Is China Muslim-Friendly? 🇨🇳 We Traveled With Our Kids to Find Out

Most people don't realize this. That China has a deep Muslim history and thanks to Islamic Travel AU we got to experience that firsthand. We spent 10 days traveling across China as a Muslim family and what we discovered challenged everything that we thought we knew about this country. From halal foods to masajid to unforgettable moments with our kids this trip truly surprised us in many many ways. So let's just dive right into it. We flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Which is one of the perks of living in Asia is that everything's relatively close. It wasn't that far. Six hours. Not bad. All right we just landed in Beijing at 3 30 a.m and we're a little bit tired today. A little bit jet-lagged. As we are here in Beijing to start a 10-day Islamic tour of China with Islamic Travel AU we are so excited. Not only are we going to visit one of the oldest, actually the oldest mosque in China which is like 1,300 years old. We're also going to take the kids to the Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, Forbidden City. Wow. So cool. So much history to explore. Lots of rich culture and we started our morning just kind of going for a walk in and around our hotel. So stay tuned for the exciting things. Okay so one thing we kind of mentally prepared for but not really was like it was gonna be cold right so we all got our tubes and our jackets. It's hard living in the tropics for a year and then coming to cold and then just being cold. Now this is actually our first ever travel as a group. So that we have to put that in there because this was a totally different travel experience. You're going with a group of people you have no idea who they are. You meet them on day one basically and you're spending 10 days with them. You don't know how weird they are. You experience was phenomenal. I would just ask that question to you again because it's the first time we've ever traveled with a group and when I say travel it mean like travel. So yes or no would you do it again and what was kind of your how do you feel about it? Oh 100% yes I would do it again. Not just because we had a great time but I feel like it's a totally different experience when you're with a group of people and you really get to know them firsthand. You spend you know all the way from morning till nighttime with these people. You dine with them, you adventure with them, you get to sightsee with them and the entire like group itself was fantastic. There was people of all ages. Your kids basically get to be exposed to you know seniors and younger people and the whole dynamic is just it's just different and we really enjoyed it. So for me I like to just adventure. I don't like a lot of pre-planning and I don't like a lot of itineraries whereas she is the queen of having to micromanage absolutely everything top down right which is great because I don't have to. She does all that logistical side of it which is great but being able to be like what time do we meet downstairs? Eight o'clock. Eight o'clock we're there on the bus and away we go and all of our worries and concerns were totally eliminated. Was a fantastic experience and I would highly recommend obviously Islamic Travel AU. So the cool part about this group trip with Islamic Travel AU is everything is pre-arranged. So we basically got to the hotel, everything is good to go. They tell us just like you said like 8 a.m let's meet at this time. They already have the bus arranged for people that need wheelchairs. The wheelchairs are arranged. And people to push the wheelchairs. That part was also arranged. Which is really cool. All of the activities are already arranged. Restaurants already arranged. The museums. Literally everything. Every excursion, every experience that we had they took care of everything. It's all included in your package. So just the fact that you just show up and you just get to do all the things takes the guesswork out of traveling and you don't have to like sit there and sit on chatGBT and plan out your entire itinerary about the best things and places to visit because they've done it all for you. So this trip guys was super special for us because obviously being able to see the Muslim heritage in China which is way older than I ever imagined. But being able to also see the amazing cultural side. Being able to see certain wonders of the world was fantastic. But day one we got there super early into Beijing. I will say I was actually very surprised with Beijing and how clean the air was. Now one thing we'll say about China that we did notice is there's cameras everywhere. So cameras everywhere. Now in terms of safety that's definitely a nice thing. We expected. Yeah you feel like no one's going to pickpocket you or anything like that. You feel a little bit more on the safer side right? Yeah. So there's that. But the second thing is you kind of feel like you're being watched like at all times. So that part takes a bit to get used to. And there's police everywhere. Like on almost like every street corner there's like a little booth. A police booth. So you do feel safe. I will say I never felt unsafe in China. Yeah. And so as a family traveling as a family I feel good about that part that you don't have