The Literary Performance And Imagination Of Death Ritual

In the narratives of death ritual of writings by Hui writers Huo Da, Zhang Chengzhi and Shi Shuqing, with perspectives of cultural anthropology and ethnology, there are complicated relations and deep interactions between the Islamic death ritual and the history, memory and cultural identity of Hui. Under the personal experiences from minority nationality writers, by analyzing the interplay between "the literary performance and imagination of death ritual" and the reconstruction of cultural identity, it might drop a hint for understanding the meanings of constructive cultural identity of contemporary Hui.This article is composed of five parts. The Introduction explains why the author selected this subject, with the relevant literature review, the main content and the research method. It also interprets some important concepts:ritual, performance, nationality and identity.The Chapter One is about the construction of cultural identity in texts with the theme of Hui. from the historical memory to the experience nowadays, in the globalized world. With the reference of seeking for cultural identity between Beijing and Mecca, literary root-seeking leads the personal cultural identity constructed by Hui writers to the performance and imagination of national cultural identity.The Chapter Two explains concretely the death ritual in literature, in cases study of Funeral of the Muslims, Study about the Assassination in West Province and The Knife under Water. Those novels reveal the different literary performance about death ritual by an urban woman, an archeologist and a writer in the "imagined" Xihaigu. This is also indicates the different positions of writers with various experiences, when they are constructing the memory and cultural identity of Hui.The Chapter Three makes further comparison of thoese cases. The identity of religion, nationality and aesthetics is the common concerns. Although the national identity is the overriding motivation of Hui writers’seeking for the cultural identity, it is still one external approach to express the cultural identity with the other two, rather than the essential reason for the writings of death ritual. The perspectives of gender, contemporary trends of thought and ecological difference in regions brought about the multiple writings of cultural identity among Hui writers.Through the comparison of the three writers’innate Hui identity and cultural identity made from one’s own experience, compared with the cultural identity of foreign Hui——Donggan, the Conclusion reflects on the contextualization of contemporary Hui cultural identity and the meanings of "other". There is also a note of Muslim’s memorials in the Appendix. To some degree, it reveals the real death ritual of Hui inhabit north China. Their various performances of death ritual record their subjectivity and practicality of the constructing of cultural identities, while it also shows the interaction among different nationalities and regions in the multiplex and integrative structure of the Chinese nation.