Introduction
The question of interethnic interaction has always been relevant for multi-ethnic countries such as Kazakhstan, which is now home to more than 130 ethnicities as the result of various political and historical factors such as forced migration (Dilmanov Reference Dilmanov2006), Chinese Muslims’ flight from Qing authorities in the late 19th century (Poyarkov Reference Poyarkov1901), tsarist settlement policies (Demko Reference Demko1969), mass deportations and exile under Stalin (Nekrich Reference Nekrich1978), and migration during the Virgin Land campaign in the 1950s (Ercilasun Reference Ercilasun2017, 53–65). As Schatz remarks, “Soviet Kazakhstan was thus depicted as a cultural mosaic” (2000, 76). This “cultural mosaic” is institutionally framed as a nation of Soviet people (Sovetskii narod) possessing the right of preservation and promotion of national languages and cultures under the leadership of Moscow.
Since its independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has had a more liberal policy on the ethnicity question than have some other former Soviet states, such as Estonia and Latvia. Kazakhstan granted citizenship to all of its people, regardless of their ethnic identity and knowledge of the state language, Kazakh. The current president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, often repeats that Kazakhstan is a multicultural country and that he can prevent interethnic conflicts (Lillis Reference Lillis2010). In order to institutionalize interethnic relations, the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan was established in 1995, uniting nearly 800 ethnic and cultural associations. The main task of the Assembly is to support, promote, and preserve the culture, traditions, and languages of all Kazakhstan’s ethnic groups. As Yves-Marie Davenel (Reference Davenel2012) has rightly pointed out, relations between the Kazakh authorities and cultural associations can be described by the idea of cultural citizenship, which, according to Renato Rosaldo (Reference Rosaldo1994, 57) is “the right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity or native language) with respect to the norm of the dominant national community, without compromising one’s right to belong, in the sense of participating in the nation-state’s democratic processes.”
Dungans are Sinophone Muslims, descendants of the Hui peopleFootnote 1 who migrated to the territory of modern Central Asia from China in the late 19th century after the failure of their revolt against the Qing dynasty. Officially, in the Soviet Union, the ethnonym Dungan came into use for Chinese-speaking Muslims in the process of nation-state delimitation in Central Asia, which was initiated in 1924 (Stratanovich Reference Stratanovich1954). In Chinese academic circles, the words Donggan ren (东干人) and Dōnggānzú (东干族) refer only to the Dungan people of the former Soviet Union. The Dungans have their own writing system, which was developed based on the Latin alphabet in 1933, then changed to Cyrillic in 1955. In 1956, the first school textbooks on the Dungan language and literature were published for Dungan children (Imazov Reference Imazov2009, 159).
Currently, the Dungans are one of the fastest-growing ethnicities, since they traditionally have large families with an average of four children per household. According to the official statistics, as of January 1, 2017, there were 68,252 Dungans in Kazakhstan, making them the eleventh-largest ethnic group (Agency on Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan 2017). The main Dungan settlements are in the south of Kazakhstan, in the urban area of Almaty and in the Zhambyl regions, where agriculture is well developed, as most Dungan are farmers. The Dungan brought their rich cuisine, traditions, and ceremonies with them from China, which they have carefully preserved for nearly a century and a half. However, for a variety of reasons, as discussed below, some of these customs and traditions have undergone a transformation.
Drawing on the example of wedding rites in three Dungan villages, I define the extent and relationship between native and borrowed elements in wedding ceremonies in different areas of southern Kazakhstan. The main difficulty in studying Dungan wedding rituals lies in their diversity. Each of the villages of Zhalpak Tobe, Sortobe, and Zarya Vostok has developed its own special wedding customs and rituals. Such local variations of the traditional wedding ceremony have arisen not only because the villagers came from different provinces of China (Gansu, Shaanxi, and Xinjiang), but also because of their close cultural and socioeconomic ties with other ethnic environments—Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Uighur, and Russian.
The nature and extent of borrowing in Dungan wedding rituals varies according to region and depends on the degree of interaction with representatives of other nationalities. Dungan researcher Mane Savurov (Reference Savurov2007) rightly points out that the traditional forms of wedding rituals remained fairly steady until 1950. Subsequently, due to the overall development of culture and the influence of the Dungans’ surroundings, some traditions have been simplified and some original elements lost. In Savurov’s view, this is primarily linked to the emancipation of women and their changing role in the family, as well as to the education of children in matters of marriage and the like. Nevertheless, many colorful elements of Dungan wedding ceremonies have been preserved to this day (Savurov Reference Savurov2007, 13).
This article comprehensively analyzes wedding ceremonies in three villages, reveals the impact of ethnocultural interactions on Dungan wedding rituals, and defines the ratio of native elements to borrowed. The entire complex of the wedding ceremony is divided into three parts: (1) matchmaking, (2) wedding, and (3) post-wedding rituals. The article also draws on my extensive field research among the Dungans of Zaria Vostok.
