanese feared the advance of the Chinese communist forces
that had gained a footing in the northwestern regions, and they feared the advance of the
CCP's ally, the Russian Communists, into the Far East. The strategy of the Japanese was
to ally with the Muslim groups of China, and in turn. Central Asia, with the idea of
creating a Muslim buffer state, or region.^ The league's publications, such as Huijiao

Judge, Print andPolitics,65-6S.

^
Arts and Life, 95.
Derk Bodde, "Chinese Muslims in Occupied Areas" in Far Eastern Survey 15:21 (1946),
330.

136

Yuekan and Zhenzong Bao Yuekan, which promoted the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity
touted by Tokyo/
In 1938 the league sponsored a youth corps, the Chinese Muslim Youth
Corps (Zhonggito Huijiao Oingnian Tuan) in Beijing. The corps attended classes at
Northeastern University, and by 1942 there were five hundred Chinese Muslim graduates.
Chinese Muslim males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five who had at least a
smattering of elementary education, were eligible for admission. The organization was
essentially militaristic. The students wore uniforms and were drilled in the same fashion as
the Japanese army. The training was imbued with anti-Communism and ideas of
Pan-Islamism. Once out of the academy, however, the corps' responsibilities were meager
policing and more perfiinctory than meaningful.^ The Japanese effort seems to have been
riddled with propaganda in an attempt to gain Muslim allegiance, as seems the case with
the Nationalists and the Communists.^
By the 1930s the Nationalists, the Japanese and the Chinese Communists
were all wooing Chinese Muslim populations. But it was not until the government moved
inland to Chongqing that the Nationalists really got alerted to the Muslim Belt of the
^ A number of issues of each of these magazines can be found at the Library of Congress.
Bodde, "Chinese Muslims," 331.
' Japanese finagling in Muslim organizations was not new. From 1931 to 1937
Manchuria had been their base for activities in China. They actively recruited Chinese
Muslim participation in Manchuria, fi^om the beginning of the setup of Manchuguo. In
1932 they created the Islamic League (Yisi/an Xiehui) in the capital, and established over
160 branches in Manchuria. They even founded an educational organization, the Institute
for Islamic Culture (Huijiao fVenhua Xiieyiian), and they produced a number of
periodicals. The crowning moment came when the ill-fated Emperor Puyi's cousin, Pu
Guang converted to Islam, news of which made it to a Cairo weekly. See Bodde, "Japan
and the Muslims," 313.

137

Northwest.The Communists, Japanese and Russians, all were vying for influence in the
region, and its strategic importance became increasingly apparent." The Communists and
Nationalists both touted religious tolerzmce and promises of autonomous rule for Muslims
in their drive to control the Muslim Belt.'" The contenders met with varying degrees of
success in the region, but their efforts went on in the midst of preexisting domains of local
warlords and religious factions. The three all tried allying with the warlords, but
allegiances were seldom to be trusted, and the common people had little choice.
In addition to promises of autonomy and freedom of religion, the
Nationalists and Communists both used education as a means of indoctrination. The
government in Chongqing did manage to direct funds for education to the region. In
Qinghai, for example, over a thousand elementary schools were established.'^ Even so
there were leaders who saw the government's involvement as an extension of Pan-Hanism
{Dahan zhuyi\ and they feared the government efforts would lead to absorption into Han
culture. The Chinese Communists achieved increasing success in recruiting local Chinese
Muslims closer to the apex of their operations in Shaanxi. The region was poverty
''^Once in Chongqing the strategic importance of the Northwest became clear to the ROC,
thus control of the Muslim Belt was important. But Chinese were largely uninformed
about Chinese Muslims. Their importance was not lost on historian Gu Jiegang who
devoted two complete issues of his magazine, Yugong [Chinese Historical Geography], to
the subject of Chinese Muslims.
"For discussions of China's Muslim belt during the republican period see A. Doak
Bamett, China on the Eve of Communist Takeover (New York; Frederick A. Praeger,
1968), 181-194; Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, 18-29; Lipman, "Ethnicity and Politics,"
285- 316; Edgar Snow, Red Star over China (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 305-323.
'"Not only did both the CCP and the GMD continue to uphold Sun Yatsen as the
Founding Father of modem China, but it is noteworthy how similar the rhetoric pertaining
to minorities was coming from the two opponents.
'^Bamett, China on the Eve, 186.

