LEGIBLE CITIZENS: WRITING UYGHUR WOMEN INTO THE CHINESE NATION
Arianne Ekinci
A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the History Department in the
College of Arts and Sciences.
Chapel Hill 2019
ABSTRACT
Arianne Ekinci: Legible Citizens: Writing Uyghur Women into the Chinese Nation (Under the direction of Michael Tsin)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF MAPS ... vi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS... vii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ... viii
INTRODUCTION... 1
Historical Frame and Historiography... 3
Materials and Methods: Official Texts as Archival Documents... 9
CHAPTER 1: READING UYGHUR WOMEN INTO HAN-CENTERED NARRATIVES.... 15
CHAPTER 2: IMPOVERISHED PEASANTS TO INSPIRED PROLETARIAT: THE MAKING OF MODEL MINORITIES UNDER STATE GAZE... 25
CHAPTER 3: UYGHUR WOMEN IN A MEN’S WORLD ... 33
CONCLUSION... 44
LIST OF MAPS
Map 1 - Dzhungaria and Altishahr in the 18th-Early 20th Centuries... 5
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
PRC People’s Republic of China
CCP Chinese Communist Party
KMT Kuo Min Tang (Nationalist Party)
GMD Guo Min Dang (Nationalist Party; same at KMT)
ETR East Turkestan Republic (1933-1934)
INTRODUCTION
In 1951, some 300women “representing all regional ethnicities” in Xinjiang Province attended the first China Women’s Federation meeting in Urumqi. Their presence and the
structure of this meeting was predicated on the assumptions that, not only were they all residents and citizens of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) governed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but that they were primarily identified through clearly delineated ethnic groups, that each ethnic group was on equal footing in relation to the state, and that, regardless of ethnic
identification, they were all “Chinese” (Zhonghua) nationals.1 While Xinjiang had longstanding ties with various polities later writ into Chinese history, local Turkic Muslim inhabitants had historically neither thought of themselves as belonging to distinct populations defined along ethnic lines, nor viewed their communities as primarily oriented towards the Chinese state. 2,3 Traditionally, the region had been a transition zone and crossroads between multiple cultures and polities along the Silk Road. Oases south of the Tianshan mountains were sites of overlapping cultural, political and economic orientation while settlements to the north had strong ties to Soviet Turkestan and had recently experimented with a Soviet-supported Turkic republic that
1 Hu Zhong 胡中, “Xinjiang ge zu fu nü zai wang qian jinzhe” 新疆各族妇女在前进着 [“Women of every ethnicity
in Xinjiang striding forward”], Xin Zhongguo Funü 新中国妇女 23 (1951): 32-33. Party rosters from the period always delineate participants’ ethnicity (if not Han) and gender (if not male).
2 The PRC holds that every polity appearing in historical record occupying territory that was drawn inside the
domain of the PRC in 1949 is part of “Chinese History”, regardless of cultural attributes of court or strong external political affiliations.
3 This paper uses “Turki” and “Turkic” when describing speakers of variants of the Turkic branch of languages in
had negotiated semi-sovereignty with the departed Nationalist (KMT) party. Thus, the new state’s claim that every member of these populations now held Chinese citizenship equal with all other citizens of China, and were under the exclusive purview of the government in Beijing, was a novel notion.
The foundations of this meeting beg the questions of what it meant for these women to be both an "ethnic minority” and a national subject in the new Chinese state; how individuals classified as non-majority were supposed to order and fulfill the roles of woman, ethnic individual and citizen, and how these peoples were intended to interpret and integrate their “local” culture into their identity as national subjects. Official documents tell us how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) envision and present this new synthesis of identities, but not necessarily how state rhetoric played out in practice.
Though Uyghurs were the majority population in Xinjiang, Uyghur women were a
“quadrupaly marginalized” population as measured by their distance from the prototypical hearty Han peasants often presented as the nation’s cultural core.4 As women they were supposedly marginalized within their own societies; as Muslim ethnic minorities and inhabitants of the fringes of former empire they resided at the physical and social margins of the Chinese state. And yet this population was, within a few years of liberation, recast as an essential component of the Chinese nation.5 This thesis traces the route imagined for the integration of this population into the Chinese nation, using popularly published state-sanctioned texts to examine how Uyghur
4 According to the first official census of the PRC in 1953, Xinjiang had a total population of 4.87 million,
comprised of 75% Uyghur, 6% Han Chinese, and 19% other Turkic Muslims and Hui (also called Dungans or Muslim Chinese). For a discussion of certain women as “doubly” marginalized subjects, see Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014) 6.
5 As all regions comprising the PRC were taken as comprising Chinese history, so every population within the new
women were envisioned as embodying these layers of intended identity. While state-sanctioned texts cannot be assumed to accurately represent the lived experiences of Uyghur women, this study argues that the narrative fissure created through authorial attempts to graft individual encounters onto the “official stance” in popular press allows careful readers insight into how the state intended for policies to be carried out in practice, and implications for both the type of subjecthood offered Uyghur women and value of Uyghur women’s roles in creation of the new nation. What emerges are a set of assumptions about the nature of ethnic minority subjecthood and women’s place in the nation that is not written anywhere in official literature, but certainly begins to explain the unequal foundations of ethnic relations that continue to trouble the region today.
Historical Frame and Historiography
Up to the eve of 1949, China was no nation. During the Republican Period (1911-1949), the country to be was governed by a scattered assortment of warlords, local republics and soviets under tentative spheres of communist and nationalist power, and outposts of Japanese and Soviet rule. In the past, not only had dynasties with distinctly different cultural and regional origins ruled over the land that would become China, but they had differently imagined and organized the very disparate populations under their rule. While Xinjiang had technically come under Qing jurisdiction in the mid 1700s, the Manchus exercised a tentative power invested primarily in several garrison towns in the northern Dzungharian basin.6 South of the Tianshan mountains, in
6 In Northern Xinjiang, a region more directly ruled under the Qing, and populated by a mix of Mongols, Kazaks,
the Altishahr region,7 Qing officials loosely administered the oasis settlements through local nobility. Early scholarship based on Qing imperial archives traces the development of Qing garrison towns in the north, and the importance Chinese-Muslim trade in the Eastern towns of Hami and Turpan, but all but ignore regions to the south and west, where Qing control was far weaker.8 Conversely, Rian Thum’s work on pilgrimage routes, sacred manuscripts, and the development of an Altishahr identity in the 18th-19th centuries barely mentions Qing officials or their government apparatuses. In her studies of the same period, Linda Benson highlights the strong exchanges of population between Kashgar and the Ferghana Valley, the power of cross-border trade in determining political relations and creating communities from mixed origin populations, and the messy understanding of borders and subjecthood exemplified by claims to extraterritoriality by Muslim locals holding foreign passports. 9 Recent legal, political and national histories advance the notion of vague frontiers with overlapping spheres of political obligations and the possibility of multiple subjecthoods in the pre-nation state period.10
7 Literally “Six-cities”, referring to the oasis cities ringing the Taklamakan Desert in Southern Xinjiang
8 Here, the “Muslims” were a mix of Turkic people and Hui. Hui in this period was used to refer both to Muslims in
general, and to Muslims hailing from east of Xinjiang who probably had mixed Arab and Han blood and did not generally speak any dialect of Turki.
