Language, Culture, and Identity among Minority Students in China
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Language, Culture, and Identity among Minority Students in China

The Case of the Hui

Yuxiang Wang

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Language, Culture, and Identity among Minority Students in China

The Case of the Hui

Yuxiang Wang

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About This Book

This book explores Hui (one of the Muslim minority groups in China) students' lived experiences in an elementary school in central P. R. China from the perspectives of philosophical foundations of education and the sociology of education, the impact of their experiences on their identity construction, and what schooling means to Hui students. The book describes a vivid picture of how the Hui construct their own identities in the public school setting, and how the state curricula, teachers, and parents play roles in student identity construction. The objectives of the book are to discover factors that impact Hui students' identity construction and have caused Hui students to know little about their own culture and language; and to explore what should be done to help teachers, administrators, and policy makers appreciate minority culture and include minority culture and knowledge in school curriculum in order to meet the needs of Hui students.
The book provides historical, policy, and curricular contexts for readers to understand Hui students' experiences in central China, and discusses the cultural differences between Han and Hui from a philosophical level. The book uses postcolonial theory to critique the assimilative nature of school education, the construction of Hui students' identity from Han ideology, and the cultural hegemony of the mainstream Han group. It also discusses curriculum reconceptualization both in China and globally, and the possibility of multicultural education in China.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2013
ISBN
9781135068370

1 Introduction

There are 55 ethnic minorities, which represent approximately 130 million people, in the People’s Republic of China (PRC); the Han, which comprises 90 percent of China’s population of about 1.3 billion, is the dominant majority (National Minority Policies and Its Practice in China, 2004). Almost half of China’s territory is occupied by minority groups; they inhabit the inner border regions where there are grasslands, deserts, or mountains (Veeck, Pannell, Smith, & Huang, 2007). Tibetans and Uyghurs constitute a majority in the Tibet Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, respectively, in Western China. Fifty-three minority groups have their own spoken languages; Manchu and Hui speak Mandarin Chinese (Zuo, 2007). There are about 120 mother tongues in minority regions (Sun, 2004), among which only 30 minority languages have written scripts and 20 languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers (Zuo, 2007). Mandarin Chinese is the official language.
Most populations of Muslims live in Northwestern China: Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, and Shaanxi; they are Hui, Uyghurs, Tartars, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Salar, Dongxiang, and Bonan (Lynn, 2004), which are 10 of the 55 minority groups in China, and the population of the 10 minority groups accounts for 48 percent of the Muslim in China (National Bureau of Statistics, 2001). The total Hui population in China is 9,816,805. Hui is the third largest minority group in China. Although most of the Hui people reside in Northwestern China, the rest of the Hui people are scattered among 90 percent of the cities and townships in Central and Eastern China (Israeli, 2002; Lynn, 2004). In each city and township where Hui people reside, they stay together and form a Hui residential area, where a mosque is usually built, around which Hui people live. The Hui people’s living patterns can be summarized as “widely scattered but locally concentrated around the mosque” (X. Yang, 2010). There is one Hui autonomous region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and there are Hui autonomous prefectures, townships, and villages nationwide. In Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, there are 1,862,474 Hui people, which constitutes almost 19 percent of the total Hui population. There are two autonomous prefectures: one is Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu Province, and the other
Table 1.1 Hui Populations in Each Province in China
Map 1.1 Map of China
Map 1.1 Map of China
is Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Xingjiang; the former has a Hui population of 526,746, and the latter has a Hui population of 173,563, which account for 5.37 percent and 1.77 percent of the total Hui population, respectively (Zhongguo Geji Huizu Zizhiquyu Renkou Qinkuang, 2008). There are 11 autonomous Hui Counties: four in Qinghai Province; two in Hebei Province; two in Yunnan Province; and one in Guizhou Province, Gansu Province, and Xingjiang, respectively. There are 140 Hui Autonomous Townships: 37 in Northwestern China, 38 in Southwestern China, 27 in North China, five in Northeastern China, and 31 in South China (W. Yang, 2009). About 54 percent of the Hui Autonomous Townships are located in Central and Eastern China. The above figures demonstrate that part of the Hui population is scattered among cities and townships in Central and Eastern China even though most Hui live in Northeastern China.
China is divided into three regions based on geological and economic factors. They are the Eastern region, the Central region, and the Western region. In the Eastern region, there are 10 provinces or cities; all are coastal provinces or cities except for Beijing, which is an inland city and the capital of China. In this region, the Hui population accounts for 19.93 percent of the total Hui population nationwide. The nine in-land provinces in the Central region are neighbors to the Eastern provinces and cities. The Hui population in Central region comprises 19.33 percent of the total Hui population nationwide. In the Western region, there are 12 provinces or autonomous regions. The Hui population there constitutes 60.74 percent of the total Hui population nationwide (see Table 1.1 and Map 1.1).

