Hui

Hui

Hui, also spelled Hwei or Huihui, also called Tonggan, Burmese Pathay, Russian Dungan, an official nationality of China, composed of nearly 10 million people. The Hui are Chinese Muslims (i.e., neither Turkic nor Mongolian) who have intermingled with the Han Chinese throughout China but are relatively concentrated in western China—in the provinces or autonomous regions of Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Henan, Hebei, Shandong, and Yunnan. Considerable numbers also live in Anhui, Liaoning, and Beijing. The Hui are also found on the frontier between China and Myanmar (Burma) and in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, in Central Asia. They speak Mandarin as a first language.

The ancestors of the Hui were merchants, soldiers, handicraftsmen, and scholars who came to China from Islamic Persia and Central Asia from the 7th to the 13th century. After these ancestors settled in China, they intermarried with the Han Chinese, Uighur, and Mongolian nationalities and came to speak Chinese languages, or dialects (while often retaining Arabic, too). Eventually their appearance and other cultural characteristics became thoroughly Chinese. They now engage mostly in agriculture, and most of them live in rural areas, although urban dwellers are significantly increasing. There have been a number of famous Hui thinkers, navigators, scientists, and artists. The “Hui Brigade” was active in World War II, in the resistance against Japan (1937–45).