Reposted from the web

Summary: This Muslim travel guide China 2026 update keeps the original 2017 Botou travel notes intact and readable. It also supports readers searching for halal food in China, Chinese Muslim food, China Muslim travel tips, and local mosque history in Hebei.

On March 25, 2017, I visited the ancient canal town of Botou in Cangzhou, Hebei, to explore its food and culture. The information in this article comes from the History of Botou Canal and the Records of Botou Mosque.

The formation of the Hui Muslim community in Botou

In 1392, the 25th year of the Hongwu reign, the Ming Dynasty set up a canal administration office in Botou to manage shipping between Tianjin and Dezhou, and Botou gradually became an important canal town. In 1399, the first year of the Jianwen reign, during the Jingnan Campaign, Prince Yan Zhu Di attacked and captured the old city of Cangzhou. He killed thousands of surrendered soldiers and tens of thousands of residents. Eastern Hebei suffered greatly, and Botou was hit hard, causing its population to drop sharply.

In 1404, the second year of the Yongle reign, Zhu Di, who had become the Yongle Emperor, ordered residents to move to Cangzhou. Many Hui Muslims came to Botou as a result. Records show that Hui Muslims with the surnames Yang, Cao, Dai, Hui, Zhang, Wang, and Shi all moved to Botou in 1404 by imperial decree from Erlanggang in Shangyuan County, Yingtian Prefecture, Nanjing. Research suggests that Erlanggang was a camp for Semu people who had surrendered to the Ming from the Yuan Dynasty. The first mosque in Botou was built that same year.

Later, more Hui Muslims moved here from Shandong, Shanxi, and Anhui, and the Botou Hui Muslim community was officially formed. In 1551, the 30th year of the Jiajing reign, Botou began building city walls. They used earth for three sides, and on the east side facing the canal, they added parapets to the houses and opened six city gates. The Hui Muslim community was located inside the south gate. The Botou Mosque underwent large-scale expansion during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, taking on its current form.











Moon-Sighting Tower (Wangyuelou)































In the eyes of Allah, the most honorable among you is the one who is most pious. (49:13)

















After 1966, the Botou Mosque stopped its activities. Religious staff were publicly denounced, and scriptures were burned. The head of the mosque, Zhang Zizhen, was driven away and passed away the following year. The imam, Ha Fuling, was sent back to his hometown in Xinzhuang, Xian County.

After the denunciations, Jin Laiguang set up a flour mill. Older religious staff worked as millers, and the younger ones went to work in factories. The main hall of the mosque was occupied by an embroidery factory, an oilcloth factory, a straw hat factory, and a sack thread factory as workshops. The water room was used by an agricultural production team as a machine shop. The side gates of the main entrance, the charity school, the side halls, and the south lecture hall all collapsed. The spire of the Moon-Sighting Tower was smashed, its first-floor walls collapsed, and the base walls of the main hall also fell. Eighteen original plaques inscribed by figures like Ji Xiaolan and Zhang Zhidong were lost. Only a damaged plaque reading "Pure and Bright" (Qingzhen Guangming), inscribed by the 75th Duke Yansheng, Kong Xiangke, in 1864, the third year of the Tongzhi reign, was found. In 1982, a calligrapher repaired the damaged parts based on the original style.



On the canal bank directly east of the Botou Mosque, there used to be a brick and wood archway, commonly known by locals as the Big Round Gate (Dayuanmen), with the words "Muslim Lane" (Qingzhen Xiang) written on it. In 1953, a major flood on the canal led to the demolition of the Big Round Gate to block the riverbank. In the old days, Hui Muslim merchant ships traveling on the canal knew they had reached the Hui Muslim residential area as soon as they saw the "Muslim Lane" plaque.

There was once a stone archway next to the Big Round Gate that collapsed in the 1960s. When the Botou Mosque was rebuilt in 1982, two stone lintels from the top of the archway were moved to the mosque's main hall to serve as a foundation. The left side featured a dragon head and phoenix tail, and the right side featured a qilin delivering a child.







The women's mosque was built in 1953. It was originally the Huizhen Production Cooperative, built under the leadership of Imam Zhang Zizhen, and was rebuilt in 1993.





