City Marriage System Comparative Study

Hui, one of the 56 ethnic groups in China, has been keeping on developing in our country under the guidance of Islam for a long history. The several million Hui people countrywide have constructed various compact Islamic living communities, in which the traditional Islamic culture has been well preserved since then. Meanwhile, they also have absorbed many local cultures from other ethnic groups, which is the main reason why Islamic culture in different living communities of Hui people has its own regional characteristics.Since 1950s, China has fastened its pace of urbanization with the development of the global economy. The transformation from the suburbs to the cities has not only greatly changed the economic mode, but also changed people's lives with increasing urban characteristics. Some ethnic groups have completely broken away from their previous culture during the large change of the social environment due to the significant influence of modern economic activities and the heavy impaction of modern cultures. Therefore, similar to the other ethnic groups, Hui people are facing the same serious challenge to keep their traditional culture, ethnic consciousness and religious belief, especially, the fundamental Islamic social and ethical values.With the urbanization,their conventional and comparatively simple marriage system has been broken up and turned into a relatively complicated pattern.In order to further understand the marriage system and its present situation which has been more complicated than before, in this thesis I investigate the traditional marriage customs, cultures and their present situations for two Hui people marriage systems in Kunming and Xining cities, respectively, based on the combination of the methodologies of ethnology, sociology and history.From the detailed comparison of the marriage systems between the two Hui living communities in the process of the urbanization, it is found that the rapid changes of the residential structure, the frequent communications with other ethnic groups, and the persisted family patterns together should work on the marriage system. Furthermore, this thesis points out that, for the increasing cross-nationality marriage of the twoliving communities, the difference between them is mainly resulted by the different local economic level and the different religious culture there.In the conclusion, I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the exogamy as well as the endogamy for the development of an ethnic group. It is concluded that the marriage idea dominated by Islamic culture is still playing an important role on the transformative trend of the present marriage system for Hui people. In the end of this section, I present my personal understanding and consideration for the exogamy. I think that, by reinforcing the coherence force of Hui people, it is a possible way for us to effectively protect ethnic traditional cultures and enable ethnic minorities to get used to the pace of the modernization.