Invocations of "the market" in political science tend towards the macro-level. We are all too often want to zoom out to a bird's eye view, and examine how market forces exert an influence on culture from a global level. However, as Tip O'Neill once opined, "All politics is local." In this spirit, it's useful to get back down to how markets (literal locations for the purchase of food and produce rather than large abstract forces of economics) influence local culture and society, and build observations upward and outward. The politics of the marketplace in Yinchuan reflect some of the larger issues present throughout China when discussing interethnic relations.
The quote in the title of this post comes from a friend and colleague of mine here in Yinchuan, who I've been working with. It came as we wandered through the Tongxin Lu Market in Yinchuan's western XiXia District. Call it a teachable moment. He began, "If you want to really understand culture, you have to get down to the ground, and see how people live." Continuing, he argued, "Even this one small market can represent the whole of global society." In Yinchuan, this seems especially true.
What do we learn from Yinchuan's open air markets?
Quite a lot, actually. In Ningxia, a Hui Autonomous Region, the politics of food exert heavy influence on local life. There's another post in the works about that phenomenon (particularly the state's involvement in the process of certifying what is and is not considered 'halal'), but there's plenty to dig into in examining a local market.
For one thing, a trip to a market gives an indication of just how important the Hui observance of halal standards is in Yinchuan. The market on Tongxin lu is effectively divided in two: a qingzhen, or halal market, in which most vendors are Hui, and customers may purchase beef or lamb, and a separate market for the vending of pork.
The separation isn't a minor detail. The taboo on pork remains a strong force in Hui culture. Indeed, as we walked through the non-Halal section of the market, my colleague remarked that the odor of the pork being sold there was enough to almost make him physically sick. "I know that this is all pyschological, that it's all in my head, and that it's all through conditioning," he told me, "but all the same I can't help it. When I'm around pork, I get the feeling that I might throw up."
Unsurprisingly, this means that each section of the market also vends produce as well as meat, to avoid having the fruits, vegetables, etc. become tainted by the mere presence of pork. Likewise, a slew of products that are ostensibly considered "clean" by default according to Islamic doctrine, are sold in the Hui market as qing zhen. For instance, numerous vendors sell rice noodles, tofu, and other non-meat products which are branded as halal. When asked what makes these products qingzhen, the answers given as justification vary. Most often, vendors conclude that the product they're selling is qingzhen by virtue of the fact that it was produced by other Hui.
The divisons of the market are marked clearly and distinctly. The halal market leaves nothing to ambiguity. All vendors' signs are emblazoned with Arabic script, the characters 清真 (qing zhen, or halal), and are written in bold green. The non-halal market advertises that shoppers are now entering a 大肉区(darou qu, or "pork section") in bold, red characters. This results in a fairly transparent and legible coding scheme: green = Hui vendors, red = Han vendors. The lines of demarcation in the marketplace are color coded in a manner that is not unlike the way countries get shaded in different hues on elementary school political maps.
So what are the larger lessons here? I find the Tongxin lu market illustrative of several aspects of contemporary Han-Hui interactions. The separateness of the markets is but one aspect among many that separates the two communities. A colleague in Xining once remarked that even though Han and Hui share urban environments in many of China's cities, the two often live incredibly segregated existances in which Han interact with other Han, and Hui interact with other Hui. On Tongxin Lu, this separation of filters down, in some senses by necessity, even into the process of buying groceries. Further, the market illustrates how easily identities may be reduced down to easily decoded systems of symbolism: red and green signs marking the difference between Hui and Han. It's in this way that food and color become shorthand for entire cultural systems. In a final sense, the market illustrates how even familiar items like tofu, or noodles, may become imbued with ethnic significance or marked as "other". In the qingzhen section of the market tofu becomes "halal tofu" and thus a marker of an ethnic boundary. In subtle ways like this, profound differences in lifestyle, culture and beilef become visible.
The politics of food in Yinchuan are perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of interethnic relations here. In the next few days, I'll dive into this a little more deeply. Watch this space.