China

THE day after Ramadhan had ended I received the news that meant I would be spending two years in China. VSO decided to post me to Tianshui, a town in the north western province of Gansu where there is a substantial Muslim population. I would be teaching English at a Teachers College, the students at university level.

On an afternoon break from language classes I walked from the university site where we were based, by the ancient city walls which now surround the centre, through one of its main gateways and on towards the Muslim Quarter. This was heralded by a high archway on top of which was a crescent and a banner with Arabic script. Underneath was the beginning of a lane surrounded by small restaurants, many tables set outside.

I was in search of The Great Mosque, one of the largest in China. The crowded alleyways did not make for easy map reading. Outside one building was a group of men wearing white caps, I walked through the entrance and into the packed courtyard. Prayers had just ended, a lot of people were staring at me, I peeked into the cool, neatly-kept prayer hall.

I managed to find another bigger mosque where the people were friendlier, one man showing me around. We looked into a classroom full of children and women reciting the Quran. This was not The Great Mosque, though, and one of the boys who had been following me about was assigned to lead me to it.

He left me at the top of another alleyway. Flanking one side of the lane was a tall wall, its ornamental upper section an intriguing mix of Chinese and Arabic style architecture. At the end of the lane was the entrance to the Mosque.

It cost just over a pound to enter into the mosaic of courtyards and gardens with buildings around their edges. A pagoda-style minaret, a pavilion with a sloping oriental roof and a huge ancient-looking well were some of the monuments running through the gardens. A paved courtyard led up to the prayer hall.

In Roman times Xian had rivalled Rome and later Constantinople as the major city of the world. It formed one end of the Silk Road, and it was then, around 1200 years ago, that traders from Persia and Arabia stayed in Xian and formed the roots of the present day Muslim Community.

The Great Mosque, its proper name being Huajuexiang, was originally built in the 14th century, later expanded and renovated. The main hall can hold 2000 worshippers. Within the Mosque stone tablets with writings in Chinese, Arabic and Persian are preserved along with couplets written on scrolls, hand written copies of the Quran, paintings, and other religious relics.

There are about 20 million Muslims in China of various ethnic groups: Huis, Uygurs, Kazaks, Tajiks, Uzbekhs and others, mainly concentrated in the north western provinces of Gansu, Ningxia and Xinjiang. The authorities give funding for the upkeep of mosques and weekend Quran schools. The Chinese Islamic Association organises conferences around the country and annually sends a group of its members to Mecca for the Hajj.

On my first night in Xian I had been led to the Muslim Quarter and in the darkness I had been struck more than anything else by the poverty. Not debilitating, but the sewers lay open, and the mud brick huts and dusty lanes reminded me that I was far from Western Europe. This is a place that remains untouched by the latest gadgetry and the philosophy that goes with it.

I arrived alone in Tianshui at half past midnight on the last day in August. The time of arrival had me apprehensive but almost immediately after stepping onto the platform a welcoming party of three men had identified me and introduced themselves as from Tianshui Teachers College. One was an English teacher from the Foreign Affairs Department assigned to look after me and deal with any problems I had. “You know four languages?” I do not know what rubbish I had written in my CV. The teacher was a Hui Muslim as was the head of the English Department who I met the next day at my welcoming dinner.

This was a pretty typical Chinese ‘banquet’. Dish after dish would keep coming, the plates kept on a revolving sheet covering the circular table. Diners would pick up food from the plates in the centre washed down by an endless supply of sweet tea. Some of the dishes were unidentifiable but the restaurants were all Muslim so there was no problem on that front.

The College gave me a bicycle, so I was able to explore the area over the next few days. Tianshui is set in a valley, its surrounding hills and bridges connecting various parts of the town giving it a certain Swiss quality. But the bridges went over a dry river bed with little water except when it rained. The dusty streets, apartment blocks with grey balconies, broken roads and rickety shacks reminded me of Karachi.

A week after arriving I walked into my first class. A boy at the back shouted something and for some reason they all stood up. They looked at me, I looked at them. “Err, you can sit down.” They sat. I relaxed and was soon quite impressed by their level of English. They were in their second year training to be English teachers, the course had just been extended from two to three years.

