The mini-bus roared down the highway. Somehow, these things have the universal quality of being rickety. The frame of the vehicle, (a sort of Van/bus hybrid) jolts over bump in the road, the supports creaking slightly. I've never ridden one that felt smooth. This one proved no exception. I sat in the middle bench seat, a strange member of this small party hurtling towards Tongxin County. In the driver's seat, my fairly new friend drove, wearing his white Islamic skullcap and biker shades, every now and then calling out to unseen others on his CB radio, like the driver of a MAC truck. In the passenger seat sat his bespectacled friend, the teacher, who despite his formal appearance, I was told, was a motorcycle enthusiast who had driven from Ningxia through neighboring Gansu, and then the mountains of western Sichuan before finally ending up in Lhasa. Next to me, the driver's 8 year old daughter, hair tied up in pigtails, who watched Korean soap operas and Disney's "Frozen" on her laptop and squealed with delightful laughter as only small kids can. In the back, the driver's wife, a middle aged woman, who are sunflower seeds by the handful and prodded her daughter to speak English (or at least standard Mandarin instead of local dialect) to me (who she referred to as "shushu" or "uncle"). In the very rear of the van, lying down, covered by a blanket, sat the driver's elderly mother, wearing a black hijab, silently gazing out the window. Outside the Ningxia countryside slipped past, all in flat shades of tan and beige: bare farmer's fields, patches of scrub grass in rocky, sandy, yellowish earth, mud brick houses, narrow-laned country roads, the naked fingers of tree branches. Out here there was nothing but wind farms, and occasionally a small village or farm community. Every so often, the tall, slender, spires and green domes of minarets of country mosques reached out into the pale blue sky. In the faint distance, low, ruddy mountains loomed. Here, in this vast expanse of open road and open sky, the narrow streets and daily rhythms of Yinchuan faded into a distant memory. Onward we drove, south toward Tongxin County for the occasion of a wedding.
***
Tongxin County is, as much as anywhere, the Hui heartland (so much so, in fact, that it was recently the centerpiece of a New York Times article that put a spotlight on Hui communities). People often remark that the percentage of Tongxin's total population made up by the Hui exceeds 90%. In the town of Weizhou, where I visited over the past weekend, estimated that 95% of the town's 20,000 residents were Hui. Beyond such matters of population, Islamic culture certainly predominates in the town. As I was being led around on tour of the town on my first afternoon in Weizhou, the woman serving as my defacto guide informed me that virtually none of the community's restaurants or convenience stores sold alcohol.
"There was a Han family who tried to open up a bar here a while ago," she told me. "They didn't stay in business very long."
The county serves as a nice contrast to Yinchuan, where, despite being the titular minority group in the autonomous region of which the city is the capital, the Hui only comprise about 30-40% of the total population. Moreover, it's a good chance to understand how the urban Hui experience differs from how Hui identity is understood in the country. Time and again, interviewees testify to the fact that a "deeper" or more devout sense of religious identity exist in the countryside. If I wanted to understand what being Hui was all about, I'm told, I needed to get out to Tongxin County. And so, when offered the chance to go down for a wedding, I jumped at the chance.
The contrasts between Weizhou township and Yinchuan are, indeed, numerous. They are also immediately apparent. Weizhou is dusty, with many of the mud-brick buildings being the same beige hue as the surrounding landscape of scrub grass and tree-less rolling hills. Here, the highest architecture are the minarets that rise from the mosques. It is a community that lacks the noise and bustle of even a relatively small city, like Yinchuan.
But this relative quiet should not suggest that Tongxin County has not also felt the impact of recent development efforts aimed at western China. In fact, walking around in the streets visitors happen upon evidence of how Tongxin, too, has changed in recent years, in the form of faded looking slogans painted onto the low walls:
"Increase Ethnic Unity. Promote Religious Harmony."
"An Ethnically United Family Works Together to Build a New Tongxin"
Like many small communities, the efforts to bring China's west up to the same level of development as the coast have had an effect in Tongxin County. The acquaintance of mine, who invited me to attend the wedding pointed out that the town used to be the epicenter for one of the country's most severe drug problems. A strident anti-drug propaganda campaign, and an influx of money aimed at development has changed that. My friend pointed out many of the large, new, luxury style houses that have been bult in the commmunity as evidence of how far the area has come.
"Look at those houses," he told me. "20 years ago this community had a serious drug-addiction problem. And now look how people live! You couldn't have a house like this in Yinchuan." Indeed, it was stunning. Though it may have appeared rather ordinary, the streets of Weizhou were clean, tidy, and the houses relatively well maintained. The standard of living for locals did appear to have risen considerably. My friend put it this way: "People here have simple lives. There aren't any hi-rise buildings here. But the locals are really quite prosperous. Life here is good."
