Chinese Muslims’ daily food practices and their geographies of encounter in urban Guangzhou

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article aims to understand how Chinese Muslims negotiate their identities and how they are included and excluded in urban Guangzhou – a multicultural and multi-ethnic city in south China – through the lens of food. This empirical research consists of intersectional and interactional analysis based on narratives of both the ethnic majority and minority groups. Drawing on a qualitative analysis, this research sheds light on both Muslim geographies of encounter and geographical studies on food consumption in China’s multicultural context. Focusing on daily food practices of Chinese Hui Muslims who are immigrated to Guangzhou from Islamic communities in northwest China, this research elucidates how these Muslims use food to sustain their religious identities, how they manage their food practices when eating with Han Chinese and how such daily food practices integrate them into or exclude them from the mainstream Han Chinese culture in relation to wider socio-political issues. The key argument of this research indicates that public food spaces, on the one hand, can enable the social interactions between Chinese Muslims and non-Muslims, and on the other hand, gain new meanings through the encounters of these two groups.