Newcastle University

Dr Andrew Law, whilst on sabbatical leave in China, was lucky enough to join a function celebrating Xi'an's Hui community and its links to other Hui communities outside of China.  Specifically at the function, held on 26 July and led by Mr An (local Hui Leader), the Muslim community was celebrating the arrival of a Kazak painter who lives in a village on the Chinese-Kazak silk Road.  The village which is known as Masanchi contains numerous Chinese Muslims who left China in 1878.  Mr An told Dr Law that he had been to the village and others like it and had been able to speak in a very old form of Mandarin with them.  As Mr An reported to Dr Law, it seemed that the form of Shaanxi dialect that they seemed to use dated back to the Qing period (to the nineteenth century); in this regard, Mr An was also able to talk to the Kazak painter in this dialect. 

Then Dr Law, along with the Kazak painter and other guests were invited to give speeches on the importance of making links between Eastern and western cultures.  Specifically, Dr Law noted that the Silk Road story and indeed the contemporary attempts by Xi'an's administration to construct the Silk Road into a World Heritage Site, could enable more and more of these interesting links between ethnic cultures which run across national borders.  The event which in many ways has been aided by the application for WHS of the Silk Road and its heritages in Xi'an, can be seen as a positive way in which new forms of heritage application may lead to new forms of cultural communication and translation.