http://www.charm.ru/coins/misc/soghdian-kaiyuan.shtml

And Soghdiana in modern time….. bears any traces of the Pre-Arab conquest Samarkand?

Again, the enterprise of Silk Road has more to do with erasing Islam than anything else imo.

(I personally know those people in the above video and yes, it is in Cantonese but 10 times better than anything else you can find on Web)

And most striking to me in the translation of Hou Han Shu is I was quite surprised the Han chroniclers held high regard of the Roman aka Da Qin. Compared to those they had close contact within the orbit of tribute-vesselship system in which China tried to retain itself as the rightful sovereign, Da Qin was written with praises,  their succession model (probably of the Republic era) was quite likened to the ideal of Yao and Shun (堯舜), or the non-bloodline transfer of the throne. Funny thing is Wang Mang(王莽) at that time used to same argument to force its short-lived coup d’etat upon the Han Dynasty. Uh oh, don’t tell me historical writing is about the past here~~~~

We cannot actually  establish one-on-one relationshipx between the names used in Chinese chronicles and the “actual” polities. Egypt is Haixi (海西) ﹖Eh……  I really think it is quite impossible to establish this relation with only a couple lines of description on the place.

《蘋果日報》

摸古蹟被阻　新疆官員惡妻打人

「真是豬狗不如！」「如此畜生給國家人民丟臉！」一名婦人日前到敦煌莫高窟遊覽時，因不甘被女講解員阻止觸摸逾千年歷史的西夏壁畫，竟命令隨行的兩名助手掌摑講解員，還連珠炮對她污言穢語。事件曝光後，引起網民公憤之餘，還對涉案的惡婦進行人肉搜索，原來她大有來頭──新疆建設兵團 12師 211團副團長陳偉夫人、 211團醫院書記于富琴。

「史上最牛的團長夫人莫高窟前醜陋的現形記」帖子昨日熱爆內地各大網站。本月 6日，著名旅遊景點莫高窟藏經洞裏，一位年約 50歲的中年婦突然伸手觸摸西夏壁畫，被一名 19歲的講解員上前制止，她大怒下離去。怎料她很快折返，並帶同兩名壯漢直走向該講解員面前，只見兩男打了講解員二記耳光，伴隨着耳光的是她那不堪入耳的 污言穢語。洞窟內一片死寂，所有遊客都被眼前這一幕嚇呆了。此時，受辱講解員早已泣不成聲。

驕橫跋扈的官太于富琴引起網民公憤。

「不就是小服務員嗎？」

幾名保安員見狀，將惡婦帶到辦公室問話，她竟反咬講解員打人，更令人感到可惡的是官階相當於副縣長的陳偉竟說：「不就是一個小服務員嗎？我們是有身份的人，幾分鐘的一個小事，你們不要把事情搞大了……」

由於有人報案，公安介入調查事件。惡婦向公安透露自己的身份，但經調查證實她的隨行人員打人後，她在公安陪同下到莫高窟向被打的女事主道歉，但理虧的她也只是敷衍幾句，草草了事，但就有人將她的惡行曝光。有網民慨嘆，新疆頻頻出事，與地方官員囂張的態度不無關係。

新疆生產建設兵團是上世紀 50年代初，中央政府一聲令下，解放軍駐新疆 10.5萬官兵集體就地轉業組建而成的，實行「軍政合一」的特殊組織，地位超然。

新浪網

Summary of  the above piece in translation:

Here is the story : the wife of one Xinjiang Construction Regiment Vice Commander went to Dunhuang on a tour.  Naturally they would visit the Buddhist cave like everyone else. In one of the thousand-years-old cave, this “lady” (I think “bitch” is the more appropriate word here) touched the statue and wanted to get a feel of it. It is not permitted to touch the work in almost every single museum in the world, and the tour guide did what she had to do — asked politely the ” lady” not to do it. The “lady” thought her right was infringed upon, and she slapped the tour guide, verbally abused her with profanities. And the little tour guide couldn’t do anything, but called the local security and police. Well, the police called the “lady”‘s husband, and you can imagine what happened: the vice commander of field told the police to fuck off, “I am too important for this and don’t stop this affair from looming” we were told. Local police then asked the “lady” to apologize to the tour guide. A couple brief remark and sorry, she got away — however someone put the matter on internet, it was exposed, and some of the people tracked down the “lady”, jeering her incivility of course.

