After two weeks here in Yinchuan, the city is starting to make more sense to me. There's a lot to say about this city, and the Hui community here. Before diving into some of these topics, I think it's important to give you, my readers, a feel for the community itself. In Yinchuan, this means taking a look at the NanGuan Grand Mosque. While Yinchuan has many, many, community mosques, the NanGuan is most certainly its largest, and most renowned. It's easily spotted. Unlike many of the mosques in Jinan and Beijing which I've been visiting, the NanGuan Grand Mosque is a recently rebuilt one, completed in 1981. Unlike Beijing's Niu Jie Mosque, or Jinan's Great Southern Mosque, the NanGuan Mosque is not a Chinese-style building, but instead is buit to resemble Middle Eastern style mosques. Its green domes and towering minarets topped with crescent moons are unmistakable.
The mosque sits at the heart of a small enclave of Hui businesses and restaurants. The front of the building is served by three different Islamic Goods stores that sell prayer hats, scarves, incense, commentaries on the Qur'an, prayer beads, and Islamic decor.
The outer wall of the mosque complex that runs alongside the street on ChangCheng Da Jie is lined with halal butcher shops which sell beef and mutton in bulk to customers.
Adjacent the mosque on its north side is a line of halal restaurants, mostly specializing in noodles and barbecue, named Ningxia Niu Jie, perhaps hoping to draw comparisons with the famous (and larger) Niu Jie Hui community in Beijing.
The mosque is also unquestionably a center for religious life, as well. As many as 500 people routinely attend Friday Jumu'ah prayers here, and it serves as an important cultural and religious locus for the community. Beyond that, there's also an exhibit in the mosque's lower level which provides an explanation about the evolution of Hui culture, and the role of Islam in China. The display even includes scale models of the Kaa'ba in Mecca, and the mosque in Medina. It's an important site for education as well as worship.
There's still quite a lot to learn here. Over the next few days, I'll try to start a more substantive discussion of Yinchuan's Hui community, but getting an understanding of the institutions as the heart of that community is vital. As I continue to delve into Yinchuan, returning to the NanGuan Mosque will prove important, indeed.
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