Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

Another interesting point is the perceived relationship of
the Dungans to the Hui nationality of China. While in Frunze, we
had the opportunity to spend an evening with a Dungan man, Mr.
Zhang, from the Kirghiz Academy of Social Sciences. Mr. Zhang is
in his early forties. His great-grandparents migrated from
Xinjiang to Russia in 1882. When we asked him, he described the
nature of the Dungan-Hui relationship for us in the following
way: 'We are Dungans ... our Hui Hui people live not only in the
Soviet Union but across the border in China as well." Mr. Zhang
then, (and presumably other Dungans, at least of his generation),
acknowledge a common ancestry with the Hui of China, and use the
term \Hui Huil as an alternate (if not primary) self-reference.
For this reason, an understanding of the ethnic origins of the
Dungans begins with a tracking of the origins of the Hui
nationality in China. The trail leads us far from Mr. Zhang and
~irghizstan, to the southeastern coastal cities of 7th century
China.
651 a.d., the second year of the reign of Tang Gao Zong
( &*), is cited as the year that Islam was formally introduced
into China (Ma 1986:182). It was during this period, the middle
of the 7th century, that considerable numbers of Arab and Persian
merchants came by ship to China from the Persian Gulf (3).
Specializing in international trade of exotic commodities such as
herbs, rhinoceros horns, elephant tusks and gems, these foreign
merchants began to take up residence in southern China's busy
commercial ports. Their first settlements were in Guangzhou (4).
Later settlements were formed in Yangzhou, Quanzhou and Hangzhou
(Bai, et a1 1964:6).
Over the centuries, these so-called .\ foreign guests ( $ )
or \native-born foreign guests1 ( 2 ) adopted
monosyllabic surnames that could be wrltten with Chinese
characters (5). There was also a considerable amount of
intermarriage with the local Chinese, so that by the 12th century
these communities had much assimilated into Chinese culture.
Throughout this long period of assimilation, however, these
people retained their Islamic religion and a distinctive
religious culture. They built mosques and maintained separate
graveyards, in which tombstones were inscribed in Arabic script
(Bai, et a1 1964: 6) .
These 'foreign guests1, however, are only one minor source
of the Hui nationality as we know it today. The term \HuiV does
not even appear as a name for-these southern communities until
several centuries later under the influence of the name of
peoples then living in the north--the major source of today's Hui
nationality (6) .