YANG PU

PhD Student

Research Title: Qingzhen Routes, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and Southeast Asia
Research Group: Social & Cultural Geography (SCG)
Thesis Advisor: Prof Tim Bunnell
Co-advisor: Prof James Sidaway & Dr Thomas White (King’s College London)

I received a BA in Arabic from Shanghai International Studies University, an MSc in Social Anthropology with distinction from the London School of Economics, and an MPhil in China Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. My doctoral research examines how the transnational circulation of Chinese halal (qingzhen) food reconfigures religion, infrastructure, and geopolitics across China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Originating from Daoist texts, qingzhen (lit. ‘pure and true’) became synonymous with halal and Islam in fifteenth-century China. In the 1970s, Malays and non-Muslim Chinese migrants filled the niche for halal Chinese food in Malaysian and Singaporean markets. Since China’s Reform and Opening in the 1980s, itinerant Muslims from northwest China have established an estimated 60,000 noodle restaurants – first in southeast China and Southeast Asia, and eventually throughout China and the world. Building on these grassroots ventures, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has promoted the Qingzhen Enterprises Go Out scheme since the 2010s, founding qingzhen restaurants, industrial parks, and dairy factories worldwide. My research traces these enterprises ethnographically to develop a multiscalar understanding of geopolitics as co-produced by nation-states, ethnoreligious communities, and other-than-human beings.