few Salar raise livestock and the local timber industry is also another source of income for some villages. Hui general Ma Fuxiang recruited Salars into his army, and said they moved to China since the Tang dynasty. His classification of them is in two groups, five inner clans, eight outer clans. Ma said the outer group speaks Tibetan, no longer knowing their native language. Salars only married other Salars. Uighurs have said that they were unable to understand the Salar language. Ma and Han are the two most widespread names among the Salar. Ma is a Salar surname for the same reason it is a common Hui surname, Ma substitutes for Muhammad. The upper four clans of the Salar assumed the surname Han and lived west of Xunhua. One of these Salar surnamed Han was Han Yimu, a Salar officer who served under General Ma Bufang. He fought in the Kuomintang Islamic Insurgency in China (1950–1958), leading Salars in a revolt in 1952 and 1958. Ma Bufang, enlisted Salars as officers in his army by exclusively targeting Xunhua and Hualong as areas to draw officers from. 18.69 years was the average first marriage age for Salar women in 2000 while Tibetan women were married at 23.8 years on average in 1990. Clothing The typical clothing of the Salar is very similar to the Hui people in the region. The men are commonly bearded and dress in white shirts and white or black skullcaps. The traditional clothing for men is jackets and gowns. The young single women are accustomed to dressing in Chinese dress of bright colors. The married women utilize the traditional veil in white or black colors. Music Singing is part of Salar culture. A style of singing called Hua'er is shared among the Han, Hui, Salar and Tibetans in Qinghai province. They have a musical instrument called the Kouxuan. It is a string instrument manufactured in silver or in copper and only played by the women. Language The people of China and Salar themselves regard the Salar language as a Tujue language (Turk language) (突厥語言). The Salar language has two large dialect groups. The divergence is due to the fact that one branch in Xunhua county of Qinghai province and Gansu province was influenced by the Tibetan languages and Chinese and the other branch in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture by the Uyghur and Kazakh languages. In the late