It's a normal Monday afternoon at the Dongguan mosque in Xining. The busy mosque is at the heart of Xining's Islamic community and especially now, during Ramadan, it's busy during the afternoon as worshipers stream in for the mosque's community Qur'anic study and Arabic language classes at about 1:00pm, just prior to afternoon prayer. As the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, sounds at 1:15, the number of people gathered in the courtyard swells. Hundreds of people in white skullcaps scurry around, darting in and out of the mosque's washroom and rolling out carpets over the stone tile. However, while the mosque's congregants make ready for their afternoon devotions, another very different group massed toward the back of the mosque; one that wore neon colored rain-jackets, heavy hiking-grade backpacks, and the leather cowboy hats one always finds at souvenir shops in China's tourist areas. They armed themselves with large SLR cameras draped around their necks, or cell phones lofted high on selfie-sticks. As the exhortations of Allahu Ackbar! (God is Great!) and Hayya'alas-salah (Hasten to prayer!) echoed through the courtyard, and the congregation ambled to their spots on the carpets in the middle of the yard, the bleeps and twitter of electronic equipment rustled through the rear of the mosque. The tourists fixed their selfie sticks like bayonets on rifles, checked their video settings and hoisted them skyward over the almost 10,000 people gathered in prayer. As the faithful prostrated themselves together in prayer, the tourist also lifted their arms (and their cameras) in unison, snapping away. Some, searching for the perfect view, crept up to the final row of worshipers, standing within mere inches of them. One woman, armed with a smart phone that boasted an enormous screen crouched low, almost to the point of using the shoulders of the kneeling worshipers as an armrest to steady her screen, and snapped a photo. Another, turned her back to the crowd, raised camera high over her head, and joyfully snapped selfies of her clearly practiced "Can you believe this!?!?" face.
I took all of this in from my post against the columns of the mosque's rear gate. I suddenly felt a rush of unease rush over me. Tourists continued to creep forward, looking for better photos, more intimate shots, the perfect memento of their visit. As they did, they were continually urged to step back by the mosque staff, who frantically continued to roll out yet more carpets and make more space for those entering the courtyard to pray. Suddenly, I felt very much like a voyeur, as if I were intruding on something private and sacred. I put away my cellphone, and made a conscious effort to stay well back of the crowd. The worshipers, for their part, continued on unphased. They rose and bowed when along with the ritual, as if the throng of on lookers (of which I was a part) were not even there.
The relative indifference of the mosque-goers to the presence of such a large group of observers shouldn't be too surprising, considering the fact that it's become a part of the daily routine of the Dongguan Mosque. The mosque is internationally famous for the sheer size of the crowd it draws for prayer. It is Xining's oldest mosque and one of its most elaborate. Its historical importance runs deep in the community (I'll be devoting a separate entry to this at some point, I promise). Friday afternoon prayers at the Dongguan draw anywhere between 60,000-100,000 on a normal Friday, depending upon who's estimate you follow. People spread their prayer rugs in the streets and carry on in prayer as traffic moves around them. And then there's the crowd that gathers to watch the crowd. It's not uncommon to pass by the Dongguan Mosque on a Friday afternoon and find an enormous group of onlookers gathered on the opposite side of the street, cameras at the ready. This crowd is always a curious mix: foreign backpackers, Han tourists, and local Hui and Salar women (women usually pray at home rather than at the mosque in Xining). The significance of the spectacle isn't lost on the faithful either. Watch for long enough, and you're sure to see at least a few people who have come to pray sit down on their rugs and start taking pictures of the crowd.
It's worth asking, however, what the tourist take away from their visits in predominantly Muslim areas. With the launch of China's "One Belt, One Road" (yidai yilu, 一带一路) initiative that hopes to revive economic, educational and cultural exchange between China and the predominantly Islamic countries located along the routes of the former Silk Road, the state has given lots of focus over to predominantly Muslim areas within China, itself. Perhaps the Hui Culture Park (中华回乡文化园) just outside of Yinchuan provides the clearest example of an attempt to draw increased attention, and tourist dollars to China's Muslim areas. The park, built in the formerly rural Hui village of Najiahu (纳家户) in Yonging County in 2007, attempts to give visitors a thorough education in Hui identity. Once they enter the park through the elaborate front gate which is built to resemble the Taj Mahal, visitors can tour a rather campy museum devoted to exploring the culture and origins of the Hui (prominent mentions of the Hui's ancestral roots in Qatar, Kuwait and other Gulf States suggest either a pandering to Middle Eastern visitors or a heavy amount of Middle Eastern investment), don hijabs and go to an elaborated golden-domed mock-up prayer hall where they can listen to a local madrassa student practice reciting the adhan, and can even tour the Saudi Arabia Exhibition Hall from the 2010 Shanghai World Expo which has been moved to the site. After touring the park, tourists can wander over to the adjacent reconstructed shopping high street/"Old Town" in what was once a residential area of Najiahu. The area, which touts itself as "China's Number One Street of the Hui Minority" intends to be a one-stop destination for all things Sino-Islamic: tea shops, restaurants, prayer goods stores, and places to buy Ningxia specialty goods (宁夏特产品) like Goji berries or pre-packaged "8 Treasure Tea" (八宝茶). Those tourists who are adventuresome enough might persist onward to the venerable, and justifiably famous for its beautiful architecture, Najiahu Grand Mosque (which I've previously written about) that sits directly across the road. The intent of all of these structures, which transformed Najiahu from a small, pious farm village with a famous mosque into the psuedo-officially ordained cultural capital of the Hui people, is clearly to make Najiahu into the centerpiece of tourism built around the One Belt, One Road project.
