Exploring Ningxia: Mosques, Hui Muslim Culture, & Halal Food in Yinchuan
[Internet Repost]
Urban Landscape Essay: Wandering Through the Multi-Ethnic Spaces Where Tradition and Modernity Intertwine in Yinchuan
Abstract:
An observational journey into the evolution of Yinchuan's urban spatial morphology. We document the urban fabric where traditional Hui Muslim neighborhoods, Western Xia ancient aesthetics, Islamic architectural forms, and modern commercial spaces intersect and weave together, showcasing the multifaceted and inclusive charm of this famous oasis city in China's northwest.
If I were to indulge my inner unfiltered brat, I'd honestly say Yinchuan is a pretty boring city.
Boring doesn't mean the city isn't beautiful, nor does it mean it lacks character. On the contrary, with the Helan Mountains as its companion and the northern winds as its soundtrack, this epic landscape is the perfect place for a solitary wanderer like me to rest his traveling heart. Yet the vibe it puts out always strikes me as a bit jarring. When I first came here on a solo long-distance trip back in 2017, hunting for echoes of the Tang Dynasty, I already felt a sense of dissonance beneath the city's pretty exterior—though I couldn't quite put my finger on where that dissonance came from. It wasn't until seven years later, when I turned my focus toward the world of Islam in China, that I finally found the source of that jarring feeling: the Hui Muslims.
The Western Xia Imperial Tombs at the foot of the Helan Mountains
Today, Yinchuan is the capital of Ningxia, and the name of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is inseparable from the Hui people. I think this is precisely why Yinchuan feels so jarring and out of place to me. As the capital of a Hui autonomous region, it's bound to highlight ethnic characteristics. But in reality—at least in my historical and geographical worldview—Yinchuan and the Hui people don't have a strong, inherent connection.
Historically, Yinchuan didn't rise to prominence because of the Hui. The earliest center of this Yellow River irrigation basin was located within present-day Lingwu, which it administers; Yinchuan was originally just a frontier garrison town built to defend Lingzhou. It was only because the nomadic Tangut people fell in love with the lush pastures of the Helan Mountains, choosing this place as their capital and imperial ancestral burial grounds, that Yinchuan's status eventually surpassed Lingwu's. The ancestors of the Hui Muslims migrated here much later, during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, bringing new vitality to this land as frontier soldiers and mobile merchants. Yet when we talk about the historical imagery Yinchuan leaves with the world—those northern winds, autumn moons, and the Han and Tang frontier memories of barbarian flutes—they have almost nothing to do with the Hui people.
The Lingzhou Gao Miao Temple, photographed by me in 2017
Now let's talk about the imagery of the Hui. What should the cultural appearance of the Hui people actually look like? That in itself is a hard question to answer, because many of the cultural traits the Hui display to the general public were actually fabricated after the founding of the People's Republic. For instance, the so-called traditional Hui ethnic attire: aside from headscarves and white skullcaps, many elements of their clothing design were actually 'borrowed' back then from the traditional costumes of Muslim ethnic groups in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus within the Soviet sphere. After the reform and opening up, as Chinese people's horizons broadened, new elements were 'borrowed' from the Arab world and integrated into the mix, such as architecture featuring domes.
With all due sympathy for the original intentions, you could call this creating new folkways. But if you look at the facts, you could also call it inventing a fake folk tradition.
From the perspective of the Hui people, Ningxia has historically not been the place where Hui culture is most prominent, and Yinchuan certainly isn't either. From the perspective of Yinchuan, you can't say the city has nothing to do with the Hui, but its most prominent historical cultural imagery really doesn't have much to do with them either—especially since most of these Hui motifs were newly concocted over the past few decades. This is why the external image presented by Yinchuan, from history to reality, feels so jarring and mismatched to me.
The Drum Tower of Yinchuan
I admit that as someone overly obsessed with the past, I sometimes have a habit of nitpicking new things, acting like an old man who grew old before his time. But I also believe that the sensitivity bestowed upon me by history gives me an insightful perspective for observing the world in reality. The jarring dissonance of Yinchuan in my eyes precisely mirrors the inner struggles, awkward contortions, and bumpy road the Chinese Hui community faces today when trying to define its own identity.