The research objective is to reveal the impact of ethnocultural interactions within Dungan wedding rituals and define the interplay between the native and the borrowed elements in wedding ceremonies in different parts of southern Kazakhstan: Zhalpak Tobe, where Dungan wedding rituals are affected in part by close interactions with Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Russians; Zaria Vostok, where borrowed elements are dominant over native ones due to the high percentage of interethnic marriages and urbanization; and Sortobe, where Dungan traditions have been largely preserved due to population homogeneity, strongly negative attitudes toward interethnic marriages, and other factors.
This research draws upon mostly primary sources, including oral interviews, personal observations during extensive fieldwork, and some secondary data, such as memoirs and analyses of published materials on Dungan studies. I rely on process tracing through the lens of comparative historical analysis. The process-tracing method is used to evaluate how Dungan wedding rituals have developed and changed in different villages since the end of the 19th century, while comparative historical analysis provides explanations for the causes of these changes in all of the aforementioned areas. I couple process-tracing case studies with comparative historical methods to enable me to gain a greater understanding of the causes of the borrowing in these three villages across time and shed light on the generalizable mechanisms linking causes and outcomes.
A number of works devoted to Dungan wedding ceremonies have been written by Russian, Soviet, and Dungan researchers, as well as by foreign scholars.
Researchers during the Russian Imperial Period
There was little research on the Dungan during the Russian Imperial period. However, some researchers managed to collect information through different reports and memories of officials, soldiers, doctors, and teachers who arrived with the first Dungan. One of the earliest works on the peculiarities of the economic structure, lifestyle, and worldview of the Shaanxi Dungan came from Vladimir Tsibuzgin and Andrei Shmakov (1909). They provide valuable information on the matchmaking process, amount of bride money (kalym), and wedding ceremonies of the Dungans of the Karakunuz village (now Masanchin village, seven kilometers from Sortobe) at the end of the 19th century.
Dmitry Fedorov (Reference Fedorov1903), a lieutenant colonel of the Russian army writes in his report about the Ili Dungan that Dungan marriages were traditionally arranged by parents and blessed by an Ahung (priest) and that the age of marriage was 18 for boys and 15 for girls. Dungan women did not marry non-Dungans, but Dungan men did. In the Ili region, the kalym amounted to 400 to 1,000 rubles and spending on the wedding itself ranged from 500 to 3,000 rubles.
Fedor Poyarkov, a Russian physician and ethnographer, writes that before migrating to the Russian Empire, Dungans usually married off their sons between the ages of 10 and 17, while daughters were married at the ages of 13 to 15 or even earlier. After taking on Russian citizenship, however, Dungans had to postpone their marriages, largely because of an inability to pay the kalym, which was sometimes very high. As a result, some Dungans, at great risk to themselves, brought Muslim wives from China. It was a long process, since Dungan men had to grow long braids in order to intermarry with the Chinese, otherwise they could be executed by Chinese authorities as illegal foreigners. Meanwhile, within the Russian Empire, these men had to be very careful with the local administration, since Dungans were strictly prohibited to have long hair. If they were caught, their braids were immediately cut off (Poyarkov Reference Poyarkov1903; 1908).
Ivan Selitski (1904), a colonel of the Russian army and head of Iarkent in the Semirechinski oblast, wrote that the weddings of Dungans mostly took place in the fall, after the wheat harvest. Monday and Thursday were believed to be the happiest days for weddings, since the prophet Muhammed and other holy people did their great deeds and preferred to travel on these days.
Soviet Researchers
The works of this period can be characterized by their highly descriptive approach, which is intrinsic to the Soviet model of ethnography and viewed through their preferred ideological framework. In that respect, it is interesting to note that, according to Soviet researchers, all changes in the Dungan society occurred due to the Soviet influence.
Beginning in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Soviet ethnographers displayed their interest in Dungan studies. Grigory Stratanovich’s (1949; 1954) dissertation on Dungan ethnography provides a detailed description of Dungan culture and wedding rituals. Semen Garin notes “the traditional Dungan custom of matchmaking, the humorous games of bride kidnapping, display of presents, jokes and finally a joyful feast which quite often lasts a good week” (1952, 158).
After comprehensive field research, Soviet researcher Sergei Tolstov concluded that old-fashioned Dungan customs, traditions, and religious rites were gradually vanishing in Soviet Central Asia, although some of the traditions, such as the kalym and cash gifts from wedding guests persist in simplified forms (1963, 533).
Dungan Researchers as a Part of Soviet Studies on Dungans
In 1959, Lodjar Shinlo published an ethnographic album of Dungan drawings, many of which depict Dungan weddings. Without these pictures, it would be impossible to reconstruct the Dungan ceremonies now, since many of them have totally disappeared.
In 1979, a pioneer of Dungan studies, Professor Muhamed Sushanlo, gave a full description of Dungan traditions and culture, including a number of patterns in Dungan marriage in the different parts of Soviet Central Asia. Later, a Dungan ethnographer from Uzbekistan, Savurov (Reference Savurov2007), contributed to this topic by providing some proverbs and sayings about the Dungan marriage process. Professor Rashid Bakirov (Reference Bakirov2014) of Taraz University views the borrowed elements of Dungan wedding rituals in Kazakhstan as a sign of tolerance of and respect for neighboring nations. Kyrgyz researchers Ali Dzhon and Fatima Havaza (Reference Dzhon and Havaza2016) find that the Dungan people of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan who live outside of the Dungan community are more affected by the influence of the surrounding culture, which has led to a significant change in their traditional culture. Dzhon’s (2016) research on marriage ceremonies is very interesting because he writes about the influence of popular beliefs, legends, and superstitions on Dungan wedding traditions.
