Prologue
Born and raised in a Muslim Hui family in an urban Han-dominated region, I always felt that I was not one of “them,” the people with whom I grew up and studied in school. My middle-school classmates were surprised to find out that I was a “Hui” and I did not eat pork like they did. This little incident has remained deep in my consciousness and constantly reminds me of how I downplayed my minority identity in school because I did not want people to know that I was different. I also felt that I was not capable of explaining my differences because of my own poor knowledge of Islam.
Over the years, I became accustomed to not talking openly about my minority identity, unless I was with my family, relatives, or close friends. Thus, my identity as a Muslim Hui minority was often displaced by my other identities as an urban resident, a diligent student, a good caring daughter, a nice friend, and many more. However, during the years of my early adulthood, I never forgot this part of myself, though it was submerged and I seldom brought it up. When needed, I used the ethnic term “Hui” to identify myself and shied away from the Islamic part of Hui nationality, though ethnic and religious aspects of being Hui are integrated in China (when you are a Hui, you are a Muslim). I am hesitant to identify myself as a Muslim because I have limited knowledge of Islam and have not followed the Islamic doctrines besides keeping the dietary restrictions and occasionally learning about Islam through reading the Koran, visiting mosques, and discussing Islam with my father.
My personal understanding of Huiness is thus not aligned with societal views of Hui as a radical and violent group of Muslims which often causes
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political unrest and cultural rivalry. Whenever I mention that I am Hui, people ask, “Are you a Muslim? Do you believe in Islam?” In my experience, Hui is often a religious label attached to Chinese Muslims who have some association with Muslims in other parts of the world, and the ethnic nature of Huiness seems reserved only for official recognition and categorization. The search for my own identities continues, but I continue struggling to identify and hesitate to reveal myself as a Muslim Hui.
In recent years, studying and living in the United States, I usually prioritize my identity as Chinese, and it often gets complicated to explain myself as a member of a Chinese ethnic and religious minority, even to Chinese people. My journey of finding, negotiating, and choosing my identities became the impetus for my research topic around identities and motivated me to study Muslim Hui and my cultural roots and religious origins. Being an urban Muslim Hui, I am more interested in Muslim Hui living in rural northwestern China where the Silk Road passed through and where the first group of Muslim businessmen traveled through and introduced Islam into China. I believe that this region, with its large Muslim Hui population, preserves many Islamic traditions, though it is less known to outsiders.
While I was formulating my research, a Muslim Hui friend recommended to me an English book entitled The Diaries of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese School Girl published in 2005, an autobiography of a schoolgirl from an impoverished rural village in the Xihaigu region of Ningxia. In this book, Ma Yan describes her struggle against hunger and poverty, as well as her wishes to continue her education for a better life and to lift her parents and the children alike in her community out of poverty. I was moved by her determination to get out of rural poverty and her desire to take care of her parents through education. Inspired by the schoolgirl’s autobiography, the terms Muslim Hui identities, rurality, poverty, education, and filial piety converged in my mind and became the topic of this research. A place unknown to me seemed to reveal a little of itself in the book. I am propelled to find out if education has changed the lives of the Muslim Hui as Ma Yan had wished during the ten years since her diaries were published to the outside world. Reflecting on my own experience with identities, I am also eager to know how Muslim Hui in that region cope with their identities in the context of state schooling.
Therefore, this research is partly a fulfillment of my childhood dream to take a personal journey and learn more about ethnic Muslim Hui in northwestern China. Most importantly, the study seeks to present stories of a
viii PROLOGUE
rural ethnic group that is less known but struggles against poverty while maintaining the practices of Islamic traditions. State schooling, believed by the government as a pathway leading to prosperity, is questioned and challenged by local Muslim Hui students about its promised value of education. The dichotomies between mainstream ideologies and Islamic teachings never cease to shape Muslim Hui students’ heterogeneous experiences, as they manage to construct different educational journals to prosperity through negotiating their multiple identities.
ix PROLOGUE
Acknowledgements
In writing this book, I have benefited enormously from the assistance and support of many people. My foremost gratitude is to the teachers, students, families, and community members in the village and county in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region where I conducted my fieldwork. I want to thank them for giving me the opportunity to listen to their life stories and experience a new world in their classrooms, at their homes, and on their roads. I am especially indebted to two local scholars, Jinbao Ma of The Journal of Muslim Hui Minority Studies and Genming Wang of Ningxia University, who facilitated my access to the research site and ensured my safety during my fieldwork. Special thanks also goes to Professor Huaizhong Yang of Ningxia Social Science Academy for his mentorship and long-term support of my study. Because of the people’s hospitality, genuineness, and sincerity, the months of staying in a village surrounded by barren mountains, blown by sandstorms, and constrained by water shortages were pleasant and enjoyable. The weekend meals prepared by every family I visited kept me warm and encouraged me to persist through the bad days.
I would also like to express my gratitude to an outstanding circle of mentors, colleagues, and friends at University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, who inspired me to use qualitative inquiry to pursue my scholarly interest and challenged me in my thought process. My greatest indebtedness goes to my co-advisors, Dr. Joan DeJaeghere and Dr. Frances Vavrus, whose stimulating comments and insights constantly illuminated my ideas and thoughts at different stages of my research and writing. Their encouragement, guidance, and support during the time I was in the field were
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especially precious and heartfelt, and provided me the confidence and belief in myself to complete the work. I would like to thank them for always being there for me and walking me through the PhD journey’s ups and downs. I am also appreciative of Dr. David Chapman, Dr. Gerald Fry, and Dr. Peter Demerath, who engaged with my work critically and shared their knowledge and experience in anthropology, policy analysis, and cultural studies.
