Qurban 1428H – Yunnan China

On the day of Hari Raya Haji, we arrived bright and early (730am dok!) at the nearby village.

Wearing Jubah during winter is so not a good idea because it ups the cold factor by 600%. We actually wore our outfit for the day under it, but it was still cold. I mean, you know, wearing jeans with a relatively short top during solat raya (for girls) isn’t very sopan you know. Or at least that’s what I think.

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And when I say the ENTIRE village came to welcome us, I really mean the ENTIRE village.

They takbir-ed and entered the mosque together. Really nothing like Singapore. You can really feel the spirit of raya in the air, really something I won’t ever forget. I actually have a vid of the procession but I have to first process the video to make it less than 100MB and I’m lazy to do that now.

Yup, more on the hot imam later on.

The cina mosque

Really friendly woman who was asking how old I was, etc etc. It really helps to know how to speak Mandarin because then you can speak with the villagers and I don’t know, I just think it makes it that much more meaningful.

Plus you have NO idea how much my Mandarin has improved just on this trip. Haha. I even made friends with those youngsters working in giordano. I’m totally serious. haha.

That’s my dad. Sitting beside the imam. And that’s what I call, taknak kalah. Haha.

Off comes the jubah, mwahahha.

My mum and Aishah, the wife of one of the imams of the mosque

She spoke Arabic so my mum could talk to her in bits and pieces. She invited us to her home and we chatted for a while. Really really hospitable people la. Terharu man. Her husband is in Syria and would only come back in like, 5 years time.

And then the kambing truck arrives!

My dad was the only one to have hot imam in his photo la! Because my dad was the first to go and hot imam was helping to sembelih the sheep. So his white jubah got soaked with blood and so when it got to our sheep, he already left to change his clothes! !

My SISTER THE KAMBING STEALER!! I saw the brown kambing and I wanted it ah! And she stole it from me!!!! Yup of course she has to be different right. Firstly, of all questions, she asked my mum if she could hug her sheep. And then, when we were writing our signs, she had to have the smiley face la, exclamation mark la, and notice the “baik dok!” at the bottom of the paper.

SHEESH.

Hot imam in kental clothes. Sigh sigh sigh.

Wah, when he speaks arab ah, its like music for the universe.

Qurban here in Yunnan is different because the people in this poverty stricken village only eat meat once a year. Basically if we don’t do qurban, they have no meat. All the sheep/cows we Singaporeans sacrifice will last them the whole year. That’s why I think its more meaningful to Qurban/Aqiqah in these villages than to do it in Singapore or a city like Beijing because the people don’t really need the meat.

Click for colour, if you really want to. :S

I was just amazed at how they really treasure the meat that they are given because they really meticulously peel off the skin, making sure it doesn’t tear so they can use the leather. And how they take every single part of the sheep even the head to make soup or whatever.

I saw some dude washing the oseophagus and keeping it.

Its really super gotong-royong, the whole village comes down to help and they’re so grateful for the meat. They cooked the qurban meat for us for lunch.

The qurban took place in the Boys madrasah compound. So behind the basketball court where they were sacrificing sheep, they were sacrificing cows!

I’ve never seen cows being qurban-ed before ah!

Click for colour, if you really want to. :S

Click for colour, if you really want to. :S

They had to tie the cow up, because of the size. (There’s a picture of it pre-qurban in the facebook album) And OMG the size of the knife used.. And how the blood sputtered out of the neck.. And check out the bucket that was filled to the brim with the cow’s blood.

My sister and her weirdass affinity to animals. We were at LiJiang ancient town right, and she bought a toy giraffe. GIRAFFE. Its her latest obsession, she says.

GIRAFFE!

Hot imam telling us about the madrasah and how Cik Mariah has helped them fund the place. The girl is one of our jemaah. She’s from Alsagoff so she was the only one who could speak fluent arab and she translated hot imam’s speech for us.

After that hot imam took some of our jemaah to his house and SIGH SIGH SIGH! They reported seeing wedding photos and like a photo of him with his wife and kid.

We had to leave for the next village because we only did half of the qurban in this village. So the other half was to be done in the other village.

Imagine the entire village of 500-600 people sharing 26 sheep and 2 cows for an entire year.

We all got into the vans to go to the next village and Aishah told me to come back here for dinner, and not to leave… was so sad la! They were genuinely happy to see us and were really hospitable..really can’t describe it in words.

I told her insyaAllah, I’ll come back next year.

We left for a nearby kindergarten (on the way to the other village), which Cik Mariah helped to build. She’s now working on improving their toilets because its currently just a bigass shithole (that’s what she called it!), which the kids frequently fall into.

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SUPER CUTE!

The Muslim villages are all in very rural areas and up in the mountains. The journey to the next village was about 30mins on rocky roads.

Village name!

The girls from the madrasah who were waiting to welcome us.

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After that we walked up the street where 23974329874 more villagers were waiting for us. Wah, this one I really cannot tahan already. They were SO incredibly happy to see us, when I salam-ed the old aunties and they excitedly grabbed my hand so tightly and just the joy in their voices as they said ‘Assalamualaikum’, wah I totally started crying. But I was wearing shades, so I totally step cool ah, padahal tengah nangis.

OOH There was another pretty kambing!

I was watching the qurban and chatting with this lady who supervises the madrasah. She was telling me how grateful they were that we did qurban in the village because every year they wait for hari raya haji to get a taste of meat.

She kept thanking me and saying that its really something that she wishes she could repay us. Was sooo sad la, I just didnt know what to say other than no need to thank me.

They cooked dinner for us, totally served us like VVVVIPs and we stayed there till pretty late (10+pm). We were about to leave and the villagers were telling us to spend the night there, because it was so late already. This auntie even grabbed us and told us not to leave, and not to forget her, come back soon.

SO SAD YOU KNOW!!!

Really ah, their hospitality cannot be matched.

This is really the most memorable hari raya haji ever!

The next day it was back to Kunming, the city of eternal spring. It got pretty cold in the village, especially at night, the temperature was as low as 0-2 deg. The weather in Kunming was nice. Was mostly 15-19 deg, its like outdoor aircon. Very comfortable weather.

Cheng Ho park!

We had to climb like, a bajillion steps.

I was trying to read it la ok. But all I could read were the numbers, ren, ke and zhong. Hahah!

Dinner at a super nice restaurant called Aladdin. ROXXORZX la the restaurant! Clean, nice toilets and good food.

The rest of the time was spent walking around Kunming. Shopping, mostly. Heh.

Skippy Peanut Butter is like, RMB3.30. That’s like, SGD0.60 aka SIXTY CENTS, BALLS.

Bought hoards of rice crackers and Oreo wafer sticks, which I have been binging on, resulting in my waist size being 73298475236 as of today.

!!!!!!!!!!

We saw really soft blankets from Germany in the Carrefour.

Heh. The people behind us must think we’re mad. Heh heh.

On the last day, they brought us to a flower market which was very near the airport. My sister saw this:

And she was gushing about how cute the girafffe was.

Yup.

And we got to the airport, not knowing the nightmare that was waiting to happen. We all had the mindset that by 1am, we would be in glorious Singapore, eating Burger King, Mee Soto, Mee Rebus etc.

The faces of the stranded.

We only got moving at 1.50am, plane only took off at 240am.

BAIK CHINA EASTERN!

Full set of photos:

Shangri-La
Stone Forest
Qurban
Kunming