Going through the usual introductory questions such as “are you married?” and “do you like Chinese food?”, someone suddenly piped up with “do you believe in Allah?” A bit taken aback I politely replied “yes” and moved onto the next question,. A couple of weeks later, class about to end, the same student raised his voice, “I hope you are not angry at me saying something, last night I saw you eating outside the College at a restaurant that is not a Muslim restaurant”. I told him I was not eating meat. “Chinese Muslims only eat at Muslim restaurants”. I asked him if he regularly went to mosque. “Every Friday”. The co-teacher had said a couple of times that he would take me to a mosque in the town but there had been a slight strain in his voice and he had not got round to it. I arranged to go with my student, whose English name was William, that Friday.

Prayers had just ended when we walked into the oldest mosque in Tianshui. Many people, men and women, were standing around in the small compound between the gateway and the main buildings of the mosque. Most wore white caps, identifying them as members of the Hui community, the largest Muslim group in China.

I stopped grinning, “Maybe we shouldn’t, we’ll come back next week”. We walked out through the gateway. “You come to Friday prayers every week?” He did not look at me, “Next week we must come at one o’clock”.

We had reached the centre of town, heralded by a fair-sized square, the roads around it treacherously busy. To the back a tall building was under construction, in front was a small bus depot servicing too many minibuses and coaches which just did not mix with the bicycle infested roads. The streets to the side were lined with hundreds of stalls selling bread, fruits, clothes, toiletries; there were cobblers, bicycle repair men, noodle shacks and tobacconists. One road to the front lead to the more up-market commercial area. Around here were the sophisticated shops and restaurants, and a couple of reasonably well-stocked department stores.

“There is another mosque.” We walked through the square and up one of the glitzier streets which at the top transformed into a shanty market. The road was wide, but run down, the buildings smaller and considerably older-looking than nearer the centre. “Is it far?” William pointed, and from behind a nearby building a dome and silver crescent rose up into the skyline.

This was Tianshui’s biggest mosque. The doorway lead into a garden, it seemed quite empty. William found an old man who told him everyone had gone to the funeral at the other mosque, and the Imam would return in a couple of hours.

We walked back towards the centre. Over a bowl of beef noodles at a Muslim restaurant I asked William about himself. He was from Lanzhou, capital of the province. He had friends studying law in Beijing and that was what he really wanted to do, but his father wanted him to become a teacher. I was to hear over and over again students training to be teachers say that they did not want to go into teaching, it was poorly paid compared to other jobs, held little respect and they would be sent out into the countryside to work and live in terrible conditions, a situation often difficult to progress from. At the end of their schooling those who just miss the mark in the astonishingly difficult university exams have to go to Teacher Training Colleges. Young people feel little incentive to go into the profession voluntarily, so the government gives them no choice. Many of the students I had met were sharp and intelligent, and most had a warm sense of humour. They were talented and able, but were watching a China of promise and opportunity pass them by.

I walked with William down the main street of the centre of town. We entered a park and sat on a bench by the artificial lake. I asked about other Hui Muslims of his age. There were only 12 Muslim students in the whole College which seemed a ridiculously low figure. I knew of at least four Muslims on the teaching staff of the English Department alone. Apparently Hui children were not interested in becoming teachers, most did not carry on their education past school and went into business at which they were very successful. According to William few were interested in religion. He was proud to say he was, “But I seldom go to mosque in Tianshui, I only go when I am in my home town”. I nodded, “So do I”.

Back at the central Mosque the Imam had returned. He welcomed us into his room. Many books in Arabic were scattered about, there was a narrow hard bed to one side and a sink in an alcove at the end of the room. He sat opposite us, much younger than I expected, with shaved head, a long circular beard and sharp, searching eyes.

Mostly, he asked me about England. His job was voluntary, income dependent on donations from Mosque-goers. The local authorities gave money for the upkeep of the mosque. He came from a nearby village and had trained at the Islamic University in Lanzhou. Half the students there were funded by the government, the others had to pay for themselves. As I was getting up to leave, he handed me a small book of suras, Arabic and Chinese on facing pages.

