Chinese Government Said Kids Can’t Enter the Mosque
We were little kids back then.
When the holidays came, our parents would herd us into the mosque like they were carrying out some solemn duty. It was a time of mischief and trouble — a time when faith hadn’t yet been disciplined into a “problem.”
In the mosque classroom, I lit a firecracker the moment the imam turned his back. It went off loud, smoke everywhere. The older kids pinned me down on the desk, and the imam came over furious, ruler raised, and gave me a beating. My backside really hurt — but there was no fear in that pain. I wiped my tears, grinned, and kept right on reciting with the imam from that blue-covered traditional-script book, Zaxue Zhujie — “Niyya takan ratam…” In the afternoon, the potatoes in the mosque kitchen’s big pot were done, and the kids scrambled for them with pure joy. Laughter, shouting, and the sound of Qur’anic recitation all mixed together into one rough but warm river.
Back then, the mosque was more than just a place for salah. It was the school, the canteen, the daycare for the Muslim community — the most humble and real form of belonging a people could have.
When college breaks ended, friends came back and talked about volunteering at the mosque: helping students with homework across all grade levels, teaching pinyin, working through math problems. It was their way of giving back to their hometown — of repaying the debt of that pot of potatoes from childhood. The mosque was still there, like patient ground, receiving one generation of children after another.
After graduation, I became a township official in the Chinese government.
The township where I worked had several immigrant villages. People had moved out from the deep mountains of Linxia and Dingxi in Gansu — relocated from places unfit for human habitation to the flat land of Qinwang Plain. On the open wasteland, unbroken wind bent the signal towers sideways. When night fell, you could only shut the doors and windows tight and listen to the wind howl across the open land. No television. No entertainment. Life was monotonous and hard. Young people had nothing to do — so they had children. Five years, eight births — in that era when family planning carried a “one-strike” veto, this was almost an absurd miracle. Affairs at the resettlement sites were handled by two or three people from the county relocation office, whose minds were on skimming money and other things elsewhere. Family planning became the kind of thing nobody wanted to touch — whoever did was asking for trouble. The township government took over public security, agriculture, and roads — but always sidestepped family planning. Who would dare? That was a career-ending matter.
And yet the children grew up, for real.
There were several mosques at the resettlement sites — a few simple tile-roofed structures. The slightly larger building served as the prayer hall; the smaller room housed the imam. No walls around them, no signs — just standing alone at the edge of the village. The same month I reported for duty at the township, a young student who had just completed his religious training and received his credentials at Lanzhou’s Xiguan Grand Mosque arrived as well. He was draped in bright red fabric, fair-skinned and young, still looking every bit like a student.
Three years later, I rode past that mosque on the motorbike the township had issued me. The courtyard was packed with preschool-aged children with no household registration. The young imam was leading them in a game of “hawk and chick,” and laughter tumbled through the wind. The handsome young man had been darkened by the wind of Qinwang Plain, a few wisps of goatee hanging from his chin — the seal of his identity.
The immigrant village’s primary school had been built based on a plan of three children per couple — and by now it was long over capacity. The burden of watching over the children had fallen to the mosque.
The mosque became a daycare, a school — the last buffer zone.
In 2015, I went back to my hometown of Lintan and prayed Dhuhr at the West Grand Mosque. Before the prayer had even finished, the courtyard was already alive with children’s noise. The neighboring Lintan No. 1 Primary School was building a new teaching block, so the mosque gave all the classrooms of its madrasa to the school — free of charge. When that wasn’t enough, a row of portable prefab rooms was set up around the courtyard as classrooms. That arrangement lasted three years.
Then something remarkable appeared: students in matching school uniforms lined up in the mosque courtyard to do morning exercises and dance. From the loudspeakers — the outdoor adhaan speakers that had since been banned — upbeat music and songs now played. Teachers stood on the high steps of the traditional Chinese-style prayer hall, leading the exercises. The elderly men who had come for salah sat quietly on the benches by the hall entrance, waiting.
That scene was warm, harmonious — and almost unbelievable.
It was like a crack in the age: the sacred and the secular standing side by side, drawing on each other, completing each other. In that moment, Islam’s capacity for tolerance — toward children, toward all forms of seeking knowledge — was on full display in a way that was almost hard to imagine.
In 2018, during Hajj in Saudi Arabia, an imam traveling with our group showed me a surveillance video someone back home had sent him. In the courtyard of a mosque in Guanghe County, children from a holiday class were playing. A figure crept in furtively, looked around, and left. I recognized him immediately — a colleague of mine, a Hui official who in normal times would walk behind me calling me “Leader” and “Brother.”
