The Eternal Outsider

What is the point at which the foreign becomes local?This is a question we might ask ourselves as we view the artistic creations of immigrants who express themselves through the idiom of their adopted land. Are British-Indian writers who write in English British or Indian or both? Are Burmese-Muslim artists who work in the indigenous lacquer traditions of Burma Muslim or Burmese or both?Here we have a work by the esteemed artist Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang. Haji Noor Deen belongs to a community of Chinese Muslims called the Hui.

Is this an Arabic painting in the Chinese style or a Chinese painting in the Arabic style?

A brief history of the Hui in China might shed some light on this question.The Hui are descended from Arabs who came to China to trade around the thirteenth century. The biggest Hui communities were in the south, in Guangzhou and Fujian. Far away from the fusty Confucians of Beijing, the culture of these port cities was cosmopolitan and freewheeling, making them ideal locales for Arab trading settlements. Crucially, at this time China was ruled by the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty.Being outsiders themselves, the Yuan Mongols naturally felt more comfortable with another group of outsiders, especially one with whom they shared cultural traits, and appointed many Arabs to positions of importance within the government.{{1}}Later, when the Yuan dynasty overthrown by the indigenous albeit xenophobic Ming dynasty, the Arab traders chose to make themselves inconspicuous by integrating with the local population. They married local Chinese girls, and even adopted Chinese traditions like calligraphy.In the Western province of Xinjiang one can see the artistic traditions of Moslem groups who didn’t sinicize—those have retained their distinctive central Asian feel.{{2}}Being at the periphery, far from the keepers of both Islamic and Confucian tradition, gave the Hui the freedom to innovate.They pioneered their own calligraphic script called the Sini script. They used brushes with bristles in contrast to the reed pens of Islamic tradition. And because they used long Chinese scrolls of paper, they were especially good at large-scale calligraphy. They also wrote from top to bottom (Arabic calligraphy typically reads from right to left), and in any direction they pleased, really.{{3}} Going back to the question posed earlier, how those in power view a group impacts how the group sees itself. It is telling that the world of Islamic, and not Chinese, calligraphy has feted Haji Noor Deen. So to that extent, he is still seen as the “other” by the Chinese majority.[[1]]Gauvin A. Baley in Tamerlane's Tableware, 1996.[[1]][[2]]Lucien de Guise in "From Middle East to Middle Kingdom,"Saudi Aramco World, 2009.[[2]][[3]] Demonstration by Master Haji Noor Deen given at Harvard University, April 25, 2012.[[3]]