The Two Sons

Of all the difference between Changzhou and Alaer the biggest is easily the presence of the Uyghur students. I teach two classes of Uyghur students but their English is on a lower level so it can be hard to just chat with them. One day though I ran out of stuff to do a little early so I just tried to ask them some basic questions about Uyghur people which they were happy to answer. I first asked about the scarfs that some of the girls wear on their heads. They said it was a Muslim thing, which is what I thought, but I was also interested why not all of them wore it. They said it had something to do with family and tradition, which I interpreted to mean it basically depended on how religious your family was. The scarfs were also many different colors, from mostly black to bright yellow, which the students told me was just a matter of personal taste. Also unlike some religious Jews the head covering had nothing to do with being married or not. Also I find it interesting that unlike what I see in pictures of some other Muslim societies the girls don't seem t worried about some hair showing around the edges or of taking them off and adjusting them in class.

I asked a number of other questions about religion. Sometimes the answers I got were a little contradictory, especially when I asked both classes but I tried to figure out exactly what they meant. I don't think there is a mosque in Alaer, or if there is it's not anywhere near the school. I did read online though that Aksu has the second biggest mosque in China. The girls said that women don't usually attend mosque as it was mostly for the men. What was really interesting though was that they said that students weren't allowed to attend mosque, and I think that holds true even during breaks. They gave me the impression that once they were done being students the men would attend mosque. I also wasn't sure if this was only in college or all through out their student careers. This was especially surprising to me as I know a lot of the students didn't eat during the day during the month of Ramadan, and that they all follow the Muslim dietary restrictions, the biggest being no pork. There are separate cafeterias for the Muslim students due to the dietary restrictions and they say that sometimes the Han students eat in their cafeteria but they never eat in the Han ones.

I've been to a few cafeterias at the school. One older Uyghur one was really run down and crowded. The older Han one was old but not in as bad shape. There was also a brand new cafeteria with one floor for the Han students and one floor for the Uyghurs which was sparkling and new. I also found out that the Uyghur students like Bollywood movies and were quite impressed I knew of so many of the big stars and had been to India. One interesting thing was that the class wasn't entirely Uyghur it was about 70% Uyghur with most of the rest of the students being ethnically Kazakhy. In one class one girl was Uzbeky as well. They said that they all lived in the same dorms, which were seperate from Han dorms. They also said that it was common for Uyghur and Kazakhy people to intermarry but that they almost never married Han people. The last thing I found out recently is that there is a big holiday on the 17th, not that the school felt the need to tell me. It's called something like Eid al-Adha and celebrates when Abraham also sacrificed his son but instead sacrificed a goat. They said they really liked the holiday because it involved a big lamb dinner with friends and family, traditionally the lamb is a sacrifice. One last interesting note is that the story of Abraham differs slightly between the Christian and Jewish version and the Muslim version. In the Christian and Jewish version Abraham almost sacrifices his son Isaac, who is later considered the father of the Jewish and later Christian people. In Islam Abraham also sacrifices his son Ishmael who is traditionally thought of as the father of the Arab people.