The next day, that mosque was shut down for “rectification.” The officials in charge of religious affairs received disciplinary action.
The children’s laughter had suddenly become a liability.
Later — during Ramadan 2019 — I broke my fast at Xiaoxihu and went to the mosque next door for Tarawih. At the entrance I ran into the head imam, who warmly invited me to his office to share the iftar meal. I declined politely; I just wanted to pray in peace.
That evening’s prayer seemed to have been deliberately delayed. The head of the mosque management committee took the microphone, gathered the committee members, and moved through the mosque driving the children out — demanding that parents take every child and leave immediately. “Minors are not permitted to enter” — printed in large characters on the door of the prayer hall.
The courtyard went suddenly silent.
The imam was slow to enter the hall. Before leading the prayer, he repeatedly stressed that the rule barring minors from the mosque had to be strictly enforced. They were saying it for my benefit — I was the director from the United Front Work Department.
In that moment, I suddenly understood: the mosque was no longer the big pot of my childhood. It had become a space watched by something evil. Every footstep of a child could become grounds for a written reprimand.
Today, every mosque, every church, every Taoist temple, every Buddhist temple displays the flag, posts slogans, hangs banners — Core Socialist Values, ethnic unity, religious harmony, anti-crime campaigns… Layer upon layer of colorful rhetoric. And the most prominent of all is that cold, hard prohibition:
Minors are not permitted to enter.
The mosques in the cities are as quiet as a forgotten mountain shrine.
No children running.
No firecrackers.
No chaos of kids scrambling for potatoes.
Only echoes remain.
History does not often turn in grand narratives. It turns quietly — in the moment a child is ushered out of the gate.
When the children of a people are forbidden from entering their own sacred space, that is not merely a regulation. It is a severing of memory. It is a hollowing out of inheritance. It is a predetermined verdict on the future.
I remember that ruler.
I remember that pot of potatoes.
I remember the wind of Qinwang Plain.
I remember the expression on the old man’s face as he sat by the prayer hall door, waiting for the children to finish their exercises.
This is not nostalgia.
This is testimony.
The mosque was once the children’s courtyard.
Now, all that remains are surveillance cameras and facial recognition at the gate.
When the holidays came, our parents would herd us into the mosque like they were carrying out some solemn duty. It was a time of mischief and trouble — a time when faith hadn’t yet been disciplined into a “problem.”
In the mosque classroom, I lit a firecracker the moment the imam turned his back. It went off loud, smoke everywhere. The older kids pinned me down on the desk, and the imam came over furious, ruler raised, and gave me a beating. My backside really hurt — but there was no fear in that pain. I wiped my tears, grinned, and kept right on reciting with the imam from that blue-covered traditional-script book, Zaxue Zhujie — “Niyya takan ratam…” In the afternoon, the potatoes in the mosque kitchen’s big pot were done, and the kids scrambled for them with pure joy. Laughter, shouting, and the sound of Qur’anic recitation all mixed together into one rough but warm river.
Back then, the mosque was more than just a place for salah. It was the school, the canteen, the daycare for the Muslim community — the most humble and real form of belonging a people could have.
When college breaks ended, friends came back and talked about volunteering at the mosque: helping students with homework across all grade levels, teaching pinyin, working through math problems. It was their way of giving back to their hometown — of repaying the debt of that pot of potatoes from childhood. The mosque was still there, like patient ground, receiving one generation of children after another.
After graduation, I became a township official in the Chinese government.
The township where I worked had several immigrant villages. People had moved out from the deep mountains of Linxia and Dingxi in Gansu — relocated from places unfit for human habitation to the flat land of Qinwang Plain. On the open wasteland, unbroken wind bent the signal towers sideways. When night fell, you could only shut the doors and windows tight and listen to the wind howl across the open land. No television. No entertainment. Life was monotonous and hard. Young people had nothing to do — so they had children. Five years, eight births — in that era when family planning carried a “one-strike” veto, this was almost an absurd miracle. Affairs at the resettlement sites were handled by two or three people from the county relocation office, whose minds were on skimming money and other things elsewhere. Family planning became the kind of thing nobody wanted to touch — whoever did was asking for trouble. The township government took over public security, agriculture, and roads — but always sidestepped family planning. Who would dare? That was a career-ending matter.
And yet the children grew up, for real.