Can you imagine what would happen  if the tour guide was a Uyghur instead?

Reading Wang Daiyu’s piece and I can’t help but feel sorry for those in our class with no background of Chinese Philosophy — Confucianism of course can be as remote as quantum mechanics but Lixue (理學) probably is even more annoying and disgusting.You really need to know something about Zhu Xi and Wang Yang Ming to understand why Wang Daiyu wanted to come up with his argument in this way. Zhu Xi and Wang Yang Ming sought to “metaphysicsize” Confucian ethics. They tried to build a metaphysical or epistemological foundation for the “rightful” actions of a person. Zhu Xi of the Song Dynasty talked about the importance of first understanding the nature (格物) and then refining oneself. Wang Yang Ming turned the whole argument upside down — he stressed the importance of practices, so that the three “hearts” (cognition, the knowledge of the mass and the virtuous understanding of saints) will be combined together. Actions and rightful practices occupied the central pieces of Wang Yang Ming and his school of philosophy, which dominated the whole East Asia since the Middle of the Ming to the modern era.

Well, after finishing the reading, in light of the above background, I am not sure if we can categorize Wang Daiyu’s thesis as “sufi”. I am more inclined to say, in a subtle way he actually wanted to Chinese metaphysicsize the basic tenets of Islam (albeit we know all the difference of the schools). In a country in which Shar’ia is not primary operatives of the society, the practices of the religion, in this sense, would need to be explained, either to the mass or the intelligentsia class. That’s why Wang Daiyu, under the Yang Ming School domination of the intellectual scene, would naturally follow the logic of Wang Yang Ming, and tried to establish the importance of practices as a way to achieve the understanding of the tawhid. And yes, the three “ones” ( real one, numerical one and body one ) bear some similarities compared to Sufism, but the driving force for this realization behind, I think is totally different.  In Sufisim, in poetry like Sa’di, the fana is an act of love and the tawhid is more like taken for granted in the first place already. The ‘ishq for God and the yearn for unity are a psychological impulse than a foundation for the religious practice; however in Wang Daiyu’s case, the emphasis of Tawhid to me is to interface mainstream Islam with an ethical practices under the framework of Chinese philosophy particularly Yang Ming school of Confucianism.  Wang Daiyu did not take the concept of Tawhid for granted like the case of the Sufi masters. Especially comparing AL Ghazzali’s notion of rationality incoherence, the starting point of Sufism is to brak through the intellectual cage of Hellenistic philosophy so to reach the “reality” of God in an interpretative and emotional way. And I do think think that’s why Wang Daiyu sought to do at the outset.

About the Great Mosque in Xi’an,  I have been there once three years ago. I really like the architecture and its splendid design. Funny thing is, in the central courtyard of the mosque, one can easily see myriads of imperial tablets as a homage of the Monarch (mainly Qing Manchurian) to the Mosque. Chinese on the top portion and Manchurian on the lower part, the tablets are all sheltered in Pavilions, one for each of those. And the side chambers of the Mosque are probably the most typical Chinese household one can find on TV or anything else. The central corridor cutting the courtyard into two halves, is called Wu Jian Ting (五間庭). It is probably a reference to the five pillars of faith or in Chinese Wu li (五禮) . We all know that the five pillars are Shadaha, Salat, Zakat, Ramadan and Hajj. I was there in early 2006, and it was Eid by the time. Goats were slaughtered and you can see blood pool in the mosque too. I was looking at one the stone tablet in one of the side chamber and it was vocalized Qur’an. I looked at it and thought, “wow, how on earth they did the cursive scripture like this?”.