Many colleagues and friends have also supported me along the journey. Although it would be impossible to name all of them, I am indebted to them for their love, care, wisdom, and inspiration. Thanks to my cohort in the Comparative and International Development Education program for their critical feedback on my topic when it was developing, formulating, maturing, and finally settling, and for their intellectual stimulation and rigorous academic critiques while I was writing. I also want to thank Christen Opsal for all her patient assistance in editing my paper.
In addition to my friends and colleagues at Minnesota, I also want to express my sincere gratitude to Andy and Daonna Start and their lovely sons, Zachary and Andrew, for making me a new family in Minnesota and mentally and socially supporting me to complete my study. My gratitude also goes to Dr. Matthew Christensen, my colleague and mentor at Brigham Young University, for his long-term support of my work and research and his original thoughts and comments on the book writing process; to Dr. MacLeans Geo-JaJa, my former advisor at Brigham Young University, for his mentorship, friendship, and belief in my ability to accomplish my work; and to Xi Wang, a childhood friend, for inspiring and illuminating me with her wisdom and ensuring my progress in the journey. I would also like to thank Yunpeng Shi for his unceasing encouragement, which pushed me through the difficult time in my writing process.
Last but not least, I am very grateful to my parents for being the most supportive and caring stewards of my life. Their unconditional love, endless patience, myriad sacrifices, and enormous trust have empowered me with courage to fulfill my dreams and overcome challenges on a larger stage. I would like to dedicate this book to them, to my father for providing feedback during my early fieldwork, and to my mother for ensuring the health I needed to maintain the energy in completing the book. I would not have walked so far without them.
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
xiii 1 Introduction to Education for Rural Muslim Hui 1 2 Education for Ethnic Minorities in China: Policies and Practices 31 3 Ethnicity, Ethnic Identity, and State Schooling for Ethnic Minorities 49 4 Discipline as Teaching: Construction of an Educated Identity 69 5 From Aspiration to Participation: Confusions and Struggles in a Time of Transition 109 6 Negotiating State Schooling: An Unpredictable Educational Journey to Prosperity 129 contents
xiv CONTENTS 7 Education for Muslim Hui Youth at a Crossroads 175 Appendices 187 References 197 Index 207
list of figures
xv Fig. 1.1 Houses and Mosques scattered and nestled in a valley of the Xihaigu region 2 Fig. 1.2 A village mosque standing in the middle of the harsh landscape 6 Fig. 4.1 The road traveled by cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians, and animals 73 Fig. 4.2 The local community with mountains carved out with crop terraces 74 Fig. 4.3 A typical house made of dirt in the local community 81 Fig. 5.1 Local farmers working long hours in the cornfields 113 Fig. 5.2 A typical mountainous village nestled in a terraced landscape with an elementary school at the far side by the foot of mountain 116
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The bus carefully passes through and makes its rough turns alongside the rugged mountains. As soon as the winding road ends, it is broadened up and leads further to a land of barrenness with small villages remotely scattered where mosques are seen standing in the middle of the harsh landscape and nestled at the foot of mountains, far away from the main road but glittering at passersby with their shiny crescent moons and stars on the top. Gongbeis, or enshrined tombs, are built magnificently containing the remains of spiritual Islamic heroes or founders of various sects, stretching a few blocks in villages; Qingzhen (Halal) restaurants line the streets of counties and township, decorated with boards written Tasmi in Arabic scripts that read, “In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful.” Images of Al-Masjid Al-Haram, the Sacred Mosque or the Grand Mosque in the city of Mecca, are hung up on the walls, while Hancan (non-Halal) restaurants are nearly invisible. Men and women are often seen in white hats and colorful headscarves on their scooters and bicycles or driving small trucks and vans. This wide space is called Xihaigu, a name unknown to many Chinese people, but a place that generations of Muslim Hui call home. In the past, accessing this heartland of northwestern China is nearly impossible. Today, it is still not easy to access, even with regular bus and train schedules and asphalt-paved roads. It requires an approximate four-hour bus ride from Yinchuan, the capital city of Ningxia Autonomous Region, or an eight-hour bus ride from Xi’an, the capital city
© The Author(s) 2018
X. Wu, Educational Journeys, Struggles and Ethnic Identity, Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57054-9_1
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of Shaanxi, to reach a main county center in the area, and it takes another hour or more to get to the towns and villages within the county. There is still no high-speed train stopping by the Guyuan City where the nearest train station is located; with slow trains occasionally make their stops in Guyuan, getting from the train station to any parts of county still needs hours more of traveling (Fig. 1.1).
Xihaigu is a mountainous area in the southern Ningxia autonomous region. This extended mountainous region is shaped as a turtle, surrounded by Gansu province on the southwest with six counties in Guyuan city, and Yinchi and Tongxin counties of Wuzhong city of Ningxia. Located on the Loess Plateau and the Silk Road, it was historically an important hub for importing and exporting trades, where many Muslim traders finally settled and integrated into Chinese society. Xihaigu is also the place where the culture of pastoralism from the north interacted and integrated with the culture of farming in the central plain. Local farmers rely heavily on crop farming and livestock husbandry with some house-
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Fig. 1.1 Houses and Mosques scattered and nestled in a valley of the Xihaigu region
holds engaged in large-scale commercial agriculture. Because the region has been geographically isolated by layers of mountains without a sufficiently developed transportation system, it faces considerably slow economic development compared to rapid national development in China in recent years (Xu, 2012). However, Islamic practices are prevalent, as it is the core component of local Muslim Hui life. Households in villages are usually built around mosques where religious activities are conducted, through which jiaofang, the religious communities, are formed and maintained (Ma, 2008).
