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Southern Ningxia Travel Series Part 6: Trekking Through Barren, Arid Mountains to Uncover Hidden Islamic Sanctuaries

Abstract:

A chronicle of firsthand observations and insights deep within the mountains of southern Ningxia. Across the gullied loess highlands, we explore proud, isolated mosques and ancient Sufi halls, experiencing both the stark harshness of the natural geography and the unwavering, resilient spiritual world of our Hui Muslim ancestors.

| Shitangling |



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Captured on Canvas

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We spent only half a day and a night in Haiyuan. The next morning, we headed to the Liye Gongbei (Sufi shrine / mausoleum complex) and briefly caught up with a reader friend named Luo. Even though he warmly insisted we stay for lunch, our schedule was too tight, so we had to apologize and head out. Heading north out of the mountain pass from Haiyuan, you hit the flat, wide-open expanse of Tongxin, where you truly start to feel the rugged character of the southern mountainous region known as Haigu. Formerly known as Pingyuan, Tongxin carries a classic frontier name. The area is packed with strategic passes (like Xiamaguan), forts (like Yuwangbao), and walled towns (like Weizhou City), all tied to wartime history.



We didn't linger in modern Tongxin County seat, but pushed further east to a place called Shitangling. Locals in Tongxin refer to this area as the East Mountain. The East Mountain is where I finally felt that the Ningxia portrayed in movies and literature actually exists. Throughout our journey across Xihaihu, we hadn't seen scenery quite this heartbreaking—it was intensely bitter and barren! And that harshness reaches its absolute peak right here in Shitangling.

Ningxia has a very unique Sufi order called the Jahriyya, and one distinct branch is named right after Shitangling. I first heard about Shitangling back in college. A classmate of mine from Sanying in Guyuan mentioned he belonged to the Jahriyya. I assumed he was from the Yangmen order, but he told me he was from the Shitangling Jahriyya, which I found fascinating. I later learned a lot about Shitangling from him. Of course, when he heard I was from the Ahadiyyah branch of the Jahriyya, he was probably pretty surprised too. Chatting back and forth, it seemed we both traced our religious roots back to the same era in Yarkant (Shache).

My classmate's vibe was the absolute embodiment of Shitangling: sheer hardship. He poured all his energy into studying the religious path, and his emotional devotion was fiercely intense. His personality was as silent as the loess soil of Xihaihu, wandering the campus almost like an ascetic monk. I never imagined that Shitangling would still look the same today. Its isolated geographical location and harsh environment reminded me of Dongxiang in Gansu, which I visited as a kid—though nowadays, you rarely find a place as desolate as this even in Dongxiang. Just how harsh is it? Wherever you cast your gaze, there is only one color: loess earth. The soil is so dried out that even a torrential downpour acts like nothing more than a quick lip balm, and the dry wind seems determined to suck every drop of moisture out of the air. If you pick up a chunk of earth and crumble it, it instantly turns into billowing dust. The bricks of the buildings and the rammed-earth walls possess zero softness or charm—they look like strips of sun-dried meat.

△ The landscape of Shitangling



The Shitangling Gongbei sits there so strangely and abruptly on the edge of a gully cliff. How abrupt? It has none of the picturesque mountain settings you’d expect from ancient architecture; there's no auspicious backing behind it, no protective slope in front, and no embrace from hills on either side. You walk to the end of the road, and right there in the middle of the yellow earth stands an isolated gongbei, looking both lonely and stubborn. This is the gongbei of the founding master known as "Horse-Bearded Daozu" (Master Ma Huzi), the ancestral center of this Sufi order (menhuan).

The ancestral center has been newly rebuilt, looking completely different from the old gongbei I'd seen in photographs. In such a withered, desolate environment, things that are too new stick out like a sore thumb—just like the luxury car with Zhejiang license plates parked outside the shrine's hall. A woman stepped out of the hall and proudly took the initiative to introduce it to us: "This is my son's car; he works as a translator in Yiwu." As she spoke, her glamorously dressed daughter-in-law walked out of the hall carrying a baby, her high heels clacking loudly against the ground, as if the dust of Zhejiang hadn't yet been blown away by the Ningxia wind. I know Tongxin is famous for producing Arabic translators. I don't know where such fierce winds come from out here—they were even strong enough to blow around the shoes left outside the prayer hall.