The Yuhuang Pavilion in Yinchuan
Ever since the Yuan Dynasty, the land of Ningxia belonged administratively to Gansu. It was only because of its geographic proximity to the revolutionary holy land (northern Shaanxi) during that turbulent period of emulating the Soviet Union (in setting up ethnic autonomous regions) that this area was carved out separately as a Hui autonomous region. To be entirely truthful, Ningxia's binding to the Hui people is purely a historical product of a special era—much like pairing traditional Eastern European and Caucasian Muslim clothing elements with the white skullcaps of Chinese Hui to create a Hui 'traditional costume.' While it looks decent enough on the outside, it can't disguise the fact that underneath, it's a bit of a Frankenstein monster.
Do the Hui people have their own unique culture? Of course they do, but it's mainly reflected not in concrete cultural elements like clothing and architecture, but hidden deep within their spiritual mindset and core values. Living in a flashy modern capitalist era, most people lack the patience and spiritual clarity to see through the fleeting illusions of *dunya* (this worldly life). Therefore, a visual external image is necessary for an ethnic group to shape its self-awareness, even if it inevitably gets mixed up with fabricated folk customs. But then again, let's not be too hard on our Hui compatriots: how many of the 'well-known' Han Chinese traditions and cultural concepts we have today—like hanging red decorations for Chinese New Year, eating mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival to commemorate Qu Yuan (and calling him a patriotic poet, no less), or even saying that Qingming Festival shouldn't be greeted with 'Happy Qingming'—how many of these are also fake folk customs invented for deliberate reasons over the past few decades?
When I first came here seven years ago, Arabic-style domes and arched decorations were peppered everywhere, from residential housing estates to public buildings. Revisiting it now, after being scoured by the wave of rectification against the 'Three-Isms' (Saudiization, Arabization, and Pan-Islamization), what's left behind on the shores are either buildings with chopped-off necks or weird, awkward mutant heads. It's given the city a new kind of 'Frankenstein scar' in a totally different look. You could say it succeeded because of ethnic autonomy, and failed because of ethnic autonomy.
The main hall of the Nanguan Mosque in Yinchuan as I first saw it on November 7, 2017
Visiting old haunts, if not for these big characters, I genuinely wouldn't have recognized I'd ever been here. The inner main hall has been replaced with a traditional Chinese roof, and after removing the dome on the outer gate, it looks remarkably like a vegetable market entrance from the old socialist era.
History proves that whenever any group or region is treated specially, it always pays a corresponding price. A civilized society truly heading toward the future must be built on a foundation of equality and universality.
However, my experience studying frontier history also tells me that swaying, tentative beginnings are precisely where the creativity for transformation is most easily nurtured. In the words of Owen Lattimore, this is the 'marginal advantage' of civilizations. For instance, the rise of the Khitans and Mongols—they neither came from the absolute core regions of agrarian civilization, nor were they the tribes deep in the forests and grasslands that most strictly adhered to traditional nomadic and hunting-and-gathering ways. Precisely because they happened to straddle the borderlands between two civilizations, they maintained a tolerant acceptance of anything new. When fortune favored them, they stood out and created great deeds.
Today's Ningxia and Yinchuan may find themselves in the most awkward of predicaments, repeatedly running into walls during decades of searching for self-definition. But after all, it has broken free from Gansu's embrace, and through bold experimentation and bumping its head, it might indeed carve out a new path of renaissance for the Chinese Hui. A renaissance isn't about returning to tradition—regardless of whether that tradition hails from ancient China or Arabia—but rather about 'borrowing antiquity to reform institutions' (*tuogu gaizhi*) after deconstructing tradition.
When Europeans back then spliced classical Greek and Roman architectural elements onto new buildings, it was essentially nothing more than a Frankenstein mix, yet it birthed the intricate and refined artistic styles of Rococo and Baroque. Perhaps those bizarre architectural decorations all over Yinchuan's streets today—neither Hui nor Han, neither Chinese nor Arabic—will one day become the hallmark of this Renaissance era, and the scars might even turn into tattoos worth showing off. It's just going to take wisdom and time.
