The
Hui people (,
Xiao'erjing: حُوِ ذَو ) are a
Chinese ethnic group, typically distinguished by their practice of
Islam.
Hui is the abbreviation of the full name Huihui "回回", which is the diminutive form of HuiE "
回纥 /
回鶻". They form one of the
56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the
People's Republic of China. They are concentrated in
Northwestern China (
Ningxia,
Gansu,
Qinghai,
Xinjiang), but communities exist across the country, e.g.
Beijing,
Inner Mongolia,
Hebei,
Yunnan, etc. Most Hui are similar in culture to
Han Chinese with the exception that they practice
Islam, and have some distinctive cultural characteristics as a result. For example, as Muslims, they follow
Islamic dietary laws and reject the consumption of pork, the most common meat consumed in
Chinese culture, and have also given rise to their variation of
Chinese cuisine,
Chinese Islamic cuisine and
Muslim Chinese martial arts. Their mode of dress also differs only in that men wear white caps and women wear
headscarves or (occasionally)
veils, as is the case in most
Islamic cultures. (
The definition of Hui after 1949 does not include ethnic groups such as the
Uyghur, who live in the Mainland China and also practice Islam.
The Hui people are mixed blood. Their ancestors include Central Asian, Persian, Han Chinese, and Mongols. In ancient China, e.g. Tang and Yuan Dynasty, lots of people from Central Asian and Persia came to trade or pursue political careers. In the following nearly one thousand years, they gradually mixed with Mongols and Han Chinese, and the Hui people were formed. Because the Hui people have lived in China for so many years, they haven't retained Arabic and Central Asian languages, instead becoming Chinese speakers.
Apart from some minor characteristics, the majority of Hui people look much like Han Chinese, especially in eastern China.
Note that prior to 1949, the definition of Hui referred to Chinese Muslim with Turkic ancestry which later extended to non-Turkic Muslim such as Southern Chinese Muslim who were predominantly of Malay and Arabic origin. Included among the Hui in Chinese census statistics (and not officially recognized as a separate ethnic group) are several thousand
Utsuls in southern Hainan province, who speak an Austronesian language (
Tsat) related to that of the
Cham Muslim minority of Vietnam, and who are said to be descended from Chams who migrated to
Hainan.
A traditional
Chinese term for Islam is 回教 (
pinyin:
Huíjiào, literally "the religion of the Hui"), though today it is mainly in use in Singapore, Taiwan, and other overseas Chinese communities; the most prevalent term within the PRC is the
transliteration 伊斯蘭教 (pinyin:
'Yīsīlán jiào, literally "Islam religion").
Etymology
Under the aegis of the
Communist Party in the 1930s the term Hui was defined to indicate only
Sinophone Muslims. In 1941, this was clarified by a Communist Party committee comprising ethnic policy researchers in a treatise entitled "On the question of Huihui Ethnicity" (Huihui minzu wenti). This treatise defined the characteristics of the Hui nationality as follows: the Hui or Huihui constitute an ethnic group associated with, but not defined by, the
Islamic religion and they are descended primarily from Muslims who migrated to China during the Mongol-founded Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), as distinct from the
Uyghur and other Turkic-speaking ethnic groups in
Xinjiang. The Nationalist government had recognised all Muslims as one of "the five peoples"—alongside the
Manchus,
Mongols,
Tibetans and
Han Chinese—that constituted the
Republic of China. The new Communist interpretation of Chinese Muslim ethnicity marked a clear departure from the ethno-religious policies of the Nationalists, and had emerged as a result of the pragmatic application of Stalinist ethnic theory to the conditions of the Chinese revolution.
Hui people everywhere are referred to by Central Asian Turks and Tajiks as
Dungans. In its population censuses, the Soviet Union also identified Chinese Muslims as "Dungans" (дунгане) and recorded them as located mainly in Kyrgyzstan, southern Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. In the Russian census of 2002, a total of 800 Dungans were enumerated. In
Thailand Chinese Muslims are referred to as
Chin Ho, in
Myanmar and
Yunnan Province, as
Panthay.
History
Origins
Hui people praying in a mosque in China
The Hui Chinese have diverse origins. Some in the southeast coast are descended from
Arab and
Persian Muslim traders who settled in China and gradually intermarried and assimilated to the surrounding population, keeping only their distinctive religion. A totally different explanation is available for the
Mandarin Chinese-speaking
Yunnan and Northern Huis, whose ethnogenesis might be a result of the convergence of large number of
Mongol,
Turkic,
Iranian or other
Central Asian settlers in these regions who formed the dominant stratum in the Mongol-founded
Yuan Dynasty. However, even
Guangdong Muslims, of the southeastern coast, typically resemble northern Asians much more so than their typical
Guangdong neighbours.