Halal food

During the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China era, the most famous halal restaurants in Botou were Taihe Restaurant on Shunhe Street, which opened during the Tongzhi reign, and Shunfu Restaurant and Xingshenghe on Gulou Street, which opened during the Guangxu reign. Xiyu Restaurant was on East Street. The small and medium-sized restaurants around Shunhe Street were all halal, offering a wide variety of halal snacks.

Taihe Restaurant opened in 1870 (the ninth year of the Tongzhi reign). It was founded by Hui Muslim brothers Dai Ruiwu and Dai Bin. The building had the shop in the front and the restaurant in the back, with both open seating and private rooms, including standard and premium options. The menu focused on beef, lamb, fish, and shrimp. Dishes included clear-stewed beef, oil-fried tripe, braised cabbage, stir-fried lamb brains, stir-fried shrimp, stewed beef tongue and tail, braised beef tendon, and sweet and sour fish. The third-generation chef, Dai Shengheng, went to Tianjin in 1921 at age 15 to apprentice at the halal Hongbinlou Restaurant. He learned to cook elaborate whole-lamb feasts and river seafood. After returning to the restaurant, he became the head chef. He cooked high-end dishes like shark fin, bird's nest, and whole lamb, as well as home-style dishes like stir-fried, braised, and stewed beef and lamb. His signature dishes included deboned chicken, deboned fish, steamed chicken, candied peaches (basi tao), braised cabbage, various sweet dishes, and oil-poached sauces. His shredded meat noodle soup was considered the best. The noodles in Taihe Restaurant's shredded meat noodle soup were thin and translucent like silk threads, and the shredded meat was as thin as bean sprouts. The soup came in chicken or meatball varieties, served with large broad beans, preserved vegetables (nancai), wood ear mushrooms, and fried tofu puffs. It tasted delicious.

In 1937, Dai Shengheng went to Jinan to open the new Majia Restaurant, and Taihe Restaurant closed.

Xingshenghe Maji was founded during the Guangxu reign by Hui Muslim Ma Chunbo. It was located on Gulou Street outside Chaoyang Gate and was famous for its five-spice roast beef. Ma's roast meat contained no beef fat or mixed scraps. Before roasting, the meat was soaked in cold water for several hours to remove blood. It was seasoned with five spices: cinnamon, star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, fennel seeds, and cloves. No soy sauce or sugar coloring was used. It was simmered in old broth over low heat for six hours. When finished, it was sweet, moist, and brownish-red, with a chewy texture that held together. It could stay fresh for three to five days.

Before 1937, Ma Doutai, a Hui Muslim from Xinzhuang in Xian County, came to Gulou Street in Botou to open the Juxingheng Pastry Shop. It had the shop in the front and the factory in the back. They offered over 20 varieties of pastries that were sweet, salty, fragrant, soft, and crispy. They used various fillings like red hawthorn, white sugar, date paste, and red bean paste, making it the most famous halal pastry shop in Botou.

After 1937, 19 halal restaurants opened in Botou, nine of which were on Sanfu Street. The larger restaurants included Enshunlou, Qingzhen Restaurant, Fushun Restaurant, and Enyishun. Their signature dishes included braised sea cucumber, braised fish, steamed duck, and eight-treasure rice (babao fan). Eight-treasure rice is a sweet dish. The main ingredient is glutinous rice, supplemented with green silk, colorful cakes, lotus seeds, water chestnuts, melon strips, walnut kernels, raisins, and melon seeds. The rice is first made into a sticky consistency and mixed with white sugar. Then, the toppings are added, creating a colorful and uniquely shaped dish.



Lamb offal (yangzasui)



Stewed free-range chicken (dun benji)



Braised lamb offal (hui yangza)



Egg rolls (danjuan)



The pastries at this shop were all sourced from Tianjin.



















Hui Muslims and the Grand Canal

Local shipping in Botou was mainly operated by Hui Muslims. The trade was divided into two groups: those who worked on the boats and those who owned the boats. Those who worked on the boats were the crew and trackers. Those who owned the boats were the boat owners, divided into those who owned large boats for renting out or hiring labor, and those who used their own small boats. Some small boat owners operated ferries for passengers, some transported fertilizer for riverside villages, and others ran long-distance transport routes from Tianjin in the north to Xinxiang, Henan in the south. The trough boats (caozichuan) used for long-distance transport were flat, long, and wide, with a shallow draft.