Western Researchers
Most Western scholars devote their attention to examining how the influence of local people matches with Dungan traditions, and what signs of Chinese culture remain, which thereby helps reconstruct the Dungan ethnic identity.
Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakov Dyer (Reference Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer1978), in her article “Soviet Dungan Weddings: Symbolism and Traditions,” writes that from the time the Dungan settled in China in the late 19th century until the 1970s, their wedding ceremonies preserved the original wedding rituals of Qing China, despite minor changes. According to Rimsky-Korsakov, the Dungan, like other Chinese immigrants living in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, are extremely conservative, which is primarily associated with the desire to preserve their national identity in an alien environment (365). In contrast, she indicates that the wedding ceremonies of the Dungan in China have suffered drastic changes, which can be linked to at least into three historical phases: (1) the family-celebrated six stages of traditional Chinese wedding rituals, (2) the replacement of these rituals by “modern weddings” in the 20th century under Western influence, and (3) replacement of these with Communist-style weddings after 1948.
Lawrence Krader (Reference Krader1966, 124) suggests that another reason for the conservatism of the Shaanxi Dungans might be their adherence to Sunnism and engagement in agriculture. What he seems to be saying is that at the end of the 19th century, although the majority of the Kazakh population followed of Sunnism, traditional Kazakh society practiced Islam along with shamanism, and Kazakhs were nomadic people who herded livestock on the vast steppes of Kazakhstan, while Dungans led a sedentary way of life. Elisabeth Allès (2000) stresses that Dungan weddings are indicators of flexibility and the Dungan’s ability to adapt to a changing environment, influenced by multiple traditions, including Chinese ornaments as well as white European dresses and Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” A detailed description of the wedding rituals of the Shaanxi Dungan can be found in Mexican researcher Soledad Jiménez Tovar’s (2014) dissertation. According to her observations, Dungan marriage has been used as a strategy to avoid assimilation into other local groups.
Chinese Researchers
Chinese scholars, just like the Soviets, tend to view the Dungan through the lens of their existing political framework, the concept of nationality (minzu).Footnote 2 Some scholars of the Hui consider the Dungan their relatives who preserved ancient Chinese Muslim traditions.
Chinese researcher Wing-tsit Chan (Reference Chan1953) gives a full description of an Ahung’s duty during the Chinese Muslim wedding ceremony. Among these duties are explaining to the groom his rights and responsibilities according to Sharia law, preaching the doctrine, and settling different disputes (189). According to Chinese researcher Ding Hong (Reference Hong2005), who is herself Hui, the Dungan or Hui culture is deeply indebted to the Han culture, and Dungan people have inherited these elements and made a legacy of their own culture. The Dungan people incorporate many elements of Han culture in their wedding rituals to distinguish themselves from other Muslim groups.
Another well-known Chinese researcher, a professor of Turkish and Dungan studies, Hu Zhenhua (2014), argues that borrowing is a natural process and it would be unusual if after so many years the Dungan did not adopt anything from the people with whom they share a common fate. Professor Wang Guojie of Shaanxi Normal University, who has devoted 30 years to study Dungan people of Central Asia, believes that Dungan marriage has an important role in the transmission of Chinese culture. In our interview, he called the Shaanxi wedding a “living fossil of Shaanxi culture.”Footnote 3
In general, all the authors agree that there are some differences between the Gansu and Shaanxi, such as their languages, family rites, and all other spheres of culture. However, a significant drawback of these works is that these studies (1) are devoted mainly to only one of the groups of Dungans, either Gansu or Shaanxi; (2) provide only the general characteristics of wedding ceremonies of each group by pointing out distinctive features of these rituals; and (3) have never studied the Dungans of Zaria Vostok as a separate group.
Common Features of Dungan Marriage Rituals
In this ethnographic section I describe the common features of the matchmaking process and then illustrate the peculiarities of the three mentioned milieus.
Most Dungan believe that children should be married as early as possible. A Dungan proverb says, “Nǐ yuè zǎo dédào nǚ'ér nǚxù zǎoqí, nǐ huì dédào bāngzhù” (越早你得到一个媳妇, 你得到的帮助越早), or “the earlier you get a daughter-in-law, the earlier you get help.” Girls would leave school at the age of 13 or 14 and get married. Such marriages were not recorded by the registrar or the local administration. This trend was observed until the 1950s (Savurov Reference Savurov2007).
Until almost the middle of the 20th century, a young girl’s way of life would change at the age of 11 or 12, upon reaching puberty. Her parents restricted her freedom, and she was accompanied everywhere by older relatives (Dzhon Reference Dzhon2016, 47). From the 19th century to the present day, there have been three categories of marriage arrangements in the Dungan community.
