Hi everyone,
As you may have noticed, things on the blog have slowed over the past week or so. There's a reason for that as over the past week I've been making a few road trips outside Xining. Where did I go? Why did I do it? Allow me to catch you up to speed.
Eastern Qinghai and Western Gansu Provinces are really active and important sites for doing research on Hui culture and Islam in China more broadly. This area of country is the core of what Dru C. Gladney referred to as the "Qur'an Belt," a highly Muslim area that stretched from far western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to the Ningxia Hui Autonomous region. Qinghai and Gansu are squarely in the middle of this Chinese Islamic heartland, and the region between the provincial capital cities of Xining (Qinghai) and Lanzhou (Gansu) has long been an intellectual and cultural center for China's Muslims. This region that sits just south of the Gobi Desert, east of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and at the end of the famed Hexi Corridor marks an important spot on the old Silk Road. It's a place where traders who had made it through the desert and the string of oasis towns along the Tarim Basin and through the high mountains to the west began to slowly descend toward the terminus of these trade routes towards Chang'an (Modern Xi'an) on China's central plains. As such, the area attracted merchants, traders, and others who wandered in from Central Asia in the west, or the Chinese heartland in the west. Among them were Turkic, Persian, and Arab merchants from the west, Mongols from the Steppe, Tibetans from the mountains, and Han from the eastern coastal regions. All of this interaction brought new cultures and faiths to the region (sometimes by force), and eventually the area became a patchwork of multi-ethnic communities, many of them Muslim. Islam came to the area along with the goods of the merchants, as well as with the armies. Today, the area stands as the country's most devoutly Muslim region.
So, it only makes sense that if I'm going to be out in Qinghai for a few months, I might as well venture out to see some of these areas for myself. While Xining has become a leading city for Chinese Islam in recent decades, understanding the basis for the culture of the region requires getting out a little bit. Specifically, I was interested in making trips to two cities to the southeast of Xining: Xunhua and Linxia. You can see their locations on the map below. Xining, my current base of operation is up in the Northwest corner. Linxia is in the far southeast corner. Xunhua lies in between.
Zooming out reveals that, actually, these cities are quite close to one another. Getting to Xunhua City requires only a three hour bus ride from Xining over some pretty stunning countryside. Getting to Linxia takes 7-9 hours from Xining by bus, or alternatively, 1 hour by train from Xining to Lanzhou (the provincial capital of Gansu province) and another 2-3 hours by bus from Lanzhou to Linxia.
Why these two cities? Both present interesting contrasts to Xining. Both are small communities whose young people often leave to work in larger cities, like Xining or other communities on the east coast. Both are the administrative seat of an ethnic Autonomous County or Prefecture (Xunhua City is the seat of Xunhua Salar Autonomous County, and Linxia City is the seat of the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture). And both are home to strong Isalmic communities.
Xunhua is the homeland of the Salar, a people descended of Turkic refugees from the area around Samarkand in today's Turkmenistan. They settled in Qinghai in the 1300s after fleeing the Mongol conquest of Central Asia, and began to integrate into the plateau, intermarrying with Hui, Tibetans, and Han Chinese.
Linxia is referred to as China's "Little Mecca." It has long been the intellectual and spiritual capital for the Hui. It is the place where 2 of China's 4 major Sufi orders were founded. Important religious figures like the Sufi Masters Ma Laichi, and Ma Mingxin all hailed from LInxia, and began to promote their orders in that city. Even today it is centrally important to the dissemination and promotion of Chinese Islamic culture and scholarship.
Thus, it was obvious that I had to spend some time in these communities. And so, I did. Last week, I was able to take a day trip to Xunhua early in the week, and spend the weekend in Linxia. In that short period I managed to learn quite a bit, and I feel as if my understanding of the entire region is far more nuanced as a result. Over the next few days, I'll recap my trips to both cities. Stay Tuned!