138

stricken and far from the events in the East. Most of the recruits had no knowledge of
Japan, and all they learned in the communist training camp schools was that the Japanese
were foreign interlopers.'^
In the East, metropolitan Chinese Muslims had long been inculcated with
the idea that the Communists were atheists and would have no tolerance for religion
freedom, which caused urban leaders to favor the republican government.'-

In 1937 in

response to looming events Chinese Muslim leaders in Zhangzhou organized the Chinese
Islamic National Salvation Federation (Zhongguo Huijiao Jiugito Xiehui).

Chinese

Muslim representatives from provinces around the country met in Hankou in 1938 and
expanded the federation, largely supplanting all previously established Chinese Muslim
organizations. From its inception, the federation received direct support from the
Nationalist government. General Omar Bai Chongxi, who had become the Minister of
National Defense of the ROC, served as chairman of the federation.'^
Many Chinese Muslims of the northern and coastal regions fled to
southwestern provinces as the Japanese advanced into China. Some leaders from
Beijing's branch of the Jujin Hui moved to Guilin, in exile. Other Chinese Muslims went
to Chongqing. With the course of events, the Chinese Muslim associations were forced
from local concerns to national policies. The energy that had inspired the community
twenty years earlier shifted. Nonetheless some leaders found ways to keep alive earlier
'"Edgar Snow, Red Star over China (New York; Grove Press, 1961), 312-316.
"The Japanese had also used this tactic when endorsing Islam and encouraging
Pan-lslamism. See Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, 27-28.
"^Chan Wing-tsit, Religious Trends, 191.
'^Bodde, "China's Muslim," 283.

139

programs. During the war some leaders tried radio. They broadcasted educational
programs and religious lectures (in Arabic and Chinese) out of Shanghai and Chongqing.
Innovative as the move was, however, it is questionable how many Chinese Muslims had
radios, much less had an opportunity to hear the shows.
The government seems to have maintained a conciliatory posture toward
the Chinese Muslims after the problem of the ban on religion in schools, and the
defamation scandals of the late twenties." In 1939 the Chinese Islamic National Salvation
Federation successfully petitioned the government to make the study of Islamic culture a
regular feature in the curricula offered in Chinese universities."" Special classes in Islam
and Arabic language were introduced at Beijing University, the Central University,
Yunnan University', and Zhongshan University.-' The prominent scholar. Ma Jian, was
one of a half dozen Chinese Muslims who became professors of Islamic studies in Chinese
universities. Chinese Muslims also opened the Islamic Theological Seminary in
Chongqing.In 1938 the government, in the name of the Chinese Islamic National
Salvation Federation, dispatched a Chinese Muslim Near East Goodwill Mission to visit
Middle Eastern and South Asian countries. The mission reached Mecca in time for the
Haj, where the members joined with a million Muslims from around the world. Members

"*Fu, Zhonggiio Huijiao, 236; Pickens, "Moslems in China," 256.

'^Pickens, "Moslems in China," 254-260.
-'^Chinese Ministry, "Mohammedanism," 27.
-'Ting, "Islamic Culture," 373.
"Hughes, Ernest Richard, Religion in China (London; Hutchinson University Library,
1950), 109.