There were several mosques at the resettlement sites — a few simple tile-roofed structures. The slightly larger building served as the prayer hall; the smaller room housed the imam. No walls around them, no signs — just standing alone at the edge of the village. The same month I reported for duty at the township, a young student who had just completed his religious training and received his credentials at Lanzhou’s Xiguan Grand Mosque arrived as well. He was draped in bright red fabric, fair-skinned and young, still looking every bit like a student.
Three years later, I rode past that mosque on the motorbike the township had issued me. The courtyard was packed with preschool-aged children with no household registration. The young imam was leading them in a game of “hawk and chick,” and laughter tumbled through the wind. The handsome young man had been darkened by the wind of Qinwang Plain, a few wisps of goatee hanging from his chin — the seal of his identity.
The immigrant village’s primary school had been built based on a plan of three children per couple — and by now it was long over capacity. The burden of watching over the children had fallen to the mosque.
The mosque became a daycare, a school — the last buffer zone.
In 2015, I went back to my hometown of Lintan and prayed Dhuhr at the West Grand Mosque. Before the prayer had even finished, the courtyard was already alive with children’s noise. The neighboring Lintan No. 1 Primary School was building a new teaching block, so the mosque gave all the classrooms of its madrasa to the school — free of charge. When that wasn’t enough, a row of portable prefab rooms was set up around the courtyard as classrooms. That arrangement lasted three years.
Then something remarkable appeared: students in matching school uniforms lined up in the mosque courtyard to do morning exercises and dance. From the loudspeakers — the outdoor adhaan speakers that had since been banned — upbeat music and songs now played. Teachers stood on the high steps of the traditional Chinese-style prayer hall, leading the exercises. The elderly men who had come for salah sat quietly on the benches by the hall entrance, waiting.
That scene was warm, harmonious — and almost unbelievable.
It was like a crack in the age: the sacred and the secular standing side by side, drawing on each other, completing each other. In that moment, Islam’s capacity for tolerance — toward children, toward all forms of seeking knowledge — was on full display in a way that was almost hard to imagine.
In 2018, during Hajj in Saudi Arabia, an imam traveling with our group showed me a surveillance video someone back home had sent him. In the courtyard of a mosque in Guanghe County, children from a holiday class were playing. A figure crept in furtively, looked around, and left. I recognized him immediately — a colleague of mine, a Hui official who in normal times would walk behind me calling me “Leader” and “Brother.”
The next day, that mosque was shut down for “rectification.” The officials in charge of religious affairs received disciplinary action.
The children’s laughter had suddenly become a liability.
Later — during Ramadan 2019 — I broke my fast at Xiaoxihu and went to the mosque next door for Tarawih. At the entrance I ran into the head imam, who warmly invited me to his office to share the iftar meal. I declined politely; I just wanted to pray in peace.
That evening’s prayer seemed to have been deliberately delayed. The head of the mosque management committee took the microphone, gathered the committee members, and moved through the mosque driving the children out — demanding that parents take every child and leave immediately. “Minors are not permitted to enter” — printed in large characters on the door of the prayer hall.
The courtyard went suddenly silent.
The imam was slow to enter the hall. Before leading the prayer, he repeatedly stressed that the rule barring minors from the mosque had to be strictly enforced. They were saying it for my benefit — I was the director from the United Front Work Department.
In that moment, I suddenly understood: the mosque was no longer the big pot of my childhood. It had become a space watched by something evil. Every footstep of a child could become grounds for a written reprimand.
Today, every mosque, every church, every Taoist temple, every Buddhist temple displays the flag, posts slogans, hangs banners — Core Socialist Values, ethnic unity, religious harmony, anti-crime campaigns… Layer upon layer of colorful rhetoric. And the most prominent of all is that cold, hard prohibition:
Minors are not permitted to enter.
The mosques in the cities are as quiet as a forgotten mountain shrine.
No children running.
No firecrackers.
No chaos of kids scrambling for potatoes.
Only echoes remain.
History does not often turn in grand narratives. It turns quietly — in the moment a child is ushered out of the gate.
When the children of a people are forbidden from entering their own sacred space, that is not merely a regulation. It is a severing of memory. It is a hollowing out of inheritance. It is a predetermined verdict on the future.
I remember that ruler.
I remember that pot of potatoes.
I remember the wind of Qinwang Plain.
I remember the expression on the old man’s face as he sat by the prayer hall door, waiting for the children to finish their exercises.
This is not nostalgia.
This is testimony.
The mosque was once the children’s courtyard.
Now, all that remains are surveillance cameras and facial recognition at the gate.