anything to worry about. So you know day one we just was very relaxing. We just decided you know that we as a group we would take rickshaw rides through the old kind of old part of Beijing which was a really cool experience. But when he says rickshaw rides he doesn't mean the ones in Pakistan where it's like a motorcycle and you're sitting. No no. This was I mean like a literal dude on a bicycle. Like the ones in Bangladesh. Where it's a guy on a bicycle and a little rickshaw and away you go. Oh Yusuf was all about this. Like Yusuf every day was like can we go on a rickshaw ride? Can we go on the rickshaw? But he was asleep the whole first ride. The issue was that he slept the entire trip. So the whole thing he looked forward to he missed. So he did miss out on that. Although he did go on one rickshaw ride. We did make it up to him. Where he was awake. In Shanghai. Yeah. I mean give me a fun fact about China. Ketchup was invented here. But in the terms it's like pickled fish. And then when it came to the U.S. then a guy started adding tomatoes and then sold it. And then that's how it became Heinz ketchup today. According to her research. According to all facts books. Yeah it's true. Sleeping through it all. That was really nice. Strolling through. You know seeing all the weeping willows. We were only allowed two people per rickshaw. So it was basically Will one of the girls and me one of the girls. And then halfway through we switched. So we switched halfway. And Yusuf was with them because I have to offset my larger frame. Yeah. Huh? What did you say? I said when I get off I'm not gonna add it or else I would just be like hopping. Hopping why? Because I made you into a mermaid lady? China's definitely colder than Malaysia huh? Not even remotely cold. And he was asleep on me anyway. So there's that. So it was just a nice. Relaxing. Welcome to Beijing. Welcome to China. So another thing that Islamic Travel did is they had tour guides. And they were English speaking. And you could ask them any question that you wanted. And they gave us such a wealth of information. Everywhere we went they just told us all about that place. And they actually gave us these like ear pieces. So everywhere we would go they would like speak into our ears. I don't know. It's like a tour guide. It's like you get this like little device basically. And like earphones. And you can put them in. And then they speak on a microphone. So you don't have to be close to them. You can be far away from them doing your own thing. But you can still hear everything they're telling you. And I will say Peter was our tour guide. And he was fantastic. And he was super funny. So on day two we found out you know that we're we're going to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. We are here at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. And it's massive for sure. Very beautiful. And you know what? Very clean. Has a lot of history that we will speak about later. Now to get in was a whole ordeal. It was a whole ordeal. It took some time. I will say that this is I've never seen crowds in my life like I've seen there. I mean other than like Hajj and Umrah and stuff. A massive portion of the tourism in China is from within China. Yeah. So you have huge amounts of people that are touring their own country. Which I think is fantastic in keeping your money and your own economy. And there's a billion plus people. Yeah. So they got a lot of people to do some tourism. So that part took some time. But I mean the wait was worth it for sure. Like there was a lot of walking. I think we walked I don't know how much. Seven kilometers. Seven kilometers. I think is what is what the Forbidden City works out to be. Yeah. The Forbidden City we didn't even we didn't even scratch the surface. Yeah. So much of it but there's so much to see that you could literally spend all day there. And when yeah it puts you it puts into perspective like what life was like back when this was in its heyday. Because it was like you walk through the gates and then it's a courtyard and it's beautiful and then you go through the gates and it's a courtyard. And then there's more gates. And there's gates all the way you know back you know to where the palace is. It's like it's like it was like different levels. So it's like the intimate kind of people that were there and then the people that had more permission. Which you were forbidden. More permission and then like it just like continues. That's the cool part is that this was forbidden. The city was forbidden but we got to experience it along with a whole lot of other people. Those of you that don't know the Forbidden City is a vast imperial palace in Beijing that once housed Chinese emperors for nearly 500 years. And it was actually eventually closed to the public during imperial rule. The Forbidden City was the heart of imperial China. And it was forbidden for anyone to enter if you were not part of like the royal court. So it's a big deal that we get to walk through it. And when you go and you have a tour guide there's actually so much drama that was taking place. It was like family drama between people trying to overthrow this guy and they're killing him and they're going to put their person in power. Oh man it was a lot of history. Yeah there's