(There are four blog posts to Day Nine…stay pumped)
After my presentation, we clambered onto the bus and rolled out from Xia’he to Lanzhou. Of course we made a few pit stops on the way. We stopped for lunch at Linxia’s Languan Square. TBC likes to plop us in random towns and tell us “Okay, now go find food.” It makes for a interesting and real experience, no doubt.
My friends and I went walking around and found a beef noodle shop. I was the most experienced speaker in the group, so I asked the Fuwuyuan (server) for non spicy noodles. He brought them spicy. We were sitting at the middle table on the second floor, surrounded by Chinese people just flat out staring at us. I don’t even think they were eating. They were just congregating to stare, especially at me and my black friend. We finished and I wanted to pay, so I asked the old Chinese man serving tea, “Where do we pay?” and he started laughing at me and slowly backing away, speaking in an unintelligible dialect. You’d think I asked him where to buy men’s boxers or something.
After five more minutes of just sitting there, waiting for something to happen, my friend and I decided to walk downstairs to figure out where to pay. Before we headed down, just for fun I looked up and counted the number of people staring at us.
Survey says? Eleven.
Turns out we had to pay downstairs. The cashier understood me a lot better than that strange old Chinese man. So we left the restaurant and headed back to the bus. I took a video (that I will wait until I get back to upload) of us crossing the street. In China, there is no right of way. Whoever is the biggest with the loudest horn wins the streets of China. After three weeks of crossing streets, there is still no way in hell that I am used to this yet.
We returned to the bus, rode for another hour or so, and then disembarked at the Xichuan Big Mosque. We girls had to make sure we were covered up in long pants and long sleeves, despite the hot summer day.
It was interesting to catch a glimpse of Chinese Muslim life: How they’ve found ways to connect Chinese and Muslim culture.
There were a couple of things I saw and found troubling. Entering the compound, I saw many men of all ages, standing and watching us or playing badminton or pong. I wondered where the women were. I saw one woman hanging up to dry clothes, and another I glimpsed in a room we passed. We smiled at each other through the screen window.
Walking around, I saw three men sitting around a table, chatting happily away. We then went into a room, where I found out where the women were. Several women were hunched over sewing tables, patching clothes together. My Vietnamese friend commented on how tedious and monotonous the work looked.
On the wall, motivational sayings in Chinese (that I could read!) were posted. One particularly memorable one stated, “Company is home; Development depends on everyone.”
I left that room of busy women workers to find that a few more men had joined the happy conversation at the table outside. Where was their tedious, monotonous work?
There was one man that I could see was doing some sort of work. We walked into a room adjacent to the sewing room. He stood and smiled at us, smoking a cigarette as a machine printed out sewing patterns.
Of course I’m probably not seeing the whole picture. Perhaps the men work extremely hard during certain periods of the year, like harvest time. I’m not trying to condemn the culture at all. At this point, I’m just glad I was born and raised in the one I was.
Before we left, our Muslim tour guide spoke in broken English to us, “Please know that we love peace. We are peaceful. Maybe not what your newspaper says, but we are.”
Kind of amazing that no matter how superior we Americans like to think we are in matters of freedom and openness, that all it takes is one comment by our host, one glimpse in the life of a minority to slap us back down to earth. Before you get on your high and mighty stool, take a look at how the American media reports on minorities, especially Muslims.
Instead of taking the time to understand their culture, we condemn their way of life, their rigid gender roles, their conservative dress for women, which we see as oppression. I don’t like being told that I have to wear long sleeves on a hot day, but I’m sure Muslim women in France don’t like being told that they have to show off their skin in public.
It seems every culture is guilty of “knowing best” at one point or another. That’s why am I glad as an individual that I get to live these reminder experiences. Visiting a Chinese mosque, I am reminded of my American ignorance, for in human culture, there is no right of way.
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