The Folklorist in the Marketplace by Willow G. Mullins Puja Batra-Wells

Author:Willow G. Mullins, Puja Batra-Wells [Willow G. Mullins, Puja Batra-Wells]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Folklore & Mythology
ISBN: 9781607327851
Publisher: Utah State University Press
Published: 2019-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

7

An Ordered Mess

Folk Narratives and Practices in a Chinese Hui Muslim Market

Zhao Yuanhao

IN THIS CHAPTER I LOOK AT NARRATIVES FROM an ethnic village market in Shandong Province, China, and people’s everyday experiences in it, to discuss the relationship between order and disorder in the market as a social space. I suggest a dialectic and dialogic relation of market orders and transgressions.

On a hot summer day in 2013, I stepped for the first time into the marketplace affiliated with the H Village. The villagers are Hui, a Muslim minority officially recognized by the Chinese government. The market is called “The Great Three and Eight Market” (san ba da ji in the local dialect). It obtains its name from its opening dates: lunar month days whose single digit is 3 or 8.1 The market occupies the main street running north-south in the east part of the village,2 with narrow alleys extending from it to the east or west. Shops lining the street are run by villagers and are partially converted from households. People, not only Hui, but also Han (the majority Chinese) from adjacent villages or places further away, such as the SW City,3 gather here on market days.

The first impression that the marketplace gives me is that it is a mess. Beside shops, there are pushcarts, three-wheeled motorcycles, peddlers with shoulder-poles. and goods spread on sheets on the ground. Everything a Hui (or a non-Hui) needs to maintain his/her everyday life, from cradle to grave, could be found here: beef and lamb slaughtered right on the street; chickens cooing in overloaded cages and fish munching water for oxygen in shallow barrels; tea leaves in cans and packs on shelves; snacks of alluring artificial colors neatly stored in cardboard-cells; vegetables in piles with mud on them; hand tools, toys, clothes, and bedding displayed on the ground beside boards inscribed with Quranic verses. Public bathrooms, shadowy showrooms, food stalls and restaurants, midwife services, and tombstone workshops are open side by side. To render its label of “Hui [Muslim] market” problematic, one can even find blood tofu and liquor stores in the market.4 This chapter reads through the market’s chaotic surface and decode the logics underpinning market practices, to argue for an orderliness of the market.

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