a lot of histories. And so moving forward to the next day we got to go to the Summer Palace which was the Chinese emperor's escape when they wanted to get away from the heat. It's an enormous royal garden filled with lakes, temples, palaces and it was for kind of rest and reflection. And oh my god was it beautiful. It was stunning. It was so pretty. And I wish we were there in the summer because I feel like in the summer it would be a totally different experience. It was a winter palace for us. Yeah it was a little bit cold but it's so pretty. And it's right on the lake. So after that we went to the Great Wall of China. Now this one obviously our kids were the most excited about because I mean anyone that hears the word China they're like Great Wall of China. They need to think we need to go. So it takes a bit of time to go up there. It is pretty high up. Let me just let me just pause there. I did not know okay and I'm a bit of a history person. I've always loved history. I did not know that if you were to stretch out the Great Wall in a straight line and pull it around did you know that it would encompass half of the earth? I told you that fact. I know. And you were like no. I was like no. I was like no no actually. I literally had to fact check her on the Great Wall and I was like oh my god. So this is including this is including like the damaged sections and stuff that have been destroyed but believe it's 21,000 kilometers long or it's we're close to that number. Now when you when you see this thing okay so when you see it from down below you're not even on it or anywhere near it you're like how the heck did they get up there and like take the building supply? How did they do that? Yeah what she's talking about hopefully we have video of that part but it's on the top of the mountain. It's mind-blowing. It's not just like okay build a wall here. There ain't no trails. There ain't no trucks. Human ingenuity is something that is mind-boggling because when you see what these guys did. And the bricks are like perfect it's not even like mismatched stones or like it's like perfect. Basically walk up from the point where the bus can't take you and then you take the most terrifying gondola ride of your life. It's not a yeah it's a ski lift. It's not a gondola. It's a ski lift. It's just a seat. Oh my god. That you go up on. And of course we were thinking gondola like an enclosed because a couple months ago we went for my birthday to Genting Highlands and they have like a nice gondola that goes down the mountain and it's a fully enclosed like just like in Langkawi same thing. So in our minds we were like okay gondola. We didn't know but there was a gondola. We just didn't get yeah yeah there's an actual gondola. But I think because we arrived later in the day because we did the forbidden palace I think that was closed down so our only option was to take the chairlift to the top of the mountain and she's terrified of heights. And we couldn't all go together so it was her and Yousef. Oh my god. Me and the girls. I'm actually sweating. I'm sweating thinking about it because I literally thought I was gonna die. I thought I thought I was gonna die and then I thought Yousef was gonna fall to the earth and plummet down and be squished like a bug. It's actually terrifying so if you're scared of heights him no problem. He's like oh this is fine. The girls weren't. No they had no problem. They were okay. Because they were with dad. My god it is so high up there is nothing to put. There is no seat belt. That's the scary part. You just sit down on it they put this bar on you and all you got is the bar. Now if you make one little uh you're gone. That's it. You're dead. Not exactly. Okay so we weren't expecting the cable car to be open going up to the great wall and anybody that knows Sana knows she's terrified of heights so and she's got Yousef right now. I do not think she's enjoying this one bit. No no straight up like there there's nothing holding your child other than your arm. I was squeezing him for dear life and I and I was reciting every dua possible known to man and I was like if I if my life ends now what like anyways sorry for being dramatic but it is absolutely terrifying. She's not she's actually underplaying how she actually acted so she's downplaying it a lot. It was scary okay and then going down same thing. I'm literally sweating thinking about it. You okay Sana? Yeah mom doesn't realize it yet. It gets hectic when you got to get off because you got to get off quick otherwise the thing's gonna pull you over. So I'm kind of worried. I wish I would have went first actually. Who's Gugu? Okay so aside from that Beijing was done then we took a train like a bullet train to Xi'an. Xi'an? No Xi'an is the company that makes cheap products. It's Xi'an. Xi'an. Xi'an. I probably got it wrong too but it's not Xi'an okay. Okay so from there the very first thing that we did was visit an ancient mosque and this was extremely cool. I don't know if 1300 years is ancient but it is the oldest mosque in China founded in 742 CE during the Tang dynasty. Yeah so this mosque has stood for over 1300 years and the cool thing about it is they blended traditional Chinese architecture with Islamic faith and history and I will tell you we'll definitely