Xiaowei Zang opens his book with the challenge that the ethnic Hui minority living in Lanzhou, China, is wrongly associated with the stereotyped image of being "traditional," in contrast with the "modern" Han majority. Zang explains that the persisting misrepresentation of the Hui people as "traditional" is due to the methodological, as well as the theoretical, lethargy of mainstream scholarship. He also suspects that the misrepresentation has to do with the sociology of knowledge prevailing in the Anglo Saxon-centric minority studies in the United States. While he skilfully denies the image of the "traditional" Hui minority, Zang implicitly, and ironically, notes at the end of the book that the dichotomy of tradition and modernity can be problematic as he argues in support of actual coexistence of both the pluralism of ethnic customs (insinuating tradition) and the assimilation into urban behaviour (indicating modernity).
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