This book examines how state schooling in China has economically, culturally, and ideologically had an impact on and gradually transformed a traditional Muslim Hui village in rural Northwestern China. By discussing the interpretation and appropriation of dominant educational discourse of "quality" in the rural context, it illustrates the dichotomies of poverty and prosperity, civility and uncivility, and religiosity and secularity as they are perceived and understood by teachers, parents and students. Based on an original ethnographic research conducted in a secondary school, it further...