bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

sponsorType

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

factSheets

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

copyrighted

customTimezone

liveContents

Jasper Becker

THE NUMBER of Muslim families grimly hanging on to their historic homes is dwindling as the bulldozers flatten the landscape for redevelopment around one of Beijing's oldest buildings, the Ox Street Mosque.

The mosque in Niu Jie, built during the Song dynasty, may be 1,000 years old.

More than 1,000 members of China's oldest Muslim communities gathered last August to protest at the gates of the Beijing municipal Government against what they feared was the destruction of their ancient community.

The peaceful protests lasted four days, part of the flickering resistance that started when the Xuanwu district authorities announced a massive redevelopment plan five years ago.

'It didn't do much good,' said one woman from the doorway of her courtyard house which once formed part of a winding alleyway that has all but gone. 'They gave us a little more money, that's all.'

Beijing has about 250,000 Muslims, generally known as Hui, whose features reveal a legacy of mixed Chinese and Central Asian bloodlines. The term is now vaguely used to refer to a separate ethnic group or to any Muslim believer and, although they elude precise definition, the Hui are proud of their separate history and identity.

Beijing even has a Hui autonomous county within its borders where the descendants of soldier-settlers brought from the Yangtze River region during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) still live.

Some Hui are descendants of traders or emissaries from Turkic or Middle Eastern lands who came to the imperial capital.

The mosque was certainly built before the Yuan dynasty (1269-1368). When the Mongols conquered Beijing, they brought Uygurs, Persians and Uzbeks with them. 'A third of central government ministers were Hui under Kublai Khan,' said Professor Hu Zhenhua of the Central Nationalities University, a Hui who is an expert on the history of Islam in China.

Some of those still living around the mosque say they can trace their ancestry back to famous generals including Hu Dahai and Chang Yuchun, who served Ming dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang and his son Yongle, who moved the capital here in the 14th century. He employed the famous Muslim eunuch Zheng He to lead his navies on distant voyages to India and Africa.

For the Hui community, the area around the Niu Jie mosque is their own local Mecca, the most venerated symbol of their past. It is also where the central Government brings state guests from Muslim nations to demonstrate the country's religious freedom.

Now the Hui are leaving, unable to afford to buy property in the bleak apartment blocks which have been rising over the elaborately carved wooden roofs of the mosque. Five years ago, there were 7,000 families living in a tightly knit community in the grey hutongs around the mosque. That number has shrunk to 3,000.

Han Chinese are moving in, often out-of-town businessmen buying up flats in an area being surrounded by broad new roads, glitzy offices, showrooms and other commercial properties.

'We don't like it. I hate it when I smell the pork being cooked by our neighbours. We have different traditions, the two communities don't mix,' said a man who, four years ago, was one of the first to move into a high rise. Half of his new neighbours are Han Chinese.

Despite the anger, residents are afraid to be identified by name or in photographs.

In an area so steeped in history, people speak casually of this or that emperor's visit as if they were events that happened yesterday. The Emperor Kangxi wore a white skull cap to investigate reports Muslims were holding anti-government meetings in the mosque.

Rulers during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) feared the martial Hui, who staged fierce uprisings in the northeast during some periods. The government then insisted that mosques were not built in the Arabic style but to resemble Chinese temples, and banned tall minarets and the call to prayers.

Yet the great Qing Emperor Qianlong went to Xuanwu district often and developed a taste for the mutton hotpots, noodles and flat bread.

The Hui prospered in Beijing and many wealthy families had courtyards near the mosque, including Li Lianying, the chief eunuch of the Empress Dowager Cixi, who reigned in the late 19th century.

By the 1970s, the area had become run down and overcrowded. In the 1980s, Hui schools and restaurants reopened and the area gained a new lease of life until Beijing developed in the mid-1990s a master plan to demolish all hutongs.

When real estate developers began moving in to tear the courtyards down, they offered residents 30,000 yuan (HK$28,200) in compensation, which was then enough to buy a two-bedroom apartment. Now, a similar-sized apartment costs from 130,000 to 150,000 yuan, and a good one about 500,000 yuan.

'Where can people like us get that kind of money? That's why we staged a protest,' said one woman, who is hoping that if she stays longer she might get a better deal.

She took part in the August protests which lasted for four days and another protest in November. Neither was reported by the press.

Development companies, often run by local government officials, try to prevent collective action by offering special deals on condition that a family keeps it a secret from their neighbours.

Some have moved, retaining hopes of being able to return, but instead have found themselves priced out of the market and stranded in one of the distant new satellite towns being built around the capital.

Around the mosque, the Xuanwu district Government is creating a park, a car park for visitors and an arcade of shops or restaurants which is being built in a vaguely Arabic style with green roofs and windows.

The mosque is intended to remain a symbol of China's ties with the Muslim world but local Hui complain that many others, less famous but almost as old, are being knocked down.

Beijing has 69 mosques and the older ones are concentrated in the Xuanwu district which has 40,000 Hui residents. District officials declined to be interviewed.

'When the courtyard house and hutongs go, our traditions and history will be lost,' one man complained angrily. Other men who were sitting around playing chess as the construction work went on around them warned him to stop speaking out.

Public resistance, beyond protests over compensation payments, remains difficult because the state owns all the land. Any disputes taken to court are likely to be resolved in favour of the authorities.

Jasper Becker is the Post's Beijing bureau chief



Stubborn Ox Street losing to developers