When the vietcongs invaded and conquered the malay kingdom of champa several hundreds years ago, some seek refuge and settled in hainan and Cambodia.
Utsul
The
Utsuls ([hu˩ t͡saːn˧˨];
traditional Chinese: 回輝人;
simplified Chinese: 回辉人;
pinyin:
Huíhuī rén) or
Hainan Hui (Chinese: 海南回族; pinyin:
Hǎinán huízú), are a
Chamic-speaking
East Asian ethnic group which lives on the island of
Hainan and are considered one of the People's Republic of China's
unrecognized ethnic groups. They are found on the southernmost tip of Hainan near the city of
Sanya.
Utsul, Utsat, Utset, Huihui, Hui or Hainan Cham
Contents
The Utsuls are thought to be descendants of
Cham refugees who fled their homeland of
Champa in what is now modern Central
Vietnam to escape the
Vietnamese invasion.
[2] After the Vietnamese completed the conquest of Cham in 1471, sacking Vijaya, the last capital of the Cham kingdom, a Cham prince and some 1,000 followers moved to Hainan, where the
Ming dynasty allowed them to set up a kingdom-in-exile.
[3] Several Chinese accounts record Cham arriving on Hainan even earlier, from 986, shortly after the Vietnamese captured the earlier Cham capital of Indrapura in 982, while other Cham refugees settled in
Guangzhou.
[4][5]
While most of the Chams who fled
Champa went to neighbouring
Cambodia, a small business class fled northwards. How they came to acquire the name Utsul is unknown.
Their population was greatly reduced during
World War II by the Japanese who slaughtered more than 4,000 of them in their massacres of ethnic minorities in Western Hainan and Sanya as Chinese armies were hiding among them from the invading Japanese.
[6]
DiscriminationEdit
See also:
Islamophobia in China
In 2020, it was reported that Beijing had started a religious crackdown aimed at the Utsul community as part of their efforts of
sinicization. Restrictions included limiting the size of mosques, requiring a Communist Party member on mosque management committees, forbidding the use of Arabic words on food stalls (such as "
halal"), and forbidding the wearing of
hijab.
[7][8][9]
IdentityEdit
Although they are culturally, ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Hui, the
Chinese government nevertheless classifies them as Hui due to their Islamic faith. From reports by Hans Stübel, the German ethnographer who made contact with them in the 1930s, however, their language is completely unrelated to any other language spoken in mainland China.
[10] About 3,500 of them are speakers of the
Tsat language, which is one of the few
Malayo-Polynesian languages that are
tonal. Whereas other Hui people are Muslims who do not have a distinct mother tongue or language that separates them from the
Han, the Utsuls do have their own language, which is regarded as separate and distinct from Sinitic dialects. As a result, their classification as Hui people is controversial.
GeneticsEdit
Dongna Li and Chuan-Chao Wang have typed paternal Y chromosome and maternal mitochondrial DNA markers in 102 Utsat people to gain a better understanding of the genetic history of this population. High frequencies of the Y chromosome haplogroup O1a*-M119 and mtDNA lineages D4, F2a, F1b, F1a1, B5a, M8a, M*, D5 and B4a exhibit a pattern similar to that seen in the neighboring indigenous Li ethnic minority. Cluster analyses (principal component analyses and networks) of the Utsat, Cham and other ethnic groups in East Asia indicate that the Utsat are much closer to the Hainan indigenous
Li people than to the Cham and other mainland southeast Asian populations. These findings suggest that the origins of the Utsat likely involved massive assimilation of indigenous ethnic groups. During the assimilation process, the language of Utsat has been structurally changed to a tonal language; their Islamic beliefs may have helped to keep their culture and self-identification.
[11]
Family namesEdit
Some common Utsul family names include Chen, Ha, Hai, Jiang, Li, Liu and Pu.
[12]