9 Generally Russian or British. See Laura Newby, The Empire and the Khanate: A Political History of Qing
Relations With Khoqand C. 1760-1860 ( Leiden: Brill, 2005) 145.
10 See, for example Li Chen, Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics (New
Dzhungaria and Altishahr in the 18th-Early 20th Centuries
Recent scholarship undertaken by David Brophy and Ondrej Klimes has highlighted the use of longstanding routes of trade, education and pilgrimage linking Altishahr and Dzhungaria to Turkistan, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, India and Afghanistan in facilitating the introduction of political and educational reforms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the early 1920s, Turki intellectuals were studying communism in Moscow, debating the boundaries of a Uyghur community in Almaty, studying in Jadidist Islamic reform schools or vocationally-oriented co-educational missionary schools, and serving Russian or British intelligence interests in Kashgar. Sedentary Turkic Muslim residents of Altishar and Dzhungaria – those who would be designated as ethnic Uyghurs in the PRC - were marked by different layers of affiliations and identities, just as their polities were not oriented towards a single source.
It was against this backdrop that distinct ethnic and regional identities began to emerge, as new actors influenced the redefining of in-groups.11 Previously, inhabitants of the region had
11 Specifically, the Soviet Union introduced the concept of definitive nations and ethnic nationalities within the
called themselves “Locals” or “Muslims”, were generally known to the Qing government as “Muslim” and to European explores as “Turki”.12 In 1921 a Turpani poet began calling himself “Uyghur Child”, reviving the name of a 9th Century Buddhist empire with little probable link to the later-day inhabitants of the poet’s hometown. While this name was soon borrowed as a label that both described and produced the notion of a coherent population, there existed multiple and competing notions of “Uyghur” identity. At a Soviet-sponsored conference in Tashkent,
attendees from Altishahr, Dzhungari, and emigres to the Almaty region debated over the boundaries of ethnicity along Stalinist principles: while some proposed that all Muslims in the region, Turki and Hui alike, be grouped under a single ethnic label, it was ultimately decided that sedentary Turkic Muslims in Eastern, or Chinese, Turkestan were comprised of two ethnic groups: the Taranchis, brought to Dzhungaria from various locales by the previous Dzhungarian Mongol rulers, and the Uyghurs, a community encompassing all other sedentary Turkic Muslims ‘local’ to the region.13 The Taranchis and Uyghurs were later folded into a single classification.
The 1930s and 40s witnessed continuous splintering and reimaginations of political formations along the faultlines of affiliation. While CCP literature paints a picture of uniform (and
uniformly oppressive) Chinese Nationalist (KMT) rule across Xinjiang during this period, Xinjiang was not governed as a single entity, and certainly not by a single power. Two alternate, Turki-governed states, appeared in this period: The Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (TIRET),
identity.
12 See Peter. Hopkirk, The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990),
Justin Jon Rudelson, Oasis identities: Uyghur nationalism along China’s Silk Road (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997) and Albert Von Le Coq, Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
13 Though, as Laura Newby points out in The Empire and the Khanate, this probably included a significant
based in Khotan from 1933-4, and the East Turkestan Republic (ETR) seated in Yili, the later of which, if CCP literature is to be taken at face value, was a socially progressive proto-communist people’s government.14 While the KMT held a power-base in Urumqi after 1928, rule outside this base was largely reliant on alliances, first with Hui warlord Ma Zhongying who helped them defeat TIRET, then with the CCP until the 1942 split, and finally with the ETR from 1944-1949. The KMT capitulated to the CCP in 1949, with many of the same central figures retaining their regional posts. Following the disappearance of ETR leadership onboard a flight enroute to talks in Beijing, the CCP was able to step into a relative power vacuum and establish control over the region between 1950 and 1952. Originally named “Xinjiang Province”, the region was
redesignated “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” in 1955, but remained almost entirely under central state control. Since its inception in 1921, the CCP had been predominately a Sinophone party led by individuals who identified themselves as Han Chinese, and was sometimes [mis]labeled “the Han People’s Party” by Turki locals.15 In 1952, the new state set about classifying its entire population by ethnicity. While inhabitants of other border regions were subject to scrutiny against Stalin’s four principles of nationality and repeated visits by trained ethnographers, in Xinjiang the PRC seems to have borrowed categories directly from the
14 Many former ERT activists were easily folded into the Communist government, which relied on their extensive
local networks for promulgation of CCP campaigns.
15 For a history of the development and nuances of Han identity, see Justin Jacobs, Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese
USSR, creating mirror population groups on both sides of the border.16,17 The PRC treated each ethnic population as a singular, historically isolated group, enjoying direct relationships
exclusively with the state, and equal relationships with all other ethnic populations, as if each ethnic community was a single spoke on a bike wheel, connected only through the hub of the [Han-dominated] state. Gone were the messy layers of population and identity of the late Qing and Republican periods.
Within half of a century, Xinjiang had evolved from a crossroads at the edge of empire(s) to a land of multiple political possibilities, to supposed integration into a state among nation-states, one small space in a world where every inch could be contained and claimed under government gaze. Many scholars have cast the PRC’s early years as a period of nation-building. However, literature produced by the Uyghur diaspora, particularly from scholars and former political figures who established a new base in Turkey, argue that the CCP’s reign in Xinjiang is characteristic of political aggression and colonialism.
Unfortunately, there are few, if any, existent texts providing an unmediated view of Uyghur women’s incorporation into the Chinese Nation or variegated experiences of citizenship and community construction. Available texts concerned with the lives and experiences of Uyghur women in the early PRC are, as far as we know, produced, sponsored, and state-approved texts, and primarily Chinese-language texts. As Thomas Mullaney has pointed out, the state was still forming a unified voice in the early PRC and different authors offered up
multivocal experiences in their struggle to strike that perfect chord in aligning the reality about
16 See Thomas Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2011) for a description of this process.
which they wrote with centralized state ideals.18 However, these authors all had the state in mind as their ultimate audience, and knew that they wrote under its ever-watchful eye. Literature not subject to state view did not exist in the public sphere in the early PRC, and diaspora scholarship undertaken by those who fled Xinjiang in 1949 cannot be expected to cover experiences within the PRC.
Sites of Narrative: (1) Kashgar, Maralbashi and Urumqi, (2) Hotan and Hami, (3) Ili
Materials and Methods: Official Texts as Archival Documents
Any scholar working on Uyghur women in the early PRC is thus forced to work with
compromised sources coming from a narrow selection of narratives aimed at specific, primarily public, audiences. Given the limitations of such materials, it should not be surprising that there is little historiography covering the region in this period. Most historians work in earlier periods, where they have access through Qing Dynasty, KMT, and foreign archives as well as
produced religious manuscripts. Anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists have generally turned their gaze to the period following Reform and Opening in the 1980s, when foreign scholars were able to personally visit the region for research purposes. Only this later scholarship occasionally focuses on the experiences of Uyghur women.