Despite these good intentions, however, the park has been something of a white elephant since its completion. The tourists have yet to materialize in Najiahu. What's more, the tourist high street adjacent the park is something of an eyesore, and seemingly a cautionary tale for speculative development ventures. The numerous storefronts that remain empty and incomplete on the tourist high street stand as a testament to a project that ran out of steam far before ever realizing its intended goal. Instead of the busloads of tourists that were supposed to fuel the newly renovated business, local shopkeepers and restauranteurs must rely on lunch meetings held by local officials and businessmen to stay afloat during the rather lean summer tourist season, and the even leaner winter off-season.
The Dongguan is another such showcase Chinese Islamic community, with somewhat different results. Where Najiahu feels like an abortive attempt to create a tourist attraction out of thin air, the Dongguan Mosque attracts a genuinely large crowd on a weekly (if not daily) basis. And with good reason, as the Friday Jumu'ah prayers that occur there weekly are, indeed, something to be seen. In the hours between prayer, a tour guide fluent in English and Arabic shuffles guests around the mosque, explaining its unique features (like the roof ornaments gifted to the mosque by the nearby Labrang Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, or the elaborate front gate built by Xining's former Hui warlord governor, Ma Bufang), and explaining a bit about the daily life of the mosque (how Muslims pray, what the function of each surrounding building is). Thus unlike the Hui Culture Park in Najiahu, the Dongguan Mosque doesn't have to create space for the presentation of Hui identity. Instead of creating an artificial prayer hall through which visitors may experience a controlled version of Islam, the Dongguan Mosque allows visitors to see an Islamic community in action. Tourists can peer into the main hall, and while they can't enter, the experience they get of watching the courtyard fill with actual worshipers may do more to help them understand Hui or Islamic culture than any simulation.
Perhaps a larger concern, however, is the depth of the knowledge these tourists gain. At the Dongguan the juxtaposition between tourist's seeking photographs and locals coming to pray provides a striking contrast that is worth meditating over. Such stark contrasts only serve to reinforce the semi-voyeuristic feeling one gets watching tourists interact with worshipers. Throughout China, interactions between primarily Han tourists and ethnic minority cultures usually occur in tightly staged performances of song, dance, and music. There's a lot of writing out there on the subject, that I enthusiastically recommend to readers who are less familiar with this dynamic between majority/minority in contemporary China. Do Han tourists experience prayer at the Dongguan as yet another kind of performance? On the one hand, the event seems starkly different. The solemnity of prayer seems to lack the spectacle aspects of other minority-park type performances. The Hui, Salar, and Dongxiang Muslims who gather at the Dongguan Mosque do not sing or dance. They do not face or address the tourists. And yet, the clamoring for photos, and posing for selfies seems to suggest, at the very least, a misleading of the purpose of the afternoon prayers, if not a complete undercutting of their significance. If the afternoon prayer sessions at the Dongguan are indeed mainly seen as event for tourists to watch rather than for faithful to participate in, what does this suggest about the greater understanding of the Hui community, and the Islamic religion that tourists ought to gain from such visits? What understanding about the role of Islam in the life of the Hui community do tourists take away from an event in which they are mostly engrossed in photographing rather than studying?
Similarly one wonders about the consequences of this kind of presence for the life of the local mosque community. How does the daily presence of a crowd of onlookers influence the relationship that local Hui have with their ritual? Their belief? In what sense have the Dongguan's prayer services knowingly taken on a performative aspect? These are questions that are difficult, if not impossible, to answer. The dilemma inherent in discussing things like "authenticity" or "genuine" displays of culture is one of essentializing or fixing a certain vision of what a culture "ought to be" in some sort of "pure" form, and considering deviations from it as "inauthentic." For many reasons, these kinds of claims are problematic. However, it would also seem incorrect to deny that the flood of tourists who gather at the Dongguan Mosque to watch the afternoon prayers has impacted the life of the community.
China currently faces the challenge of how to engage with its Islamic minority communities. As places like the Dongguan and the Hui Culture Park in Najiahu gain prominence as centers of Chinese Islamic culture, the ways in which the narrative about these communities is presented will be of vital importance in determining the course of the relationship between China's Muslim minorities and the non-Muslim Han majority. Whether the emerging Sino-Islamic tourist industry falls back on relatively caricatured and shallow depictions of China's Muslims, or strives to use the platform of "One Belt, One Road" to foster genuine and deep cultural interchange and learning remains anyone's guess.