It was documented that a proportion of these nomad or military ethnic groups were originally
Nestorian Christians many of whom later converted to Islam, while under the sinicizing pressures of the
Ming and
Qing states.
This explains the ethnonym "Hui," in close affinity with that of "Uyghur," albeit Sinicized and contradistinctive from "Uyghur" in usage. The ethnonym "Hui," though for a long time used as an
umbrella term (at least since Qing) to designate Muslim Chinese speakers everywhere and Muslims in general (for example, a Qing Chinese might describe a Uyghur as a "Chantou" who practiced the "Hui" religion), was not used in the Southeast as much as "
Qīngzhēn", a term still in common use today, especially for Muslim (Hui) eating establishments and for
mosques (
qīngzhēn sì in
Mandarin).
An old Hui man.
Southeastern Muslims also have a much longer tradition of synthesizing Confucian teachings with the
Sharia and
Qur'anic teachings, and were reported to have been contributing to the Confucian officialdom since the
Tang period. Among the Northern Hui, on the other hand, there are strong influences of Central Asian
Sufi schools such as Kubrawiyya, Qadiriyya,
Naqshbandiyya (
Khufiyya and
Jahriyya) etc. mostly of the
Hanafi Madhhab (whereas among the Southeastern communities the
Shafi'i Madhhab is more of the norm). Before the "
Ihwani" movement, a Chinese variant of the
Salafi movement, Northern Hui Sufis were very fond of synthesizing
Taoist teachings and
martial arts practices with Sufi philosophy.
In early modern times, villages in Northern Chinese Hui areas still bore labels like "Blue-cap Huihui," "Black-cap Huihui," and "White-cap Huihui," betraying their possible Christian, Judaic and Muslim origins, even though the religious practices among North China Hui by then were by and large Islamic. Hui is also used as a catch-all grouping for Islamic Chinese who are not classified under another ethnic group.
Muslim Revolts
During the mid-nineteenth century, a series of civil wars broke out throughout China by various ethnic-lingual groups against the ruling Manchu-Mongol-Han Bannerman and Han Confucians elites. These include the Taiping Rebellion in Southern China (whose leaders were Evangelical Christians of ethnic
Han Chinese Hakka and
Zhuang background), the
Muslims Rebellion in Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia in Northwestern China and Yuannan, and the
Miao people Revolt in Hunan and Guizhou. These revolts were supported by European Powers at the beginning but eventually put down by the Manchu government. The Donggan People were descendants of the Muslim rebels who fled to Russia after the rebellion were suppressed by the joint force of Hunan Army led by
Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠) with support from local Hui elites.
Population loss during these revolts was staggering. Some have estimated that the population loss in Shaanxi between 1862 and 1879 was as high as 6,220,000, about 44.6% of the original population before the war, of which 5.2 million was due to war. For the Hui, the figure may have been as high as 1.55 million. In 1990, there were only 132,000 Hui in Shaanxi.
Panthays
Panthays form a group of Chinese Muslims in
Burma. Some people refer to Panthays as the oldest group of Chinese Muslims in Burma. However, because of intermixing and cultural diffusion the Panthays are not as distinct a group as there once were.
Dungans
Dungan (; ) is a term used in territories of the former
Soviet Union and in
Xinjiang to refer to Chinese-speaking Muslim people. In the censuses of Russia and the former Soviet Central Asia, the Hui are enumerated separately from Chinese, and are labelled as Dungans. In both China and the former Soviet republics where they reside, however, members of this ethnic group call
themselves Lao Huihui or Zhongyuanren, not Dungans. Zhongyuan
中原, literally means "The Central Plain" is the historical name of
Shaanxi and
Henan provinces. Most Dungans living in former Soviet Union are descendants of Hui people from Gansu and Shaanxi.
Surnames
These are some common surnames used by the Hui ethnic group:
Prominent Hui
- Bai Shouyi (白壽彝), prominent Chinese historian and ethnologist
- Hai Feng (海峰), a professor of Xinjiang University and an author of a book on Dungan language
- Li Zhi (李贄), a famous Confucian philosopher in Ming Dynasty, would perhaps be considered a Hui if he lived today because of some his ancestors being Persian Muslims.
- Ma Dexin (马德新), Islamic scholar in Yunnan
- Zheng He (鄭和), a Semu Muslim, probably the most famous Muslim in Chinese history, would perhaps be considered a Hui if he lived today
Related group names
- Utsul (in Hainan Island; speakers of a Malayo-Polynesian language, but officially classified by the Chinese government as Hui)
See also