140

also visited Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran and India. In 1939, another
mission was sent to the South Seas and visited Malaya, India, Iran and Arabia. The
mission campaigned on the part of the republic's government against Japanese
aggression.^ The diplomatic role contrasts with the scholarly and cultural exchanges of
Chinese Muslims in the previous decades when students traveled on their own to the
Middle East.
In 1943 the amalgamation of societies that constituted the federation
changed its name to the Chinese Muslim Association {Zhonggito Huijiao Xiehui). In
1949 a Chinese Youth League (Zhongguo Huijiao Oingtiian Hui) was established in
Quangzhou. It took a hard anti-Communist stand, in line with ROC government, and after
the civil war, thousands of Chinese Muslims fled mainland China. Twenty thousands went
to Saudi Arabia, and some 6,000 Turkic-speaking Muslims went overland to Turkey.
Twenty thousand Chinese Muslims fled to Taiwan with the Nationalists, making the
official Hui population there 40,000.-^ Today versions of the association exist both in
Taiwan and the mainland. The association goes by the name the Chinese Islamic
Association {Zhongguo Isstdan Jiao Xiehui) in Beijing, and the Chinese Muslim
Association in Taiwan.
Wang Jingzhai, the prominent scholar and ahong from the Oxen Street
Mosque, went to Taiwan in 1948 hoping to establish a mosque and an organization. The
Li Shui Street Mosque, also known as the Grand Mosque was established under Wang's
-^Chinese Ministry of Information, comp. "Mohammedanism" in China Hand Book.
1937-145 (New York; Macmillan Company, 1947), 27.
-'Pillsbury, Cohesion. 72.

141

leadership, but he found conditions in Taiwan wanting at best in the late 1940s. Wang
became disillusioned, and his health was failing. He returned to mainland but died shortly
thereafter. Ma Songting followed him to Taiwan, but met with similar disappointment.
Ma moved on to Hong Kong where he presided over the large multinational community of
Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians, and Sri Lankans in the colony. After a few years, the
Communists managed to persuade Ma Songting to return to Beijing. Ma was appointed
Deputy Chief of the Chinese Islamic Association and Deputy Superintendent of the
Chinese Islamic College, only to be purged in the late fifties.^

The metropolitan Chinese Muslims got swept up in the enthusiasm of the

early republican era. Many influential members of the community embraced the
Nationalists' revolution and the new republic. The leaders' motives were nationalistic, as
Chinese they wanted a strong China. The leaders' motives were also parochial, they
wanted a strong Chinese Muslim community, and they actively set out to improve local
conditions. By strengthening their communities Chinese Muslim leaders could insure the
survival of Chinese Muslim culture, just as a strong China would insure the survival of
Chinese culture. Chinese Muslims leaders welcomed modernization and nationalism
seeing them as vehicles that would facilitate their efforts, and protect them.
Chinese Muslim activities paralleled those of other Chinese. Chinese
Muslims took part in the New Culture Movement, many joined the army. At the same

- Pillsbury, Cohesion, 156-157. Ma Zhenwu, a former leader of one of the Sufi schools,
the Jahriyya was also among those purged.

142

time they focused attention on issues unique to themselves. For example, what would the
role of Islam be in a modem society. As Muslims how would they react and adapt to the
changes? This dissertation has examined the activities of urban Chinese Muslims: the
creation of study groups and associations; the revamping of Muslim schools; and the
publishing of books and periodicals. This has been a look at strategies used in adapting to
change. The goal has been to illustrate that the Chinese Muslims accepted change, even
welcomed it, but in so doing they altered perceptions of themselves and their religion.
Under dynastic rule Chinese Muslim districts had functioned with a degree
of autonomy. Through the centuries a process of indigenization took place in the Muslim
communities. The apologists elaborated on a syncretism that allowed for a fairly
untroubled coexistence for metropolitan Chinese Muslims and non-Muslims. But the
twentieth century brought upheaval to the former system, and with that Hui leaders
reassessed Chinese Muslim status. Modem changes in the material and political world did
not necessarily bode ill for the spiritual realm, and if change had advantages, the leaders
sought to exploit them thereby enriching their communities.
The Chinese Muslim seem to have accepted the republic for more than one
reason. The new govemment granted them equity and respect, it guaranteed religious
freedom, and it acknowledged Chinese Muslim differences without antagonism. If
Chinese nationalism sparked faith in the nation like a religion, then Hui nationalism could
work similarly for the Chinese Muslims. Hui nationalism would allow Chinese Muslims to
practice their rituals and translate Hui symbols to the modem environment. In so doing a

