The Long Road Home

Yesterday I arrived in the small town of Dujiangyan in the late afternoon. This place is famous for its irrigation system, first done, rather amazingly, in 3rd c BC. I went to see the river. By the South Bridge, I there was a gateway marked Qingzhen Si, or mosque. Noone seemed to be around. Inside there was a passageway with whitewashed walls and a trellis with pink roses overhead. Then a wooden lattice screen, and behind it an absolutely exquisite cobbled courtyard with wooden prayer hall up a flight of stone steps.  Two knobbly trees. Around the courtyard were wooden side buildings with eaves over walkway where there were tables, and there was a tricycle rickshaw parked. The prayer hall had a pagoda tower with a crescent moon on the top.  A man was chanting alone kneeling in the prayer hall. Two men in white caps appeared and sat at a table reading newspapers and showing eachother paragraphs. I went to say hello. The younger guy was in a smart ironed shirt and was very articulate and turned out to be a leader of the Muslim community in the town. He said there were 2500 Muslims in Dujiangyan. His boy and girl were playing a game in which you skid in your socks on the tiles in front of the prayer hall. He said his family genealogy showed they were descended from Uzbeks who came to China in the Yuan Mongol dynasty ie 12th c and moved from Beijing south to Yunnan and then Sichuan over the centuries. He said Genghis Khan had brought back lots of artisans from the Middle East and Central Asia after they took Baghdad and came back to China. He said the mosque was 400 years old and though had been constantly restored, had never changed its appearance. He was very keen to talk about football and Wayne Rooney’s foot. Suddenly he said he had to go, and went down a corridor by the side of the prayer hall. The old man still reading the paper said he had gone to wash. Around 20 men then gathered all in white caps in the courtyard, and went into the prayer hall. The Uzbek origin football guy put on a gold hat with a tail and a cape of some kind. One young man stood outside at the threshhold with all the shoes, looking in at the backs of the other men, and did a fabulous loud nasal call to prayer, holding his ears. The children were on the threshhold with me, giggling and also holding their ears. The men prayed kneeling and standing for about ten minutes till 8pm. The little girl absent-mindedly hummed along. Lanterns came on under the wooden eaves. I left as it got dark. Outside, tricycle rickshaws were trundling by, ringing bells. There were halal food kiosks selling baked flat breads under bare light bulbs, a green Muslim Hotel, and a motorbike with ‘come and go in peace’ on the number plate in Chinese with Arabic above.

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