Eating safely, eating Islam: Food hospitality and inter-ethnic relations in Muslim restaurants in Ningxia

Abstract

This article interrogates the relationship between food and faith in an instance of hospitality in halal restaurants in the autonomous Muslim province of Ningxia in north-western China. The non-Muslim Han Chinese majority here revealed an explicit preference for eating in halal restaurants owned and operated by the Hui-Muslim minority despite the fact that Han–Hui relations in daily life were at best cordial. Critiquing Derrida’s contention on the impossibility of absolute/unconditional hospitality, the author shows that absolute hospitality is indeed possible in the commercial encounter in halal restaurants in Ningxia as it is mediated by inter-ethnic prejudices and expectations. Hui and Han, bound by rules of hospitality, perform commensality in Hui restaurants primarily because of a Chinese nationwide concern with food safety. Rocked by numerous food scandals since the early 2000s, many non-Muslim Chinese looking for safe dining options have, in the case of Ningxia, resorted to dining in Muslim-run Hui restaurants. The belief that Hui would not knowingly taint their food as they serve fellow Muslims and are, therefore, bound by moral ethical-religious values to provide safe food makes Hui restaurants the preferred dining spaces for Chinese concerned with eating without fear.