Ethnic Evolvement in a South Fujian Hui Community

Baiqi is a place recognized in Fujian, a coastal province in south China, for its Hui ethnicity. However, the ethnic identity of its citizens was not really established until recent decades. As scholars have noted, though the Hui identity in south Fujian has been constructed under a preferential policy carried out by the state, it was impossible for it to have come into existence without its social and historical resources (Gladney 1991, 1998; Fan 2001a, 2001b: 309-33). In the past, Muslim identity was a matter of dispute within the Guo surname group. This name connotes Hui ethnicity today. The argument, more often than not, was driven by outside Muslim agencies, despite the fact that the Guo had retained some of the Islamic legacy of their Muslim ancestors. The Guo were eventually listed as Hui, one of 55 officially affirmed minority nationalities, in 1957, even though many Guo kinsmen had refused to be included as such when the government inquired into their ethnicity in 1953 (FPA 1953a). In 1990 Baiqi was approved as an ethnic township (minzuxiang___), the only one for the Hui in Fujian. I found it interesting to note in my field research that the Guo are now concerned with the authenticity of their Hui ethnicity with regard to their Muslim past, yet downplay comparable claims of other local Hui groups. As an exercise in historical anthropology, I propose to investigate the Guo Hui’s Muslim history and how, in accordance with a changing socio-economic context, the locals have chosen to interpret this history. For a better understanding of the Guo’s new attitude with regard to their Muslim past, I shall give attention, in the first place, to the relevant geographical conditions. Even though I do not take it for granted that natural surroundings should be treated as a decisive factor in