Starting in the late 1980s, economic and cultural exchanges between Dungan villages and China, especially communications with Shaanxi Province, have seen a rapid increase. More and more Dungan people are engaged in border trade with China. An Husai is one of them. He has visited China several times, bringing back with him advanced technology and equipment. Dungan people recently began utilizing greenhouse technology from China, so that they could grow vegetables all year round. In recent years, they have also begun to utilize Chinese equipment to manufacture bricks, biscuits and paint.

According to An Husai, the Kazakhstan government has formulated policies to aid the development of the Dungan people. But in the early days, when Kazakhstan was a newly independent state, traffic police set up a number of toll booths on the road which Dungan people used to transport vegetables. In 2002, An Husai reported this problem to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who immediately ordered the removal of more than 60 toll stations. The road was later named the “green passage.”

Ties of Friendship

According to Yarchube Iskokov, Dungan people attach great importance to education. Presently, Masanchi Village has four schools, with more than 3,000 students enrolled. Two of the four schools offer only Kazakh-language programs, while students in the other two need to learn Kazakh, Russian, English and Dungan. Each year, the KDA sponsors 60-70 exchange students to study in Chinese colleges, such as Northwest University, Xi’an International Studies University, and Lanzhou University. Currently, An Husai’s son is learning Chinese at Fudan University in Shanghai.

To honor their Chinese roots and encourage trade and cultural exchanges with China, the KDA plans to establish a Confucius Institute in Kazakhstan, so that more Dungan people will have a chance to learn Chinese.

The KDA has set up a representative office in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi Province, to facilitate bilateral exchange and cooperation. The provincial government of Shaanxi has also dispatched Chinese teachers to teach Dungan people Chinese language as well as agricultural specialists to educate them on new vegetable growing technology. Today, the Dungan people serve as a friendly bridge between China and Kazakhstan.

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The Origin of the Dungan

In the 1860-70s, an uprising in support of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom swept across China. At the same time, the Hui people allied with other ethnic groups in northwestern China’s Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia areas to rebel against the Qing court. This uprising failed, and an army comprised of 10,000 people fled westwards. Many died on the road, but some 3,000 emigrants crossed the Tianshan Mountains and eventually reached the Chui River which was then part of the Russian Empire. There, they settled to plant seeds brought from China, and gradually formed an ethnic group that became known as the Dungan (meaning “people from the east” in Shaanxi dialect).