Urban Landscape Essay: Wandering Through the Multi-Ethnic Spaces Where Tradition and Modernity Intertwine in Yinchuan
Abstract:
An observational journey into the evolution of Yinchuan's urban spatial morphology. We document the urban fabric where traditional Hui Muslim neighborhoods, Western Xia ancient aesthetics, Islamic architectural forms, and modern commercial spaces intersect and weave together, showcasing the multifaceted and inclusive charm of this famous oasis city in China's northwest.
If I were to indulge my inner unfiltered brat, I'd honestly say Yinchuan is a pretty boring city.
Boring doesn't mean the city isn't beautiful, nor does it mean it lacks character. On the contrary, with the Helan Mountains as its companion and the northern winds as its soundtrack, this epic landscape is the perfect place for a solitary wanderer like me to rest his traveling heart. Yet the vibe it puts out always strikes me as a bit jarring. When I first came here on a solo long-distance trip back in 2017, hunting for echoes of the Tang Dynasty, I already felt a sense of dissonance beneath the city's pretty exterior—though I couldn't quite put my finger on where that dissonance came from. It wasn't until seven years later, when I turned my focus toward the world of Islam in China, that I finally found the source of that jarring feeling: the Hui Muslims.
The Western Xia Imperial Tombs at the foot of the Helan Mountains
Today, Yinchuan is the capital of Ningxia, and the name of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is inseparable from the Hui people. I think this is precisely why Yinchuan feels so jarring and out of place to me. As the capital of a Hui autonomous region, it's bound to highlight ethnic characteristics. But in reality—at least in my historical and geographical worldview—Yinchuan and the Hui people don't have a strong, inherent connection.
Historically, Yinchuan didn't rise to prominence because of the Hui. The earliest center of this Yellow River irrigation basin was located within present-day Lingwu, which it administers; Yinchuan was originally just a frontier garrison town built to defend Lingzhou. It was only because the nomadic Tangut people fell in love with the lush pastures of the Helan Mountains, choosing this place as their capital and imperial ancestral burial grounds, that Yinchuan's status eventually surpassed Lingwu's. The ancestors of the Hui Muslims migrated here much later, during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, bringing new vitality to this land as frontier soldiers and mobile merchants. Yet when we talk about the historical imagery Yinchuan leaves with the world—those northern winds, autumn moons, and the Han and Tang frontier memories of barbarian flutes—they have almost nothing to do with the Hui people.
The Lingzhou Gao Miao Temple, photographed by me in 2017
Now let's talk about the imagery of the Hui. What should the cultural appearance of the Hui people actually look like? That in itself is a hard question to answer, because many of the cultural traits the Hui display to the general public were actually fabricated after the founding of the People's Republic. For instance, the so-called traditional Hui ethnic attire: aside from headscarves and white skullcaps, many elements of their clothing design were actually 'borrowed' back then from the traditional costumes of Muslim ethnic groups in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus within the Soviet sphere. After the reform and opening up, as Chinese people's horizons broadened, new elements were 'borrowed' from the Arab world and integrated into the mix, such as architecture featuring domes.
With all due sympathy for the original intentions, you could call this creating new folkways. But if you look at the facts, you could also call it inventing a fake folk tradition.
From the perspective of the Hui people, Ningxia has historically not been the place where Hui culture is most prominent, and Yinchuan certainly isn't either. From the perspective of Yinchuan, you can't say the city has nothing to do with the Hui, but its most prominent historical cultural imagery really doesn't have much to do with them either—especially since most of these Hui motifs were newly concocted over the past few decades. This is why the external image presented by Yinchuan, from history to reality, feels so jarring and mismatched to me.
The Drum Tower of Yinchuan
I admit that as someone overly obsessed with the past, I sometimes have a habit of nitpicking new things, acting like an old man who grew old before his time. But I also believe that the sensitivity bestowed upon me by history gives me an insightful perspective for observing the world in reality. The jarring dissonance of Yinchuan in my eyes precisely mirrors the inner struggles, awkward contortions, and bumpy road the Chinese Hui community faces today when trying to define its own identity.
