Cultural Sensitivity

8/7/15 

That afternoon, we visited “Muslim Street”, which is a small neighborhood that was settled by Muslims over a 1000 years ago (as merchants settled in town to make a living from the Silk Road) and now serves as a huge tourist stop due to its given moniker and the Western world’s oft-misplaced exoticism of all things Islamic. Which was quite apparent in the repeated questions and look of concern from the older French-Canadian woman in our group (who is earning an annoying reputation for her continuous, neurotic complaints about SO many things on this trip) and our tour guides repeated disclaimer that we were “only going to ‘Muslim Street’ to see the culture not the religion. Our being there has nothing to do with the religion”. Ugh.

Outside Muslin Street - KFC are the only English characters in the city

Entrance to Muslim Street

Muslim Street Crowds

Interestingly enough, because of the large immigration of all foreigners into China millennia ago to take advantage of the Silk Road, Xi’an was the first city in ancient China to be introduced to Islam. A large population of Chinese Muslims (the Hui ethnicity) still reside in Xi’an and I found our guide seemed to be incredibly sensitive to what I assume he must have felt was our Western fear/suspicion/wariness (?) of Muslims as he pointed out their faces. He repeatedly wanted us to notice that there was very little difference between the Hui and the majority of Chinese (Han) people: “You can see they look Chinese; they look just like everybody else except they’re Muslim.” (BTW, China has over 50 different ethnic minorities – no surprise, since the country covers such a large swath of land – but the Han are the vast ethnic majority with 92% of the population.) While I appreciate our guide’s sincere attempt at trying to make us Westerners (less than half our group is American) feel comfortable in this part of town while sharing a unique and historic culture with us, it made me cringe that he even had to make such a concerted effort – that we Westerners/Americans have such a bad/prejudiced/fear mongering reputation. [NN: The unnecessary mistrust of Muslims is not confined to Americans. Our Chinese guide was warning us because he held the mistrust just as much and the Australians seemed just as concerned as our French Canadian travel mate. Prejudice is not prejudiced and affects all.]

Traditional buildings

Traditional buildings

Traditional buildings

Doorway detail

Traditional tea house

Traditional buildings

Traditional buildings

Uncomfortable commentary aside, Muslim Street was just like any other crowded market district: wall to wall food stalls, ethnic and souvenir shops, stores for every random object imaginable and filled with lots of colorful people (both foreign and domestic). Did I mention the food stalls? There were TONS of food stalls! I was so tempted by all the fried seafood, myriad of breads and sweets, and who knows what else on display it was sooo hard not to stop and buy one of everything! But alas, in addition to avoiding tap water, I’ve been warned that China is not the place to try street food (no matter how tempting), and having just somewhat gotten over one serious malady, I was weary of potentially tempting fate with another one. Our guide did buy us all a persimmon cake to try, though. It was OK, nothing special.

Persimmon cakes

Naan-like bread

Fried squid & crabs

Candy makers

He pointed out a few other traditional food items of the Hui – of which BBQ seems to be a major component! – but nothing seemed too strange. Maybe that’s just because in the US, we have such a great influx and integration of immigrants and their cultures, which means we have delicious food from all over the world, and being a well know lover of food, I already eat so much of it that very little seems strange ;) Our guide did enjoy patting his ample belly and sharing with us a common Chinese saying that “the Han eat everything with 4 legs but the tables and everything with 2 ‘wings’ but airplanes”. He claims this is due to the great drought & famine across China in 1958-1961. (Remember the old warning from moms about cleaning your plate because people were starving in China?) Interestingly enough (though maybe not surprising), the Chinese government does allow any reference to the 1960s famine, but rather officially refers to it as the “Three Years of Natural Disasters”.

Nick is very happy to stop @ McDonalds for some fries!

Chinese Obama

Oba Mao - ha ha!

Random pig on the street

After checking out Muslim Street, we checked into a very nice hotel and I was so excited to have access to the internet again! I had tried to restart this blog on a second blog site before leaving Shanghai, but alas, even this site is now blocked as well – so no blogging until the trip is over (sorry, Mom). I’m not sure what loop hole I was able to get through in Shanghai to access that site, but either the hole closed or security/censorship measures changed over the last 4 days. Either way, the internet in China is pretty useless at this point. Even watching tv in the hotel room seems to be a highly calculated measure. They have CNN and some French channels on the hotels we’ve been in but Nick was told these channels not shown on regular Chinese television; they’re only provided in major hotels that are frequented by foreigners. There were also several separate occasions where we would be watching CNN and there would be a brief pause in the news feed and then it would jump ahead a few seconds (or maybe it was minutes?). At first, I just assumed this was a brief glitch in the feed (any maybe it was), but then when it happened repeatedly in different hotels, I started to wonder if CNN was being edited before it was being aired. [NN: Yes it definitely is.] And in all honesty, if they are so strict about censorship and what words/topics can or cannot be said in China, I was surprised that CNN was allowed to be shown anyway, because the Chinese government can’t stop CNN from reporting on controversial issues, especially when they concern China. Or can they…if they edit the feed before it’s shown….;)

Chinese orchestra

Tang Dynasty Theater Orchestra

That night we were treated to the Tang Dynasty dinner show. It was a Western style dinner (No family style portions, no lazy Susan; it wasn’t very good and the “beef” selection for Nick was just beef flavored tofu - YUCK) in a very fancy, gilded theater, followed by a visually stunning performance of Chinese dynastic history, as told through live music, beautiful costumes, and traditional dance. It was awesome! [NN: The show was impressive and we had great seats. Also they had these glazed cashew nuts covered with sesame seeds that were delicious. We each just got a few but I inquired about buying some more and the manager brought us out a big plate!]