The road to Beijing's Northwestern Hui Cemetery (Huimin Gongmu, 回民公墓) winds away from the main boulevard and the bus stop which bears its name. In this far corner of Haidian District (海淀区) you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd left Beijing entirely. The houses which line the shade covered road are low, mostly two-story buildings that look older and more worn that the fifteen or twenty floor apartment towers that dominate skyline closer to the city center. Here, out past the end of Subway Line 4, things are quiet, still. Here, in Beijing's suburbs, things feel much like they do in other small towns in China. I'm reminded of visits I've made to rural Yunnan. It seems inconceivable that the center of a major world city is a mere 35 minute subway ride away. And so I plod forward, out here, on the edge of urban Beijing, in search of a place that, even for this quiet suburb, feels obscure.
***
Why am I here? The story begins with a routine health check. On my way to conduct the standard health evaluation administered to all foreigners seeking a residency permit, I notice the name of a particular bus station on a marquee while waiting for my own bus. Huimin Gongmu (回民公墓). The Hui Cemetery. Naturally, this peaked my curiosity. Dru C. Gladney (who I often cite here), wrote extensively in the 1990s about the importance of graves as important sites for the sustainment of Hui culture. The tombs of Sufi Islamic saints frequently become places of pilgrimage for followers, and serve as sites of ritual, mythologizing, and creation of an ethnic consciousness. For my part, I've always been fascinated that these places built for the dead provide a venue for creation and invention for the living. And so I stored away the sign for a later date. A place to revisit.
Part of the intrigue surrounding the place is my uncertainty about what exactly it was. In western China, tombs of saints are memorialized in grandeur, often with large complexes serving as memorial halls, or gongbei (拱北). Occasionally, these tombs become the sites of full blown mosques that attract large contingents of worshippers and are pillars of the local Islamic community. Usually, however, tombs like this are found in Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, and the other provinces of China's distant western periphery. I'd never heard of a place like this in Beijing. And so, with a good deal of curiosity I headed out yesterday, on a sunny afternoon to find the cemetery, not knowing at all what I should expect to find there.
***
Eventually, far enough along the path, the houses recede. I find myself walking alongside a brick wall which appears to front an open field, though I can't see over it to tell. Far beyond, I see the low hills which surround Beijing rising in the distance. On top of a distant, particularly high peak, sits a lone pagoda. I no longer hear the sounds of the road. Or of the city. At first, the silence startles me. Very quickly, I realize that what I hear is not silence. Instead I hear bird songs. I hear crickets in the field. I hear the rustle of the wind. Ahead I see an ornate front gate. This, I surmise, must be the place, and so I walk through. As I step inside I see a mostly empty field. A sign announces this as a 'gongmu' (cemetery) so I stride over to the guesthouse, prepared to ask if I'm allowed to wander around on the grounds. I walk through the open door of the small gatehouse, startling the gatekeeper, who appears to be daydreaming, watching TV.
"Hello, sir" I say, politely. "这是回民公墓吗?" Is this the Hui cemetery?
"不, 不, 不." No, he responds emphatically, as if I should probably know better. "这是汉民公墓." This is the Han cemetery. And then, gesturing down the road, he adds, "回民公墓在旁边.” The Hui cemetery is over there.
He walks with me to the gate, and watches as I shuffle on down the path, pondering how, even in death, the Han and Hui remain apart.
***
Before, I've talked about how the Hui have been and continue to be "familiar strangers" in Chinese society. The fact that the Hui speak Mandarin rather than some minority language, and share a lot of cultural traditions with the Han make them the subject of much consternation and scrutiny by Han people, historically. It's a very "Like us, but not like us," kind of relationship between the groups. These perceptions prevail even today. And where there are differences between the two groups, no matter how subtle, the effects may be profound. Attitudes toward ancestors and ghosts are a prime example of such differences. Ancestral lineage matters quite a bit in traditional Chinese culture. Partly, this stems from Confucian practices of ancestor veneration. Though the Cultural Revolution was successful in some senses in stomping out a lot of traditional religious practice, veneration of ancestors is something that still happens in China. In the countryside in Yunnan, you'll still find large, intricate carved wood altars to ancestors placed with pride in family homes. In Jinan, you'll still find people that publicly burn paper money, and pour out baijiu on the street corner when the full moon arrives in order to venerate their forebears. Every year, people still celebrate the QingMing (清明节), or "Clear Brightness" Festival, by sweeping the tombs of their deceased family members. Further, as I've found in the course of living and working here, there is a very real propensity to believe in ghosts.
