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Why are they picking these flowers? Just for making garlands or is there any food made from these??? Just curious.!!
ox street of Beijing is a muslim street, famous for muslim foodNiu Jie (Ox Street) is a cramped road running north-south in the Muslim Quarter of Beijing, about a mile directly west of the Temple of Heaven. In addition to the signs in Chinese, you can see signs in Arabic as well. The street is lined with Muslim restaurants, halal meat shops and vendors selling fried dough rings, rice cakes and shaobang (muffins), and you can see men wearing white caps and beards.
During our family vacation to China, we visited Niu Jie neighborhood where Beijing's main mosque is located. It is believed that Islam was first introduced in China in 616-18 AD by Waggas (Sad ibn abi Waqqas), Sayid Wahab ibn Abu Kabcha. Sad ibn abi Waqqas was the maternal uncle of Prophet Muhammad. Wahab ibn abu Kabcha (Wahb abi Kabcha) might be a son of al-Harth ibn Abdul Uzza (known as Abu Kabsha). These pioneers were companions of Prophet Muhammad.
As we entered the mosque, we were warmly greeted by a bearded gentleman wearing a white cap who said Assalam-Alaikum. As we walked around, we saw signs in English indicating that the mosque was constructed in 995 by two Arab Muslim Imams who are buried within the mosque compound. Throughout the Yuan, Ming and Qing periods (13th-19th C), it underwent several alterations and since 1949 it has been repeatedly restored. Unlike the traditional mosque architecture in Muslim nations, the Niu Jie mosque has a Chinese style roof with no minarets. Its traditional Chinese roof design has animal figures found on the corners of the temple roofs in China.
Most Hui Muslim Chinese are similar in culture to Han Chinese with the exception that they practice Islam, and have some distinctive cultural characteristics as a result. For example, as Muslims, they follow Islamic dietary laws and reject the consumption of pork, the most common meat consumed in Chinese culture, and have also given rise to their variation of Chinese cuisine, Chinese Islamic cuisine. Their mode of dress also differs only in that adult males wear white caps and females wear headscarves or (occasionally) veils, as is the case in most Islamic cultures.
Haq's Musings: July Vacation in Beijing