Lhasa is usually described as a Tibetan city, and it is, but it has also been a trading town on a route that connected China, Central Asia, Nepal and India, and people from those directions settled here. Among them were Chinese-speaking Muslims, known in Chinese as Hui, who came as merchants and butchers and stayed, and whose community is concentrated in the south-east of the old city around the mosque. There is also a much older Tibetan-speaking Muslim population, descended from traders from Kashmir and Ladakh.
The quarter
The area is a short walk from the Barkhor, and it is unmistakable: a large mosque in a walled compound with Chinese-style roofs, a smaller mosque nearby, and a cluster of restaurants, bakeries, butcher shops and groceries around them, with signs in Chinese and some Arabic as well as Tibetan. The two communities have historically kept to different trades, and the food trade is the most visible today. The alleys are narrow, busy and thoroughly everyday.
What to eat
The Hui kitchens here cook a cuisine that will be familiar from western China: hand-pulled noodles in beef broth, fried and steamed dumplings, flatbreads and large naan-like loaves baked against the wall of an oven, grilled mutton skewers, braised beef and offal, and sweet pastries. It is heavier on wheat, beef and mutton than Tibetan food and much less dependent on yak and barley. Because the community has been here for centuries, some dishes have drifted towards local ingredients - a mutton soup enriched with barley, for instance - and a few restaurants serve both Tibetan and Hui dishes side by side. Breakfast is a good time to come, when the bakeries are pulling bread out of the ovens.
Practical notes
The quarter is in the old city within walking distance of the Jokhang and the Barkhor, and is easy to find by following the mosque's minaret. It is an ordinary residential and commercial neighbourhood, so dress and behave accordingly, and do not photograph inside the mosques without permission. The restaurants are cheap and open from early morning to evening. If you are interested in the history, the community's own accounts make clear how old and how mixed the settlement is, which is a useful corrective to the idea that Lhasa was ever a single, uniform place.