In 1972, Xihaigu was listed as one of the world’s most uninhabitable zones by the United Nations World Food Program. Year-round drought makes it difficult for many crops to grow except potatoes, corn, and flax; and overly grazed grassland leads to depletion and erosion of the soil. In some remote mountainous regions, drinking water simply is not available, and people have to walk miles to fetch water for daily needs (Zhu & Chiang, 1996). Such chronic water shortages and harsh natural environment are ever-present threats (Chinadaily, 2013), which cause many people to live in poverty, barely making ends meet. Since 1978, influenced by the strong push for economic development initiated with the Open Door Policy, the Chinese government has invested large amounts of money on Xihaigu in an attempt to lift people out of poverty. A series of povertyreduction initiatives was carried out to stimulate local economic development. One of the important tasks was to preserve water resources and build infrastructure to obtain water from underground or other regions for the purposes of farming irrigation and daily necessity. More roads started being built, linking villages to townships and nearby cities in the hope of providing local people with access to outside opportunities. While crop farming and livestock husbandry are still two dominant ways of living, local governments have started to promote farming industry, forestry, and family businesses, and encourage people to return the farmland to growing trees (Tuigenhuanlin 退耕还林). More villagers receive financial incentives to grow commercial crops and raise livestock in addition to the traditional subsistence agriculture. A series of social policies were also implemented to assist local farmers not only to survive but also to live a better life. For example, each household was provided with skills and literacy training so that at least one laborer from each household could have the skills to find non-farming jobs. Free TV dishes were installed for every family so that they could have access to outside information and resources. Solar cookers were also introduced to most families and installed with
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government subsidies. “Immigrant villages” were recently established to move villagers from the remote mountainous regions to designated places near townships and counties, and provide residents with free housing and other necessary supplies. Although these poverty-reduction initiatives have helped a large number of local households live better, poverty is still persistent, especially in the remote mountainous regions, largely due to the population explosion in the 1970s and 1980s, limited natural resources, the harsh environment and frequent natural disasters, and predominant dependence on agriculture.
Economic development triggers social changes. The rural residents of Xihaigu started to experience an unprecedented transformation from a traditional society to a modern society, and they were forced into a transitioning period, during which they needed to seek alternatives for poverty alleviation. Some were not prepared to respond to the sudden change and still considered farming a primary source of income with complementary part-time and off-season, labor-centric work in local areas or nearby provinces; whereas others saw the opportunities outside villages for non-agriculture jobs and decided to migrate to other provinces for high-income jobs. Since 1985, single males constituted the majority of migrant workers, and they replaced the older major laborers, who previously earned extra income for the family. Starting in 1994, the idea of being a migrant worker swept through villages, and more and more local farmers chose to leave farmland for urban factories and the service sector. A diverse group of migrants, both old and young, have emerged (Chen, 2002).
Responding to economic development and the social transformation of local communities, four major social classes have appeared. The middleupper class consists of county and township government officials, skilled workers, private business owners, and religious personnel. The middle class contains village managerial staff and small business owners. The middle lower class usually refers to farmers, loiterers, and anyone who is able to work but is not employed. The last group is migrant workers who constantly switch from labor-centric work in the city to farming work back in the village during harvest season (Zhang, 2006). The increasing complexity of social stratification leads to Muslim Hui’s discrepant perceptions of education, as the new social stratification seems associated with levels of education and corresponding employments. Therefore, education has gradually been valued as a viable pathway to achieving prosperity and acquisition of high economic and social status.
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MusliM Hui in CHina, ningxia, and xiHaigu
The Muslim Hui population is approximately 10 million across China based on the data from the sixth national population census (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2010). As the second largest ethnic group, its members are both concentrated in certain ethnic minority regions and scattered through all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions (State Ethnic Affairs Commission of People’s Republic of China, n.d.).
According to Yang (2006), Muslim Hui people on the east coast occupy 21.05% of the total Hui population in China; Hui members in the middle regions account for another 18.21%; and the majority of the Hui population (60.75%) resides in western China. In northwestern China, the Muslim Hui are mostly concentrated, as opposed to their counterparts scattered along the eastern coast. The Ningxia Hui autonomous region, located in northwestern China, was established in 1958 and is the designated provincial-level region for Muslim Hui. There, the Hui population occupied 35% of the total regional population in 2010 (Ningxia Statistics Bureau, 2011), and with large numbers considering Xihaigu home.
Because the Muslim Hui reside in diverse parts of China, they express a wide spectrum of ethnoreligious identities influenced by their social and political environments (Gladney, 2004). For example, in urban areas, many Muslim Hui do not equate their ethnic category with a religious affiliation, and they are often difficult to identify by the ways in which they practice Islam. In some regions, occupational specializations, such as small restaurant business owners, and dietary restrictions may indicate the Muslim Hui; however, among Muslim Hui who follow dietary restrictions, the practice of consuming only Halal food also differs across different Muslim communities (Gladney, 1991). Because Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region has the most concentrated Muslim Hui population, Muslim Hui express a strong Hui identity through exhibiting their Islamic beliefs and actively participating in religious rituals (Gladney, 1991). By 1997, the total population in Ningxia was about 2,360,000, and Muslim Hui represented 45%. In some counties, Muslim Hui occupy over 90%, such as some towns and villages in Xihaigu. Such high concentration of Muslim Hui has created a landscape where Hui is culturally dominant and Han are the perceived minority (Fig. 1.2).