overlay here but when you see how they wrote the 30 Jews of the Quran hand carved into these wooden panels in Arabic and below it translated it into Chinese. So all of the the whole Quran is in Arabic translated to Chinese hand carved in these beautiful 30 panels all around the masjid. It's so beautiful. Yeah when you walk in there it's definitely like a warm feeling. They have it's all wood absolutely beautiful. Prayed there. I got to pray Jumu'ah there which was pretty cool. So different I will tell you this. Okay a brief caveat. I got a book. I had the imam come to me. He singled me out from the whole crowd and he said come I want to I want to talk to you and he spoke good English and so he he presented me with a gift and I was I was blown away. I was like wow this is incredible. It's a book that he wrote about the history of the masjid. I have the book maybe we could show it but so he went through it and he said you know we want to give you this as a gift. You're a foreigner. You're coming here and I said wow like this is incredible. Thank you so much and then his next line was normally when we give gifts the people donate something. It's like shark man. He totally rooked me into having to donate but Alhamdulillah. So from here we went to the city wall. Now those of you that don't know there is a huge city wall kind of like the Great Wall of China. I believe it's 14 kilometers around the city. Yeah and it was super fun. The kids had a blast. You can actually walk and bike the entire thing. It's the oldest intact like ancient city walls in the world. It's really cool and they have this beautiful lit up bell tower in the middle of the city in the main square and it's so pretty. So it is over 600 years old built in the 14th century during the Ming dynasty. Will was right it's 14 kilometers long. You go up there and you walk but they also had a bicycle area. Unfortunately we weren't able to do that because the kids were too young for it but it is a very cool experience. You can see the entire city from there and then we were off to what I would say is my favorite part of the trip. Obviously the history the Muslim history and everything but what I was most looking forward to was the terracotta army which is an army of some 8,000 intact terracotta soldiers that were discovered in the 1970s. They're digging a well. Just so much history here and I could talk about this for hours and hours and hours. They're built over 2,200 years ago. Yeah by the first emperor of China. The whole story about the first emperor of China is crazy. His tomb is there. They haven't opened it. It's a whole thing. There's documentaries. The Netflix documentary about the terracotta warriors. Go and watch it. It was fantastic and we watched it before we went so the kids were super excited. No two warriors are the same. They weren't the same. They weren't dull. They were actually hand painted. There's just so much I could say about this. That was really cool but it was really crowded. None of them were intact. The archaeologists painstakingly put every single one of those 8,000 back together again and put them back in their rows. Some of it they're leaving destroyed because they want to keep the history of it and then there's other parts. They haven't even opened up yet and again there's so much history there. I love history. It's fantastic and yes I got terracotta army soldier dude magnets. Our magnet wall and I didn't get the cheap ones on the outside. I paid top dollar to get them from the gift store inside. More than 2,000 years ago an entire army was buried here to protect the emperor forever. At least that's what they thought. Little did they know that we'd be excavating it and paying tickets to go and look at them after. Little did they know that the emperor would actually die on a PR trip and then have his throne stolen away from his older son who committed suicide because the younger son made a deal with his crazy story. It's a whole crazy story. Look it up. The documentary that we mentioned you have to watch it. It's really cool. So from here we took a flight to Shanghai. So Shanghai was the last city that we toured with Islamic Travel AU and Shanghai was a totally different vibe. It doesn't feel old whatsoever. There's like a bajillion huge skyscrapers. The fourth tallest building in the world. When you look at it, it doesn't look that big. No but there's skyline. I have to have to give this to them. It is stunning. The first thing that we did in Shanghai was we went to the Shanghai Garden. This was built over 400 years ago during the Ming dynasty and it's got rock formations, koi ponds, pavilions, ancient trees. I'm not a big fan of like gardens and like flowers but I'm a huge fan of Chinese gardens. After going and seeing so many beautiful gardens and how they set things up and let's let's speak on this in that back in those days, women didn't leave the house. Yeah. And so they needed these big beautiful gardens and stuff inside the house because they were at home while everybody else went out. But it is so incredibly stunning. The reflexology rocks in in the path. So you take your shoes off and you walk on these rock paths and it's meant to you know. So nice. Chinese reflexology. Also one thing that one of the tour guides had told us was the