Hui Christians: The Interplay of Islam and Christianity in Chendai

A history of Chendai, a small town of Fujian Province in southeast China, is a vivid micro-reflection of the interplay of Islam and Christianity in a foreign land. Islam first came to this place with the Arab merchants around the fourteenth century. Although many people originally believed in local religions, they soon converted to Islam, married foreign Muslim merchants, and became Chinese Hui Muslims. For many generations, these Hui Muslims considered themselves as the proud descendants of Muslims from the Islamic heartland. This sentiment, however, started to change in the nineteenth century. As Chinese-Arab direct trade declined during this period, Islamic traditions also faded out in people’s daily lives. Although they still identified themselves as Huis, many of them became non-practicing Muslims. With the arrival of American and British Christian missionary organizations in town, Christian schools, hospitals, and churches replaced madrasas and mosques as the supporting institutions for people’s welfare. As a result, by the beginning of the twentieth century, some Huis in Chendai had acquired a new identity: Hui Christians.

The seemingly paradoxical identity of Hui Christians in Chendai makes more sense if its formation is contextualized and analyzed with a longue durée approach. Their story, based on records in the local gazetteers and family genealogy books, reveals the intertwined impacts of Islam and Christianity on the lives of ordinary people in a non-Islamic and non-Christian society.