Shuōhuà dexifuer (说话的媳妇儿, promised bride) is based on an agreement between two families for their unborn children. In order to secure this contract, the imam is invited from a mosque to read the prayer and bless the agreement. Subsequently, their future children are considered engaged, and their families become relatives and closely communicate with each other. Terminating the contract is considered reprehensible and condemned by society.
Huàn mín qīn (换民亲, exchange of relative) is the most common practice today, based on the exchange of brides between two families. This marriage has economic advantages, and disagreements between relatives are quickly resolved. The bride can be sure that she will be treated well in her husband’s family, as the marriage is the product of an equal exchange.
Tóng ēn xífuer (同恩媳妇儿, raised in the family), is when the future bride and groom are raised in the same family from childhood. According to Dungan ethnographer Ali Dzhon (Reference Dzhon and Havaza2016, 43) this type of prenuptial agreement took place in the past but is no longer practiced. Often it was the groom’s family who took in and raised his betrothed, but sometimes when the bride’s family had no male children or the groom was an orphan, he was taken to be raised in her family, and they were married upon reaching puberty (44). In my view, the main reason for this tradition was the poverty of those times: parents worried about their daughter’s future, so they gave her to a good family at an early age to later become a daughter-in-law. This type of agreement is not considered to contradict the principles of Islam, since the prophet Muhammed took his wife Aisha to his house at the age of six and married her when she achieved her majority.
The Dungan tend to maintain close ties within their own community and prefer to marry and settle within their own surroundings; therefore, marriages between Shaanxi and Gansu groups are rare. Jiménez Tovar also stresses that Shaanxi and Gansu Dungan normally do not intermarry because of some stereotypes (2014, 158). However, Dungan ethnographers Savurov (Reference Savurov2007) and Dzhon (Reference Dzhon2016, 48) offer some explanations for this. Firstly, a young wife can always ask for help from her relatives if she is mistreated by her husband; secondly, the parents receive full information about the personal qualities of the future groom or bride and their families, since people know each other perfectly in one village; and thirdly, compatriotic marriage is economically more beneficial than marriage to a bride from far away. In this case, the bride is most often taken from among relatives in order to strengthen clan ties.
In Dungan society, choosing a bride is mostly the responsibility of women, and in most cases the prerogative of the groom’s mother. At the time of the Russian Empire and for half of the Soviet period, it was very common for the bride not to see her future husband until the day of the wedding, since Sharia law rejects courtship before marriage. Nowadays, due to the advent of modern electronic communications, boys and girls can hang out on social media networks, communicating with each other without informing their parents. When young people come to an agreement, they usually ask their parents to organize a wedding for them. The parents’ disagreement with their children’s decision or financial problems within the family may lead to elopement: the couple runs away together and seeks the consent of their parents later. Dungans of Kazakhstan normally do not practice bride kidnapping since marriage by capture is severely punishable. A prospective husband would face a showdown with his future wife’s relatives, who would definitely take the girl back home. Moreover, this kind of bride kidnapping is not approved by Ahung and is condemned by society.
The future groom’s parents carefully collect data on the future bride through friends, neighbors, and colleagues—seeking information about her personal qualities, family, habits, character, skills, health, and the like. Girls from big families are favored, as it is believed that in these families they acquire the skills necessary to be good wives and mothers. Males have a privileged position in the society compared to females, and this is also articulated in Dungan wedding rituals. Savurov (Reference Savurov2007, 3) gives some good examples of this: if groom dies on or before the day of the wedding, no unmarried boy will marry his bride—she can only become the wife of a widower or a disabled or elderly man. It is believed that she is the bearer of misfortune. However, if a bride dies before the wedding, her groom can easily marry any other girl without social prejudice. To a certain extent, this custom has been preserved in our time. The position of a young girl and her parents is always passive and associated with anticipation of a potential groom. A girl over the age of 23 to 25 is considered an old maid, and it is difficult to find a good husband for her. A Dungan proverb about such girls says “Nǚzǐ zhōng dǐ guō lǐ zhōnglì guō lǐ gōnglì” (女子中底锅里中立锅里功力), which suggests that the girl is an old maid who is no longer young and has not married (Savurov Reference Savurov2007, 4). However, old maids are very rare; the Dungan community uses every opportunity to arrange marriage.
