Walking the Wall

The Chinese have a greeting that translates as “Have you eaten?” Not “Hi, how are you?” or “Nice to meet you”, but “Have you eaten?” In Chinese, this is “Ni chi le ma?” (This might help to explain why Brendan and I haven’t lost much weight so far on our hike.)

Wanting to be polite, we often find ourselves agreeing to a break in our walk to join a kindly stranger, along with friends and families, for a bowl of noodles. Which always seems to turn into several bowls of noodles.

So it’s good to walk through the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and try out the food of the Muslim Hui (pronounced “HWAY”) minority. The food is still heavy on the noodles but with a few welcome additions to traditional Chinese fare.

Eat, drink, man, woman

Meet Mr Chu and his wife, Mrs Zhang, who live in a tiny one-room house near the banks of the Yellow River. We had just taken a rest stop, put our backpacks back on and started walking when Mr Chu appeared on top of the wall.

“Have you eaten?” he called from above. “Have you had something to drink?”

And finally, probably because we were wearing hats and sunglasses: “Are you a man and a woman?” (One thing the Chinese are not known for is their tact.)

We really didn’t have time to go with him, but he was so insistent that we at least take some apples that we finally agreed. After all, his house was right on the other side of the wall.

How ’bout them apples?

If it weren’t for the Hui, the bread situation in this part of the country would be pretty dire. Unlike the majority Han Chinese, the Hui can really make bread, lightly cooked with spices, garlic and egg, and finding Hui bread in towns is always a real treat for us. So when Mr Chu’s wife, who was rolling dough when we walked in, started making us bread, we didn’t protest too much. She cooked it for a few seconds in a skillet on their coal stove and it was some of the best bread we’d had. But after the second huge piece we had to sincerely protest. This was washed down with a few glasses of Eight Treasure Tea (ba bao cha), one of our favourite new finds, which is tea made with walnuts, goji berries, jujubes or dates, sesame seeds, raisins, longans, and rock sugar.

Hui to go, Mrs Zhang!

Ningxia is one of the smallest and poorest regions of China, with a population of about 6 million. Though this is a Hui autonomous region, the Hui make up 2 million of the population, the rest being Han and other ethnic groups. Throughout the nation there are nearly 10 million Hui.

A mosque near Yinchuan

Ningxia became an autonomous region in 1958 in recognition of the cultural background of the Muslim Hui, who are the descendants of the Middle Eastern or Central Asian Silk Road traders or of people who were converted to Islam by these traders. Though most of the Hui are similar to the Han Chinese in looks, they are distinguished by their practice of Islam and their avoidance of eating pork. The men wear white caps and the women often wear shawls (in this part of the country we have never seen a woman in a veil). Our language skills are not good enough to ask about their religion and whether there is any practice of Sharia law.

Mosques are often decorated with Arabic script

We met a group of men in Yinchuan who stand on the street every day selling Eight Treasure Cake (ba bao gao). They were from the province of Xinjiang and were obviously of Central Asian origin. Though we thought they might be Uyghurs, an Islamic people of Central Asian descent in Xinjiang, when asked they said they were Hui.

Ai bu bu la (possibly a Sinicisation of “Abullah”) from Xinjiang

Negotiating a price on a slice of Eight Treasure Cake

In the same way that Hui bread is always going to be fresh and tasty, we have come to recognise that Hui restaurants are nearly always a safe bet for a place to eat.

The cheery bunch of cooks at a Hui restaurant in Yinchuan

Chinese restaurants in this part of the country can often be dirty, noisy and smoky places to eat; the Hui restaurants, on the other hand, are usually run by families and are a fair bit quieter, especially on Saturday nights. The food’s a bit heavy on the mutton, but you usually know it’s fresh (don’t ask how).

Just look at those rosy cheeks