Another contentious issue for Muslims is the education of their children, according to the 51-year-old imam. "A Muslim naturally wants his or her children to be educated in the Islamic tradition. As far as I know, Guangzhou does have a couple of Islamic schools for children aged between 5 and 16, operated by Arab Muslims. But due to a number of reasons, ranging from cost to cultural differences, African Muslims - apart from those from the Arabic countries of North Africa - rarely send their children to these schools," he said. "Behind the growing number of African Muslims in the city, there is an even larger number of children left back home in Africa. The separation must be painful for all concerned."

Growing competition

According to Wang Caixia, who operates a small logistics company on Xiatangxi Road, just around the corner from Baixun Hostel, the Muslim traders have not been helped by the economic situation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the continued appreciation of the yuan and the growing competition among themselves.

"Have you noticed the line of minivans parked outside along the street? They are responsible for sending the African traders' purchases to our storerooms and ultimately to the port," she said. "If you take the hotel as the central point, within a radius of 5 kilometers, there are around 30 logistics companies, including ours. Collectively, our businesses offer telltale indications of the economic health of the Africans."

Wang said the best days were those directly before 2008, when the goods her company transported filled nearly 100 containers every month. Today, that number has dropped to somewhere between 10 and 20, depending on the month of the year.

"With the onslaught of the financial tsunami, things took an abrupt turn and went into what seemed back then like free-fall. But it touched the bottom by the end of 2009, and from that point, things have consistently improved, although I'm still not too sure about the chances of a full recovery," she said. "The fact that most of the traders are dealing in the middle-to-low end of the market has made them extremely vulnerable to the fickleness of the economy."

Amadou Ndiaye, a Malian Muslim whose transformation from wide-eyed foreign student to businessman and old China hand took nearly 30 years, said the pinch caused by the rising value of the Chinese currency has been palpable. "We have to sell the goods we buy in Guangzhou at a much higher price to people in Africa, which means goods that used to take one week to sell now routinely take two or three months," he said.

But the traders continue to arrive, undeterred by any uncertainty that might appear on the horizon. This, according to Ndiaye, has as much to do with religion and family ties as entrepreneurship.

"When I first came to Guangzhou in 1985, I was a student at the city's South China Agricultural University," recalled the 54-year-old who spends 75 percent of his time in Guangzhou running his business. "Only one mosque was open at the time and the few foreign Muslim students - mostly from Mali - would sometimes join the 200 or so Chinese Muslims for Friday prayers. But those occasions were quite rare: Most of the time, we just prayed at the dorm, led by a fellow Malian student who was an imam back in Africa."

These days, the mosque to which he referred, Huaisheng, or Holy Remembrance Mosque, receives more than 2,000 worshippers on Fridays. However, that number is dwarfed by attendances at Xianxian, or Bygone Sage Mosque, which is reputed to attract nearly 10,000 people to the weekly Jumu'ah. Both mosques are located in the old town in the city's heart and will be forever associated with one man - Saad bin Abi Waqqas, an important companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Some say he was the prophet's maternal uncle, and the first Islamic preacher in China.

He is reputed to have arrived in China in around AD 620 and it was at his behest that the Huaisheng Mosque was constructed in around AD 625 during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), making it the oldest mosque in the country. Historians differ over both the date of his death and his final resting place, but according to a theory espoused by the bulk of Chinese scholars, he passed away in around AD 630 and was buried in Guangzhou. Xianxian Mosque was later built close to the grave.

An international metropolis

On days other than Friday, Xianxian, covering 28,000 square meters, is a garden cemetery with a solitary beauty, enveloped perennially in the lush greenery of the subtropical city. The slab-covered trail leading to what is believed to be Waqqas' burial chamber is regularly washed clean by the rain and is trodden by pious Muslims year-round.

"Trade brought the Muslims to Guangzhou 1,400 years ago, in very much the same way it does today," said Wang Wenjie. "Back then, they introduced Islam to the coastal city and partly through that, the entire country. Today, the influx of foreign Muslims has made Guangzhou an international metropolis and a magnet for Chinese Muslims who have opened more than 1,900 halal noodle restaurants in the city."

Mohammed Nagi, a Libyan Muslim who has lived in Guangzhou for eight years, said his attachment to the city began after his first visit to the Huaisheng Mosque.

"Someone told me that the mosque once sat right on the banks of the Pearl River, which runs through Guangzhou and the minaret served as a beacon for approaching ships. The water has since receded to about 2.4 miles (3,860 meters) away," he said. "Time can change a lot, but history lives on in the present. Every call to prayer rising from the top of the minaret echoes down the millennium."

Contact the writer at [email protected]

Peng Yining, Yang Yang, Li Wenfang and Zhang Yu'an contributed to this story.

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