143

network of communications, through organizations and publications, served to enrich a

sense of Hui solidarity.
As China struggled to create a nationalism that fortified the nation-state
both in the international community and in the eyes of the Chinese people, the Chinese
Muslims had a variation of that project in the formulation Hui consciousness. By creating
the Mutual Progress Association and the Pure and True Society Chinese Muslim leaders
offered their commuitities new opportunities, which helped to promote a strong image of
being Chinese Muslim. In the same vein, a translated version of the Qur'an promised to
make the sacred text more accessible, while the new schools and the drive for literacy
offered power to the people, and the chance to take advantage of the modem age.
While metropolitan Chinese Muslim scholars and clergymen embraced
progressive programs, they did not lose sight of the fine line between assimilation and
annihilation. If Chinese Muslims acquiesced too much, they would forfeit their own
identity, and jeopardize their way of life. So in their writings and studies, Chinese
Muslims scholars did not ignore their religion nor did they ignore their heritage. The
message of the apologetics was still applicable in twentieth century China. The Chinese
Muslims could be both Chinese and Hui, simultaneously. But as Jun Jing put it, memories
of the past are conceived and developed within the existing social structure, not
"mechanically retrieved but. .. permeated with present-day concerns" and influences
along the way.-'^

-'^Jun Jing, The Temple of Memories: History, Power, attd Morality in a Chinese Village
(Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1996), 4.

144

The Chinese-speaking Muslims concentrated in the large cities became the

most articulate segment of the broader Islamic minority in the first half of the twentieth
century. The urban Chinese Muslim population had coexisted for centuries with the
Chinese host culture, peacefully and successfully for the most part. The basis of the
coexistence, however, had been the host's acceptance of Chinese Muslim distinctiveness,
and a tolerance of minority interests. The Chinese Muslim could accept membership in the
Chinese state and its host culture to that extent.
Twentieth century history exemplifies the evolution of their two-way
relationship as traditional institutions and civilization have been swept by revolution and
transformed, through stages to the present. In this process, Chinese Muslim intellectuals
experienced their own "nationality" ~ their cherished cultured identity and religion which
defined their community. They did so in response to the transformative upheavals
engulfing them. As a result, the Chinese Muslim built a new sense of themselves and of
the conditions essential for a comfortable membership in the Chinese world.
Throughout the century politicians redefined the Hui identity to suit their
platforms, and the dialogue promoted Chinese Muslim self-examination. The Republic of
China designated Chinese Muslims as Chinese people with religious differences and special
habits and lifestyles. The People's Republic of China prescribed the shaoshu minzu
formula, making the Chinese-speaking Muslims a minority nationality, but, ironically,
denying that religion was an element in the Hui make-up. Whatever labels were and are
devised, however, the Hui have survived and prospered on both sides of the Taiwan

145

Straits, and with their own sense of identity, with all their shared imaginings and
particularities.
Nationalism and modem nation-state building have characterized the
twentieth century. But nationalism, like the roster of nations, has changed over the course
of the century. Marx, Lenin and Mao were wrong to believe that once diverse people
were united they would in time amalgamate into one. Rather, the reverse has appeared to
be the norm, and as the century comes to a close, nationalism has spawned more
nationalities. While many cultures have been obliterated by the encroachment of other
cultures, human diversity survives. It survives in cultures, ethnicities, races, and
nationalities. These identities overlap, and defining them can become tautological, but the
concepts serve to illuminate identities. At the same time, identities do change and adjust,
and in the nation-state in which people are defined as nationalities, their identities do not
remain stagnant. Nor does that of the nation.
If one seeks a lesson from these emergent tensions applicable to the
Chinese situation, perhaps the lesson is that such tensions represent the exit point from the
earlier willing entrance into an experiment of building a multinational community.
Certainly contemporary China has experienced recurrent ethnic tension, particularly from
the Great Leap era of the late 1950s that was stimulated by periodic ethnic assimilation
policies.-^ Aside from the Tibetan example ~ a reaction to conquest rather than to the
souring of a partnership ~ other ethnic tensions suggest the conditional nature of this
multinationality state. Even the Chinese-speaking Muslim population who have long lived
"^Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, 159-171.

146

in the midst of the Han Chinese world require tolerance from the majority as enticement.
Chinese Muslim tolerance for the Chinese state depends upon its tolerance for them. It is
subtle and not easily discerned, but the metropolitan Chinese Muslim communities have
managed to mix in the Chinese world and yet remain pure and true.

147

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