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504 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 Li Shujiang and Karl W. Luckert. Mythology and Folklore ofthe Hui, a Muslim Chinese People. Translations by Fenglan Yu, Zhilin Hou, and Ganhui Wang. Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1994. xii, 459 pp. Hardcover $59.50. Paperback $19.95. This is a collection of "Hui folktales" in translation. In this work, "Hui" refers to the group ofofficially-approved sinophone Muslims in China, that is, to the group designated "Hui nationality" (Huizu) by the modern Chinese state. The narratives in this collection are arranged thematically: genesis, quasi-historical, religious , didactic, and romantic themes are all represented. Whether 'historical' or 'modern', they are presented as authentic oral narratives. This work is the result ofa cooperative translation project between Southwestern Missouri State University and the University ofNingxia. Over half the texts were collected in the 1980s by a team ofresearchers from Ningxia's Nationalities Literature Center, directed by Professor Li Shujiang. The remaining texts were culled from previously published Chinese-language collections ofHui literature. Initially the texts were translated in Ningxia by Yu Fenglan, Hou Zhilin, and Wang Ganhui; the translations were then revised in the U.S. by Dr. Luckert with the assistance ofYu Zongqi. This is apparently the first work in a series of Chinese minority nationality folklore in translation; additional collections of Kazakh and Uyghur folktales are planned by the American author. The book is arranged as follows: theoretical and thematic introduction (pp. 3-33), photographs (pp. 35-71), and topically-arranged stories in translation (pp. 73-446). At first glance, the Hui, one ofthe largest groups in China to be accorded minority nationality (shaoshu minzu) status, defy facile categorization. Many (but not all) are practicing Muslims; they inhabit every province in China, but are concentrated in the northwest; they speak slightly idiosyncratic versions oflocal Chinese dialects; they are not physically distinctive from the local Han Chinese population; and the degree to which their customs (gustatory, sartorial, or ceremonial ) differ from those of the local Han population depends largely on locale, and on where a Hui individual falls on the religious-secular continuum. The Hui generally claim Sino-Arab descent. Despite these wide regional variations, the group ofpeople who currently call themselves Hui have developed a distinct group identity. In northwestern China, Hui identity is closely tied to Islam, while elsewhere this identity is secular and more nebulous. As defined by the modern Chinese state, the Hui are Muslim and sinophone. Actually, a large number of Hui are secular, not Muslim, and a small number ofpeople calling themselves Hui are speakers ofTibetan, not Chinese. What unites these people across China ofHawai'i Press Reviews 505 is that they have adopted and reinforced the Chinese state's definition ofthe "Hui nationality" (Huizu). In recent years in the West there has been a mild surge of interest in this group, including scholarship by Joseph Fletcher, Jonathan Lipman, Dru Gladney, and others. In addition, recent scholarship on ethnicity in China (particularly by Crossley, Harrell, Keyes, and Gladney) has moved beyond the situationalist/ primordialist debate and has advanced the notion that identity is processual, interactive , and localized, not static and objective. The Hui identity reflects an ongoing dynamic between the state, the Hui's own "ethnic consciousness," and the surrounding groups (Harrell 1994; Keyes 1976, 1981). This conception ofethnic identity as an ongoing process contrasts sharply with the theoretical basis ofChinese ethnography. The considerable Chinese scholarship on the Hui is based, in fact, on the opposite premise: that ethnic identity is fixed, global, discreet, and objectifiable. In the view of Chinese academia, each of the fifty-six officially recognized minority nationalities constitutes (and has always constituted) a bundle ofimmutable features: an efhnonym, a history, a language, a locale, and culturally variant customs.1 The task ofthe Chinese folklorist , then, is to identify a discreet body offolk literature that links the group in question to the most salient feature(s) ofits officially defined feature bundle. For the Hui, this is unquestionably Islam. (Other popularly accepted Hui features include their Sino-Arab ancestry, their business acumen, and, lest we forget, their white skullcaps.) Li and Luckert's work reflects this Chinese theoretical model in tone...

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