Muslim Chinese: Abdul the Bread Seller

I'm currently on assignment for one month in Shenzhen, in southern China, on a really intense technical writing project.

You can read how I got a gig like this by clicking here.

If you want to see a load of really cool videos of my travels here in China, then click here and enjoy.

DINNER AND A CHANCE MEETING

By day, I work upwards of 10 hours as the sole westerner in large office of several hundred Chinese folks in a mainland China state-owned enterprise. You can bet after a long day of intensive interviews with engineers (mostly in Mandarin), poring over documents, and dismantling complex machinery, I'm felling pretty beat as nightfall comes.

As respite, I love to go for walks in the evening and see the local color. Night time on a busy city alley-way in China is, as the Chinese say, feng fu duo cai (·á¸»¶à²Ê) - "highly rich and with many colors". Many times it's great loads of fun.

Last night I felt tired and grumpy after work. So I ambled off by myself. Instead of taking a taxi back to the hotel, I chose to sup at a local Sichuan-style restaurant a few blocks away. The food was superb as expected, and the grandiose pouring of water for my Eight Treasure Tea really cheered me up.

A MEMBER OF CHINA'S ISLAM

After chow, I paid the bill and walked down a bustling alley I spied on my way into the restaurant. What a treasure! Card playing countryside tinkerers lackadaisically slapped down their bets on a makeshift table while awaiting their next customer. A tea hawker hailed me down and successfully sold me a bag of tea small enough for me to cart around in my briefcase. A good start to a night of pleasant shopping...

As I started off from the tea stall, from around the corner came a hearty greeting and a friendly wave... Hello!....

I saw the prized guest of the evening, who sported a well-worn but dignified dress jacket. Has name was Mr. Abdul - otherwise in known as Abudalla Malamabrrr - a member of China's lesser-known Islamic community: Mu si lin as they say in Mandarin - Muslim or Islamic Chinese - of a minority known as the Uyghur (also Uighur) people from China's remote Xinjiang Province.

ABDUL, NICE GUY

He extended his hand in greeting to me as I approached. Though small of frame, he had a sturdy grip and a great smile. Gesturing to the beard on my face, he asked me if I was Muslim. I answered no, stating instead that I was a Mexican-American who could speak some Chinese. Not knowing where Mexico was, he asked me in a heavily accented Mandarin, "What province is that?"

I laughed at his accent - not meaning to make fun of him - rather because I have heard other foreigners (Westerners) speak Chinese with an accent of some kind or other. But I had not expected to hear this from an officially recognized member of China's enclave.

Anyway, Abdul sells large roundels of sesame-dotted baked bread for ¥2 (about USD $0.29) that he reheats for buyers on the spot by using a portable coal-fired stone furnace. He tells me the bread is not indigenous to his land, rather he borrowed the bread recipe from China's Yunnan Province. He said the more "pure Chinese" folks (known as Han Chinese) wouldn't like real Uighur food, so he opted to acclimate his style to a more popular local taste.

I bought a loaf of his bread. It was modest, somewhat dry-ish, but definitely filling. Good stuff.

MANY MUSLIMS IN SHENZHEN

When I lived for several years in the central coastal city of Shanghai some 10 years ago, I ran across only a few Uighur Muslims. They could have been found only in certain outskirt parts of Shanghai (mostly in Pudong District), and I noticed that they were always prone to scanning their surroundings sheepishly, as they seemed to be under continuous persecution by the police. Their activities at that time seemed to be limited only to the selling of skewered lamb meat on the street, and I heard rumors of the nefarious sale of hashish by a smooth talker named Mr. Mohamed. That was back then...

This decade or more later, I am surprised at how many Muslims I have run across already, how frequently I meet them, and (probably quite fortunately) how openly they appear here on the streets of Shenzhen.

While Abdul certainly looks like a guy who's had a tough life during his few years on this earth, absent from his face are the harrowed eyes that I had seen in other Uighur Muslims years earlier.

No doubt Abdul pleads for life tougher than the Han Chinese that surround him on the street, the worry lines on his face seemed to be more centered on the same concerns that plague the minds of most any other Chinese citizen: What will the future be like? Will I still have work tomorrow? How will I be able to support my family?

SHENZHEN

While Abdul is one of many Muslims I have run across here in Shenzhen, on the other hand I am not at all surprised at how many I have seen. Here's why.

When you speak to a person who is a resident of Shenzhen, they are exactly that: a "resident". Of the many, many Chinese citizens I have spoken with here in Shenzhen on this trip, none of them say that they are actually from Shenzhen. Of all the people I have spoken with, only one of them proudly declared that he was from Shenzhen - and he was a half-crazed taxi driver, and no doubt on a caffeine-laced high toward the end of a long shift of driving.

With Shenzhen City being so young, people have had to flood in from the farthest regions of China. While at the office where I am working for this project, I have run across perhaps a few people who are from Chinese cities nearby (such as Guangzhou), Abdul and his fellows probably win the prize on having traveled the furthest from his home in Xinjiang, which is at the westernmost regions of China bordering with Tibet, Russia, and Mongolia.

SHENZHEN: A CITY OF NEW OPPORTUNITIES

So why do folks come here from all over? The answer is simple: opportunity.

Shenzhen is a relatively young city - young at lease by Chinese standards. Officially commissioned in 1979, Shenzhen had a modest start more or less as a fishing village some few kilometers north of the bustling metropolis of Hong Kong.

Now some 30 years later, with the official endorsement and support of the central government, Shenzhen is now the home to no less than 10 million inhabitants. Shenzhen offers itself as a new frontier of opportunity on many fronts: education, work, entrepreneurship, health, and lifestyle.

I am glad to see that different look in Abdul's eyes. Where some years ago his eyes may have been filled with worries of a different kind, there now seems to be more space in them to see the possibility of friendship in a bearded Mexican-American man he saw on the street the other day.

I am glad he offered his hand to me the other day.

- John

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