Long-distance boats from Botou carried salt south and returned with cotton, coal, and porcelain. The trip from Tianjin to Dezhou took eight or nine days, to Linqing took half a month, and to Daokou Town in Henan took over forty days.

In 1946, there were 31 Hui Muslim boat-owning households in Botou, primarily from the Shi, Li, Cao, Duo, and Mu families. Later, because the canal became heavily silted, the Mu family moved to Tianjin and switched to sea shipping. By July 1948, Botou had 231 wooden boats.



Trackers were at the bottom of the shipping industry. Boat owners chose the number of trackers based on the boat's size and cargo capacity, usually five or six, though some trips used as few as one or two, or as many as over ten. When traveling downstream, trackers stayed on the boat to row; when traveling upstream, they went ashore to pull the boat. When pulling, they used a main tow rope attached to a chest pad worn diagonally across the chest. The tracker at the front and the one at the back controlled the direction to keep the boat straight. When passing under a bridge, they had to unhook the rope. The boatmen on board would call out signals to the lead tracker, and they would reattach the rope to continue after passing the bridge.

During the voyage, trackers followed a schedule of three tea breaks and four meals a day. They started the boat at 5:00 a.m., ate breakfast at 8:00 or 9:00, had their first tea break after traveling a bit, ate lunch at noon, had their second tea break, ate dinner around 4:00 or 5:00 p.m., had their third tea break, and finally ate a late-night snack after docking at dark before resting. The tea for these breaks was usually plain water, and the meals consisted of steamed cornmeal buns (wotou), pickled vegetables, and millet porridge. The stoves on the boats were small, so the steamed cornmeal buns (wotou) came out thin and tall, and you could grab four or five in one hand. Besides this, when they reached Cangzhou, Dezhou, and Linqingzhou, they could have noodles in soup, which they called passing through a prefecture to eat noodles.

There were many types of tracker work songs, with different ones for going downstream, upstream, turning corners, and passing bridges. The head boatman directed the work. He stood at the bow to watch the current, used a pole to adjust the boat's direction, and used work songs to coordinate everyone. A song leader followed the trackers. He did not pull the rope but was responsible for responding to the head boatman's lead vocals. The lyrics included lines like, Big boats carry white grain, small boats carry green bamboo poles; Big boats can dock at Jiujiang port, small boats only rely on the riverbanks. After 1957, wooden boats on the South Canal were replaced by small tugboats, and the canal work songs gradually disappeared. The only person who can sing the full set of Botou canal work songs today is Li Shuyuan, a Hui Muslim born in 1935. He is the fourth-generation descendant of the Li family, a major boat-owning family in Botou. He started working on boats at age 14 and is the last person from those major families who witnessed the glory days of the South Canal.

In 1957, during the public-private partnership transition, Botou's fleets were assigned to Dezhou, Xinxiang, and Tianjin. Botou no longer had its own fleet, and many people left their boats to return to Botou, where they were assigned to brick factories and construction teams. During breaks, these workers would sing the work songs, which became the final echoes of the canal.





Derived from the shipping industry were the porter guilds, commonly known as the heavy lifters. The porter guilds in Botou were mainly Hui Muslims. They usually used a shoulder pole and a shoulder pad. Some families shared handcarts, and when unloading logs, they used levers with large, semicircular iron hooks at the front. At that time, each person carried one 90-kilogram sack of grain or one roll of paper or cardboard weighing over 100 kilograms. They carried four 22.5-kilogram bags of flour at a time. They tracked their work by receiving a bamboo tally for each load and counting them at the end. When lifting heavy items like logs, everyone would sing labor work songs. One person would lead, and the others would follow, creating a rhythmic, powerful, and responsive sound.

During the Republic of China era, there were three Hui Muslim porter groups in Botou. One was the Tongshun Shop porter group, commonly known as the South End porter group. Another was the Wuying porter group, and the third was the Gulou and East Street porter group. The three groups merged in 1947 to become the Wharf Second Labor Union, and in 1958, they became the Second Transport Team.

Before 1965, the Botou section of the Grand Canal had plenty of water. In the early summer of 1965, the canal dried up for the first time. After that, the water level dropped every year. By the first half of the 1970s, it was nearly dry, and shipping in Botou came to an end. view all