The abrupt, harsh environment of Shitangling embodies the original spirit of this Sufi order. Leave aside the fact that it conceals such a gongbei; just staying alive in an environment like this feels too abrupt, and daily life is unimaginably hard. Without even going back too far, just imagine what kind of despair life here must have held thirty years ago—despair so deep that people had zero expectations left for this mundane world, leaving their only hope in the spiritual realm. Perhaps harsh mountains and wicked waters breed tough rebels, but harsh mountains and wicked waters also breed spiritual masters.

△ Real people once lived ordinary lives right here



Master Ma Huzi rose abruptly from these harsh, unforgiving mountains, carving out a path in the spiritual realm. It was a spirit as truly great as that of the Prophet Moses (Musa). Just like the young people in this region today who learn Arabic and go abroad to work as translators, the very first person who stepped out to become a translator is truly worthy of our respect—they forged a path through the edge of the abyss. Take a trip to Shitangling, and you'll immediately understand why the Ningxia plateau is such a fertile ground for Sufism.

Master Ma Huzi wasn't born into any aristocratic or prominent family; he had no miraculous birth legends surrounding his dormitory (wuliwen), and he was so poor he couldn't even clearly trace his ancestors. According to legend, Master Ma Huzi made the pilgrimage to Mecca on foot three times, taking twelve years in total, and finally obtained the Jahriyya path in Yarkant, Xinjiang—known today as Shache. Master Ma Huzi and the founding grandfather of the Ahadiyyah lived in the exact same era and traveled to the very same place, receiving the same Jahriyya order. Whether they came from the same spiritual hall, I cannot say for sure, but their doctrines and philosophies clearly show noticeable differences. In Shitangling, Master Ma Huzi's Shache mentor is called Shah Wuzhongding (Shah Wuzhourongding), but the lineage above Shah Wuzhongding has been lost to them; otherwise, we could compare it against our own lineage tree.

△ The newly rebuilt Shitangling Gongbei

△ Old photograph of the Shitangling Gongbei



Although Shitangling identifies with the Jahriyya, its style carries a heavy Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi school influence. It is actually quite close to their neighboring branch, the minor Khufiyya. Indeed, legend says that three men traveled together to Shache alongside Master Ma Huzi, and the other two received the Khufiyya order. This ties into what I mentioned in Part 3: the Jahriyya also has old and new branches. The New Jahriyya refers to branches influenced by the Mujaddidi school, with Shitangling and Wenquan Hall in the Hehuang region serving as prime examples. Why would the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi school influence the Jahriyya? Because Mujaddidi thought was a sweeping wave at the time, and various Sufi orders were influenced by it to varying degrees. Meanwhile, orders like the Great Gongbei and Yangmen represent Classical Jahriyya.

After returning, Master Ma Huzi continued to establish his teachings through extraordinary asceticism. Through three generations of succession, he quickly won over the Hui Muslims of Pingyuan and the Yancha Mountains who had lost hope in worldly life, offering them a lifeline. Today, Shitangling still holds significant influence in the mountainous regions of southern Ningxia. You can see this from the endless stream of visitors paying respects at the gravesites in Shitangling Gongbei—a testament to the enduring allure of this shrine nestled deep in the desolate wilderness.

The history of Shitangling was actually written down some time ago by a member of their order named Ma Jun in a book titled *Silent History*. However, the book leans a bit too heavily into imitating the form, tone, and style of *Tears of Life* (Xinling Shi)—something even the author himself openly admits. Personally, I don't think that was necessary. Shitangling has its own unique character and such incredible stories that it deserves its own historical style rather than imitation. Of course, the book's value as historical source material remains unmatched.

