Between Shanghai and Mecca: Diaspora and Diplomacy of Chinese Muslims in the Twentieth Century by Janice Hyeju Jeong Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Engseng Ho, Advisor ___________________________ Prasenjit Duara, Advisor ___________________________ Nicole Barnes ___________________________ Adam Mestyan ___________________________ Cemil Aydin Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2019 ABSTRACT Between Shanghai and Mecca: Diaspora and Diplomacy of Chinese Muslims in the Twentieth Century by Janice Hyeju Jeong Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Engseng Ho, Advisor ___________________________ Prasenjit Duara, Advisor ___________________________ Nicole Barnes ___________________________ Adam Mestyan ___________________________ Cemil Aydin An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2019 Copyright by Janice Hyeju Jeong 2019 Abstract While China’s recent Belt and the Road Initiative and its expansion across Eurasia is garnering public and scholarly attention, this dissertation recasts the space of Eurasia as one connected through historic Islamic networks between Mecca and China. Specifically, I show that eruptions of unpredictable wars and political turnovers across Asia in the twentieth century sparked a sector of Chinese Muslim militarists and scholar-politicians to constantly reformulate extensive networks of kinship, scholarship, patronage, pilgrimage and diplomacy between China, the Indian Ocean world and the Arabian Peninsula. In these endeavors, Mecca represented a hub and mediator of mobility, a diplomatic theater filled with propaganda and contestations, and a fictive homeland that turned into a real home which absorbed streams of exiles and refugees. Each chapter adds a layer of Chinese Muslims’ engagements with Mecca as a locale and a metaphor – from old little Meccas in Linxia (southern Gansu) and Canton (Guangzhou), to the new logistical hub of Shanghai that hosted Mecca-bound pilgrims from across China in the first half of the twentieth century, and to Mecca where competing pilgrimage diplomatic delegations and refugee settlers asserted their belonging. By doing so, the dissertation unleashes Chinese Muslims’ sphere of activities, imaginaries, space-making, and historiographical reconfigurations from the confines of the territorial state of China, revealing the creation of sacred places and logistical hubs across regions, and channels of circulations that went through them. I draw from a wealth of pilgrimage and diplomatic travelogues, interviews with living communities in Saudi iv Arabia, mainland China and Taiwan over multiple generations, archival documents, memoirs and biographies. While the protagonists in this dissertation represent only a portion of the diverse groups of Chinese Muslim populations, they present an indicative view of Chinese Muslims as a collective — as a people for whom real and imagined connections with external places have been central to their self-understandings and social mobility in multiple locales. At certain moments when inter-state relations were about to take off, they undertook roles as diplomatic mediators in official and unofficial capacities. Their spatial configurations, in turn, show the role of Mecca as a physical site and a symbolic center in assembling inter-Asian circulations -- giving rise to little Meccas and infrastructural hubs elsewhere, attracting competing diplomatic missions, and offering a haven for pilgrim sojourners and diaspora communities who have constituted the diverse social make-up of Saudi Arabia. v Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... iv Contents .......................................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. ix Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................... xi Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Mecca in China and China in Mecca ......................................................................................... 8 The Many Faces and Resurgences of Mecca .......................................................................... 16 Multiple Homes and their Potentials ....................................................................................... 21 Diplomacy and Networks of Religion and Diasporas ............................................................. 27 Discovering Textual Communities and their Time Travels (Research Methodology) ............ 36 Chapter Organization .............................................................................................................. 42 Part I: Wars and Travels ............................................................................................................... 52 1. The Making of Meccas: Wars and Kings in China and Arabia, 1900-1937 .............................. 53 1.1 Hezhou as a Regional Mecca ............................................................................................ 60 1.2 Local Kings and Their Armies .......................................................................................... 70 1.2.1 Initial Rise as Borderland Traders ................................................................................ 74 1.2.2. From Peddle Traders to Military Men ......................................................................... 77 1.2.3. Building Armies and External Ties ............................................................................. 85 1.3 Networked Patronages ....................................................................................................... 92 1.4 Making Presence in Mecca .............................................................................................. 102 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 112 2. Mapping Mecca in the Ports of Shanghai and Canton ............................................................. 116 vi 2.1 The Graveyard of Canton: Genealogical Histories, Sacred Geographies ........................ 122 2.1.1. The Making of a Little Mecca in Canton .................................................................. 124 2.1.2. Donations and Travelers ............................................................................................ 139 2.2. Shanghai: Convergences and Divergences of Entrepreneurs, Scholars, Politicians ...... 157 2.2.1. A Pilgrim’s Journey .................................................................................................. 160 2.2.2. Western mosque: Convergences ............................................................................... 167 2.2.3. Controversies ............................................................................................................. 179 2.2.4. Between Shanghai and Mecca ................................................................................... 192 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 205 3. Diplomatic Journeys, 1937-1947 ............................................................................................. 209 3.1 Trans-Imperial Contexts .................................................................................................. 214 3.2. Politicization of the space between Shanghai and Mecca .............................................. 218 3.2.1. War, Religious Associations and the “Islamic World” ............................................. 227 3.3. Diaspora Networks beneath Inter-State Diplomacy ....................................................... 238 3.4. Mecca, 1939: War of Words, Battle over Diaspora Networks ....................................... 246 3.5. Mecca and Shanghai Remain: 1947 Pilgrimage Delegation from Shanghai .................. 259 3.6. Pivoting of Networks ...................................................................................................... 269 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 273 Part II: Re-Routings ..................................................................................................................... 276 4. Routes and Re-Routes: Making New Homes in the Hejaz ...................................................... 277 4.1 Reaching Mecca .............................................................................................................. 282 4.2 Switching Roles ............................................................................................................... 303 4.3 Climbing Up Institutions, Altering Names .....................................................................