My name is Fatimah Na. I am the youngest daughter in the family and I have two older sisters. My father is a farmer and my mother is an administrator for a Han company. I live in the Na homestead village of Yinchuan, the capital city of Ningxia province; one of the largest Hui populated Autonomous Regions.
The Hui is one of the largest Muslim communities and the third largest of China’s 55 recognized minority nationalities. To identify the Hui communities across China, it is not as simple as looking at a common geographic area, practice, language or identity because not every Hui shares them. As mentioned by Gladney, “it is Islam, or the memory of it, that is the only thing that all Hui have in common, and they are the sole minority in China to share only a religious identity ( Dislocating China, 287).” The way we identify ourselves is by distinguishing what we do differently from the Han, although not every Hui believes in Islam but everyone follows the traditions passed on from their parents.
I am a Hui and I prefer referring myself as Hui Min or Hui Zu meaning Hui nationality or Yisilan jiao meaning Islam but never ever call me Hui jiao, which refers to Hui religion. In the Hui community, we believe in the “world religion of Islam and therefore we are Muslims in faith (Gladney, China's Minority Cultures 30).” We are only members of the Islam religion and not the Hui religion disciples.
One very important tradition that all Hui in China follow is the qing zhen lifestyle. This practice symbolizes our identity and distinguishes us from the Han and other Muslim minorities. Since I was a child, my parents would be very strict about living a qing zhen lifestyle. The term qing zhen refers to ‘pure and true’ and it is “through attention to dietary restrictions” that we can achieve such Islamic purity (Gladney, China's
Minority Cultures 57). For such purposes, we do not eat pork. My parents would always remind to:
Not drink from the same cup or eat with the utensils that formerly may have been used by someone who had eaten pork; the residue might still be on the cup, no matter how often or how well it had been used (Gladney, China's Minority Cultures 25).
I respect and obey what my parents tell me to do and I have never tasted pork in the 17 years of my life. I would be teased by a few of my Han friends occasionally but no matter what happened, I refused to eat pork.