Why Focus on Hui Students in Central China?

After the implementation of China’s Open-Door Policy in 1979, a large Hui population moved to Central and Eastern China for better job opportunities. Most of the populations stayed in large cities. For example, Hui populations in 1990 in Shanghai, Qingdao, Suzhou, and Hangzhou were 22,000; 3,200; 3,700; and 4,000, respectively; in 2007, those numbers increased to 153,000; 18,000; 33,000; and 12,000, respectively (X. Yang, 2010). The newly arrived Hui populations enriched the Hui community in Central and Eastern China (X. Yang, 2010). Meanwhile, X. Yang finds that newly-moved-in Western Hui people also created conflicts and misunderstanding because of their different religious practices, dialects, and economic development. The Hui in the Western region complain that the Hui in the Eastern regions have changed because the Hui in the Eastern region have been Sinicized or assimilated (X. Yang, 2010). Furthermore, even though Hui people have lived in cities for many years, local Han residents in cities still regard Hui people as outsiders because of their different beliefs, religions, and dietary traditions (Xiong, 1993).
There are about 337,521 Hui and 200 mosques in Anhui Province. Most of the Hui population in Anhui province resides in Northern Anhui, and the rest live in central and southern parts of Anhui Province (Mu & J. Wang, 1988). There are eight Hui Autonomous Townships in Anhui Province. There is one Hui and Manchu Autonomous Township in the county where I conducted my research, which is located at the central part of Anhui Province.
Some research focused on the Hui people’s experiences in Northwestern China has been done (Gladney, 1999, 2004; Y. Sun, W. Yu, & Ye, 2010; Yi, 2008). Y. Sun, W. Yu, and Ye (2011) examine the factors that caused Hui girls to drop out of school early in a Hui residential area in Qinghai Province. They find that Hui girls dropped out of school because of their families’ shortage of manpower in the farmlands, boring curricula and teaching for exams in school, and the local Hui parents’ discouragement of girls’ education. Yi (2008) studies the effect of the exclusion of ethnic culture and knowledge and the dominance of mainstream Han ideology in state education on Tibetan and Hui students’ social mobility and discusses the importance of including minority students’ culture in school curriculum to help them succeed in school and in the future. Gladney (2004) finds that the Hui school in Niujie Street in Beijing uses the same curriculum as the Han school does, except that pork is not served in the cafeteria. Gillette (2000) has a conversation with a university graduate, who is a Huihui in the Hui residential area in Xi’an city. Gillette finds that the young Hui man complained that Hui parents concentrated on the small-scaled family business and paid little attention to their children’s school education, which became one of the reasons many Hui students dropped out of high school and joined the family business without going to college. Hui parents, on the other hand, argued that Hui schools in the Hui residential area did a poor job of educating their children because teachers in the schools did not care about Hui students. Some Hui parents sent their children to Han schools with high-quality teachers, better teaching facilities, and strict discipline. A Hui principal in one of the Hui schools complained that she did not receive enough monetary and personnel support and resources from the local government.
The scarce literature about Hui students, parents, and schools provides mixed findings. However, little research has been focused on the Hui students’ experience in Central and Eastern China. It is necessary to examine how their culture and knowledge are treated in school curricula and by teachers in classroom instruction and how their identity is constructed in school; likewise, there is a need to investigate the role of schooling in Hui students’ lives. Postigloine (1999) argues that the inclusion of minority language, culture, and knowledge in school curricula plays an important role in constructing minority students’ identity. In his study of Tibetan students’ experiences in boarding school in Eastern China, Zhu (2007) finds that schooling, to Tibetan students, is a process of instilling the dominant Han ideology into Tibetan students because little Tibetan culture, knowledge, and history are included in school curricula. Zhu argues that Han teachers and boarding schools construct Tibetan students’ identity from the perspectives of the dominant Han group and the state.
The state discourses about minority groups tend to be romantic, harmonic, and happy; the following statements exemplify these values: “56 nationalities are a family,” “Minority groups live a happy life,” “Minority groups love the country” (Y. Wang & Phillion, 2010). These mainstream ideologies are also integrated in school textbooks, school curricula, and teachers’ classroom instruction. The state cultivates the state identity through knowledge selection, patriotic education, moral education, and teachers’ instillation of mainstream ideology through daily practice for the purpose of national unity and stability. Minority identity, however, is devalued through the exclusion of minority language, culture, and knowledge from school curricula; these elements are considered non-scientific, backward, or untrue. The mainstream Han group’s interpretation of minority language, culture, and knowledge and the mainstream construction of minority identity should be critically examined: why does the mainstream Han group construct the Hui students’ identity from the Han perspective? Why does the mainstream Han group interpret the Hui students’ culture and knowledge as non-scientific, backward, or untrue? Why do public schools reproduce the mainstream Han ideology?
In this age of globalization, Hui students’ cultural recognition and identity construction have to face the scrutiny of international organizations such as UNESCO and evaluation or critique from multicultural education theories (Kymlicka, 2007) because language rights are a basic human right and minority people have the rights to maintain their culture and construct their own identity (Banks, 2007; Taylor, 1992). Hui students have a right to maintain their culture and knowledge and construct their identity. The Hui people have lost their home language throughout history, and their identity has transformed from Muslims in China to Chinese Muslims (Israeli, 2002), which means that the Hui people have been assimilated into the mainstream Han society (Mackerras, 1994). There is an urgent need to study Hui students’ experience in school by examining their cultural recognition in school and at home and by analyzing their identity construction such as I have done in my study.

