Linxia
Above a metal shop has been busy making mosque decorations and a gate, a bicycle repair man waits by the side of the road. Below a man stops for a smoke, and a noodle-maker performs magic. He takes lumps of dough and makes noodles, with no tool but his hands, in mere seconds. Fantastic.
Linxia is a small town by Chinese standards. Lonely Planet devotes hardly a half-page to the place. I suspect they only mention it because the popular back-packer destination Xiahe is normally reached through Linxia, and it is often impossible to get to Xiahe without spending a night in Linxia. However, I found Linxia to be fantastic, in it's own right. First of all, it's a Muslim Hui town, one of the few towns you can find in China which is predominantly Muslim. Mosques are readily apparent, as the tallest buildings in town are only five or six stories and the average is two stories in the city center and one everywhere else. The mosques are fantastically Chinese. If you couldn't see the symbols of Islam, you'd assume that the Mosques were either Tao or Buddhist. Especially the smaller and older ones have the same ornate paintings and are built in the same style of architecture as those other Chinese religious structures, the minarets being the only major difference.
However, I didn't spend my short time in Linxia photographing the mosques. I was enchanted by the views of country life, the farmers in their fields, the golden wheat and still fresh silked corn interspersed with barley heavy on the stalk, bent down by the fat whiskery heads. Fields of watermelons and even tiger lilies has passed by outside the bus windows on our way to Linxia and I was dying to get into that country to photograph it for myself. I ended up walking through Linxia, photographing people as I went, until at last I arrived on a plateau high above the city where the farms began in earnest.
Ahwensung Ahwensung in B and W Ahwensung Kids Ahwensung Monks China Flowers Ganjia Grasslands Hezuo Karjam Labrang Monastery Linxia Linxia Farms in B and W Linxia Farm Kids Machu Machu People Nomads Near Ahwensung Qingdao Xiahe Xi'an
Andong Mask Dance Festival Tibetan Photos I Tibetan Photos II
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