As texts written about a subject in a language not their own and directed at an external audience can hardly expected to provide unmitigated insight into the subject’s experiences and inner life, this study does not inquire into the personal experiences of Uyghur women. Instead, this study works with available materials to re-create the system of underlying assumptions of state-employee authors. As has been demonstrated by work in imperial studies by scholars such as Ann Stoler, working with state-produced texts about a subject population can still be
productive when text-appropriate questions are posed.19 Pieces written about Uyghurs for a Chinese audience are not appropriate as a guide to the internal worlds of Uyghur women as their communities were incorporated into the Chinese state, but can be used to tease out the deeper layers of official understanding of the role of this population within society and state. While documents produced directly by the government, such as the 1963 Brief History and Introduction to the Uyghurs, provide a carefully composed overview of Uyghurs and their ideal relationship with the party and state, popular texts, such as those used for this paper, are sites of navigation between overarching ideals and individual lives.20 In their attempt to conform individual
narratives to official framework, authors betray a fissure in the uniformity of state stance as they
19 See, for example, Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
20 Xinjiang Shaoshuminzu She Hui Lishi Diaocha Zu 新疆少数民族社会历史调查组 [Xinjiang Ethnic Minority
engage in the creation of experimental space where ideals are graphed on to individual bodies and state policies tested by real-world application.
Popular texts both inform audiences and draw on a set of assumed knowledge. Thus they can be read, by both the intended audience and later-day researchers, through employing personal, external and internal comparison and careful note of ommissions. For initial audiences,
comparison first occurs at the level of individual experience. Would readers living through the grain shortage of 1958 believe accounts of bountiful harvests? Would illiterate Han women sold off as child-servants-cum-brides-to-be at the age of 8 believe that Uyghur women, “denied education and sold into marriage at the age of 12 or 13” shared a similar fate, or would they truly see themselves occupying the position of culturally superior “elder sibling”? The visual
presentation of articles also explicitly elicits external comparison among stories. Articles featuring Uyghurs, whether in People’s Daily Newspaper or New Women of China or other Chinese-language publications circulated across the state,were placed alongside articles featuring other ethnic minorities and Han populations in the interior. Unless these articles were physically cut out of the paper, it is unlikely they were ever read in isolation. Connection to - and comparison with - similar topics across the PRC is implied by the very presentation of text. This manner of presentation compels audiences to read texts side by side, asking themselves both how statements about the lives of Uyghur women compare to those about Han, and how Uyghur women fit into the state as a whole. Internally, the texts display countless rifts and contradictions. Authors oscillate between state stance and individual cases, attempting to reconcile, for example, the official view that Uyghur women were insufferably oppressed prior to liberation with
everyday or large-scale opposition, and some omissions of ignorance, only elucidated through comparison with external accounts.21
Drawing upon these reading strategies, this paper uses popularly available sources from the early decades of CCP rule in Xinjiang to ask both how the party-state conceptualized Uyghur women as Chinese citizens, ethnic individuals, and gendered subjects in practice, and how the state communicates this relationship to a public audience. Three individual narratives from around the region are used as focal points for broader discussions in official texts and publicly published articles. These narratives include recollections of an early CCP advocate for women’s work and education in Kashgar and Maralbashi, an interview with a model performer employed by the Hotan Cultural Troup, and a newspaper article recounting the revolutionary turn and “free” marriage of two Uyghur youth in Ili.22 All of these texts were published in Chinese-language newspapers or periodicals with open-access, nationwide circulation, and can be
considered popular public texts. Popular texts in the PRC from this period exhibit strong traits of self-censorship and authorial awareness of how their work matches certain standards of socialist thought, as if the censor were gazing over the author’s shoulder as they picked up the pen.23 These texts are also highly concerned with instructing the public, with New Women of China
journal (Zhong guo xin funü,中国新妇女) and People’s Daily newspaper (Ren min bao, 人民报)
often used in adult literacy classes as material for both literary and socialist instruction.24 While
21 For example, early PRC writers do not seem to understand Islam as social practice, as they do not write about
Islamic cultural practices in everyday life.
22 Also written Yili, Yining and Guljha.
23 Sei Jeong Chin, (2018) “Institutional Origins of the Media Censorship in China: The Making of the Socialist
Media Censorship System in 1950s Shanghai”, Journal of Contemporary China, 27:114, 956-972, DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2018.1488108.
one of the articles selected for this study is from a “niche” magazine (Folk Music) that would have circulated only within a specialist audience, both the last story and all auxiliary articles were published in People’s Daily, which was widely read in public, both in print and orally to [often] captive audiences. The first story, which is set in the 1939-1942, is taken from two narratives in a 1980s collection of accounts of early communist activists in Kashgar.25 Though this particular narrative compilation was not published in the 1950s, its protagonist went on to head the editorial department of NewWomen of China in 1949, and thus not only set a precedent for standards and expectations concerning Han-Uyghur interactions, but also wielded great power in determining how audiences framed their understanding of minority women during this critical period. The other two stories were published in 1966 and 1952 respectively. These three texts were all selected for their comprehensive portrayal of the subject in a national media outlet, geographic representation, and for addressing a certain aspect of Uyghur women’s relationship with the state. Local media outlets were not used due to both archival constraints and this paper’s concern with the construction of Uyghurs as national citizens in inquiring into how this
population were categorized, explained and justified to audiences largely outside of Xinjiang. While the main articles come from different decades, all concern the formative years of CCP governance in Xinjiang and initial attempts at incorporating Uyghur women into the Chinese state. None of the texts selected represent outliers, and all are corroborated with numerous shorter newspaper articles and longer official documents from the early 1950s to mid 1960s.
Quarterly, No. 204: Gender in Flux: Agency and Its Limits in Contemporary China (December 2010), 835.
25 Michael Dillon consolidates and translates these two texts in “Educating girls and working with women: Wu
Each of the three sections below focuses on a single central text that provides a space for reading into the negotiation between individual encounters and official accounts to examine one aspect of the new intended roles for Uyghur women within the state. Sections begin with a summary of the story written in language closely following that of the original texts. The texts have been paraphrased, rather than directly translated, for the sake of both space and clarity. However, I have attempted to preserve the language of the original texts, with the exception of a few noted asides, and have not ‘rationalized’ or ‘updated’ the voice to match modern narrative standards.26 The intention of this practice is to convey not just the content of the original, but also the manner in which the original narrative is constructed, as the crux of this paper’s argument is directly related to the author’s mediation between official stance and particular encounters in the formation of public texts. Readers are invited to employ comparison in reading between the lines and simultaneously undertaking analysis of the original documents and
interpretations offered in the analysis.