The economic revival of Tongxin County seems to have also triggered a religious revivial. In fact, if Weizhou is lacking in high profile buildings, it has one thing in abundance: Mosques. They're everywhere in this town. By my count there were no fewer than 11 mosques in the community. Beyond this, a large central mosque, intended to be the largest in all of Ningxia and able to accomodate the entire community at once when finally completed is under construction. When asked why there were so many mosques in such a small community, I was informed that it was due to convenience: when the call to prayer sounded, people needed to be able to quickly and easily arrive at the mosque. Thus, having a mosque on every block was to ensure that nobody would have to miss prayers because of living far away.
Most of these mosques (in fact, now that I think of it, all of them) are built in the style which is quite popular here in Northwest China, which approximates and imitates Arabian or Middle Eastern architectural styles. In fact, most of them seem to take their cues from the grand mosque in Mecca. There is an increased sense of connectedness to the larger Islamic world here. Alongside the predominance of architecture influenced by the Middle East, there is a rising literacy rate in classical or Qur'anic Arabic amongst residents of the community. My erstwhile tourguide explained that almost all of the local kids, including her own sister attended Arabic language and Qur'anic study classes on their school vacations. Residents pepper their sentences with Arabic phrases, like inshallah, and greet each other by saying "asalamu alaykum" or "Peace be upon you." Islamic culture is very much visibe on the surface in Weizhou. Simply put, you don't have to look hard or long to understand the importance of Islam in this community.
***
At 6:30am, the streets of Weizhou were still pitch dark. No streetlights cast light on the streets. As I cast my eyes skyward, the familiar sight of Orion's belt met my gaze. Out in Weizhou no haze prevented me from seeing the stars. The wind blew biting and cold. My phone gave the temperature as -17 degrees Celsius. And yet, even in this frigid pre-dawn hour, I found myself walking with my friend toward the mosque just down the street to observe sunrise prayers. As we continued down the street, other figures became visible in the darkness, heading in the same direction. Once in earshot, greetings were given.
"Asalamu-alaykum" came a voice from just ahead.
"W'alaykum as-salaam" came my friend's response.
As we continued on into the courtyard of the mosque in the dark, it became apparent that the crowd already gathered at this early hour was large. Many older men already sat inside the prayer hall, staking out their places for the ceremony that was about to begin. In a side room, the mosque's lead imam taught a number of young students a class on Qur'anic interpretation which appeared to be well underway despite the earliness of the hour. My friend excused himself to wash before going into the main hall, and instructed me to wait outside the hall where he would meet me when the service concluded. I ascended the steps to the second hall, where the entranceway to the main hall was. Men continued to stream past, taking off their shoes and placing them where they could easily be found later. As the sky began to ligthen, a classroom bell rang from the area near the sideroom, and slowly, the imam and all of his students filed out, and up the stairs into the hall. The mosque's loudspeakers flickered on, and with a crackle, the call to prayer rang out, surely loud enough to be heard throughout the town. It was, however, far from the only call being sounded that morning. As I stood outside on the balcony waiting (non-Muslims definitely not allowed inside) I could hear the call to prayer sounding over loudspeakers from mosques throughout the city. Sometimes two at once. So I stood in the freezing cold, gazing up at the morning stars, listening to the sound of each Mosque in the city call forth its faithful, and watching day break soft and orange behind the mountains.
***
A common claim about Hui identity (from both their fellow Chinese citizens, and western scholars and journailsts alike) is that the Hui are mostly assimilated into contemporary Chinese society. Andrew Jacobs recently wrote in his New York Times piece about the Hui, that many only had "a vestigial aversion to pork," as their only real connection to the faith. To be sure, the picture is far more complicated than this, but the observation is rooted in some semblance of truth. In much of urban, eastern China, it is, indeed, rare to find people who routinely pray five times a day. Most cite concerns about being unable to leave work, or not living close enough to a mosque, or simply not knowing enough about the faith to attend. In Jinan, for instance, many of the people who came to daily prayers were retirees who had the ability and the time on hand to make the commitment. Even then, attendance would be sparse. Maybe only 20 or 30 people routinely show up to regular prayer sessions outside of the weekly Friday afternoon prayers at the Jinan Great Southern Mosque.
In Weizhou, however, I was confronted with an entirely different reality. People here take the strictures of praying 5 times a day seriously. Even in bitter cold weather, upwards of 100-150 men found their way to prayer morning, afternoon and night. Even more telling, young people in the community actively seek out religious education, and the opportunity to study Arabic and the Qur'an. It speaks to the vast differences which exist between various Hui communities, even within the same region. When out touring the sites in Weizhou with my host turned defacto-tourguide, I was reminded several times that in the eyes of locals, even the Hui community in Yinchuan was relatively secularized. As my tour guide took us around to tour the grounds of a religously-oriented school for poor children run by a local woman of some financial stature, she mentioned that unlike in Yinchuan (where people had largely been "Han-ified", or secularized, and were therefore unable to read the Qur'an in Arabic), local students were proficient in Qur'anic Arabic. After a few days in Weizhou, the standards for what counted as being "assimilated" or being "devout'" seem more muddied and relative to context than ever.