But for the Hui, these traditions are complicated by Islamic faith. Ancestor veneration falls out of line with the most basic tenet of Islam: there is no God, but God. Seen this way, through the lens of Islamic faith, ancestor veneration amounts to a form of shirk, or blasphemy. Dru Gladney and Michael Dillon and other scholars of Chinese Islam remark that you won't find ancestor altars in observant Hui homes. Nor do the Hui sweep tombs every spring. I remember once asking a Hui co-worker of mine in Jinan about this. It was April and QingMing was approaching, and for the first time in years, it had been declared a national holiday for which vacation time would be given. I asked, curious, if there were other traditions besides sweeping tombs that people observed on the holiday. Her response? "I'm Muslim. We don't really do that. We don't really celebrate QingMing at all." What's more, scholars like Gladney and Dillon report, Hui culture typically doesn't put much stock in ghosts, as they, too, don't align with Islamic understandings of death and afterlife. Gladney writes of accounts of Hui travelers in the pre-modern era, unlike their Han counterparts, being totally unafraid to sleep in cemeteries because of the lack of a belief in ghosts. Further, unlike the Han, who usually cremate bodies, Islam dictates that the Hui bury theirs, as a physical body is necessary for the resurrection of the dead.
So, then, it is of no great surprise that cemeteries here are separate. Subtle shifts in culture like these often yield profound results.
***
As I reach the gate of the Hui cemetery, I find it locked. The large swinging door, solid metal, chained in place. An elderly man sits on a stool by an old minivan, tinkering with something by the steering wheel. He looks up as I approach. I ask if the cemetery is open for touring, and he suggests checking to see if anyone is inside. He bangs on the gate, and calls out to the groundskeepers, "Hey, sir? Is anyone there?" I prepare to head back down the road, and call the afternoon a loss. Suddenly, a inset door in the gate opens, and the cemetery's two caretakers appear. They are both short, stocky, and tanned, their skin leathery, suggesting they've spent the better parts of their lives working in the sun. Both have hair that is streaked with grey, and accents that are strong and hard to trace. "Our American friend is a student of Chinese culture, and he wants to understand (liaojie, 了解) this place," the elderly man tells the caretakers.
Before I know it I am swept inside the gate, and seated at a table in the shade with the two men. Behind me, I see a field of what looks like corn, and over my shoulder, off in the distance, a row of tombstones. The whole place feels overgrown. My conversation with the caretakers begins slowly. They, too, are new here having come only about a year earlier from Dezhou, in nearby Shandong province. When I ask how they like life in Beijing, quickly pronounce, “It’s great!” especially when compared to Dezhou. Both men are Hui, though they admit, that most of their attention revolves around tending to the cemetery. Gazing at the unruliness of the tall grass, I wonder to myself how much attention the place can possibly require. It’s clear from their discussion that there hasn’t been a funeral here in quite a long time, and they suggest as much, saying they rarely get any visitors. “Do you ever go into the city, to NiuJie to pray at the mosque?” I ask. “Not really,” one replies. “Mostly, we’re here, looking after the place.” And so I ask, “Is there a mosque near here, then?” They confer. “There’s one at Anheqiao,” the other says. “But what about in this neighborhood?” I ask. “Is there a mosque nearby?” The first man shakes his head. “Not one really close,” he answers, and gesturing to a small gateway in front of what looks like a small mosque complex, he remarks, “We don’t have an imam here.”
We are joined by the neighbor who had been out fixing his van. He’s Han, a Beijinger, and retired at the age of 60. As the four of us continue to discuss the history of the cemetery a picture begins to emerge. “Before Liberation,” the retiree says, referring to the CCP victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, “there were already some Muslim graves out here. So, after Liberation, they just made this whole place a Hui cemetery.” Pointing over at the Han cemetery, visible at a distance, he says “This whole area, including the Han cemetery used to be Hui graves.” I find myself a little surprised. “Even the Han cemetery?” I ask. “Even the Han cemetery,” he echoes, “but now they’ve been separated.” I ask, “What happened?” One of the caretakers answers. “There used to be a lot more graves here,” he begins to explain, “but during the Cultural Revolution, they were mostly all leveled. Now it’s hard to really know the history of this place. Nobody’s really sure about it.” “Leveled?” I ask. “Yes,” confirms the retiree. “Those ten years were incredibly luan (乱),” he says. Chaotic.
