Almost the Middle of Nowhere: NingXia Hui Minority Autonomous Region (宁夏回族自治区)

This past weekend, in the hopes of dazzling my visitor with a rarely-seen part of the Great Wall and and area with the Muslim influence of the Hui minority, I dragged Alan to YinChuan (银川), the capital of NingXia (宁夏). Everyone - both Western and Chinese - who heard we were going there asked, "Why?" Fortunately, Alan has a sense of adventure and doesn't question much.

The name NingXia literally means, "The Pacification of the Xia," and refers to the fact that the Western Xia people ruled the area now known as NingXia from about the year 1000 AD to 1227 AD, when Genghis Khan blew through town and "pacified" them, i.e. slaughtered most of them. Pretty much all that remains of the Western Xia emperors now is their large tombs, which are surrounded by the tombs of their servants and concubines, many of whom were buried alive to accompany the emperors to the afterlife.

NingXia is one of five ethnic minority "autonomous regions" in China, and is one of the smallest and poorest provinces. The other four ethnic minority autonomous regions are: Inner Mongolia (Mongols); XinJiang (Uighur), Tibet (Tibetan), and Guangxi (Zhuang). By law, autonomous regions guarantee certain rights to ethnic minorities: use of their local language, organization of their own local police; a head of government ("chairman") of their own ethnic group, etc. In practice, some observers question the level of independence this affords, since the chairman and other government officials, while of the local ethnic minority, are still appointed by the central government. The Hui, one of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities, are ethnically indistinguishable from Han Chinese, but they achieved official minority status by virtue of their religion - the Hui have practiced Islam for several centuries.

As I mentioned, I hoped to see some Hui influence in YinChuan. Many cities in China have Muslim quarters (Beijing's Ox Street "Niu Jie" 牛街, for instance) where you will find one or more mosques, restaurants with some delicious halal food (usually some seriously cooked-up meet with great doughy bread sprinkled with spices & hot pepper), and a market with white-capped vendors selling products that look at least vaguely Persian in origin. I expected YinChuan would express at least this much Hui Muslim influence, if not more. I was a bit disappointed in this regard. It turns out the one large mosque in YinChuan burned down in 1981 and was rebuilt with money from the state, resulting in a modern white tile structure that looks much like many Chinese government buildings, but for the round dome on top. The rest of YinChuan, as you can see below, was a typical pollution/ pagodas/ KFC/ construction and bikes everywhere Chinese city combo.
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On the plane on the way home, I asked the Han Chinese YinChuan native sitting next to me what she saw as the Hui influence in NingXia. She replied - in a comment that surely reflects her own ethnic pride - that although the Hui are more prevalent in NingXia than anywhere else in China, they are still very few in number and far overwhelmed by Han Chinese, thus they don't make a very big mark on society, even in NingXia.

We did come across an interesting aspect of Hui culture on our visit to the Great Wall (more details on the Wall in my next post). We noticed dozens, if not hundreds, of grave sites in the countryside near the border between NingXia and Inner Mongolia. Since 1977, the Chinese government has encouraged its citizens to cremate the dead, citing space concerns and the environmental effect of cutting down trees to build so many wood coffins. Zhou EnLai and Deng XiaoPing, good Chinese examples to the end, had their bodies cremated and ashes scattered on the mountains. Rules are more lenient for ethnic minorities who practice an officially recognized religion, however, and the Hui are free to bury their dead according to Muslim tradition. Below are pictures are some of these tombs, which were along the base of the Helan Mountains.