Chinese outside, Muslim inside – in many ways, Chinese traditional mosques reflect how Muslims have kept their faith and customs in Eastern China for more than 1400 years. Travel a couple of thousand kilometres further West to Gansu, Ningxia or Xinjiang, and mosques are omnipresent and of Arabic or Persian styles.
This book shows hundreds of photographs taken, between 2005 and 2012, of mosques and Muslim districts in China, from Guangzhou to Harbin, Beijing and Nanjing, and other former capital cities like Luoyang, Xi’an and Kaifeng, Shanghai and Hong Kong, and further West, Linxia, Lanzhou, Xining, Yongning, Turpan, Urumqi and Kashgar. With the fast-changing religious situation in China, some mosques have been demolished or altered. This book offers a testimonial of a not-too-distant past.