Not far from the gongbei sits an abandoned ancient fort and a mosque right next to it. That mosque and fort look straight out of a classic *Dragon Gate Inn* film set—the quintessential, conceptualized impression of the Northwest. The mosque possesses a desolate, lonely, and proud beauty. I've seen countless ancient and gorgeous mosques, and in terms of craftsmanship, this one isn't top-tier, nor is it big enough to speak of scale. Yet, it holds a strange aesthetic tension that builds a powerful sense of beauty across the loess plateau. From the meticulous water-ground bricks to the carefully polished couplets, you can tell how much blood, sweat, passion, and enthusiasm the people of the past squeezed out of the loess earth to pour into this mosque. Legend has it that this mosque was overseen and built by Master Ma Huzi’s only son, Ma Sanxiu.



△ The old fort and the mosque

△ Every single brick and tile reminds us how hard-won our lives are today

Leaving Shitangling, the road slumps downward as we transition from the mountainous region to another river valley basin—Weizhou. Separated from Tongxin County seat by Luoshan Mountain, Weizhou today feels like a geographical dead end. Yet in the past, it was an ancient route leading to Lingzhou—a frontline corridor shadowed by war and peace. Yuwangbao, Xiamaguan, and Weizhou City line up sequentially from south to north.

Our trip to Weizhou today was simply to pay respects at the grave of an elder. I have two or three friends in Weizhou: one is shooting a film in the fields of Weizhou, and another just returned from the U.S. and is currently quarantining in Nanjing, so I didn't want to disturb them. But once Shi Yanwei found out about my movements, it inevitably reached them. Gu Bai, the younger brother of the American Ph.D. holder, finished a long day of driving and still came out to host me. Gu Bai is a shuttle bus driver who runs the regular route between Yinchuan and Weizhou. Back when we filmed the Grand Canal documentary, Gu Bai drove the crew all the way from Beijing to Hangzhou, making us old colleagues and friends.



Gu Bai belongs to the Su family, a prominent clan in Weizhou. He has a very Weizhou vibe: much like how we people from Xining carry an inexplicable self-confidence, Gu Bai is fiercely proud of Weizhou and its culture. Having him as a guide meant absorbing the richest information about Weizhou in the shortest time. This came not only from his passion for his hometown culture, but also from the long hours he spent hanging out with his maternal grandfather, who is great at telling stories of the past and present. Gu Bai proudly mentioned that even his Ph.D. brother probably doesn't know some of the things his grandpa taught him.

Weizhou isn't a very large place, but its fame spans from ancient times to the present. The recent controversy surrounding the Weizhou Great Mosque pushed this small town on the edge of Tongxin right back into the spotlight of public opinion. Weizhou is really just the size of a town, yet it dares to call itself a "city." Looking at the remnants of the Weizhou city wall, it never really matched the grand scale of a major city in the past, but it has everything a proper city should have—including a moat. Daring to call itself a city naturally comes with confidence: geographically speaking, Weizhou is the forward outpost guarding the gateway to Lingzhou (Wuzhong). If you can't take Weizhou, you can't enter Lingzhou; it was the ultimate, most stubborn line of defense along this entire historical chain of beacon fires. From the mountain pass at Suojiacha all the way down to Weizhou, every few miles you spot an isolated beacon tower, letting you picture the former glory of this interconnected defense system.

Local legend says the people of Weizhou were originally assigned to raise horses for the Prince of Qing during the Ming dynasty. Whether that's true or not, Weizhou's original residents were undoubtedly military garrison households serving military defense needs. People from Weizhou have valued commerce and education since ancient times, and the two go hand in hand: without money, you can't fund education, and an education broadens your commercial horizons. If the people of Weizhou hadn't been prosperous, could they have ever built such a massive mosque? Traveling this whole way through prefectures, commanderies, and counties, we've never seen a mosque this large. Yet a single town like Weizhou was able to build one on this scale. Do you think this was the masterpiece of upstart nouveau riche? No, Weizhou's mosques were already crowning achievements across Ningxia as early as the Qing dynasty. The sheer scale of it forced me to carve out a section in my book *Hehuang Heroes* just to write about it. The genetic code of Weizhou people valuing education was planted early on, all the way back at the end of the Ming dynasty when they traveled thousands of miles to invite Hai Taishi—a disciple of Hu Dengzhou—to set up camp here and spread scholarly teachings. My trip to Weizhou this time was to pay homage to this beacon of Islamic law and spirituality. It’s a promise I made years ago and finally kept.

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