CHAPTER 1: READING UYGHUR WOMEN INTO HAN-CENTERED NARRATIVES
Recently returned from advanced study in Japan, 25-year-old Guangdong native Wu Naijun
arrived in Kashgar in 1939 on her husband’s coattails. Before setting out from Yan’an, the
young Chinese Communist Party member and Guangdong Women’s Teacher’s College graduate
was tasked with covertly developing CCP organization in Southern Xinjiang.27 Upon arrival in
Xinjiang Wu Naijun set out to craft herself a position that would allow her to oversee cultural
reform and social revolution via girl’s education, “undertaking education to spread the seeds of
revolution”.28 After her husband, the deputy director of the Kashgar education bureau, ousted
the ‘dissolute’ head teacher at the ethnically-mixed Chinese-medium Shule Girls Primary
School, Wu Naijun was instated in his stead. 29 She immediately embarked upon re-organizing
the school structure (including designing new school buildings) and mobilizing her students in
community-wide propaganda projects. To tackle widespread female illiteracy, Wu Naijun also
established an evening school for Han peasants in Shule and for Uyghurs at Kashgar Regional
27 Sources equivocate as to whether she was given a formal role and salary at this time. Michael Dillon states that
she was a “dependent,” in “Educating girls and working with women: Wu Naijun in Kashgar and Maralbashi” but a 1946 article entitled “Return to Yan’an” copied on a commemorative blog lists her alongside her husband as one of 31 party members originally dispatched to Xinjiang. Shi Liu Hao Liu 十六号楼， Hui dao Yan’an 回到延安
[Return to Yan’an]. 新浪博客, 8/19/2018. http://www.blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_dd9bf4ac0102y69o.html. No other copies of this article could be found.
28 Xia Weirong 夏维荣, Wu Naijun zai Kashi 伍乃菌在喀什 (Wu Naijun in Kashgar)（Kashi shi wenshi ziliao 喀
什市文史资料 1, 1986）15.
29 It is not clear in some sources that this was her husband; Zhang notes that her husband was also known by this
Girls’ Primary School. She worked in the fields alongside her students’ families in order to gain
their trust and convince them to continue supporting female education.
Wu Naijun was a pioneer, opening up unprecedented opportunities for women’s education
and community involvement.30 [Overlooking non-CCP affiliated educational offerings in the pre-PRC period], Wu Naijun saw local education to be of poor quality and in need of
outsider-instigated improvement. Not only did “feudal” thinking prevent most families from sending their
daughters to school, but those who did attend were often politically indifferent and held flippant
attitudes towards education. Furthermore, school facilities were poor and the classes
themselves badly organized. Clearly, no actual education could take place in such circumstances
and no reform could be expected to arise from within such an environment.
Given the lack of other actors, Wu Naijun lifted the burden of instigating and overseeing
reform onto her own shoulders. Students, teachers and community members alike were recruited
into the Kashgar Women’s Association (later to become the Kashgar Branch of the
province-wide Xinjiang Women’s Association) where she spent long hours coaching her disciples in
subjects ranging from basic literacy to socialist politics and a woman’s call to community
involvement. Herself childless, Wu Naijun both temporarily adopted a neglected Han girl from
the school in Shule and “was regarded by many of the children as a surrogate mother”.31
Just as she’d secured her position in Kashgar, Wu Naijun’s husband was appointed County
Head in Maralbashi, a comparatively impoverished town located 300 kilomters across the
30 Zhang Yuansheng 张源生, “Kang Ri zhanzheng shiqi zai Kashi gongzuo de gongchandang
Yuan” 抗日战争时期在喀什输了工作的共产党员 [Communists Working in Kashgar during the war against Japan], (Kashgar: Kashi shi wenshi ziliao 喀什市文史资料 2, 1987), 23.
Taklamakan desert. Wu Naijun herself was not allocated any official duties, and again not
provided a salary. Yet an overly-educated revolutionary could hardly sit at home. Within a year
of relocation, Wu Naijun had established both a women’s association (which she chaired) and a
series of handicraft cooperatives under the auspices of the Maralbashi Women’s Productive
Group, along with a weaving workshop located on the premises of the county administration.
According to later accounts, Wu Naijun saw her work in Maralbashi as addressing the everyday
difficulties experienced by local women, including a lack of economic, physical and intellectual
independence.32 In this underdeveloped town she demonstrated her economic acumen in identifying a market niche (high quality woven goods and clothes tailored to Han tastes),
creating a production plan, pulling together the necessary resources, and organizing labor to meet production targets. Wu Naijun personally designed the cloth and clothes her workers weaved.
The group was both financially and culturally successful: the commodification of labor
traditionally relegated to the home allowed women to obtain an unprecedented level of economic independenceand, under Wu Naijun’s guidance, they participated in interethnic “cultural studies,” singing and dancing together (presumably in praise of the party and their newfound economic liberation).33 Their expansion in both cultural consciousness and disposable income
raised these women’s status in home and community.
In April 1942 Wu Naijun traveled to Urumqi, where she represented women of Kashgar at
the inaugural conference of the Xinjiang Women’s Association and showcased merchandise
made by the Maralbashi Women’s Production Group at the affiliated exhibition. Wu Naijun’s
32 Echoed in later texts such as “Nanjiang funü kaishi jiexia miansha” 南疆妇女开始揭下面纱 [Southern Xinjiang
women start to take off their veils], Renmin Ri Bao人民日报 3 (5/14/1950).
33 See, for example, Zhao Tao Qi 赵涛祺, Xinjiang Weiwuerzizhiqu 新疆维吾尔自治区 (Xinjiang Autonomous
presence and reception at the meeting, and particularly the praise heaped on the handicrafts from the production group, can be read as recognition of her elevated status and approval of her accomplishments. Though soon after arrested during Sheng Shicai’s crackdown on communists, she reappeared on the political scene in 1949 as the head of education for the All-China
Women’s Federation and editor of the periodical Chinese Women (中国妇女), thus ensuring that
the framework she had developed for interacting with and reforming local women became sanctioned by state expectations.34
Though it might seem strange to preface a study on Uyghur women in the early PRC with a pre-liberation story centered on a woman identified as ethnically Han, Wu Naijun’s narrative provides a framework for how the PRC constructed an understanding of Uyghurs vis-a-vis their interaction with Han state actors. To understand the role envisioned for Uyghur women, we should take the state’s perspective in looking at how approved accounts portrayed their interaction with the demographic core of the Chinese nation: Han Chinese.35 While Han had been a nominal part of the population in Xinjiang in the Republican years, comprising less than 2% of the population in Altishahr, the early PRC saw active promotion of Han migration into the region. The Han Chinese who interacted most frequently with the local population in this era were an upper stratum of technicians, managers and party cadres sent to reform the political
34 Narrative compiled from: Xia Weirong (early half of Wu Naijun’s time in Xinjiang) and Zhang Yuansheng (later
half of Wu Naijun’s time in Kashgar). I was first directed to these sources through Michael Dillon, “Educating girls and working with women: Wu Naijun in Kashgar and Maralbashi” in.
