Islam in China
Xi'an has an interesting Muslim quarter, whose food
stalls made me think I was in Turkey:
candied fruit,
halva,
kebab, pide bread,
and "mısır" (steamed corn on the cob).
There were also bicycle-carts ingeniously transformed into cooking units, offering a type of grilled sausage on skewers.
A contraption with a large metal bowl contained walnuts, which were being churned around and around together with salt.
The Muslim Uighurs in Western China have been on the news lately because of the riots, so most people are aware now that there is a Muslim minority in China. The Uighurs are not the only ones following Islam, however: other ethnic groups outside Western China that practice Islam are called Hui.
The ancestors of some Hui people and all Uighur people were the Uighurs who built the Uighur Empire in the 8th/9th century, but only the Uighurs retain the Turkic language.
halva,
kebab, pide bread,
and "mısır" (steamed corn on the cob).
There were also bicycle-carts ingeniously transformed into cooking units, offering a type of grilled sausage on skewers.
The Muslim Uighurs in Western China have been on the news lately because of the riots, so most people are aware now that there is a Muslim minority in China. The Uighurs are not the only ones following Islam, however: other ethnic groups outside Western China that practice Islam are called Hui.
The ancestors of some Hui people and all Uighur people were the Uighurs who built the Uighur Empire in the 8th/9th century, but only the Uighurs retain the Turkic language.