After the groom’s side makes their choice, they send a matchmaker, méirén (媒人), the most respected person from the groom’s clan. Usually the méirén makes up to three or four visits to the chosen bride’s home. He starts his first visit with compliments to the bride’s parents, then talks about various other topics, and only at the end of the meeting does he announce the purpose of his visit (Dzhon Reference Dzhon2016, 50). It is not acceptable for the bride’s parents to say yes during the méirén’s first visit; acceptance is reserved for the third or, rarely, the fourth visit. During the early visits, they merely promise to think about it and consult with other members of the family. After the matchmaker’s first visit, the bride’s parents, in turn, start to collect data about the groom and his family and consult with relatives. A refusal is given to the méirén during the second visit, or the third at the latest. It is considered impolite to give a negative answer during his first visit, as it is an expression of disrespect to the matchmaker and the potential groom’s family. However, the bride’s parents should not delay their refusal until the matchmaker’s third visit because that is considered a waste of the méirén’s time. Laying the table with tea and sweets during his third visit serves as an indication of the consent of the bride’s family. On the contrary, the absence of tea or sweets signals rejection. Once the parents agree to give their daughter in marriage, they start to visit their relatives (primarily grandparents, uncles, and aunts) to inform them about the event. Often such visiting is a formality, as the final word is left to the parents. Over tea among the bride’s relatives, the matchmaker receives the parents’ consent, gěi huà (给话). Then, both sides negotiate the date of the wedding gifts, lǐ (礼). The gifts can be big, dà lǐ (大礼), and small, xiǎo lǐ (小礼). Dà lǐ consist of money and jewelry; xiǎo lǐ consist of clothes, tea, and sweets. Then the parents begin to prepare a dowry for their daughter, which consists of furniture and household appliances. While all of the above can be attributed to all groups of Dungans, from this point on the process of matchmaking is more varied, as there are strong differences between groups of compatriots.
Marriage Ceremonies of Zhalpak Tobe (Dunganovka)
In a telephone conversation with the author, the president of the Dungan association “Wenhua” Ruslan Ismazov explained that Zhalpak Tobehas has a population of 10,000, of which 85 percent are Dungan.Footnote 4 In 1877, after migration to Russia, the Taraz group of Dungans lived dispersed in the Fergana valley for several years, where they were hosted by local Muslims on the basis of the Islam principle of solidarity of coreligiosity. Here, religion has become a factor in the consolidation of representatives of believers, through which immigrants felt themselves part of the community, gradually learning the language, traditions, norms, and values of the receiving parties, which is known as the process of acculturation or incomplete assimilation—when people internalize the norms and the values of other people and adapt their way of life but retain their ethnic identity. However, the keeper of the only Dungan museum, Musa Gubarovich Loch, expressed in an interview that this acculturation was a necessary measure, since it was a question of physical survival for the Dungan, who feared persecution by the Chinese authorities and intentionally mixed with the local people.Footnote 5 All these factors have left an imprint on the life of the Zhalpak Tobe Dungan. Uzbek songs and dances are often heard. Women and girls wear satin Uzbek dresses. The older generation is fluent in Uzbek.
Matchmaking
Matchmaking is normally held after paying the kalym. In Zhalpak Tobe today the kalym is $1,000, plus the gift of a decorated sheep from the groom’s relatives. The sheep is usually brought by two boys of preschool age accompanied by an adult male. The tradition of bringing a sheep may come from the Kazakh custom, according to which the gift of cattle is the main part of the marriage ceremony. Additionally, depending on the status of the groom, he may decide to give some gold jewelry. The evening before the wedding, after the official marriage registration, the bride gathers other young girls for a farewell party, Kyz Majilis (Kazakh for “girls’ gathering”) at her parents’ home. They may dance, eat, and talk until the following day’s departure of the bride.
The Wedding
Traditional Wedding Clothes
According to my observations, the brides of Zhalpak Tobe have a fair amount of freedom in their choice of clothing, and along with the traditional Dungan dress there are Uzbek, Indian, and Turkish styles, reminiscent of diverse varieties of saris and Hürrem Sultan, reflecting the fondness of the Dungan women of Zhalpak Tobe for Indian and Turkish films. In Soviet times, there was an entire generation of women who never missed a new Indian film at the local cinema, but now Indian films have mostly been replaced with popular Turkish soap operas. Therefore, it is not surprising that Turkish films shape Dungan women’s taste in both wedding and casual dress.
Wedding Day
Weddings can be celebrated in any season, with the exception of the month of May. This month is considered inauspicious for weddings. As one Russian proverb states, “In May to marry, all life to toil.” Dungan easily adopted this custom from the Russian people. There is no exact time for guests, so the wedding itself usually starts early in the morning with wide-open gates. People usually start to come after the morning prayer. There is a cashier, Shōu lǐ qián rén (收礼钱人), who sits at the gate and collects money from the guests. He accurately writes down the guests’ names and the sum of gifted money in a copy book. This copy book serves as a report or an orientation for hosts in future. When some of their guests celebrate weddings, they look at the copy book to check the sums and bring the same to them. This procedure is exactly the same for all of the three villages. Recently, the Zhalpak Tobe Dungan have begun to celebrate their weddings at restaurants whose owners are also Dungan, which significantly mitigates the work of the pre-wedding preparation on both sides. There is no need to rent tableware, tents, or tables, or to hire musicians and assign chefs responsible for reception and guest services. All this is included in the rent of the restaurant. Local restaurants with “all-inclusive” policies have become increasingly popular among the Dungan.