***
As we left the mosque in the still early light of morning, my friend began to describe to me what would take place at the wedding ceremony.
"It's going to be a traditional Hui ceremony. Not like the one you saw in Shandong. We won't set off fireworks, or have a big elaborate ceremony. Nothing like that. It will be very brief. The imam will come and read from the Qur'an and then everyone will eat and go home."
"So when will that happen?" I asked.
"That won't happen until about 2pm," he answered. "Now, we're going to the groom's house, where people will drink tea and eat snacks. Sort of like we did yesterday."
We arrived to find the courtyard in a flurry of activity. Steam rose from underneath the flaps of the military issue green tents which had been erected there the day before. Inside, huge charcoal braziers kept the rooms warm, and heated enormous pots of water used to make tea. Already, even at the early hour, the tables inside were packed with guests, most of them men newly arrived from morning prayer. I was seated with a group of men I had not met, while my friend produced his SLR camera, and told me he was going to wander around and take pictures. And so I sat, and ate as course after course of food came out to the table: first cold spiced beef, cucmber salad, greens and tofu, steamed sweet peas and sliced chili peppers. Then came hot dishes: roasted chicken, whole braised carp, mutton ribs and stirfried wild mushrooms with
Indeed, most of the wedding seemed to revolve around feeding seemingly almost all of the people in the town. From 8am up until the very start of the ceremonies, guests came in and ate on a rotating basis. One group ate, then next waited, people cycled in and out.
Around two, the bridal part arrived in a black BMW decked out with red ribbons. True to my friend's assertions, no fireworks accompanied the arrival of the bridal carraige, just a few tossed handfuls of confetti in what seemed to be a rather staid display of celebration. The bride, veiled and dressed in red from head to toe, was swept into a bedroom, where she seemingly remained for the rest of the afternoon, meeting visitors, and being attended to by other women. Trailing her, an enormous entourage of women in headscarves and men in white prayer hats. As the party made its way into the courtyard, the guests who had previously been assembled formed a recieving line. The men in the party shook hands, and began to fill the seats inside the tent. Meanwhile the groom, wearing a dark suit and a corsage along with a clean, white prayer hat, emerged from the house and was ushered inside the tent where all the of the men were gathered. He was seated at a table next to the local imam, and together as the men encircled the groom, they recited from the Qur'an. This took maybe 10 minutes. Before I was totally sure of what was happening the ceremony was over. The bride had not been present.
Shortly afterward, a young man scaled up to the top of the courtyard wall with a basket filled with dates, peanuts and wedding candy. A crowd gathered beneath him, and waited. Once he was sure of having everyone's attention he showered the onlookers with the contents of the basket as children, men, and women holding out their aprons, attempted to catch these treats. In a matter of moments, as guests still passed out candy to children who'd not been lucky enough to snag any, guests were ushered back into the tent for a second helping of the wedding feast. Well fed, we loaded up into the car and headed out on the highway bound for home.
***
So, what do is the takeaway from the visit to Tongxin County? What have I learned?
First, I think there are some inherent lesson in the sheer amount of contrast with the wedding I was able to observe in Jinan. If that event had been a showcase of cultural fusion (fusion of Chinese and Islamic, of traditional and modern, Hui and not), this wedding was the antithesis. It was a stricly Hui affair, just as my friend had said it would be. Furthermore, the wedding speaks to differences played by the role of Islam itself. In Jinan, where the "Hui" ceremony preceeded the glitzy, modern wedding, both bride and groom had been an important part of the ceremony, and the imam went out of his way to speak about the purpose of marriage in a theological sense. The wedding in Weizhou was straightforward. No instructions were given about the purpose of marriage. The bride was not even present. The brief wedding ceremony relied on the foundation of scripture, and scripture alone.
Beyond the particulars of the ceremony, Weizhou represents a place that is seemingly on the opposite end of the spectrum from a community like Jinan. If Jinan's Hui Quarter is a place where Hui identity doesn't reigster much in the daily lives of residents, Weizhou is a place where the role of Islamic faith and Hui identity is so prominent that it is almost taken for granted. I was told on several occasions both at the mosque and at the wedding that the person speaking to me was unaware that there were Hui in America. After some initial confusion, I understood. Not only was I assumed to be Muslim, but in this case, Muslim and Hui were being used interchangably. On a few occasions, after explaining that I was not a Muslim, but was merely a scholar studying Hui culture, I was told something to the effect of "That's OK. When you're done with your studies, you'll convert." It was not a question. It was a statement of certainty.
Going to places like Weizhou are useful precisely for the purpose of exploring the ways in which identity can become almost subliminal. In places like this, the things which separate once identity from another may indeed be visible in ways that they would not be if they were being discussed more openly. In many way, Weizhou adds more naunce and more definition to the already complex portrait of Hui identity.