Mosque in China

I have seen a lot of mosques till now, from the outside.
Ironically, the catholic school I went to in India was in a Muslim locality.
For me, the images I have in mind for a mosque and a Muslim person are this:

Google images says these are representative pictures of a mosque and a Muslim man

So you can imagine my surprise, when the great mosque we visited in Xi'an looked like this:

The Great Mosque in Xi'an

And obviously everyone there was Chinese. I could not get a zoomed in picture of a Chinese guy with a taqiyah (muslim hat) on. And I really doubt if Chinese guys can grow a beard that normally one associates with Muslim men. So it was a little weird for me to see this non-stereotypical Muslim man.

And the Quran, the holy Islamic book originally written in Arabic, was in Chinese. The entire Quran was translated into Mandarin and engraved into the walls/pillars/moldings of the mosque in traditional characters. It is impressive, that they not only translated the entire 600 or so pages in Mandarin but engraved them into the walls, characters and all.

Not only was the architecture, the Quran and the crowd authentically Chinese, the food was a whole another story. To put things in perspective, I grew up in Bahrain (in the Middle-East) till my 2nd grade. I don't remember a lot but I do remember Ramadan and people breaking their fast with delicious shawarma, biryani and sevaiyyan to end it. In India, the rickshaw driver who took us kids to school was a Muslim and on Eid, he would get us those delicious home made sevaiyyan with cashews, almonds, saffron and other worldly delicacies.

It was the month of Ramadan when we went to the mosque in Xi'an. We got there after sunset so people were breaking their fast. And no, there was no shawarma, biryani or sevaiyyan. They were eating noodles/rice with chopsticks from a their respective bowls. All my memories of Ramadan and Eid were rattled in that moment.

And then I reminded myself, even if people are reading the namaaz in the background and the chants of allah-hu-akbar are familiar, I am still in China.

Train Travel in China - II

The ride to Xi'an from Beijing was eventful to say the least.
We enjoyed our 2 day trip to Xi'an and did all the touristy things as Warren had blogged about earlier.

After a ginormous hot pot lunch on Saturday, we were ready to head back home. However, we were already traumatized by our first train experience and absolutely did not want to be late. We did not want to run or get wounded on our way to the train.

We left the hot pot place at 4pm. The interesting thing in China is that cab drivers change shifts right before rush hour (which starts at 5-5:30ish). As luck we would have it we were trying to flag down a cab during this shift change time. Being at a busy intersection with *two* white foreigners sadly did not aid us in hailing a cab. So we took the bus to the "nearest" stop to our hostel. By this time Warren, Kristin and I were getting nervous. Our train was at 6:40pm. And we could not afford to miss it. We got off the bus, much further away from the hostel than we thought we were. We then speed walked next to the Xi'an city wall for a good 20 minutes. Kristin was pretty torn between trying to decide if she wanted to know the time or if she didn't. We got to a busy street and got this rickshaw-taxi hybrid after much haggling. It was quite a thrilling rough ride back to the hostel including going the wrong way on a one-way street.

Hybrid rickshaw

 We got to the hostel around 5:15. Then our Chinese friend told us that we are close to the train station and we should wait at the hostel rather than at the train station. Though that statement should have ideally calmed us down, we were still nervous about being late for our train. However, the temptation of free wi-fi won us over and we stayed at the hostel. We picked up some candy for the train ride and then took a cab to the train station. To the credit of our friend, it did take us only 10-15 minutes to get there.

Picture doesn't show the people sleeping at the station

But Xi'an was a rude shock compared to Beijing. Beijing though crowded was a well designed, spread out railway station which Xi'an most definitely was not. It was crowded, your face in someone else's shoulder crowded. To get through the line, I had to climb onto one of the security guard stands so as to not get crushed by the crowd. The guard was *not happy* about that, but her incomprehensible Chinese words were drowned out as I was one with the crowd. I tried to get a picture of the train station but it came out too blurry. It took us about 15 minutes to navigate the crowds and get to the train. The people jam at Xi'an was worse than the people jam at the Great Wall. We made it to the train sweaty, smelly and somewhat in shock with 15 minutes to spare.

Hard sleeper. Courtesy: Google images

We were given different seats so had to exchange with fellow passenger. We also had this cute 3.5 yr old Chinese boy in our compartment. He kept blabbering on with a 3 yr olds vocabulary which we still failed to understand. The hyper boy took the longest to fall asleep. But this train ride was not as pleasant as the first one. The seats were not as comfortable and you could hear way too many people snoring. We did make it back in time though and Kristin apparently gave a stellar lab presentation at 11:30am :)