The highlight of any wedding is the departure of the bride and the groom’s arrival to the bride at noon. A white car is decorated with balloons, colorful ribbons, and two crossed circles on the top—one bigger and one smaller—that resemble golden rings. Crossed golden rings symbolize a happy marriage bond in Russian culture. This car arrives at bride’s parents’ house, usually with a musical and dance accompaniment. With his best man, the groom bows to the bride’s elder relatives, including her parents. The groom’s relatives perform the shashu rite (a Kazakh tradition) for the bride: she is showered with nuts and candies and then lead to the car to be taken to groom’s house, since the Dungan society is patrilocal and the wife definitely moves into the house of her husband after the marriage. Two young married women and two little boys, who have to be from the side of the bride, accompany her to the groom’s house. After she comes out from the car, the children are given some money. The meaning of this tradition is to wish the young family male offspring, since there is a strong traditional preference for sons in the Dungan community. One of the women from the bride’s side and another from the groom’s stay for a wedding night at the groom’s house as the witnesses of the bride’s chastity. The next morning, both women congratulate the young husband’s relatives and get gifts in the form of money.
Registration
A religious marriage registration, the Nikah (from the Arabic word for union, or association) in Dungan wedding rites is an indispensable element held in the groom’s house immediately after the arrival of the wedding procession of the bride. However, no bride or other woman has the right to be present at the reading of the Nikah. The Ahung reads the prayer only in the presence of male relatives. Then he turns to the bride’s representative, wǒ qīnrén (我親人, the most honorable man on the bride’s side) with the question of whether he wishes to say something. He says that they agree to the marriage on the condition that the new relatives treat the bride well and that the dowry shall belong to her, and the husband has no right to dispose of the dowry without her consent. After wǒ qīnrén finishes speaking, the Ahung inquires whether the groom’s relatives agree. After receiving an affirmative answer, the Ahung reads a small sermon on the spouses’ rights and obligations in their new status. If one of the parties fails to give its consent, the wedding ceremony is aborted. However, such cases are very rare.
The official registration day is the day before the wedding. The bride is not at her parents’ home; she is at one of her relatives’ houses with her girlfriends, waiting for the groom to go the registry office, known as ZAGS. Usually when the groom comes with his friends, the bride’s side does not let them inside without paying a ransom (some symbolic monetary value) and plays tricks on the groom, such as making him pass quizzes and answer witty questions or stealing the bride’s shoe to ask the groom for a ransom. This tradition came from Russia, and the bride usually wears a white European-style dress on this day.
Post-wedding Rituals
On the third day after the wedding, the groom’s family invites the bride’s girlfriends and sisters to visit; on the fourth day her elder relatives come. After one month, the bride’s parents invite their daughter and son-in-law to their home for tea but do not let her stay for days or weeks, as it happens among Shaanxi Dungan. This ceremony is called Qǐng děng yuè (请等月).
Thus, the tradition of Dungan wedding ceremonies of Zhalpak Tobe is influenced not only by the culture of the neighboring peoples, but also the film industry, which plays a considerable role in Dungan wedding clothes. In the last few years, Turkish soap operas have become extremely popular and are constantly broadcast on Kazakhstan television for up to 10 hours a day, leaving all the other soap operas of the world far behind.
Marriage Ceremonies of Sortobe
Sortobe has a population of 29,000 people, 90 percent of whom are Dungan.Footnote 6 The Sortobe Dungan rightly consider themselves the most conservative of all ethnic cultures and traditions, and are proud of this fact. Even after over 140 years of residence in the Kazakh territory, the elements of the wedding rites that disappeared long ago in China are almost completely preserved in their original appearance (Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer Reference Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer1978, 365).
Matchmaking
One of the specific features of the traditional Dungan wedding complex is the size of the kalym. Sometimes the groom has to work for several years to save up for the wedding. In the late 19th century, Tsibuzgin and Shmakov (1909) provided very valuable information about Dungan matchmaking and, in their opinion, the high ransom for the bride, which at that time ranged from 240 to 400 rubles. It led to interethnic marriages, since Dungan females were fewer than males. This fact forced poor Dungan to look for brides among the neighboring peoples: Kyrgyz, Tatars, and Sarman, who did not require large sums of bride money. Sometimes Dungan men kidnapped Kyrgyz brides. Emphasizing this fact later, in the early 20th century, Poyarkov (Reference Poyarkov1903) pointed out that because of the huge size of the kalym some men 35 to 40 years of age were not married. At that time, the kalym was 200 rubles.
Sortobe Dungan call the dowry Fēilǐ (菲禮, gifts). Today, the Fēilǐ size is $5,000, which is quite burdensome for many families.Footnote 7 In October 2015, during my fieldwork, I was told that the local council had decided that henceforth the size of the bride money should not exceed 400,000 tenge ($1,000). However, this decision has not found much support among the population, and the dowry size has remained unchanged. In addition to the dowry, the groom presents a tray with precious jewelry to the bride, which includes gold earrings, bracelets, chains, and rings. In order to preserve traditional Dungan culture and family ties, Sortobe Dungan widely practice cousin marriages, which are not welcomed by doctors. At a conference in Sortobe in 2011, Dungan doctor and geneticist Khadisha Sushanlo called on her counterparts to find another way to conserve the Dungan culture, such as by bringing brides from China (as cited in Jiménez Tovar 2014, 158).
The Wedding
Traditional Wedding Clothes
The mandatory clothing for the bride on the first day is a short caftan with long pants. On the second day, she wears a long dress decorated with special ornaments around the shoulders and embroidered handmade boots. An interesting fact is that for the bride, a special Dungan wedding hairdresser, fēngtóu (风头), is invited, who gives her a ceremonial hairstyle in which the hair is swept up with tabs on the sides, known as hei wūy ā (黑乌鸦, black raven). In my view, this is because, in ancient China, the black crow was a symbol of family happiness.