***
The common wisdom about the Cultural Revolution is that chaos engulfed China for a decade. While a few scholars, like William Hinton portrayed the period as less turbulent than might be commonly believed, these versions are often dismissed as politically naïve or willfully nearsighted. Hinton’s contemporaries, like the Sinologist, Morton H. Fried, claimed he “wore his political heart on his sleeve,” and ignored the tragic realities of the Cultural Revolution. Stories like this one, of leveled antiquity and lost heritage, are indicative of why this period is remembered as disastrous. Starting in 1966 and really continuing at varying degrees of intensity for the next ten years, the Cultural Revolution took a huge toll on many communities. Seemingly every community has some story about a shrine that was damaged, a relic destroyed, an intangible cultural artifact lost to the furor of those years. The Hui are no exception to this truism. Throughout the country, this damage is referenced, at times explicitly. The Songjiang Mosque in Shanghai notes in its presentation of the mosque’s history that it had to undergo significant repairs in 1985, owing to damage sustained during the Cultural Revolution. Ben Hillman discusses how already isolated Hui communities in northwest Yunnan lost the last remaining ties with Islam during this period, and have only recently revived their Islamic heritage. Places like the Huimin Gongmu stand as strange reminders of how the ripple effect of political turmoil may be felt intensely throughout all aspects of life and culture, and may reverberate years, even decades later.
***
I walk up the paved path that runs between the graves to the right and the cornfield to the left. The cemetery’s caretakers leave me to wander on my own, and return to the shade. They’ve seen the place before, after all. The retiree comes with me, admitting, “This is also my first time inside here. I’d like to see it, too.” We walk along the path, happening upon a tombstone now and again. In some places the headstones are visible as they sit in the midst of the rows of corn, slowly being reclaimed by the earth. Later, after leaving the cemetery, as I reflect on this, I remember the words I’ve heard so many times when receiving the sacrament of ashes on Ash Wednesday: Remember, you are but dust, and to dust you shall return.
Despite being overgrown, the headstones do give some traces of the history of the place. Crescent moons and Arabic script stand out, where other details on the stones have faded and are less immediately legible: names, dates. A few headstones appear to have been damaged. One looks as if the entire rear-face of the headstone has been defaced, chiseled clean of any trace of religious imagery. The assessment of the caretakers was accurate: the cemetery, while fairly recent, is also fairly old. The oldest date on any of the stones in the field is 1963; the most recent, 1994. Twenty years later, it appears that the cemetery is all but forgotten. It’s a name on a bus-stop, and a memorial tended by two men who are its sole visitors, apart from the occasional curious foreigner conducting field research. Such neglect becomes more evident as I wander into the courtyard of the small prayer hall adjacent the cemetery. In the middle, the flowers and grass and bushes in the courtyard of the hall are wildly overgrown. Brush and piles of cement bags fill the corridors and walkways to either side of the prayer hall. Faded billboards that describe the history of this cemetery and the local community peek out from where they are stashed in the side buildings. The glass doors to the small hall are locked, but its clear that there’s really no need for it. While perusing in the courtyard, we’re interrupted by yet another man, wearing the clothes of a gardener: straw hat, garden gloves, boots. He holds a landscaping tool, and asks what we’re doing. When my retired friend suggests that I’m a student learning about Chinese culture (a statement that I do not attempt to correct), the gardener doesn’t seem to understand.
“But this place isn’t even that old,” he puzzles. “It was built about 15 years ago.”
The retiree reasons, “Well, he just wants to understand a bit more about Hui culture.”
The gardener looks at me, still not quite sure what to make of the scene. “You want to study Hui funeral traditions, right?” he asks me. “Then you ought to go somewhere that’s still in use.” Gesturing widely he continues, “This place is no longer use by now (已经停止用). It’s got no significance (没有意义).”
“When did that happen? And why?” I ask.
The gardener considers this for a brief moment, and remarks, “There is no reason (没有为什么). They just gradually stopped using this place (慢慢停止用) and found another cemetery.” Then for good measure, he repeats “It’s got no significance.”
***
In the final assessment, however, I think the gardener’s wrong. Or perhaps just mistaken. Because the Huimin Gongmu does, indeed, have significance. Its gradual slide into disuse and anonymity does not indicate its irrelevance. Rather, it is yet another piece in puzzling together the story of Beijing’s changes in the era of Reform and Opening. The decline of this spot, its prayer hall, and the Hui community that used it, tells part of the larger story about how the Hui community has shifted in the wake of Beijing’s development. Much like accounts of how chai qian (demolition and relocation) have changed the face of neighborhoods, and transformed the configurations of urban Hui communities, its has also influenced such scattered outposts as the Huimin Gongmu in Beijing’s far northwest. As Beijing’s Hui community consolidates around the community at Niu Jie and a few other places, the graves at the cemetery are left alone, to return again to the earth.