The main hall of the mosque is not open to public, and when I arrived I overheard a discussion (no argument there fortunately) between a non-Muslim Chinese and the Muslim concierge of the mosque. They were talking about the feasibility of Shar’ia installment in the modern society. The concierge said, “Nah it was not very practical in the modern time” Hmm…. I stroke my chin and left a little smirk on face turning away from the two. And quite a number of bookstores around the mosque, and I went there and bought quite a number of good  Han Kitab in original text. It was pretty cool, but my parents waiting outside of the bookstores and the women shopkeepers in hijab were looking at each other in a… funny way…

Reading this chapter, that reminds me of the 1983 NHK(Japanese Public TV) documentary series on the Silk Road. By that time, I still remember pretty well that the Japanese were suddenly immersed themselves in a fervor of the Silk Road, following economic reform of PRC allowing tourism to enter the country’s westernmost areas. Drama series were made (I still remember the theme song) and a documentary series of 40+ episodes was made in a timespan of 5 years. The portrayal of the Silk Road in the series were very like Chapter 3 of the textbook — it is a route connecting two points of cultures. To a great extent the series has been devoted to the East Asian culture influence to the West, and a great deal of the materials is about the cultural exchange between the two points, and yet the people on the route is merely reflecting the cultural interest of the East. It is less about those people and their lives but more about themselves. It is not entirely unfair to say it is quite self-congratulatory.

Well, of course the Silk Road is about the cultural achievement of connecting the two cultural spheres of dominance in the two end of the Eastern Hemisphere.  But I can’t help but ask: is the Silk Road a route, or is it an organic chain of cultural spheres together, one affecting each other and even sometimes a domino effect?  The dichotomy of “center” and “periphery” is very funny here: as if we can put Bactria, Sassanid Persia, Transaxonia and else on a two-axis Cartesian coordinates, X axis is East Asian culture, and Y “the West”.

Is that the periphery itself a center of its own? If we look at these “others” in relation to the two cultures, will we overlook their own invention and uniqueness? I believe the studying of the Silk Road is not about fitting clusters of cultures on a neat relational map to two big cauldrons. It has more to do with the people on the route themselves, not just their relationship with the two ends of the pole, but their own features are also something we should equally pay attention to.

In the Western societies and probably the whole world, two major ethnic conflicts  have been under constant spotlights,  each of which carries an unbearable historical weight with hearts of millions emotionally attached to . One is Palestine-Israel conflict, the second one probably is the question of Tibet. Each of the case has a legitimate grievance; each has an identifiable perpetrator and hence his victims; each has a history going back to the establishment of modern state; each involves an unbelievable magnitude of violence. The differences lie in the nature of the questions (henceforth the corresponding solutions), and also the international perception of the cases.

Unfortunately for the Tibetans, the case of sovereignty is in a murky water; different from UN 242 as a solid legal basis for Palestinian two-state solution, the Chinese sovereignty of Tibet (all three Tibet regions: Amdo, Kham and U-Tsang) even though not explicitly recognized but implied. The call for a full independence, unfortunate for the Tibetans, is not an internationally supported solution to the Tibetan question. Without revising this issue of sovereignty, the Tibetans, albeit clearly being victimized for long, can only maneuver  in this murky water. And this scenario not only has given excuses to PRC not to bulge an inch for negotiation, but also polarized different opinions in the Free Tibet Movement — should the Tibetians ask for independence (a politically unfeasible solution today), or a framework of federalism/confederacy (which implies an overhaul of Chinese governance and even the collapse of the CCP), or even just autonomy under the suzerainty of current PRC government?

The case of Tibet, compared to the Palestinian question, is significantly less violent. The religious institutions of Tibetan Buddhism together with his charismatic leader in the 14th Dalai Lama of course are some of the reasons, but also the lack of emigration (read: colonizations) to today’s Tibetan Autonomous Region. The colonization happened mainly in Amdo (mostly today’s Qinhai) and a less extent Kham, but the TAR itself is too uninhabitable for most people. People mainly don’t treat TAR as their permanent home including the government officials, who see their posts in TAR as a shortcut to the power core of the CCP. The current PRC President Hu Jintao for example, was the general secretary of TAR at the time of 1989 Lhasa riots and his oppressions to the demonstrations paved the way for his appointment in the post-Jiang Zemin era.

