Questioning Huntington, Gladney cited several Hui folklore of genesis to demonstrate its syncretism with Han culture.p108 the Structuralism characteristic of Han-Hui coexistence: "Most Han ancestral halls have covered corridors...the absence of corridors is the one feature that differentiates their hall from most other Han lineage halls"p115. Most Hui in south never practice Islam, but they practice ancestor worship, but they never offer pork to ancestor. Han misunderstand pork taboo, take pig as Hui's ancestor, is not total ignorance, pork has actually become the symbolic distinction of Hui. "She minority illustrate their belief that they are descended from the union of a dog and human. Many of their ritual garments contain totemic representations of the dog. this is also present among many southeast Asian groups including Yao. It is not surprising that many such ethnic stories thought derisive and offensive to Hui ancestry should originate in this area"p116
"It is now popular to be Canonese and Shanghainese in China, and a resurgence of local power-bases, often drawn along cultural fault lines, should give Huntington pause: not only was he wrong about Muslim homogeneity, but he is misinformed about Confucian continuity as well"p117. "A final story(eat Hui food, no need to listen to Hui words) reminds us that Hui and other minority communities can exist for centries without being taken seriously by the state that rules them or the scholars who study them"p118
Gonbei and Sufi: "Instead the consideration of whether the Hui are really Muslim or merely inheritors of a cultural tradition. I propose to examine one important area of interest to Hui communities. Of critical importance to Hui are the lore and events surrounding various tombs and shrines in many communities. The activities and discourse surrounding these tombs reveal much about current Hui concerns and identity in China."p121 Gonbei is to trace common lineage and their orthodox as descend of foreign Muslim. "the tombs are meaningful because they concretely demonstrate the genealogical bond between these Hui communities and their foreign ancestors, validating their claim to ethnic minority...Assurance of the authority of their Sufi order is critical to their identity as Hui Muslims who see themselves as descended from a decidedly Islamic heritage"p147. However, similarity with Han graves are also salient: fengshui concern, the fortune bringing function of the tombs. Gonbei in Sufi order functions as symbolizatio of hierarchy. Symbolize the lieanage from Muhammod to local ahong. "if one cannot obtain favor through Quranic learning, one can always attempt to use the backdoor by patronizing a local saint's tomb"p146.
Seems like questioning the rigidity of nation is quite popular today. Gladney has intellectually inherited Appadurai and Prasenjit. He argues, identity is relational, as Evans-Pritchard did in Nuer. "When A and B encounter a higher level of opposition, D, they form C, moving a node up the scale to form higher-level relations...while this scheme is binary, it's always constructed in a field of social relation, depending on their interaction with D...these alterior relations are best perceived as dialogical rather than dialectical(means there isn't certain direction)"p190. Hui from different places are different, but they could form an alliance when Han comes, but they can also ally with Han agains other Hui. "For the Hui, a gneralized notion of descent from foreign muslim ancestors is importatn for contemporary identity. For Khazak, nomadism is a distant memory they look in ethnic nostalgia, despite pastrolism passed away in middle asia and altered form in China.p198 For the Uyghur, knowledge of genealogy seems to be important only as it relates to the land."p199 "Without Russian and US threat to China's sovereignty, lower identities may increasingly come into play, evidenced by increasing southern nationalism"p202. "Hui hybridity argues, there is no pure nation, ethnicity, or race that can claim state power on that basis alone"p203. At last, Gladney cited Zhuangzi from Heaven and Earth lecture: "if there is no other then we do not have a self, if there is no self, then we do not have anything to grasp".
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