[13] For example, they follow Islamic dietary laws and reject the consumption of pork, the most commonly consumed meat in China,[16] and have therefore developed their own variation of Chinese cuisine.

[17] A study in 2004 calculated that 6.7 percent of Hui peoples' matrilineal genetics have a West-Eurasian origin and 93.3% are East-Eurasian, reflecting historical records of the population's frequent intermarriage, especially with Mongol women.

[21] The East Asian Y-chromosome haplogroup O-M122 is found in large quantities, about 24–30%, in other Muslims groups close to the Hui like the Dongxiangs, Bo'an, and Salar people.

The majority of Tibeto-Burmans, Han Chinese, and Ningxia and Liaoning Hui share paternal Y chromosomes of East Asian origin which are unrelated to Middle Easterners and Europeans.

In contrast to distant Middle Easterners and Europeans with whom the Muslims of China are not significantly related, East Asians, Han Chinese, and most of the Hui and Dongxiang of Linxia share more genes with each other.

[22] An overview study in 2021 estimated that West Eurasian-related admixture among the average Northwestern Chinese minority groups was at ~9.1%, with the remainder being dominant East-Eurasian ancestry at ~90.9%.

[26] Chinese census statistics count among the Hui (and not as officially recognized separate ethnic groups) the Muslim members of a few small non-Chinese-speaking communities.

The traditional expression Huihui, its use now largely restricted to rural areas, would sound quaint, if not outright demeaning, to modern urban Chinese Muslims.

[53] The Dungan people, descendants of Hui who fled to Central Asia, called themselves Zhongyuan ren in addition to the standard labels lao huihui and huizi.

In Taiwan, the Hui clans who followed Koxinga to Formosa to defeat the Dutch settlers no longer observe Islam and their descendants embrace the Chinese folk religion.

[72] Also on Taiwan, one branch of the Ding (Ting) clan that descended from Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar resides in Taisi Township in Yunlin County.

Joseph Fletcher cited Turkic and Persian manuscripts related to the preaching of the 17th century Kashgarian Sufi master Muhammad Yūsuf (or, possibly, his son Afaq Khoja) inside the Ming Empire (in today's Gansu and/or Qinghai), where the preacher allegedly converted ulamā-yi Tunganiyyāh (i.e., "Dungan ulema") into Sufism.

[36] In the Soviet Union and its successor countries, the term "Dungans" (дунгане) became the standard name for the descendants of Chinese-speaking Muslims who emigrated in the 1870s and 1880s to the Russian Empire, mostly to today's Kyrgyzstan and south-eastern Kazakhstan.

[citation needed] However, Hui peoples from Gansu, along with their Dongxian neighbors, did not receive substantial gene flow from Western and Central Asia or European populations during their Islamization.

[88] Among the northern Hui, Central Asian Sufi schools such as Kubrawiyya, Qadiriyya, and Naqshbandiyya (Khufiyya and Jahriyya) were strong influences, mostly of the Hanafi Madhhab.

[96] Kuomintang official Ma Hetian visited Tangwangchuan and met an "elderly local literatus from the Tang clan" while he was on his inspection tour of Gansu and Qinghai.

[100] Around 1376 the 30-year-old Chinese merchant Lin Nu visited Ormuz in Persia, converted to Islam, and married a Semu girl ("娶色目女") (either Persian or Arab) and brought her back to Quanzhou in Fujian.

[115] China banned a book entitled Xing Fengsu ("Sexual Customs") which insulted Islam and placed its authors under arrest in 1989 after protests in Lanzhou and Beijing by Chinese Hui Muslims.

Most of these repressions have been limited to the removal of aesthetically Islamic buildings and symbols, with the government renovating architecture to appear more Chinese and banning Arabic signs in Hui regions.

[142] However, renewed Tibetan-Muslim violence broke out in the wake of the gradual liberalization of China, that resulted in increased movement of people, such as Han and Hui Chinese, into Tibetan areas.

[158] However, in southern China, in Canton, James Legge encountered a mosque that had a placard denouncing footbinding, saying Islam did not allow it, since it violated God's creation.

[159] French army Commandant Viscount D'Ollone reported in 1910 that Sichuanese Hui did not strictly enforce the Islamic practices of teetotaling, ritual washing and Friday prayers.

Hui people commonly believe that their surnames originated as "Sinified" forms of their foreign Muslim ancestors some time during the Yuan or Ming eras.

[173] Intermarriage generally involves a Han Chinese converting to Islam when marrying a Hui, and marriage without conversion only takes place rarely.

Jiang Xingzhou, a Han bannerman lieutenant from the Bordered Yellow Banner, married a Muslim woman in Mukden during Qianlong's late reign.

Qing Muslim general Zuo Baogui (1837–1894), from Shandong province, was killed in Pingyang in Korea by Japanese cannon fire in 1894 while defending the city, where a memorial to him stands.

Ma Fuxiang commented on the willingness for Hui people to become martyrs in battle (see Martyrdom in Islam), saying: They have not enjoyed the educational and political privileges of the Han Chinese, and they are in many respects primitive.

Additionally unlike Uyghurs, who faces far more restrictions in religious freedoms, Hui Muslims generally do not seek independence from China and have a cultural affinity to the Han, and are far more assimilated into mainstream Chinese life.

"It's not an issue of freedom of religion," says Gladney, "Clearly, there are many avenues of religious expression that are unfettered in China, but when you cross these very often nebulous and shifting boundaries of what the state regards as political, then you're in dangerous territory.

According to the Malaysian Chinese Muslim Association, the surnames Koay, Ma, Ha, Ta, Sha, Woon, and An (or Ang) may indicate Hui ancestry.