And yet, Tibetan question itself has caused wreak havoc to millions of Tibetans already: how about the other “Tibet” in PRC, Xinjiang? On the surface, it has not descended into the mayhem and quagmire of Palestine with death of thousands and complete destruction of the Palestinian society. However the economic inequality and the cultural genocide against the Uighurs are too significant to oversee. The poverty of the Uighurs is staggering: high unemployment rate among the youths, disparities of income, and lack of Job opportunities for the Uighur have all alienated the Uighurs from the Han. The attempt to erase the language of Uighur from the aboriginals has enraged the population. Even worse than the Tibetan case, direct colonization of the Xinjiang province with its influx of Han Chinese in the region further produced hatreds on top of all the formers. What can you expect from an environment like this if the readers of this blog were born Uighurs back there?

I don’t know, now the July riots in Xinjiang probably has a significance no one ever pondered before: it probably signifies the beginning of the racial hatred between the two groups. Six millions of Uighurs on one side and another six on the other. What is gonna happen if the hatred spills over? With the lack of an international legal basis and participation of other human right organizations to mediate the conflicts, what kind of outbursts will be resulted then?

I am a Chinese myself, but no problem to call the Uighur case a shameless attempt of colonization from Chinese to a land they got out of political compromise, but not for being colonized (I don’t think the words “entrusted to them” or “annexed by them” are correctly descriptive of the case; it is somewhere in between I think and yes it is murky again). You don’t see a lot of dialogue and negotiations ongoing. Nah, it all looks grim.

At least the violence in Palestine has forced some Israelis to reconsider the Palestinian cause. And if US withdraws its support voila, Palestinian case can be resolved in no second. I don’t think Tibetans and Uighurs have that kind of privileges. It really looks bad. And I wish Chinese (myself inclusive) can take more initiative to learn more about Tibetan and Uighur cultures first before they apply their own Orientalism (or should Occidentalism?) on those people. Talk to them, listen to them, find a peaceful solution and let everyone compromise so those people will get their freedom and equality they deserve. Well, but even the weiquan(human right defending) dissidents were home arrested or put in trials, pfft, I don’t see even Han Chinese themselves got their right respected either.

Remember: here we are talking about pre-modern Imperial China, not the post-1911 Revolution China with a modern idea of education system (which means, before the Bai Hua Wen movement, or the modernized Chinese movement that aimed at a proliferation of standard education in modern Chinese). In the pre-modern China, there was no national education program, albeit the existence of the public examination for government posts. Schools were relatively sparse, and private tutoring prevailed. Literacy rate was as low as any other pre-modern societies (if not worse, ask any people you know that learn modern Chinese as a second language). So, how did the people get their education, and what was the purpose of the education back then? And if we direct these questions to the Northwestern Chinese Muslims, what answers will we get?

Xiao Er Jing, translatable as the Children’s book, was a product in that pre-modern period. As said in the wikipedia it is a “practice of writing Sinitic languages such as Mandarin or the Dungan language in the Arabic script.” It gives us a peer into the education and language situation of Northwestern Chinese Muslims.

One interesting article on this topic can be found here:

http://islaminchina.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/persian-helped-promulgate-islam-in-china/

While the effort to decipher the meaning of Xiao Er Jing is one thing for applause, I beg to differ completely from Mr. Mohammad-Javad Aqajari said about Xiao Er Jing:

“Xiao-Er-Jin script, which is a combination of Persian, Arabic, and Chinese scripts, was used by the students of Islamic science in China with the aim of accessing Islamic sources.”

Hmm, if it is for Chinese speakers to learn Persian and Arabic, why on earth should there be transliteration of Chinese characters in Arabic letters then? Just like in an introduction to Arabic textbook. if you don’t know Arabic you always want to look at the English transliteration to help your pronunciation. In the same logic, if you want to learn Arabic instead, why you want to have Arabic transliteration of Chinese characters then? It should have been the other way round!

Here is my guess, taken into consideration of the political system in Northwestern China:

1)  In a pre-modern society lacking a standardized education system, local madrasa in the Northwestern China became one of the major venues of education in place of schools. Jonathan Lippman in his book sort of mentioned that, but I think Xiao Er Jing can be seen as an evidence of that.With the flourish of Sufi Orders in the region, Persian, a literary language for poetry and mysticism, had become more common than even Arabic. You can always read Qur’an with  vocalized Arabic, and you don’t need to learn the grammar rule to extract the meaning of the surahs, given that so many commentaries in different languages were written on that. Persian in this case seemed more practical, especially it was a Langua Franca for trade to the Central Asia and the Middle East.

