Eric's Beijing Diary

Very brief but well-written overview of initial missions to the Hui Muslims in China. It is part 9 of a series, so the whole piece is longer. But worth reading. I was interested in it because I spent four summers in Gansu Province during the years that I was teaching in Beijing.

I first traveled to Gansu back in 2006.

I had an idea to try to get in touch with a village school in Gansu. So I didn’t want to stay in a youth hostel. Truth be told, there wasn’t much for youth hostels in Lanzhou at that time anyway, but I would not have wanted to go to one even if there was. That’s very unusual for me. A good youth hostel is usually the first thing I look for. But my idea was to be near Northwest Normal University so that I could try to meet a teacher from the countryside who could put me in touch with village education. So I got the brainstorm to call the university and ask for the Foreign Experts building, not knowing if there even was one.

Fortunately, there was one, and I was able to stay there for a nominal cost. Then I walked around the campus until I met a teacher and asked him if I could visit his village. Turned out his cousin was running a summer school, so I met up with her and helped her teach the children. That was the first of four summers I spent up on the Tibetan Plateau in “Gannan’” the southern part of Gansu Province bordering Sichuan.

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Labels: China Missions, Hui Muslims, Travel Gansu