35 For more in-depth discussion of what it meant to be “Han” in the early PRC, see Thomas Mullaney, James
landscape and develop industry, much as Wu Naijun and her husband had in the 1930s.36 Though set several years before liberation, Wu Naijun’s story portrays a paragon of Uyghur-Han
interactions during the early years of Communist Rule. Her story also contains a number of elements replicated in like narratives meant to train readers in understanding the Uyghurs, and particularly Uyghur women, as existing within the nation vis-a-vis their interaction with Han cadres.
What then was the intended role of Han women in minority communities, and what was the ideal relationship between Han incomers and Uyghur locals? Through studying Wu Naijun’s case alongside early PRC regional handbooks and articles from People’s Daily covering the work of the Xinjiang Women’s Federation and newly established industrial enterprises, three main areas of involvement emerge: Han women as organizers; as instructors and mentors; and as feminists and advocates. Though most articles focus on an individual’s exhibition of a single trait, Wu Naijun, a veritable renaissance woman, embodies all three.
As an organizer, Wu Naijun is imbued with the authority to identify problems, develop an exact method of addressing the issue as she has framed it, and then mobilize resources to meet targets. This same pattern is repeated time and time again in a 1956 handbook on Xinjiang: Han experts go in, immediately identify problems, and come up with the solution exactly addressing the issue, whether this be related to water supply, animal husbandry, “economic backwardness” or intrafamilial affairs.37 The handbook concludes with a final chapter entitled “Go to Xinjiang!”
36 Though the bulk of this population was lesser-educated peasants, PLA soldiers, and Xinjiang Production and
Construction Corps members, many of whom were demobilized KMT soldiers or refugees of the Shaanxi famine, these populations resided in relatively isolated ethnic enclaves.
encouraging Han technicians to voluntarily take up posts on the frontier. Importantly, these recent arrivals are given free rein to construct the framework for a dialogue assuming the
inherent existence of identifiable problems and solution, and to determine both what constitutes a “problem” and along which lines such problems should be analyzed and addressed. The
approach that party representatives such as Wu Naijun employ assumes a dichotomy of problem and solution, which lays the foundation for a discourse of local ineptitude and leadership-driven development. Uyghurs cannot step up to the plate as leaders of development. In echoing earlier Western colonial literature, Uyghurs (and particularly disenfranchised Uyghur women) are portrayed as static, a passive mass existing in the timeless realm of the native, incapable of precipitating action. 38 Conversely, the Han newcomers are portrayed not as members of Mao’s masses, but as active individuals: within one year a single Han cadre can revolutionize a town; within a month they can turn around production at a state factory.39
Wu Naijun herself is portrayed as possessing an almost superhuman skill set. Not only can she can teach multiple subjects and perform secretarial tasks, she can also organize propaganda campaigns, direct plays, earn accolades for leading performances, draw up architectural
blueprints, mediate between obstinate husbands and entrepreneurial (but oppressed) wives and daughters, run a start-up, design clothing and market merchandise. Furthermore, she is successful in all of these ventures, and achieves her success while standing on her own two feet, relying only on intangible party support.40 Wu Naijun is there to direct the scenes, apparently without
38 See, for example, creation of the “timeless Khmer” in Penny Edwards, Cambodge: the cultivation of a nation,
1860-1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007) 252.
39 See Wan An 王安, “Xin hong shou qiao de nügong Li Nongjin” 心红手巧的女工李弄琴 (Revolutionary-hearted
and skill-handed feamle worker Li Nongjin) Renmin Ri Bao人民日报 7 (4/3/1960).
assistance. Instead, it is the natives who can do nothing with proficiency and need assistance in learning their roles.
Not all Han women are teachers in formal school settings like Wu Naijun, but they are primarily portrayed as instructors and mentors in their interactions with Uyghurs. The majority of young Han women employed by the new state factories in the 1950s are given supervisory positions, but the role of all Han women as instructors and mentors is repeatedly emphasized in party accounts. People’s Daily articles on the 7-1 Textile Factory in Urumqi specify that in January of 1954 “some of the best Han women technical workers were specially chosen to help train 55 young ethnic minority women in textile technologies”.41 Subsequent articles confirm that “every Han worker recognized that training the ethnic workers was their honorable duty,”42 and “Han women workers take helping their younger sister43 ethnic colleagues as a very
honorable duty, and they all hope to have the younger sister ethnic workers transferred to their work group. When the younger sister ethnic women workers are studying technology, the Han women workers very patiently explain the basics of operating the machines, even acting out the
power channels and resources.
41 “Xinjiangshen ge shaoshuminzu de nü changye jishu gongren zhengzai chengzhang” 新疆省各少数民族的女产 业技术工人正在成长 [Female industrial workers of every ethnicity in Xinjiang Province are coming into their own] Renmin Ri Bao人民日报 3 (3/11/1954).
42Xu Baosheng徐宝生, “Shenghuo zai Xinjiang Qiyi Mianfangzhichang de ge minzu gongrenmen”生活在新疆七一 棉纺织厂的各民族工人们 [Workers of every ethnicity living in Xinjiang’s 7-1 Cotton Textile Factory] Renmin Ri Bao 人民日报2 (5/26/1954).
43 The literal phrase used is “兄弟民族” or “elder and younger brother ethnicity” which is also used when discussing
motions, encouraging and helping them in studying the operations…Within a month, the ethnic women workers have already learned some basic machine operations.”44
“Xinjiang’s 7/1 Textile Factory’s Uyghur, Kazakh and other minority women workers study technology with the help of Han workers.”45
While overlooking longstanding local textile expertise, these narratives underscore an assumption that nothing can be learned from Uyghur women, save the non-productive arts of “singing and dancing.”46 Furthermore, frequent relegation of Uyghur women to ‘domestic’
44 “Xinjiang Qiyi Mianfangzhichang ge zu nügong jiji xue jishu” 新疆七一棉纺织厂各族女工积极学技术 [Female
workers of every ethnicity energetically studying technology in Xinjiang’s 7-1 Cotton Textile Factory] Renmin Ri Bao 2 (4/2/1954). These positive attitudes towards training Uyghur women are directly contradicted by Justin Jacobs, Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State (Seattle: University of Washington Press) 187.
45 Wu Chunzhan武纯展, “Feiyue qianjin de Xinjiang” 飞跃前进的新疆 [Xinjiang Leaping Forward] Renmin Ri
Bao人民日报 9 (9/18/1959).