the pathways that they have in the garden they're not straight. They're like literally like like this and like like all of the place goes around trees under and the reason why they did that is because they want you to stop and reflect and look around and just be present. If it was straight you wouldn't really pay attention to what anything looked like but I'm telling you that just that analogy and just walking through this garden you really slow down and just appreciate nature and I think that part itself was so beautiful. And the littlest turtle I've ever seen in my life. Be like this big. Tiniest guy. But wow. And then from there you walk out into this ginormous shopping district. Yep. Which was really cool because it was like old style. Yeah. But it was old style but new. Lots of souvenirs. If you like shopping you'll probably really enjoy this area. Then we went to a village. We went to a village. It was a village. It was a village. It was Venice. It was Venice in China. The Venice of China. Yeah. Wow. Which is again you can look that up as well but it was just so stunningly beautiful. We got to take the little canal boat you know through the the trip that we had there and it was so calm and so beautiful being able to see you know the the old style and how they've preserved it. So this is known as the Venice of China. It's a 1700 year old water town filled with canals stone bridges and traditional Chinese life. Like if you want to have a zen time and you want to just relax and just enjoy the historical beauty of this place you have to go there. And this is where Yusuf finally got his rickshaw arrived. Yeah. Okay I bought the magnet before he said that. Yeah. Once again it's us rickshawing it. One thing we also have to mention is all of the meals obviously Islamic Travel AU covered all the meals. We went to all these different restaurants trying different Chinese, Uyghur, all different types of food and cuisines. Really interesting trying hot pot for the first time. I really like that. Different cuisine like duck for the first time. There's all these different things that we did at these halal restaurants. But if you're a foodie you'll definitely enjoy it. If your kids are picky probably not. Our kids are picky. So she prepared peanut butter and jam sandwiches or peanut butter Nutella sandwiches like every day. Yeah. That was a win. Yeah. Yeah the food the food was great for sure. Okay so then we ended our trip on the harbour of Shanghai. And I will tell you I've seen a lot of harbours in my life and a lot of cityscapes and I think Shanghai is probably the most beautiful harbour I've ever seen. It's beautiful. And our friends on the trip a lot most of them are from Australia and they pretty much all agreed unanimously. Yeah. And they have Sydney which is one of the most beautiful in the world as well. So we took a tour on a boat on a cruise boat ship thing that took us around and we went all around the the harbour just enjoying it. The lights the just everything. The kids were mesmerized by this. Probably 18 now. What do you think? He's showing me all his favourite colours. What do you think of the city? Is it pretty? Yeah. Which one is your favourite? The big line. So pretty hey? Yes. Now we want to give a huge thank you to Hany and Yusuf for making this trip so so special. Yusuf, our Yusuf became like besties with Yusuf. Yusuf Yusuf. And he seriously took care of everything for anyone. If anybody on this in this group needed a single thing he was the first to help them. Super accommodating like. Fantastic. That's the thing with these groups is that you come as strangers you leave as family. The really cool part is that you get to interact with each other eating and interacting all day every day. It was a really cool experience and at the very end, the last night we were there we were craving some comfort food so we managed to find a Pakistani restaurant and Yusuf and his family came with us and we had some great, amazing, we way over did it with the food. Oh yeah. Chai was amazing. It was great. So if you guys have any questions regarding this trip definitely leave those questions down below we'd be more than happy to share but we highly highly recommend that if you are planning a trip to China visit these sites and remember like I think we tend to forget like we hear China and we just think oh big scary but we forget that there's millions of Muslims that do live in China whether it's in the Uyghur area whether it's all across China and our history is there so visit it. And Muslims have played an integral part in the government system of China for hundreds and hundreds of years so do take some time to learn the history before you go. Again, big thank you to Islamic Travel AU which is one of the largest Islamic travel companies in Australia and they do tours everywhere. Yeah, absolutely. They do Umrah, they do Aqsa, they do Al-Andalus, they do amazing, they have a whole lot going on and we cannot thank them enough and we cannot praise them enough and we cannot encourage you enough to book with them. It was a phenomenal experience and we cannot wait until the next time we go. Alright guys, thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time. Alright guys, Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh. you