The Hui are one of China’s fifty-six recognized minority groups. “Females” are not. Perhaps that is soon to change? See below, entries for Hui Liangyu and Liu Yandong (photo collage by Xinhua, reprinted in China Daily):
Shanghai Scrap
Observations on Asia and the World
Another thing that caught my interest was that the order of listing is determined by the number of strokes in the surname. Is this the most common way names are ordered in China? Are there other ways more closely resembling alphabetical ordering? (Here in Japan, the most common way is by the Japanese a i u e o (kana) order; but in China with all the different dialects/languages, I assume that might be difficult.)
China Daily’s page-layout guys must be relieved that there were no minority women to fit in the chart. Related link.
Oops. That wasn’t the right link. This one, with “Barack Obama…black dude,” is the one I meant.
Is Ms. Liu wearing an earring or is she just happy to see me?
Standard Mandarin has been the national language of China for almost a century and is the basis for the pinyin system of romanization. Listing by number of strokes is common and easier than listing by the radical although listing in alphabetical order of pinyin is obvious but may have been seen as inappropriate. After all, the intended audience is Chinese.