98 Self-Perception and Identity
that he and his wife not live with the Bais. Consequently, after the
wedding the couple moved to a remote village in Shunde prefec-
ture in Guangdong province (婚後果遷順得府; JXCP, pp. 63 – 64 ).^52
As a result, lamented Zhao in the concluding the tale, Ma ceased to
teach and “did not transmit his learning” 惜乎未逢美館其學無傳
(JXCP, p. 64 ).
Zhao’s concern here is not that Ma got married—he makes
much of the fact that Ma was so sought after and takes it as a re-
flection and proof of Ma’s high standing as a scholar—but with
Ma’s decision to move to a remote area, where he was unable to
continue his teaching. Most noteworthy in the story is the fact that
Ma, presumably neither a wealthy man nor one of a particularly
prestigious background, is a sought-after husband for a wealthy,
beautiful woman (albeit a widow) from an important family.
Zhao’s lament also reveals how strong was the collective aspect of
the scholarly work undertaken within the boundaries of the educa-
tion network. Once Ma moved beyond these boundaries, his
scholarly contribution was lost.
A second tale that demonstrates the ways in which scholarly
cultural capital was a fungible asset and could be converted into so-
cial capital is that of Feng Tongyu. In this case we see a different,
and arguably more significant, sort of social capital being gained as
a result of learning and great erudition. Whereas Ma’s scholarship
earned him an unwanted wife, Feng Tongyu’s bought him the ul-
timate social recognition: the esteem of western Muslim scholars.
Zhao appended a special segment entitled “Suini xuezhe zhong
zhi di yi liuye” 雖呢學者中之第一流也 (The first among the
scholars of al-Sin [China]) to Feng’s biography (JXCP, p. 75 ). Here
we learn that after his graduation from the school in Xi’an, Feng
was particularly interested in training in Islamic jurisprudence
(feige 費格; Arabic, fiqh); specifically, he wanted to work on Is-
lamic inheritance laws. Zhao stressed that “even though there was
—————
52. No doubt this marriage was an unusual event at the time, and there were
probably other, unvoiced reasons involved in this strange story. Perhaps is it sim-
ply better to say that apparently Ma hated his new relatives and perhaps was also
ashamed to have married a widow, which may explain the move from Shandong
to Guangdong in the far south outside the educational network.