Salar People - Culture

Culture

The Salar had their own unique kinship clanships. They are patrilineal, and exogamous, encouraging clan members to marry out, with marriage amongst clan members being banned.

The Salar are an entrepreneurial people, going into multiple businesses and industries.

The typical clothing of the Salar very similar to other Muslim peoples in the region. The men are commonly bearded and dress in white shirts and white or black skullcaps.

The young single women are accustomed to dressing in Chinese dress of bright colors. The married women utilize the traditional veil in white or black colors.

Muslim Salars and Muslim Hui people are against coeducation (grouping male and female students together) due to Islam, Uyghurs are the only Muslims in China who do not mind coeducation and practice it. Secular education was given to girls.

They have a musical instrument called the Kouxuan. It is a string instrument manufactured in silver or in copper and only played by the women.

The Salars have been in Qinghai Province, China since the Mongol Yuan period. For centuries they've maintained their Oghuz language remarkably similar to the Turkmen language spoken in the Qaraqum.

However, culturally they have strictly conformed to the Naqshbandi ways of their Hui coreligionists. Therefore many nomadic Turkmen traditions have been lost, and Turkmen music was forbidden. More secular minded Salars have resorted to appropriating Tibetan or Moghol (a Qinghai Mongolic Muslim group) music as their own.

The ethnic Salars of Qinghai celebrated on March 21, 2010 their first "Nowruz" in modern times, as a revived Turkmen holiday.

Hui General Ma Fuxiang recruited Salars into his army, and said they moved to China since Tang dynasty. His classification of them is in two groups, five inner clans, eight outer clans. Ma said the outer group speaks Tibetan, no longer knowing their native language. Salars only married other Salars. Uighurs have said that they were unable to understand the Salar language.

Ma and Han are the two most widespread names among the salar. Ma is a Salar surname for the same reason it is a common Hui surname, Ma substitutes for Muhammad. The upper four clans of the Salar assumed the surname Han and lived west of Xunhua. One of these Salar surnamed Han was Han Yimu, a Salar officer who served under General Ma Bufang. He fought in the Kuomintang Islamic Insurgency in China (1950–1958), leading Salars in a revolt in 1952 and 1958. Ma Bufang, enlisted Salars as officers in his army by exclusively targeting Xunhua and Hualong as areas to draw officers from.

Westerners who encountered Salars said that they were racially mixed, of Turkic, Mongol, Tibetan, Han chinese, and Hui descent, and had features from these different races.

Reportedly the akhunds of the Salar spoke Persian, and the Salar commonly consumed alcohol in addition to knowing the Arabic script. They wore Chinese attire.

In Amdo, Salar language has heavy Chinese and Tibetan influence. It was originally Turkic, but major linguistic structures have been absorbed from Chinese. Around 20% of the vocabulary is of Chinese origin, and 10% is also of Tibetan origin. Yet the official Communist Chinese government policy deliberately covers up these influences in academic and linguistics studies, trying to emphasize the Turkic element and completely ignoring the Chinese in the Salar language. The Salar use the Chinese writing system since they do not have their own.