Although Muslim Hui express a wide spectrum of ethnoreligious identities across China, Muslim Hui in Xihaigu are among the most conservative ones. They not only follow strict dress customs and dietary restrictions,
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MUSLIM HUI IN CHINA, NINGXIA, AND XIHAIGU
but also actively engage in a variety of religious rituals, both at home and in the community, such as fulfilling five pillars of Islam and observing holidays according to the Islamic calendar. As a tradition, Muslim men and women are required to wear white hats and cover their heads with colorful headscarves, and they do not take them off except when they go to sleep. Boys and girls who attend mosque education to learn Koranic texts also wear white hats and colorful headscarves to show their statuses as Manla, apprentices of Ahongs (Imams) of mosques. In contrast, people rarely wear sleeveless shirts, shorts, or skirts, as overexposure of the skin in public is culturally unacceptable. Although I, as an urban Muslim Hui, was not expected to dress alike, I was reminded by my local Muslim Hui friends that I needed to keep long pants and long-sleeved shirts handy in case I was invited to events at the mosques or casual meetings with local Muslim Hui. As my local Muslim friends explained, because Muslim Hui is the majority in the area and they are strict about this dress code for everyone, one would be criticized for dressing inappropriately regardless of one’s nationality. To accommodate the Muslim Hui’s needs, markets in the area
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Fig. 1.2 A village mosque standing in the middle of the harsh landscape
MUSLIM
usually sell all kinds of daily necessities specifically for Muslim Hui, such as Tangpings for washing purpose (plastic ewers), hats, headscarves, large water containers, Halal food (rarely available in other parts of China), and prayer rugs. When people drive from their villages to gather in a large field for the markets, their various head coverings often create a beautiful scene to show their uniqueness.
Not only does the traditional clothing distinguish Muslim Hui in the region from other people residing in rural areas, but regular practice of Islam also tells them apart. For Muslim Hui, learning Islamic practices is considered essential for preserving and inheriting Hui culture and traditions. Education, as a fundamental mechanism, carries much responsibility for continuing these traditions. Traditionally, Muslim Hui’s education is religious, and it is carried out both in families and in the mosques. With religious education at home, Muslim Hui children develop their ethnic consciousness by following their parents’ religious practices and inheriting Islamic knowledge from their parents. By attending religious lessons in the mosques, Muslim Hui children learn how to read Koranic texts and the basic teachings of Islam. Modern education, or what we call state schooling, has not been very attractive to Muslim Hui, as it is perceived to assimilate ethnic minority groups into the Han culture (Hansen, 1999; Kaup, 2000; Mackerras, 1999; Zhu, 2007) and children would lose their ethnoreligious identity (Gladney, 1991; Lin, 2007).
In addition, Muslim Hui are also regularly engaged in various kinds of activities to express their ethnoreligious identity. Celebrating Islamic festivals is one of the major events Muslim Hui grandly observe and collectively participate in, as opposed to celebrating Chinese national holidays, during which they rarely give each other greetings. Local Muslim Hui employees with government appointments are also given days off to observe Islamic holidays; and some Muslim Hui families who have migrated to other cities usually travel back to celebrate, such as Shangfen, or visiting ancestors’ tombs. Although Muslim Hui are granted a few days off for state-recognized national holidays, they only take advantage of these days to rest and finish family chores. For instance, when some national holidays fall onto the crop harvest season, Muslim Hui parents have their children help finish the work on the farms. In a word, Islamic holidays play an indispensable role in reinforcing religious education.
Zanshengjie, the Eid al-adha or the Feast of Sacrifice, an important Islamic festival, is also widely observed throughout the region. Muslim Hui students who attend state schooling usually receive a day off to
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HUI IN CHINA, NINGXIA, AND XIHAIGU
celebrate, as it is a regional policy specific to the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. In the morning of the Festival, local families clean their house and prepare meals for the celebration. Male family members get up early, clean themselves, and dress in their best clothing in preparation to attend prayers at local mosques. Villagers generally fast and wait for congregational prayers to be said at the mosques. Female Muslims are not allowed to be present in the mosques but stay home and prepare Youxiang, fried round doughnuts, and Sanzi , fried string doughnuts, typical Hui dishes, and meat dishes for their families. Some affluent families sacrifice their animals, usually cows and sheep, and share them with their relatives and friends in the neighborhood. Poorer families also sacrifice their domestic animals, usually chickens, to feed the families and share with Ahong s residing in the local mosques. The animals are sacrificed with Ahongs reciting Tasmi , as it is how Halal food is prepared and is believed to “taste better”. To local Muslim Hui students, it is not only a holiday reminding them of its religious significance, but also a day filled with delicious food when they could spend time with relatives and friends.
Kaizhaijie, or Eid al-Fitr, Festival of Breaking the Fast, is also a widely observed Islamic festival in the region. It is the celebration of the end of Ramadan, a month of Sawm, or fasting—one of the five pillars of Islam. While the majority Han in other parts of China maintain regular work and study hours during the month of Ramadan, the life of the Muslim Hui in this community is different. Most restaurants are closed, with only a few left open for travelers who pass through counties and towns to do businesses. Many local Muslims fast and pray during Ramadan, because they believe that they will be more thoroughly blessed by Allah if they do so. Many Muslim youths also follow their parents in observing Ramadan, fasting and praying every day in the local mosques. As a young Muslim Hui, Guoqin shared his experience of observing the month of Ramadan. Both his parents were very strict about following the prayer schedule and he went to the mosque to pray with his father. However, he felt regretful about missing the last day of prayer as he was too tired to stay up. He was sad that he could not receive the full blessings from fasting because he had not completed it. His experience showed the importance of Islam in his life and in the life of his community.