46 Even in the 1800s, Hotan especially was famed for its carpets, as was all of Altishahr for embroidery. Several
industries, inclusive of not just industrial textile production but also homemade handcrafts and “sidework”, indicates application of a very different set of standards for Uyghur women than for Han women of the interior. 47 Though decried as “feudal” in Shaanxi and other locales,
engagement in work centered on the home was actually viewed as an improvement for Uyghur women. 48
Han women’s inevitably superior position vis-a-vis Uyghurs raises two questions: could Uyghur women ever reach ‘adulthood’ and attain equal footing with their Han counterparts, or were they perpetually relegated to the role of “younger sister”? And were vanguard Chinese settlers in Xinjiang primarily colonists or feminists and revolutionaries? Were they, as feminist historian Wang Zheng claims, “socialist state feminists…striving towards their Communist goal of eliminating gender, class and ethnic inequalities in China” who therefore saw Uyghur women primarily as fellow females suffering under similar yokes? Or did they view this population as primarily a lower-status “non-Han other”?49 Was their primary goal to improve the situation of women universally, or to raise the status of Han women vis-à-vis the adolescent other?
As exemplified by Wu Naijun’s case, despite its rhetoric of gender equality, the party often did not place equal importance on men and women’s work. Interaction with minority women was one avenue that allowed Han Chinese women to build up a level of power and jurisdiction in a manner often denied to them within purely Han contexts, especially in relation to Han men.
47 For examples, see Hu Zhong, 32-33.
48 See Gail Hershatter’s discussion of “feudal” work in Chapter 2 “No one is home,” in Hershatter, The Gender of
Memory, 32-64.
Regardless of her intentions as a feminist or revolutionary, Wu Naijun’s work elevated her status through positioning her as a leader and superior vis-a-vis Uyghur women. It is impossible to imagine a scenario in which these ethnic roles are switched. This same principle can be read writ large across the nation. As interpreted in these narratives, the state of Uyghurs served national interests in confirming the need for a core population holding superior cultural and scientific knowledge, and thus justifying Han incursion into the region. The positioning of Uyghur women as an oppressed population held captive by a society incapable of internally-driven reform served to prove the benevolence and aptitude of the party, its [Han Chinese] representatives, and the core population of Inner China from which they drew. In comparison to the portrayal of “feudal” and “backwards” minorities, the majority is silently painted as a standard for civilization. Ethnic others confirm Han superiority and consolidate the notion of a Han majority that is the standard for national culture, learning and advancement.50 The fundamental inequality of Han-Minority relations also makes it highly advantageous to claim Han ethnic status, and thus serves as a positive force for consolidation of a majority identity in disincentivizing populations on the fringes of Han culture – such as native Cantonese speakers like Wu Naijun – from attempting to carve out distinctive cultural identities.51
50 For further discussion of images of the colonized used to safeguard the colonizer’s cultural preeminence see
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 2.
51 See Kevin Carrico “Recentering China: the Cantonese in and beyond the Han”, James Liebold, “Searching for
CHAPTER 2: IMPOVERISHED PEASANT TO INSPIRED PROLETARIAT: THE MAKING OF MODEL MINORITIES UNDER STATE GAZE
Watching a performance of the Hotan Cultural Team, you’ll find yourself swayed by the
distinctive local songs and dance, emboldened by the freshness of the revolutionary tunes, drawn
in by the evocative voice of the young Uyghur performer Shalamaiti. Her entire performance,
will persuade you of the power of the party’s leadership, the exertion of the masses striving to
revolutionize this beautiful land, and the fierce love held in the heart of every ethnicity in
Xinjiang for Chairman Mao that inspires them to strive ever onward.
Shalamaiti was born a nobody with no prospects. At the age of 9, on the eve of revolution,
she was sent out to the fields as a shepherdess. She was never offered any chance of education.
At the age of 17 she (exactly how is never explained) joined the Hotan Cultural Team. Due to her lack of education, illiteracy, and understanding of Chinese, Shalamaiti at first struggled and
was so dispirited she almost left the team. The life of a traveling performer was straught with
difficulty: traversing mountains to tiny villages, trudging on only to hear someone say that she
would never amount to much of a performer. But her teammates encouraged her, and the team
leader gathered them into a study group to read Mao’s “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on
Literature and Art” emphasizing the importance of artistic production derived from and
inspiring the lives of the common people. Shalamaiti’s eyes were opened: in old society a poor
peasant girl like her could barely eke out a living at the level of a beast of burden.52 Becoming a
52 Literally “cow-horse life” (niu ma shenghuo, 牛马生活). Writing contrasting experiences pre and post liberation
performer was an impossibility, and this opportunity represented the party’s trust in her.
Shalamaiti determined to live up to that trust, and fulfill the needs of the masses. She practiced
on her own when everyone else had gone to dinner, and gradually her performance improved.
Whenever she encountered difficulty Mao’s thoughts gave her the courage she needed to
overcome obstacles and quiet her fear. She learned several dances, began to excel at singing,
and taught herself to play two instruments. But the people needed more, needed fresh material
that instilled revolutionary thought and love for the party into the very landscape of their
existence. Working to surmount the hurdle of her own illiteracy, Shalamaiti began to compose
her own tunes, singing snippets for her teammates and reworking them again and again until
four songs featuring her beloved Hotan became party-perfect audience favorites. The
transformation of “ordinary farmgirl” into such an exemplary performer, the author surmises, is clearly an impactful example of the power of Chairman Mao Thought to nourish those who drink
from the party’s cup and give them the strength to realize their full potential.53
The entire interview is written in Chinese and published in a state-run Chinese periodical. Shalamaiti’s voice comes to us through the art of translation, an act that goes unacknowledged by the author. Given the author’s anonymity (simply “a staff writer”), we cannot surmise who first made her story accessible to a Chinese-speaking audience. Regardless of who performed the initial act of interpretation, the journalist renders her speech legible to the larger Chinese-literate audience by writing her voice into the norms of state narrative. The text is peppered with
common Chinese phrases such as “life of beasts of burden”, an idiom used in this period to describe living standard prior to liberation.54 Even Shalamaiti herself is presented through the lens of linguistic interpretation through the equivocation of her Uyghur name with the
nonsensical Chinese transliteration (沙拉买提, lit. “Salad-buy-raise”).55 Her identity prior to and outside of state structure is mentioned only in passing and given no distinct features. Uyghurs not seen by the state are not seen. Uyghurs portrayed are those in contact with the state and,
particularly, servants to the state.
Likewise, Uyghur culture as discussed in popular publications is reduced to a secularized
visible culture – singing, dancing, and colorful clothes. Of the hundreds of references to Uyghur culture in People’s Daily and other articles, these are almost exclusively the only specific aspects of Uyghur culture mentioned, and these traits are always presented without reference to Islam or deeper cultural influences.56 Of particular importance to the authors of these articles is how these cultural products are used in service of the state, either in expressions of gratitude to the party or to propagate party messages. Shalamaiti is a model because she demonstrates how these aspects of Uyghur culture can be appropriated in creating convincing party propaganda and thus advance the reach of the state. Notably, no other aspects of Uyghur culture – nothing that could make her seem fundamentally distinct, nothing that would be difficult to harness into labor for the state, and certainly no mention of the Sufi roots of Uyghur dance– is included in her
54 People’s Daily contains 129 articles employing this term, all contrasting life before and after liberation.
55 Due to transliteration, Uyghur names as they appear in Chinese texts are often quite different from the original,
especially before standardization of transliterations. Where the original Uyghur name is clear, the original name, and not the transliteration, is used.