2) We can generalize that people there did not know standard Mandarin very well in many cases. Lippman repeatedly pointed  this out in his book, and in Ma Tong (馬通) ‘s work on Northwestern Chinese Sufi Order lineage, he too mentioned several of the important Sufi order leaders couldn’t speak “Chinese” as well. What did those people speak as a mother language then? Salar, Dungan, or even mutated version of Manchurian (as Manchu regiment was resettled in the area) were more probable than Mandarin for sure.

3) Since the region in question was within the border of China Proper, a top-down bureaucratic system had been set up there just like any other places. There were a Ya Men(衙門) and any other government institutions. In the usual practice, the government officials were appointed by the corresponding department in the Capital; and as a norm locals and native of a provinces would NOT be appointed back to their hometown or origins to avoid personal ties and networks. As a result, the appointed officials, if they came from somewhere afar, aside from Mandarin, just could not speak the vernacular language of where they were appointed to.

4) Locals still had to deal with the governments on various levels, not to mention the Northwestern China has always been a passage of trades. These local people had to deal with Mandarin speakers since it was a more commonly recognized language. They had to pick it up. That’s why Xiao Er Jing was written with transliteration of Chinese characters and terms in Persanized Arabic scripts.

Q.E.D. and that to me seemed to be more plausible that most of the explanation I found on the web, including the wikipedia which actually is very contradictory.

And the question of Xiao Er Jing leads us to several questions as said in the reading:

1) I don’t know what to “reflect” upon them, sorry Amanda — I don’t enjoy bullshit like “that is significant evidence to show that Islam and China comes to term together in the passage of time” (Pfft, gonna wash my hands for typing this line of crap). The only thing I can say is: the integration of Islam into the Chinese society did take time, not to mention the visibility of these religious minorities were noted and perceived. But did they invent new form of religious practices themselves? Yes they did actually, the Sufi Orders in the Northwestern China, the reconciliation of Islam with traditional Chinese society by Wang Daiyu, as a matter of fact, show no difference from Buddhism becoming part of Chinese tradition: but you hear anyone still talking about “when Buddhism aka one religion from India meets China”? The initial encounter of course can create cultural shock to its host (in Jonathan Lipman’s choice of the word) but on a practical level it seems very obvious people just invented new stuff along the way. Categories like “Islam” and “China” are laughable jokes sometimes.

2) Acculturation as discussed by Leslie is quite similar to the standard CCP (Chinese Communist Party) line. I have no problem with that line itself, but this story missed one very key point: look at the Xiao Er Jing wikipedia entry. That picture you can see there is a excerpt of a 1940s version of Xiao Er Jing.  These “Hui” people, supposedly one group of the Chinese people, were still incapable of speaking Mandarin the designated official language of the State. If language fails to decide who belong to “us” as opposed to the “others”, what can be used to decide so then? Leslie and CCP  like to date the formation of the “Hui” identity  in Ming, but if look at the Xiao Er Jing example I cited above, can be still be so sure it is Ming that they’ve become, eh, Chinese? Sorry, but I have to repeat one thing here: the category of “Hui” was applied by CHINESE ONTO THOSE WHOM THEY CONSIDERED TO BE DIFFERENT FROM THEM. And the construction of Hui is a matter of statecraft, a matter of political ideology. Who is to judge who belongs to one group but not the others? It is the state, not the people themselves. Of course, with significant propagation, the group in question would eventually assume such an identity upon themselves, but what good does it have to say anything about them?

Talking about culture without political awareness is nonsense. Too much Terry Eagleton may be the reason why I hate academia so badly. Well, in this so-called “Islam in China” specialty, Raphael Israeli is a  neofascist charlatan for sure. Leslie is only marginally better. Lipman knows his stuff but too occupied by that stupid racial categories of PRC. I wish we can move forward, forget about PRC and its crap, and with more good people going on this path hand-in-hand  do something more interesting and elucidating together.