“He has a very simple life.” We were walking to our bicycles through the part of town which had changed so much in recent years : more commercial, more modern, a reflection of the times. I turned to the boy who had helped me that afternoon, “He has”.

The countryside was hilly, occasionally green but mostly arid, never short of beautiful throughout the eight hour train journey. So many streams and lakes seemed to have dried up, the land did not promise much and I could now glimpse the poverty I had heard about in the simple villages the railway ran through.

In the months before leaving, talking to people knowledgeable about China, most had been impressed but a little bemused at the fact that I was going to spend two years teaching English in Gansu. They talked about opportunities in Hong Kong, Shanghai and the rich South. It seemed a bit bizarre to them that I was going to the considerably poorer North. Good for tourism but not for life.

Lanzhou is high up on a plateau and you can immediately feel the extra bite in the air. The Yellow River runs through it, and with the surrounding hills and wide roads I was struck by the pleasant cosmopolitan nature of the place. The roads were smooth and efficient, the city had a large, humming commercial area with an impressive array of shopping malls, department stores and supermarkets where most tastes were catered for.

A man greeted me, then a group of people were around us, overjoyed when I explained I was a Muslim from England. We went up some steps into the domed prayer hall. Back downstairs some boys were milling about. I asked if we could look around and followed them into the corridors. More boys kept popping up, I looked into one of the rooms which was a dormitory. There were two bunk beds, probably nicer than the dormitories in my College.

At the end of the corridor was a classroom, Arabic writing on the blackboard. We now had a small group of boys with us, continually increasing. I asked if this was the Islamic University; it was. There were 20 students, the youngest 13, the oldest 21, who spent two years there. After this some would go to Pakistan; Islamabad or Peshawar, or Malaysia and further their studies in those countries. Eventually they would become Imams, probably to be sent over the province, like the one I had met in Tianshui.

China is a huge country, its 26 provinces are each bigger than England, some several times over. Travel is a relatively recent phenomenon, both for foreigners visiting China and Chinese within their own country. Foreigners often get shouted at; ‘hello’ or ‘laowai’; a mild insult, stared at and discussed as if they were not there. Tianshui was quite good on this front; I hardly ever got shouted at and any staring would usually not be too prolonged. Lanzhou was worse, the big city mentality being more aggressive.

The philosophies that have determined China’s public and social life over the centuries, Taoism and Confucianism, have not been heard of anywhere else. China is still a nominally communist country with no sign of democracy entering its political processes. It gives the impression of being aloof from world affairs, yet it has a seat on the UN Security Council. It is not a developing country in the traditional sense, yet in some areas has abysmal poverty.

China prides itself on its unity and a strong sense of Chinese identity which is separate from anything else. Yet there are 56 different ethnic nationalities, with separate customs and traditions, living all over China and classified as Chinese. Ten of these are Muslim. The largest group is the Han who comprise 93 per cent of the population but live in only 50 per cent of Chinese land. The Han control all the levers of power.

By late October electricity shortages had been hitting Gansu, and Tianshui was having its fair share of dark nights and quiet afternoons. No microphone was needed for ‘azan’, the call to Friday prayers at the town’s largest mosque, which was about half full.

Muslims are allowed to pray and practice their religion freely by the Communist authorities, though this was not so at the time of the Cultural Revolution in the late 60s and early 70s. All religions were forbidden, mosques were appropriated by the authorities and Imams were sent to work in the fields or were put in prison. Through narrow lanes separating the small, clustered buildings of a suburb on a hill I was led to a mosque which had been used as the local Education Office; children had played table tennis in the courtyard.

In some places Muslims were made to work in pig farms. Many met and prayed in secret, and when cultural freedom returned, the mosques were re-opened and the Muslim community in China resumed their normal religious life with a strong sense of identity and togetherness.

In recent years China has been undergoing social and cultural changes of a completely different nature that have also had a profound effect on Muslim communities. The economics of state planning has been ditched, and markets are open for business. Kept on the periphery of mainstream society, those with talent and imagination look for other outlets for success, and never encumbered by the Communist indoctrination that has left a psychological mark on others, the freer economic climate has been perfect for nurturing a generation of Muslim business people.