Wedding Day
On the wedding day, fēngtóu again comes to the bride’s house and gives her the same hairstyle, but this time profusely decorated with flowers and a tiara. The groom is dressed in a European-style suit with a tie. His only differentiation from the other men, also in suits, is a band of green and red cloth draped over his shoulders, which is a symbol of happiness and joy. Sometime in the afternoon, he comes for the bride. There is no musical accompaniment. Sortobe grooms, in contrast to Zhalpak Tobe grooms, do not bow to their brides’ parents because it is believed to be a bad sign. He does not see her parents on the wedding day in order to avoid quarrels in the future. The bride, wrapped to the waist in a cotton blanket, is usually carried by the hands of the most honorable man, the mother’s brother. The meaning of this tradition is that cotton and wool give future mothers a lot of offspring. Upon arrival at the groom’s house, the young bride tries not to see her father- and mother-in-law. Arriving at the groom’s home, she bows to all of the people present with the exception of the groom’s parents for the same reason the groom did not bow to her parents. The bride is first led into the kitchen to the stove. This ceremony is intended to make her a good hostess in the house. There are also two female witnesses, who stay the night at the groom’s house.
Registration
For the Shaanxi Dungan, the Nikah the religious marriage registration, is held at the house of the bride’s father before the departure of the bride. During Nikah, the groom kneels on a low dining table covered with a blanket. The meaning of this ceremony is not entirely clear. Dzhon supposes that the groom’s presence on the table in the bride’s father home means that he is connecting to the bride’s family (2016, 79, 80). There is no special event devoted to the official marriage registration; it can be organized on the wedding day by inviting the registrar, or some days after the wedding.
Post-wedding Rituals
The next morning, the young daughter-in-law wears the third traditional outfit and bows to her husband’s parents and his other relatives. They, in turn, give her presents. On the fourth day after the wedding, the bride’s relatives come to visit her. Men and women are invited separately.
The change of headdress also has an important ritual meaning to the Sortobe Dungan: the young woman is moving to a different social status. The next day, she changes her hairstyle, no longer wearing the flowers on her head, since this is the prerogative only of unmarried girls. She wears a headscarf, perhaps with a few small flowers to the sides. The way she wears her headscarf is different from they way those of the Dungan of Zhalpak Tobe wear it.
The meaning of the ceremony Qǐng děng yuè is different in Sortobe. A week after the wedding, the young woman goes to her parents’ home for 30 days to visit all her relatives and learn the necessary skills for a housewife.Footnote 8
As can be seen, the Shaanxi Dungan have almost completely preserved the identity of their culture, respecting the succession despite that they have also occasionally practiced interethnic marriage, especially in first years after their migration to Russia (Poyarkov 1903; Reference Poiarkov1908). However, Dungan men, but not women, marry non-Dungan people, and such marriages do not affect the traditional structure, as the wife fully accepts her husband culture and their children are considered Dungan. Shaanxi Sortobe wedding ceremonies present a picture of China in the mid-19th century, even though in China, these customs have long since died out (Allès Reference Allès2000, 62–69.)
Marriage Ceremonies of Zaria Vostok
The population of Zaria Vostok, near the city of Almaty, is 18,000. Among then 40 percent are Dungan, 30 percent are Uighurs, and 30 percent are Kazakhs.Footnote 9 Zaria Vostok is of particular interest to researchers because this group of Dungans is under-studied. They also belong to the Gansu group, but before moving to the Russian Empire, they lived in Xinjiang and crossed the border via the river Ili, so they are occasionally called the Ili Dungan.
Until the 1990s, Zaria Vostok was primarily inhabited by Gansu (Ili) Dungan, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union and with the establishment of Chinese-Kazakh trade relations, Shaanxi Dungan began to move to Zaria Vostok because the village is located near the market area known as the Baraholka. Now, dwellers of Zaria Vostok make up one-third of the total Dungan population. One of the features of Zaria Vostok is its large number of mixed marriages compared to other Dungan settlements.
Matchmaking
The hallmark of the Ili Dungan is the fact that they do not practice early marriages. Marriages are mainly arranged between young people who are over 20 years old, because most of them want to get a higher education and pursue career goals first, in order to be more competitive with other urban youth. Another feature is the absence of bride money. Along with gifts in the form of fabric, sweets, fruit, and money in the amount of $200, li yinzi (礼银子) are given by the groom to the bride’s relatives. There is no special gift such, as a sheep, for the wedding. Usually, two sheep are brought to the bride’s parents only in the case of a bride kidnapping. The old tradition of the farewell party, known as Tián chá (填茶, tea pouring), deserves special attention, given that it has deep moral and educational character. The bride sits in the center of a kang (炕) starting with grandparents and ending with the youngest brothers and sisters who will take care of her. All of the relatives, in turn, pour her tea and thank her for her obedience, for being a good girl and worthy of leaving her parental home without demeaning the honor of their parents. Today, however, this custom is either simplified or forgotten. Many modern brides organize their farewell parties in restaurants with champagne.