The Recent Development of Multiculturalism in the World

Although former French leader Nicolas Sarkozy in the summer of 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in October 2010, and British Prime Minister David Cameron in February 2011 said that multiculturalism had failed, London turmoil in August 2011 and the Oslo massacre in Norway in July 2011 have made European people and people around the world rethink multiculturalism in European countries (Russell, 2011). Russell points out that the Muslim population takes up 2 to 4 percent of the total population in most Western European countries and numbers about 16 million in the European Union, but policies in those Western European countries and in the European Union discriminate against Muslim people there. Muslim beliefs are not respected. The assimilation of Muslim groups and other minority groups is believed to be the effective way of converting minority groups into Christian culture in Europe. Anti-immigration and anti-Muslim practices and attitudes, and discrimination against minority groups, are supported by some mainstream Europeans (Marquand, 2011; Russell, 2011). It is the time for European politicians, policy makers, and educators to examine their anti-immigration and anti-Muslim speeches and policies, help people respect different cultures and languages, and appreciate different identities so that racial hatred and racial discrimination may be avoided or diminished.
The independence movements of Tibetans and Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang in China demonstrate the struggles of those minority groups for language, culture, identity, and human rights. Tibetan uprisings in the 1950s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s (Mackerras, 1994; Magee, 2008), and Uyghur Muslims’ uprisings in the 1950s, 1980s, and 1990s (Israeli, 2002) are examples of the conflicts between the Han group’s hegemonic policies, ideologies, and assimilation practices on one hand and the minority groups’ attempts to maintain their cultural identity on the other (Hall, 1990). These independence movements were suppressed by the Chinese government, which is controlled by the dominant group in China, the Han. In addition, the Chinese government tends to ignore minority groups’ rights when national interests are in conflict with these rights (Nelson, 2005; M. Zhou, 2004) because China focuses on promoting political stability and national unity (Wan, 2004). The exclusion of minority culture and knowledge from state school curricula causes minority students’ resistance to state schooling, which they demonstrate by dropping out of school; their parents resist as well through sending their children to temple or mosque to receive literacy education (Postigloine, 1999; Qian, 2007).
In Canada, multiculturalism is written into law. The Canadian Multiculturalism Act (1988) was established “to preserve and enhance the multicultural heritage of Canadians while working to achieve the equality of all Canadians.” However, Crawford (1998) argues that multiculturalism in Canada does not diminish racism and discrimination. Mainstream media, for example, spread racism and discrimination against minority people in Canada. Minority people are misrepresented and interpreted from the mainstream perspective. Minority people are depicted as terrorists, criminals, and wrong-doers in media. In children’s movies and TV shows, children are misled by stereotypic images and misrepresentations. Cassin, Krawchenko, and VanderPlaat (2007) point out that “[r]acial discrimination has been observed in employment, housing, the justice system, and the media includes both institutional and subtle forms of racism” (p. 4). The Canadian Council for Refugees (2000) reports that “racism and discrimination are part of Canadian reality” (p. 1) and that racism and discrimination exist not only on an individual basis but also in refugee and immigration policies. The Canadian Council for Refugees continues to report that “we rarely see the federal and provincial governments taking a leadership role in naming and combating racism in Canada.” Therefore, multicultural education has a long way to go to help people respect different cultures, appreciate different worldviews, and build a democratic and multicultural society with social justice. Beairsto and Carrigan (2004) argue:
Multicultural education should be a process that affirms the pluralism of students and communities, promotes and exemplifies the Canadian multicultural ideal, and builds the knowledge, skills and behaviors necessary for students to be personally ful...

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