In addition to Sawm, other pillars of Islam are also fulfilled by the local Muslim Hui. Friday is one of the busiest days in the community, and people flood into a nearby mosque for Zhuma or Jumu’ah, a congregational
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prayer held every Friday. Muslims who have jobs do not usually pray five times a day due to the conflict of work and prayer schedules, but they generally attend Zhuma once a week. Local mosques can be fully packed with crowds, and mosques with facilities for female Muslims, mostly in large towns, also attract large numbers of female Muslim Hui. Cars are seen parked randomly on the street, and nobody seems to care about whether the cars are blocking the roads. Public shower services are closed for a few hours to the general public but reserved for worshippers prior to Zhuma. The purpose of such closure is to ensure that as many Muslims as possible can make Wudu, or cleaning any impurities of their bodies by washing their hands, mouth, throat, nose, ears, arms up to the elbow, and feet. However, among these large masses of local people, few Muslim youths could attend it because the school schedule does not accommodate the prayer schedule, even though they are taught to pray and attend Zhuma from nine years old.
While prayers are widely practiced in the community, Chaohezi in the local language or the pilgrimage to Mecca is only fulfilled by relatively affluent Muslims because it usually costs a local Muslim his or her life savings to complete this fifth pillar of Islam. When making ends meet is already difficult due to consistent poverty, going on such a trip is unthinkable. As so few people had and would have the opportunity to complete this once-in-a-lifetime event, Chaohezi is more than an individual fulfillment of fifth pillar—it is a community celebration of blessings brought back by local Muslim Hajjis who have successfully completed the pilgrimage to Mecca. Therefore, the return of Hajjis is one of the grandest rituals every year for the local community. Muslim Hui children and youths are usually brought or asked by their parents to join the celebration. On the day of Hajjs’ return, people as old as 80 and as young as babies in their mothers’ arms line up on the side of the road, anxiously waiting for cars and vans transporting Hajjs to arrive. The cars and vans are decorated with red signs reading “Welcome Hajji” on their dashboards. Hajjis, usually the elderly, wearing garlands of red flowers, step out of cars and vans and stroll down the road to greet crowds. Local people receive blessings by being touched by Hajjs and firmly shaking their hands. The ritual continues, as Hajjis go to other neighboring villages. An elder Muslim Hui once expressed his admiration for Hajjs, since it was too expensive for him to go. After Hajjs return, they still need to sacrifice a cow for more than 10,000 RMB ($1500 USD) and share with the villagers. Thus, joining the celebration of Hajjs’ return gives local Muslim Hui blessings that they
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AND XIHAIGU
MUSLIM HUI IN CHINA, NINGXIA,
look forward to but are not able to receive in person. Attending the celebration, the younger generation of Muslim Hui learn about Islamic traditions and keep their wish to fulfill the most challenging pillar of Islam.
Actively practicing five pillars of Islam has played a critical role in enforcing learning and teaching about the Islamic religion, as an essential component of their everyday life. A strict observance of consuming Halal food is also considered as a way that local Muslim Hui distinguish themselves from the Han by their dietary restrictions “not eating pork and non-Halal food.” Non-Halal food includes but is not limited to food that is prepared by Han members of the community, cooked by cookware and cooking utensils used to cook non-Halal food, and food not prepared in an appropriate religious way or prepared clean. Eating non-Halal food is perceived as wrong, thus expecting and enforcing this strict observance would continue when young Muslim Hui go to college in other cities dominated by Han. When Halal food is unavailable, Muslim Hui are suggested to consume substitutes, such as eggs and fruits, and cook this themselves with their own cookware and utensils. Water, the most precious resource in the community, is also separately used by Hui and Han, and Hui would not drink or use water offered by Han. When I first arrived in the area, some students asked me if I was Hui or Han, and I was puzzled and did not understand why this even mattered. Later, a teacher enlightened me, “When Hui students ask you, they most likely want to find out if it would be fine for them to borrow water from you whenever it is needed.” As not everyone is Hui, it is important for the Hui students to find out who are and are not Hui so that they would not mistakenly consume non-Halal food.
To many Muslim Hui in Xihaigu, preserving Islamic traditions is as important as expressing ethnoreligious identity, and endogamous marriage, in this sense, is critical to conserving and inheriting Huiness and Hui culture. Although intermarriage is allowed, it has to be that a Muslim boy marries a Han girl; if a Muslim girl decides to marry a Han boy, her family would generally prohibit it. Muslim Hui believe that if a Muslim boy marries a non-Muslim girl, she would join the Muslim family, become a Muslim, and practice Islam together with her husband. On the contrary, a Muslim girl would eventually stop practicing Islam if she is married to a Han boy. Such belief is widely accepted by the young Muslim Hui girls, as they have never thought of marrying Han boys, even when they are in big cities where very few Muslim Hui boys are available for marriage. During
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one of my visits, I happened to meet a 42-year-old grandmother. She had an endogamous marriage with a Muslim boy from a neighboring village when she was 16, and they immediately started a family. Her daughter was also married to a Muslim boy at age 16 and had given birth to three babies by the time she was 21. They have lived on farming and sedentary pastoralism without ever leaving the village. As a typical situation in the community, only children who attend state schooling are allowed to postpone their marriages. Even so, Muslim Hui parents are committed to ensure that their children would have an endogenous marriage.
Religious eduCation in xiHaigu
Although daily practice of Islam at home and in the community is important to express and maintain Hui’s ethnoreligious identity, a formal religious education is seen as pivotal in shaping and reinforcing the distinctiveness of Muslim Hui in Xihaigu. Before state schooling was introduced and became a requirement for local Muslim Hui children, religious education has long contributed to local Muslim children’s intellectual and spiritual development for hundreds of years. Jingtang education, or Spiritual Hall education, conducted in the mosques, is considered a primary form of religious education by parents for their children to gain knowledge of Islam since the Ming Dynasty (Wang, 2012). Its existence and later expansion satisfy the needs of inheriting religious and cultural practices (Ma, 2014). Since Muslim Hui believe that they cannot identify themselves as Muslim Hui if they do not have a basic knowledge of Islam, Jingtang education, in such sense, plays a role of raising ethnic consciousness and strengthening ethnoreligious identity. It is currently chosen by the mass Muslim Hui in Xihaigu as a dominant form in educating Muslim Hui children. To certain extent, it connects Jiaofang, or Muslim communities, facilitating religious activities, and, more importantly, ensuring the passing of Islamic knowledge and practice to the next generation of Muslim Hui.
