Islam entered China through Central Asia in the 7th century,staying mostly in the northwestern corner of the empire,in what is now the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, It was introduced to more central regions through the occasional estward migration of Xinjiang’s Uighur people,and through the arrival of Arab trading vessels in southeastern ports like Quanzhou during the Song dynasty(960-1270),but it failed to catch on with han chinese the way Buddhism did,Those han who did convert are now lumped into a separate ethnic group,the hui,Beijing’s Hui and Uighur populations don’t mix as much as their shared religious beliefs might lead you to expect t,the former dominating southeastern Beijing around the niujie Mosque and the Latter kept mostly in a series of constantly shifting ghettos.A vist to the mosque on Niu jie reveals Chiense Islam to be pretty much the same as Islam to be pretty much the same as Islam anywhere else.