The Wedding
Preparations for the wedding last for a few months, and the wedding itself lasts three days. Responsibilities for what is bought to the wedding and who buys it are distributed among members of the bride’s family. Weddings are also usually celebrated in the house of the bride and groom. On the wedding day, the bride sits behind a curtain, which comes from the Kazakh wedding tradition shamyldyk, under the musical accompaniment of the latest popular Kazakh, Turkish, and Arabic hits. The groom, with his best man, bows to the bride’s elder relatives including her parents, just as a Zhalpak Tobe groom does. The bride is also accompanied by two young married women and two little boys. However, in contrast to the similar tradition in Zhalpak Tobe, these boys do not let the bride get out of the car until the groom’s relatives pay a symbolic ransom. Two women from both sides also stay at night at groom’s house for the same reasons as do the female witnesses of the other two groups.
Wedding Dress
Traditional wedding dress is itself absent. The bride chooses a dress, usually a bright red, styled outfit consisting of a long dress or dress pants for her wedding day at her parents’ home. For the wedding party at the groom’s home, she usually wears a white European-style dress with a veil.
Registration
Traditionally Ili Dungan conduct the Nikah, the religious marriage registration ceremony, at the groom’s house, but there are two cases where this procedure takes place in the bride’s home: (1) in cases of an interethnic marriage, the bride’s side insists on having the ritual Nikah at the bride’s home and can postpone it to three or more days after the wedding if the groom does not adhere to the strict rules of this ceremony on the wedding day; (2) when the groom is Dungan, but not a resident—for example, if he comes from Zharkent, Bishkek, or Taraz—the Nikah must be performed in the house of the bride, because the bride and groom travel in the same car to another city.
The official marriage registration procedure occurs in the following ways: (1) a representative of ZAGS is invited to the wedding party, which is on a different day than the wedding itself, and is organized at the groom’s home; or (2) the newlyweds go the registry office the day or some weeks after the wedding.
Post-wedding Rituals
The ceremony of Qǐng děng yuè is simplified or even absent in Zaria Vostok. Only older generations remember this ceremony; young people rarely hear about it. Zaria Vostok Dungan believe this is because they now have mobile phones and do not live far from each other, so their children can visit them whenever they wish, without special invitations.
The change of headgear has no important ritual significance: the bride simply chooses a hairstyle and decides whether to wear a headscarf after the wedding. Typically, today’s young married women do not wear shawls. The endurance of the traditional wedding rituals of Zaria Vostok is complicated by the fact that these Dungan live in a city and have many interethnic marriages, precluding the possibility of full compliance with the Dungan wedding ceremony and post-wedding customs and rituals. According to an interview with a teacher of Dungan language, Tsuvarova Mira Karimovna, almost every Dungan family currently has relatives from other nationalities.Footnote 10 As a rule, after marriage the woman adopts the culture and traditions of her husband’s family.
Conclusion
After their migration to the Russian Empire, the three groups of Dungan brought with them similar cultures and traditions. However, over time and within their integration into multi-ethnic environments, assimilation and cultural borrowing has taken place among Gansu and Xinjiang Dungan. By contrast, Shaanxi Dungan have avoided the process of cultural borrowing and preserved the Dungan traditions and rituals just as they were 140 years ago.
My data confirm that time and environment have played great roles in shaping and changing the uniqueness of Dungan culture. My research shows the following findings. Due to their multi-ethnic environment, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Uighurs, Russians, and the Dungan of Zhalpak Tobe have borrowed each other’s elements in wedding rituals. Recently, not only have interactions with local people influenced Zhalpak Tobe Dungan wedding traditions and rituals, but so have Indian and Turkish films, especially Turkish, which shape Dungan women’s tastes and habits in the fashions of the Dungan community. The closer Dungan live to cities and interact with other ethnicities in their everyday lives, the more they borrow from other cultures and abandon their own traditions, mainly through urbanization and interethnic marriage, which are very frequent and still on the rise among Dungan of Zaria Vostok.
Wedding rituals of Sortobe are mostly characterized by the preservation and practice of the same rituals as those of 140 years ago, which represent native forms of wedding ceremonies among Dungan people. This conservatism happens because of the following factors: (1) a homogenous population consisting of more than 90 percent Dungan people; (2) strongly negative attitudes toward interethnic marriages, though these sometimes occur; (3) a high percentage of cousin marriages; (4) the isolation of the community, or distance from a city; and (5) the high degree of respect of parental authority.
The Dungan marriage rituals thus reflect how one ethnic group, with a common history, living in one country not far from one another, has reacted variously to its surroundings and changes over time.
Acknowledgments
I thank Morena Scalamera and Kairat Moldashev for their brilliant expert advice and encouragement throughout my difficult research project, and I thank the Rector of the University Narxoz Krzysztof Rybiński for the opportunity to present an initial version of this article at the 22nd Association for Study of Nationalities Convention, New York, May 4–6, 2017. Thanks also to two anonymous peer reviewers for their insightful comments on this article.