Jingtang education constitutes two levels: the primary level and the advanced level. As Hui children (age six to seven) develop an understanding of basic knowledge and practice of Islam at the primary level, such as recognizing Arabic texts, reciting Koranic verses in prayers and during fasting, and cleansing oneself for prayers, they would advance to the higher level to further learn the language and grammar of the Koran.
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RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN XIHAIGU
If they want to pursue religious professions, such as Ahong or clergy in the mosques, they would need to continue to learn “philosophical and juridical works and scriptural exegeses” (Alles, Chebbi, & Halfon, 2003). Jingtang education is also a free religious education supported by donations from local Muslim Hui families. It teaches the Jingtang language that uses Chinese characters to “imitate the odds, syntax, and structure of Arabic” (Ma, 2014), through which Muslim Hui students learn how to read the Koran and understand classical texts in Arabic and Persian. Because Jingtang education starts a year before students attend state schooling, it often overlaps the time that children are required to receive compulsory education. Therefore, a dual educational system, including both state and religious education, exists to meet different needs. For some families, religious education is the sole choice for their children; for many others, attending both education systems is ideal; and only a few families sacrifice religious education for state schooling, but they still want their children to continue going to mosque when off from state schooling.
In addition to Jingtang education, there are two other types of religious education: state-sponsored Islamic Institutes and private Chinese–Arabic schools. They accept students who have previously attended Jingtang education or received a basic knowledge of Islam. These are also the alternatives for dropouts from middle schools, those who do not make to regular high schools and colleges, or those who choose the route to religious professions. State-sponsored Islamic Institutes are specialized four-year higher institutes with primary missions of preparing students to work in religious professions. Although these institutes only accept high- school graduates and intend to train prospective religious leaders and personnel, they do broaden the job choices of Muslim Hui. Chinese–Arabic schools, on the other hand, are private, and they prioritize Arabic language learning over theological knowledge teaching. Many Chinese–Arabic schools are vocational and technical schools, and they provide job skills, such as computer skills and international trade with Arab countries, as well as language education to prospective Muslim Hui youth. They have more systematic curricula than those of Jingtang education, which tend to be loosely structured (Tang & Ding, 2014 ). Because these two types of religious education offer skills training as well as religious knowledge, they are often more suitable for Muslim Hui who seek a dual life of secularity and religiosity.
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state sCHooling and CoMpulsoRy eduCation in xiHaigu
As religious education has been a dominant form in educating Muslim Hui’s spirituality, state schooling was introduced as a government initiative to alleviate poverty in rural ethnic regions by teaching people from the ethnic groups scientific and cultural knowledge in school for stimulating economic development and eventually achieving material prosperity. Along with other initiatives mentioned above that have focused on monetary support and social services, state schooling aims at alleviating human poverty via improving the quality of the labor force, as they are thought to be the causes of persistent poverty in western regions (Liu, Yeerken, & Stein, 2013). Providing free compulsory education was among the strategies the government believed to be critical to the improvement of the quality of the rural ethnic labor force, through which they would be more prepared with skills to seek non-agricultural employment.
The push for universalization of basic education started in the mid1990s in Ningxia with the intention of ensuring school-aged children enroll in elementary schools and eliminating adult illiteracy through training. The regional government had targeted students living in both northern plain and southern mountainous regions. However, the results were quite different between the two regions. Due to geographic features, a friendly environment, and abundant irrigation resources, the northern plain region had almost achieved the goal of universal primary education by late 1990s, except for one county. However, in southern mountainous Ningxia, mainly Xihaigu region, very little progress was made because poverty had caused limited financial resources from the local government to be allocated to state schooling. By 2001, approximately 90% of local financial expenditure was still compensated by the central government. Educational infrastructure was lacking, and educational resources were scattered in small scales without accessibility to local students. Since 2002, the regional government changed its approach to targeting specifically key barriers to educational equity, and it advocated that the government needed to guarantee schooling, parents needed to send children to schools, schools needed to take responsibility for implementing educational activities, and communities needed to support schooling. More financial resources, including donations from local families, were given primarily to improve school infrastructure and recruit school-aged children, especially girls. Other initiatives, such as the Western Development Plan started in
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STATE SCHOOLING AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION IN XIHAIGU
1999, also contributed to the expansion and improvement of compulsory education. Volunteers, mainly college students from urban China, have started to go to these rural areas to aid local students to study in the hope of increasing the enrollment rate, decreasing the retention rate, lowering dropout rates, and boosting academic performance. In 2005, 50% of towns and villages in six mountainous counties had achieved universal compulsory education. By 2010, more than 80% of the 18 counties have obtained the goal of becoming counties with relatively high-quality schooling. Since 2006, the central government has further waived tuition and textbook fees for all enrolled students. The previous small-scaled schools were closed and integrated into larger-scaled schools to accommodate more students from nearby townships and villages. Educational resources have been consolidated and prioritized to meet the needs of local students. As a result, Boarding schools have been established for students from faraway locations, especially those who are from mountainous regions. The government has also provided financial subsidies to cover the living costs of students enrolled in the boarding schools. More and more families have sent their children to state schooling for various purposes.