At first glance China’s rate of development seems amazing, towns and cities buzzing with commerce, impressive new buildings under construction. But China’s growth remains confined to urban areas; much of the countryside remains the same. Unless the newly created wealth filters down, either Chinese society will become even more grossly divided or the whole free market experiment will simply break down.

Famines hit large areas of China only 30 to 40 years ago, and even now there are times when money and nutritious food do not get through to sections of the countryside. The continual migration of people away form rural and into urban areas is causing social and economic problems that can only get worse. The Communist Party now recognises that the whole of the country must develop, but the drift from so many years of mismanagement is proving increasingly difficult to overcome.

As winter came the people prayed for snow, and finally it came. Water had been running in short supply, the dam near Lanzhou had reached dangerously low levels and electricity was strictly rationed throughout the province.

No snow meant a bad harvest; farming land would have no protection from the harsh winter. To compensate, prices of summer produce would be higher than normal, causing an all-round inflationary spiral. The mining towns still provided ample coal, but there was more reliance on energy from water. In China’s driest province, talk was that this situation should change. But snow came, and crisis was averted.

Gansu is one of China’s poorest provinces. In 1980 the economy began to open up to the outside world because the country was desperate for imports and foreign investment to lift itself out of its abject poverty. This proved an astonishing success in the South East, and it was a quite conscious policy to develop these areas faster than the North West. In terms of wealth, a noticeable north west / south east divide soon became apparent between the developed coastal economies of the south and the barren landlocked borders of the north. Corruption, mismanagement and favouritism are rife in the north west.

Foreign investment is coming in all parts of the country, though. Desperate for new markets and cheap labour many western corporations have turned to China. Probably the major achievement of the Chinese Communist Party has been the unifying of the country and giving it a level of stability absent from other developing countries which has meant that foreign investors are not afraid to put money into the country’s economy.

Apart from in Lanzhou and Tianshui, there is hardly any foreign investment in Gansu. Transport is a major problem; the land is a vast ongoing series of hills, towns situated in valleys or on plateaux, villages dotted around the slopes. The dry golden earth had been covered by a soft, white blanket. Regardless of the cold, and the fact that transport was now even more difficult, it was this change in the weather that would prove a temporary salvation.

Around the same time as the opening up of the economy, English had become a subject taught in all Chinese schools. Prior to that, Russian had been the foreign language taught to students. Chinese news reports a constant stream of diplomatic missions, of Chinese officials going abroad and others visiting China : Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe; China is keen to develop links with all these areas and more, and the feeling is reciprocated. Vital to the process of this new-found internationalism filtering down to the Chinese population is the teaching of English in middle schools.

Zhangjiachuan County is an autonomous Muslim region near Tianshui. I had come as part of a delegation from the Teachers College to talk to middle school English teachers. Often in the countryside teachers received their salaries months late, and sometimes they were paid with sugar instead of money. Many of the best English teachers would leave the province to work in the south.

A sharp wind buffeted the people strolling casually on the wide roads, around the town were signs of barren vegetation. Sheep skins were popular among the stalls lining the streets, along with fruit and meat. I looked out of the minibus and wondered at the use of teaching English here.

Muslim farmers in the area, who had less land and so mostly tended animals, had been doing well selling the skins and from meat. Many of these families saw the future in terms of business, and their children’s education was of little importance. Others figured they could not afford to send their children to school, something seen as a luxury when they could be working in the fields, which is probably what they would end up doing even if they were educated.

But these feelings are not too widespread. If anything, success at school is seen as a means of escape. And the teaching of a foreign language has a significant social role in nurturing a generation that is not inward-looking but tolerant and open to ideas.

Though Gansu develops slowly, it is definitely changing. 20 years ago Tianshui was a mass of huts, small houses and dirt tracks. Now it is a humming Asian town with tall buildings for factories, department stores, hotels and government offices. Trade has developed in the more rural centres, though the flourishing markets deal almost wholly in fake goods.

The red flag fluttered in the wind, the hills in the near distance were covered with snow, I could just make out the dome of a mosque peeping out between the slanting tiled roofs. A reminder of one faith that does not change, an offer of solace at a time of confusion and a sense of identity beyond the material.