Cow Street

The boys and I went exploring a new part of town, Muslim Quarter.  Our excursion took us through zhende hutongs, the real deal hutongs, the kind where people actually live and share the bathroom down the street.  A hutong is a maze like street of buildings, now becoming popular tourist destinations.

Most do not have dryers, and if you look closely on the roof you can see a water heater, the orange like pipe contraption.  One of the coolest things I have seen is their hanging gardens.  The squash and pumpkins are overhead hanging down.

These beautiful painting were on the walls of the hutong.

Following our map and directions from a friend we kept our eye out for Cow Street.  Now as I didn't see it in writing I am thinking in my head, Kao Lu, which would be the Chinese version right.  Unfortunately I couldn't find it anywhere on the map, but knew we were headed in the right direction.

On our way we stopped off at this little temple.

I love these steles.  

After the temple we turned on Niujie.  Reading the characters, I turned to the boys and asked them if they recognized them and could tell me what it meant.  That's when it hit me, Cow Street!  It wasn't a Chinese word with the same pronunciation it was actually already being translated for me from the Chinese!  Niu-cow, Jie-street.

Prayer benches.

Talking about ringing your bell!  This dragon fish would be rammed into a super huge bell to send it ringing.

Your guess is as good as mine, but I think this was super awesome!

We watched them do the call to prayer here.  All the men were dressed in white and stood in formation, joining in with some actions during the call.  At it's conclusion they entered the prayer hall and shut the door.  Although we did not see any women participating we did find the woman's prayer hall in the back of the complex and there were a few wandering around.

Fascinating seeing the Muslim and Chinese cultures intertwine.  Here is a typical Chinese roof complete with guardians but instead of a scenic picture there is the traditional Arabic writing over the door.