56 The 1963 Brief History also mentions poetry, but gives no examples of pre-PRC poems. Religion could be
narrative. While Islam was woven into the daily fabric of Uyghur life, structuring greetings, interpersonal relations, dress, cuisine, and speech, marking the passing of the hours and the shifting of the seasons, Shalamaiti’s artistic outpourings are notably secular. This is Uyghur culture cleaved from its religious heritage and repurposed for service to the state.
As writers cannot report on what they do not see, state-sanctioned sources have obvious limitations on the selection of characters and scope of narrative. Uyghur women who come into state-sanctioned narrative are Uyghur women under the state’s gaze. Numerous articles from the period reference the state’s desire to have Uyghur women rendered publicly visible. This process does not always entail stepping onto the stage, but certainly necessitates making oneself readable to state eyes and re-defining oneself via party structures. Looking back at Shalamaiti’s
adolescence, we notice that her earlier occupation as a shepherdess rendered her invisible to state eyes and intractable by state organs. Her return to a life ordered under state eyes echoes earlier calls for the collectivization of Kazakh pastures, moving mobile (and volatile) populations into static organization. 57 Back in Altishahr, women are encouraged to both step over the threshold and unveil, stepping from dark to light, from obscurity to visibility – and legibility. One lengthy 1952 feature article in People’s Daily recounts the efforts of a Han party cadre in Hami actively interceding in minority family affairs to extract a young bride from the four walls of her in-law’s home, from under her mother-in-law’s control, and bring her into state-governed spaces. This young woman was not asked to be an active revolutionary, but merely to be present at local party
57 Most problems are recorded among the numerically smaller Kazak population. Following years of Kazak
functions.58 Regardless of where or how they were concealed from state view (and thus state reach) minority women are meant to subject themselves to this gaze and allow their lives to be defined by state-devised social structures, such as work units or participation in study groups and political meetings.
Emphasis on the legibility of minorities is not new to the PRC. In the introduction to The Art of Ethnography: A Chinese “Miao Album”, Laura Hostetler claims that illustrated taxonomy albums of ethnic minorities in the Qing were used by the state for easy identification and control of subject populations.59 The manner of depicting these minorities positioned peripheral people hailing from disparate cultural traditions within a framework that was uniformly accessible to state actors and could be replicated with minor modifications for every people in the empire. While lacking the same emphasis on illustration, the 1963 Brief History and Introduction to the Uyghurs, similarly serves to bring Uyghurs into view under a set framework, presenting them in a format common across the volumes in a series introducing every ethnic minority in the Chinese state. The state’s imposition of such a knowledge system, and the accompanying assumption that this singular way of organizing individuals and cultivating knowledge of subject populations is applicable across the board, goes hand in hand with an underlying claim to exclusive access to modernity and modern knowledge production. As anthropologist Paige West has noted, colonial powers can create the symbolic landscape that allows them to benefit from a certain vision of
58 Yao Wen 姚文, “Cong fenjian jiu jiating dao hexie de xin jiating – ji Xinjiang yi ge huizu jiating de bianhua” 从 封建旧家庭到和睦的新家庭——记新疆一个回族家庭的变化 (From an old feudal household t oto peaceful new household – changes in a Hui household in Xinjiang). Renmin Ri Bao人民日报3 (4/27/1952).
correct development.60 Here, the Han-dominated party-state is both the embodiment of modernity and the means through which it is achieved or, as Sanjay Seth notes in analyzing British knowledge production of subjects in India, “This knowledge is seen as ‘‘modern’’ not just in the sense that it is historically recent, but also because it is seen as part and parcel of
modernity.”61 However, as Rian Thum and others have demonstrated, the population designated as Uyghurs in the PRC inhabited a world structured by both a distinctive value system and a disparate way of producing and approaching knowledge. 62 This method of rendering Uyghur women visible is then imposing not just an ideology and ideal reality on their subjects, but a fundamentally foreign framework for knowing them and categorizing their world.
Given its imperfections and incompatibility with the nebulous category of “Uyghur Culture”, why would women subject themselves to state gaze? Again, Shalamaiti’s case is illustrative. Prior to subjecting herself to state gaze, Shalamaiti, like many young women of her era, is portrayed as barred from education or other opportunities. Forever sequestered in the darkness of a house, trapped behind a veil, or set upon the vast and empty plains, unliberated women were denied all possibility of personal advancement and community participation.63 As with the women liberated through their contact with Wu Naijun, opportunity is obtained only via establishment of a relationship with the state. Subjection to the state gaze is cast as the sole
60Paige West, Dispossession and the Environment: Rhetoric and Inequality in Papua New Guinea. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2016), 6.
61 Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007),
183.
62 Rian Thum, 3, 160, 186.
means of tapping into these opportunities, the sole avenue of modernity. These opportunities are therefore cast not as the inalienable rights of all citizens, but contingent upon self-subjugation.
The natural response to the state’s bestowal of such unprecedented opportunities is naturally
a “spontaneous” outpouring of gratitude and willingness to turn oneself into a vessel for the party’s message.64 However, published accounts of unbidden pro-party production must be taken with a grain of salt given the circumstances of their production. The early 1950s witnessed a professionalization and salarization of many lines of occupation, including art. By the mid-1950s, artists were state cadres. While Brief History celebrates their newfound professional respect, artists were dependent on the state for continuation of that respect - and their material livelihood.65 The state, in turn, sanctioned certain voices and ensured the study and pursuit of official types of art, thus blurring the line between grateful beneficiaries of the state and dependent state employees. Colin Mackerras hails professionalization as “the single most important phenomenon to affect the performing arts of the minority nationalities since 1949,” observing that “the training system is tailor made to produce the new type of professionals and it tends to do so according to standards set down by the Han.”66 Model workers were both scouted out and intensively trained by the state, just as displays of love for the party and zeal for socialist development - giant carpets woven in anticipation of a visit from Chairman Mao, songs written by Shalamaiti, poetry commemorating liberation, and speeches given by model workers - were
64 Brief Introduction, 224.
65Ibid, 210.
66 Colin Mackerras, “Folksongs and Dances of China's Minority Nationalities: Policy, Tradition, and
acts of careful state-supervised composition.67, 68 Model workers and performers were ordinary individuals transformed into localized vehicles for state ideology. The messages they shared were intended to seem more authentic arising ‘naturally’ from a member of the community.69
Importantly, once a woman had subjugated herself to state gaze, gained the benefits of collaboration, and made herself a vehicle for party propagation, she could not back down: by 1952, most state cadres were subject to a law prohibiting voluntary resignation.70 It’s uncertain whether Shalamaiti could have elected to leave the cultural troupe. Was her resolution to stick it out truly a personal choice and example of Mao-inspired determination, or was this decision made on her behalf by the troupe leader? Could she have ever self-elected to return to the fields and remove herself from state gaze?