MusliM Hui students’ dileMMas Between NiaNshu and NiaNjiNg
Since both religious education and state schooling are available for students to attend, with the former being fundamental and the latter being mandatory, the dilemma arises when Muslim Hui students need to make the commitment to attend either or both forms of education. The phrase Nianjing (literally translated as “read Koranic scriptures”) refers to receiving religious education, mainly Jingtang education for Muslim children and youths; and Nianshu (literally translated as “read books”) means attending state schooling and is the nine years of compulsory education. Nianjing, as a traditional home-based and community-supported form of education, is widely accepted as a pathway to learn basic knowledge and practices of Islam, acquire Hui identity, and fulfill their responsibilities to inherit and transmit Hui culture. Nianshu, on the contrary, is a modern form of education that teaches students to acquire skills and knowledge to adapt to the modern state and mainstream Han culture. In the past, Nianjing itself seemed to satisfy the spiritual needs of Muslim Hui families, since the living skills of farming and sedentary pastoralism could be passed down through families; but nowadays when poverty is persistent,
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Nianjing has become limited in meeting the needs of Muslim Hui society. Skills that were used for making a living are no longer suitable for tackling challenges that have emerged from globalization and the knowledge economy that “demands a large portion of the workforce with a university education and with access to lifelong learning opportunities” (Brown, Lauder, & Ashton, 2008, p. 135). For example, migrant workers who used to be physical laborers need technical and specialized skills to compete in an increasingly competitive job market. Nianshu became an option for promoting the economic development of the Hui, and Nianjing is sometimes seen as holding the Muslim Hui back in terms of development due to its traditional teachings. In the meantime, the concept of Nianjing goes beyond solely referring to religious education: it also includes teachings of ethnic Hui culture, as Hui are also members of an ethnic group (Li & Wang, 2003).
The relationship between Nianjing and Nianshu also carries new interpretations. According to Li and Wang (2003), Nianshu is newly advocated among Muslim Hui to be essential to preserving religion because cultural knowledge gained through Nianshu could help better understand religion during Nianjing. It is also regarded as a mechanism to educate Muslim Hui talents who play the critical role of developing the Hui group and its society. Furthermore, Nianshu also leads to material prosperity, with which Muslim Hui would become stronger as individuals and as an ethnic group while maintaining the practice of Nianjing. With Nianshu, the ethnic Hui group would possess its religious leaders and personnel as well as the talented in all occupations, including teachers, engineers, doctors, and businessmen, etc.
However, as both the government and some Muslim Hui strive to integrate Nianjing and Niangshu, certain conflicts remain unsolved. Many Muslim Hui families have not positively recognized the value of Nianshu since the early 1980s. Seeing no children make it to college in the 1980s and an approximate 15% graduation rate among Muslim Hui in the mid1990s, majority of local Muslim Hui would rather be migrant workers at earlier age to earn extra money than wait to graduate for potential unemployment. Muslim Hui parents’ long-term preference for Nianjing over Nianshu also contributes to students’ lack of interest in state schooling (Lin, 2007). One of the reasons for this preference is that they are afraid of their children being assimilated into the Han culture if they are educated in state schooling. Muslim Hui students, similarly, feel unmotivated to study in a secular learning environment with which they are unfamiliar
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MUSLIM HUI STUDENTS’ DILEMMAS BETWEEN NIANSHU
and in which they often struggle; and they tend to drop out of schooling before completing compulsory education. In addition, the quality of state schooling remains relatively low for various reasons. Unequal distribution of educational resources across the region has caused schools in remote rural areas difficulty in operating; irrelevant curricula and inadequate teachers and administrators make state schooling itself meaningless (UNICEF, 2012); and there is a shortage of high-quality teachers to maintain regular teaching tasks. Furthermore, the majority of good elementary-school teachers are concentrated in schools located in the counties or larger townships, and very few teachers are willing to go to mountainous villages to teach students who need help the most. Even in the case when some teachers are initially sent by the local government to remote villages, they usually leave the villages after a year or two and seek teaching opportunities in the townships or countries with higher pay. This leaves elementary schools in mountainous villages with unqualified teachers, and these schools need substitutes to run who may be recruited from local farmers with only a few years of schooling. Nianshu, in this sense, is not as appealing as Nianjing. Comparatively, financial resources donated from domestic and overseas individuals and organizations have been increased with the goal of improving the quality of Jingtang education and private Chinese–Arabic schools, which attracts Muslim Hui parents to choose Nianjing over Nianshu for their children.
aBout tHis Book
Intrigued by persistent poverty in Xihaigu, the promised value of state schooling as a key to alleviating poverty, and the dilemmatic choice between Nianjing and Nianshu, I set out in this book to discuss the rural appropriation and implementation of state schooling and its impact on the lives of Muslim Hui students in Xihaigu, as they encounter changing rural dynamics, fight against poverty, and try to maintain their multiple identities. It situates rural Muslim Hui students’ identities at the center of analysis and reveals their struggles and challenges in responding to compulsory education. It illustrates how state schooling is practiced in a rural, Muslim Hui–concentrated region and is lived everyday through routinized pedagogical practices and administrative actions. Most importantly, in the voices of local Muslim Hui, it explores parents’ divergent views of state schooling and compulsory education and how these divergent views affect Muslim Hui students’ ability to exercise their power to participate
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in school activities, whether they resist, struggle, or straddle between secularity and ethnoreligiosity. By revealing the struggles and challenges Muslim Hui students experience and strive to negotiate through state schooling, this book uncovers multiple factors contributing to low attendance and school completion rates from the perspectives of rural Muslim Hui. It also attempts to problematize the relationship between state schooling and Muslim Hui culture, and incorporates rurality, poverty, and ethnoreligiosity into discussions of the impacts of state schooling as it is understood and interpreted by teachers, parents, and students as a poverty alleviator.