The Yuhuang Pavilion in Yinchuan
Ever since the Yuan Dynasty, the land of Ningxia belonged administratively to Gansu. It was only because of its geographic proximity to the revolutionary holy land (northern Shaanxi) during that turbulent period of emulating the Soviet Union (in setting up ethnic autonomous regions) that this area was carved out separately as a Hui autonomous region. To be entirely truthful, Ningxia's binding to the Hui people is purely a historical product of a special era—much like pairing traditional Eastern European and Caucasian Muslim clothing elements with the white skullcaps of Chinese Hui to create a Hui 'traditional costume.' While it looks decent enough on the outside, it can't disguise the fact that underneath, it's a bit of a Frankenstein monster.
Do the Hui people have their own unique culture? Of course they do, but it's mainly reflected not in concrete cultural elements like clothing and architecture, but hidden deep within their spiritual mindset and core values. Living in a flashy modern capitalist era, most people lack the patience and spiritual clarity to see through the fleeting illusions of *dunya* (this worldly life). Therefore, a visual external image is necessary for an ethnic group to shape its self-awareness, even if it inevitably gets mixed up with fabricated folk customs. But then again, let's not be too hard on our Hui compatriots: how many of the 'well-known' Han Chinese traditions and cultural concepts we have today—like hanging red decorations for Chinese New Year, eating mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival to commemorate Qu Yuan (and calling him a patriotic poet, no less), or even saying that Qingming Festival shouldn't be greeted with 'Happy Qingming'—how many of these are also fake folk customs invented for deliberate reasons over the past few decades?
When I first came here seven years ago, Arabic-style domes and arched decorations were peppered everywhere, from residential housing estates to public buildings. Revisiting it now, after being scoured by the wave of rectification against the 'Three-Isms' (Saudiization, Arabization, and Pan-Islamization), what's left behind on the shores are either buildings with chopped-off necks or weird, awkward mutant heads. It's given the city a new kind of 'Frankenstein scar' in a totally different look. You could say it succeeded because of ethnic autonomy, and failed because of ethnic autonomy.
The main hall of the Nanguan Mosque in Yinchuan as I first saw it on November 7, 2017
Visiting old haunts, if not for these big characters, I genuinely wouldn't have recognized I'd ever been here. The inner main hall has been replaced with a traditional Chinese roof, and after removing the dome on the outer gate, it looks remarkably like a vegetable market entrance from the old socialist era.
History proves that whenever any group or region is treated specially, it always pays a corresponding price. A civilized society truly heading toward the future must be built on a foundation of equality and universality.
However, my experience studying frontier history also tells me that swaying, tentative beginnings are precisely where the creativity for transformation is most easily nurtured. In the words of Owen Lattimore, this is the 'marginal advantage' of civilizations. For instance, the rise of the Khitans and Mongols—they neither came from the absolute core regions of agrarian civilization, nor were they the tribes deep in the forests and grasslands that most strictly adhered to traditional nomadic and hunting-and-gathering ways. Precisely because they happened to straddle the borderlands between two civilizations, they maintained a tolerant acceptance of anything new. When fortune favored them, they stood out and created great deeds.
Today's Ningxia and Yinchuan may find themselves in the most awkward of predicaments, repeatedly running into walls during decades of searching for self-definition. But after all, it has broken free from Gansu's embrace, and through bold experimentation and bumping its head, it might indeed carve out a new path of renaissance for the Chinese Hui. A renaissance isn't about returning to tradition—regardless of whether that tradition hails from ancient China or Arabia—but rather about 'borrowing antiquity to reform institutions' (*tuogu gaizhi*) after deconstructing tradition.
When Europeans back then spliced classical Greek and Roman architectural elements onto new buildings, it was essentially nothing more than a Frankenstein mix, yet it birthed the intricate and refined artistic styles of Rococo and Baroque. Perhaps those bizarre architectural decorations all over Yinchuan's streets today—neither Hui nor Han, neither Chinese nor Arabic—will one day become the hallmark of this Renaissance era, and the scars might even turn into tattoos worth showing off. It's just going to take wisdom and time.