The answer is most likely “no”, at least if Shalamaiti hoped to retain access to any of the resources she benefited from while an employee of the state. Under the new regime Uyghur women are assumed to exist along a finite spectrum: forward toward party-moderated modernity, obtained through submission to the state (and, as seen in Wu Naijun’s bibliography, imported state actors); or backwards into darkness and obscurity. Modern subjecthood is one predicated on self-elected subjugation.
67 For a detailed narrative of the process of training a model worker, see Chapter 8: “Model” in Hershatter, The
Gender of Memory, 210-235.
68 For a list of other instances of supposedly spontaneous acts testifying to popular gratitude and love for the party,
see Brief History, 224.
69 For further discussion of this point, see Hershatter, 213-14.
70 Deborah S. Davis, “Social Class Transformation in Urban China: Training, Hiring, and Promoting Urban
CHAPTER 3: UYGHUR WOMEN IN A MEN’S WORLD
As the mountains blaze red under last rays of sun, Maliyamu gallops across the Ili Valley
hoping to reach her husband Muhemaiti (Muhammed) before dark, eager to share her good
news: she’s just been transferred to his unit to study land reform! Long held apart, first by
traditional society and then by their commitment to the communist party, they are finally to be
united in domicile and daily dedication to the party.
Growing up in impoverished households tied to the same oppressive landlord, Maliyamu and
Muhammed have both built themselves impressive careers within the party. Maliyamu is the
local Women’s Federation Representative, while Muhammed is Public Security Team leader for
the farmer’s collective and leader of the production mutual aid team. He and Maliyamu were
both activists in the rent reduction campaign and held their wedding in the rent reduction victory
meeting.
In youth, the two were neighbors separated only by a wall. They played together, worked
together, studied at the same school for two years, and fell in love. When Muhammed turned 16
he sold his labor to the landlord, and was often gone for months at a time. Maliyamu was 14;
according to Uyghur customs, she had already reached marriageable age. Her mother, Rozihan,
began to spend all her time worrying about finding her a suitable husband.
Maliyamu’s heart was as agitated as hot oil jumping on the griddle. As soon as Muhammed
returned to their village for Nowruz (Spring Festival) she pleaded with him to find a way for the
together half his life’s savings into bride-price, and sent the matchmaker to ask for Maliyamu’s
hand on behalf of his son.
Maliyamu’s father Lamahong had long understood that Muhammed was an intelligent and
capable young man, and gave his consent to this union. But Rozihan looked down upon
Muhammed’s family for being too poor to own even a carpet, and coldly told Ruomaji off. How
could she give away her only daughter to a family that couldn’t guarantee her material
wellbeing?
After this, Maliyamu’s home was the site of constant discord. Rozihan wanted to find a
son-in-law with better prospects, but her husband Lamahong hated the rich from the bottom of his
heart. Several families asked for Maliyamu’s hand in marriage, but nothing came of it.
In 1950 the CCP and representatives of the PRC arrived in Ili. Once a laborer, Muhammed
now became a partner. Even though he was still exploited by the landlord, he enjoyed more
freedom than he had as a laborer, and he thought to himself: “After the Han people’s Party (at
that time he still didn’t know it was the CCP) came, they’ve been good to the poor, this is
certainly a just party.” He shared the news with Maliyamu, telling her that this change in
circumstances would certainly allow them to finally wed.
When the CCP-led rent reduction team arrived in their village in November of 1951,
Muhammed and Maliyamu threw themselves into work, mobilizing young peasants and women to
participate in work and study. They were so busy helping the new administration and organizing
youth that, for the time being, they didn’t concern themselves with matters of the heart.
Following the anti-landlord struggle, the two youth joined the New Democratic Youth
League. Maliyamu became the first activist among women in her village. Endorsing her
the women’s league. In order to undertake all her duties, she often left early and came back late,
not thinking twice about her own affairs (or, apparently, her parents’ concern about their teenager gallivanting around the countryside).
After Muhammed joined the league he worked with even more enthusiasm. There wasn’t a
single soul in the village who didn’t sing his praises. On the day he was selected to be head of
the village farmer’s association Rozihan put three glutinous rice seeds in his bowl, signaling her
acceptance of his proposal. Her husband laughed, saying, “What’s happened? It looks like you
approve!”. Rozihan said with some unease, “In the past I was just another person born into
poverty; whoever thought we could turn our lives around?”
After all parents had thus endorsed the union, Muhammed and Maliyamu decided to hold a
new-style wedding at the rent reduction campaign victory meeting.
Ruomaji borrowed a wagon, and filled it with his share of the grain confiscated from the
landlord, hoping to sell it in the city in order to purchase wedding gifts. On his way to the cart he
ran into Muhammed who stopped him at once and demanded to know what he was doing.
Muhammed berated his parents, reminding them of party platitudes to sparingly use resources
and focus on production. Father and son argued for some time, the father adamant that he could
not collect a bride empty-handed any more than he could entertain guests with empty cupboards.
Having clearly memorized his share of party pamphlets, Muhammed retorted, “The government
is calling for us to use the fruits of struggle [confiscated and re-distributed grain] for
production, not to waste it. Weddings now don’t have to be like those in the past. The [1950]
Marriage Law stipulates that no bride price be required. If we squander all the grain, what will
we plant in spring? His father stood before him speechless, finally turning around and returning
Wedding preparations were also underway at Maliyamu’s house with Rozihan busy
borrowing this from one family, that from another, preparing food for the guests to eat. When
Ruomaji sent over the wedding gifts, Rozihan looked despairingly at the small parcel, ripping it
open and throwing it out on the street in rage when she noticed it contained only fabric for one
set of clothes and a single pair of shoes. “Impossible! Who could ever be so cheap!” she
wailed. Even her anti-bourgeoise husband was troubled. “This, this is unthinkable! I’ve lived
this long and never see someone take a bride like this!” he muttered.
However, on the day of the wedding people crowded into the town center a full two hours
before the ceremony began, squeezing into the doorframe, sitting on the courtyard wall, even
climbing onto the roof. Muhammed and Maliyamu entered the first new-style wedding in their
village bedecked in brilliant red flowers. Lamahong and his wife stepped onto the podium
carrying a garland of flowers, saw the lively crowd before them, and broke out in smiles.
Rozihan stood up and said, with great emotion in her voice: “In my whole life, I’ve never been so
happy as I am today. Our children’s affairs should be up to them to manage, and certainly
shouldn’t be fettered by old regulations.”71
While the direct-narrative style of this story as printed in People’s Daily in 1952 certainly raises issues of translation, memory, and the imposition of “state speech”, it has been selected for this thesis for its treatment of two issues: Uyghur women and the law and Uyghur women in the company of Uyghur men. While these two relationships are discussed extensively in an abstract
71 Story from Ge Li 歌黎. “Yi dui Weiwuerzu qingnian nannü de ziyou jiehun” 一对维吾尔族青年男女的自由结