This book is based on fieldwork I conducted from early September 2012 to mid-May 2013 with a total of seven months at a local middle school in Xiji County, Xihaigu region in the Southern Mountainous areas in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, including fall semester, which lasted from September 10, 2012 to January 5, 2013, and spring semester, which lasted from February 21, 2013 to July 1, 2013. Specifically, I spent most of my time at Prosperity Middle School in Xiji County, one of the most populous counties in Ningxia. I used critical ethnography as a research method considering my epistemological and ontological assumptions that power relations are involved in constructing the lives of Muslim Hui students. While traditional ethnography has been criticized for its neutrality in describing human societies and cultures and its inattention to social structure constraints on human actors, critical ethnography seeks to discover the dialectical relationship between “social structure” and “human agency” and reveals individual actors’ exercises of power in negotiating with dominance and repression in a given society (Anderson, 1989). In this book, I not only examine how policies of compulsory education are implemented in a rural, ethnic Muslim Hui–dominant region, together with changing views of state schooling among local Muslim Hui, but also describe the nuances and interactions that occurred in students’ daily lives and use ethnography to uncover the process of cultural production in schools initiated by students (Masemann, 1982). Particularly through “critical” ethnography, I observed the filial, rural, and ethnoreligious identities that students negotiated in schools while they exercised agentic power to construct a school life of their own by questioning, challenging, and believing in required compulsory education as a path to prosperity and changed destinies. In addition, I sought to include my subjectivity and positionality in revealing the educational journeys of Muslim Hui students and actively reflect on my position in affecting students’ responses and
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
reactions to my presence. Through these reflections, my interpretations of Muslim Hui students’ educational experiences were not based on my presumptions but were commonly practiced by participants (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000).
I chose to study the Muslim Hui students at Prosperity Middle School in Xiji County based on two considerations. First, I wanted to select a school site with a large Muslim Hui population so that I could observe how Muslim Hui students responded to compulsory education by constructing and negotiating multiple identities. Ningxia is the only Hui autonomous region in China and has one of the largest concentrated Muslim Hui populations in the country. Within Ningxia, Xiji County has one of the most concentrated Muslim Hui populations. Second, I wanted to examine the relationships between multiple identities and the academic engagement and performance of Muslim Hui students in state-run schools. The low completion rate of compulsory education in Ningxia hints that there are challenges and difficulties that Muslim Hui students face in engaging in state schooling and in maintaining academic performance to the educational standards. According to Xu and Luo (2012), the rate was 61.3% from 2003 to 2006 in comparison to a national completion rate of 76.6% in 2002 and is second to the lowest in the nation.
In order to access the research site, I developed relationships with many local Muslim Hui, as we shared our Islamic belief and believe in brotherhood and sisterhood, as well as reciprocal treatment to each other, including local government officials, school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Through these relationships, I gained their trust, which facilitated my fieldwork that later went beyond the school environment to include visits to some local communities and participation in local activities. During my seven-month fieldwork, I was treated as not only a respectful researcher, but also a kind Muslim Hui sister who wanted to help brothers and sisters to improve life in the poorest region of China. Another important component of accessing the research site was learning the local dialect. Xihaigu is located in the northern part of China, and a few local dialects are similar to rather than distinctive from standard Mandarin Chinese (Gladney, 1991). These dialects are heavily influenced by dialects spoken in adjacent provinces, because the majority of local people immigrated from the nearby provinces. However, different from the dialects in the provinces, the dialects in Xihaigu also integrate transliteration of Islamic words and phrases that are used to describe religious practices and
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express beliefs. Though variations exist across different Muslim sects in the local area depending on their geographic origins, the differences are small. The complexity of local dialects posed a challenge for me to communicate with local people. Since a person who speaks Mandarin Chinese can be seen as being arrogant, almost all Muslim Hui students communicate in dialect in school even though Mandarin Chinese is required in the classroom. In some occasions, classroom instructions need to be given in dialect to be more effective, as some students do not understand Mandarin Chinese. Teachers also feel comfortable speaking the local dialect in some teaching activities and in most non-teaching interactions, though they understand Mandarin Chinese. Older Muslim Hui generations, such as students’ parents and grandparents, do not understand Mandarin Chinese at all, and they sometime do not allow their children to speak Mandarin Chinese at home. Therefore, I spent a month and half learning the dialect to the extent that I could understand it. I conversed with teachers, attended students’ daily activities, chatted with students, and constantly asked questions about certain dialect words and how words were used differently in the local area.
When my fieldwork was deepened after getting to know the dialect and more about students, I had opportunities to speak with Muslim Hui parents, through whom I was exposed to the local dialect at a deeper level, from needing students to be my interpreters to being able to respond to questions. My grasp of the local dialect significantly helped with my interviews and transcription of interview notes. In the meantime, I had gained teachers’ acceptance and students’ recognition. Teachers would share their teaching stories with me, and students would greet and chat with me and welcome me to join their daily activities. I was further assigned to be an “Assistant to the Head Teacher” in one of the classes and started participant observations. I was also given responsibility of conducting class meetings and holding an evening section to teach academically laggedbehind students.
In addition, identifying key informants was critical to my study. I chose eighth graders as the main participants of my study, as they constituted the most dynamic group in school. The key informants were chosen based on backgrounds and the different roles each student exhibited in class, including leaders, followers, good performers, academic models, strugglers, pranksters, jokers, and so forth. All selected key informants represented various genders, ages, family situations, academic performance, location
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BOOK
ABOUT THIS
