Circulations and Convergences: Mecca in the Conceptions and Mobilities of Chinese Muslim Diasporas in Saudi Arabia

BRINFAITH RELIGION AND EMPIRE PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES

Circulations and Convergences: Mecca in the Conceptions and Mobilities of Chinese Muslim Diasporas in Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT
Mecca is often viewed through the angles of the pilgrimage, empires, Saudi foreign policy, and a source of religious movements elsewhere. While building on such transnational angles, this talk proposes to view Mecca as a convergence point and an intermediary site that has hosted and re-directed mobilities of diaspora populations from across Asia. Specifically, I will focus on an eclectic community of first to third-generation Chinese Muslim settlers in the Hejaz (western coasts of the Arabian Peninsula) who themselves or whose predecessors arrived in the region at different points in time between the 1930s and 2010s — as pilgrims, exiles, and students. The talk shows that the variegated routes between Mecca and China, coupled with imaginaries on the city as a distant home place of origin, served as a rare constant orienting force that sustained two-directional mobilities of Chinese Muslim diasporas through the wars and revolutions of the modern times.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Janice Hyeju Jeong is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Göttingen, Department of East Asian Studies. She is a part of the research team “Conceptions of World Order and their Social Carriers” under the project “Worldmaking: A Dialogue with China,” which is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Her broad research interests include Inter-Asian connections, History and Anthropology, and Sino-Islamic networks. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii and raised in Seoul, Jeong completed B.A. and Ph.D degrees at Duke University, and has had affiliations with the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, Peking University, and New York University Shanghai during fieldwork.

ORGANIZER
The event is organized by the CRF Project “Infrastructures of Faith: Religious Mobilities on the Belt and Road [BRINFAITH]” (RGC CRF HKU C7052-18G), which is hosted by the ASIAR – Asian Religious Connections Research Cluster in HKIHSS.