Red Henna, a plant from Western China
I remember growing up, there was one question I always had trouble answering:
"Are you Muslim?”
My Hui and Salar classmates often asked me this question when I was a child, but as I grew older, I often got the same question from people less familiar with Muslim culture. My usual response was, "My mother is Hui, so I’m Muslim.” Yet, considering that my father is Mongolian, my family background is quite unique. I was registered as Mongolian on my residence paper, which made me feel like an outsider on the Hui side of my family. I felt similarly disconnected from the Mongolian side, as I didn't live with them, didn't speak Mongolian, didn't have a Mongolian name, and never felt connected to the Genghis Khan portraits that adorned my relatives' homes. I only remember that I had a cousin named Bartel, one of the most common Mongolian names. He later studied art and horse-head fiddle, but I can’t remember his face no matter how hard I try.
I don’t think I ever asked my parents why people from different ethnic minorities could get married. All I know is that my identity is something that cannot be changed. Despite my father not being Muslim, I was given a Muslim "scripture name" from the Quran—Sophia—when I was a little kid. Sophia, which in English means "knowledge and intelligence," has another layer of significance, as it is also the name of one of Muhammad's wives.
Before every major festival, the elders would take out henna powder, mix it with tea, and apply it to children's nails so they would wake up with a hint of crimson on their hands. This is one of my most vivid childhood memories associated with my Muslim identity. While I was flipping through old photos, my mother told me that my grandmother had also planted a henna tree in the farmhouse where I was born.
As a child, my understanding of religion was limited to taboos—like refraining from wearing provocative clothing or depicting faces, looking for the "Halal" logo when buying snacks, saying "Bismillah" before meals, greeting elders with "Salam," and the expectation that Muslim girls would wear the hijab after the age of nine and exercise greater prudence in their behavior. I remember my grandmother covering the eyes or entire faces of my toys because the elders referred to things with eyes as Iblis, which is another word for "devil." One of my cousins had pasted a lot of Ultraman stickers from BigBabol gums on his headboard, and his grandparents scraped all the eyes off the stickers. As I grew up, I heard older people questioning the younger generation's eating habits and whether they had blindly entered into relationships, expressing their concern about being "Sinicized" or "secularized."
The first eighteen years of my life were spent in Xining, a small city that runs along the Huangshui River from east to west. It has a rich diversity of indigenous ethnic groups, including Han, Tibetan, Hui, Tu, Salar, and Mongolian. As children, we didn't really pay special attention to differentiating between different ethnic groups or their beliefs, but we still compared family sects to determine whether someone was a "good Muslim." My primary school classmates made fun of me for being a "hybrid." They also suggested that my sect was too lax. When I munched on spicy snacks in front of the school, the Muslim girl in my class told me my Imani (faith) had gone. Now I seem to have forgotten how sad I was that day.
Around that time, I began to experience memory lapses. I’ve always read the ingredient list of every snack I purchase, starting from when I was given pocket money. Once, I ate Haoduoyu, a puffed snack that contained pork extract, and wasn’t sure if I should tell my mother. Given that it is a crime to waste food, I passed the remaining half to my dad. However, after learning that my father had been given a scriptural name—Yusuf—when he married my mom, I realized I had tricked a Muslim into eating non-halal food. This made me feel guilt and regret for weeks, months, or even years. I stopped eating Haoduoyu, but I didn’t have the courage to tell my family what had happened because I was afraid of being excluded from my Muslim identity.
In 2017, I moved to Guangzhou for college, and everything felt foreign during that long Lingnan summer—from the dialect to the exotic temples and gods. There was only one "Northwest Style" counter in the school cafeteria, and the nearby mall had a Lanzhou beef noodle restaurant. There was also a restaurant serving Xinjiang-style fried rice noodles, owned by a Han Chinese person, which wasn’t halal-certified. The only students who still wore hijab were those from Malaysia. When I was conducting interviews before a shoot, I learned that many Muslim girls from the northwest who came to the southeast coast for the first time would go to the mosque for prayer to feel at home.
I don’t know how to chant. I’ve never worn a hijab, and I don’t go to the mosque to pray. I don’t fast either. Once, while I was at the "Northwest Style" counter in the cafeteria, a random student asked me, "Are you Muslim?" I didn’t know what to say. I was also added to a WeChat group created by my Muslim classmates, but I left shortly after.
In 2018, I switched my major to journalism and, with a classmate, wrote a fieldwork report titled "Analysis of Urban Adaptation of Muslim Migrant Workers in Northwest China." For this report, we went to a noodle place near the school and spoke to my northwest fellows from Hualong, Qinghai, using participant observation and semi-structured interviews.
I met some girls who had dropped out of school and were working in their family’s noodle place. I was such a contrast to them. In their life pattern, entering arranged marriages at the age of 16 or 17 was almost the same as saying “marriage” was their “future.” Their adolescence might be one of the few times they could explore their thoughts. They took selfies with their hair loose on B612, told me their stories with boys they were dating online, and complained about how their fathers limited their freedom. These moments brought us closer.
I vaguely remember a brief conversation with the youngest daughter just before I left the noodle place at the end of my fieldwork. While I felt sorry for her because she couldn't choose her own life due to religious or ethnic limitations, she felt sorry for me because I hadn’t received an Islamic education and lacked inner peace. This made me realize that, despite living in the same city, we were in two parallel universes.
In fact, she was right. The intertwining of my sense of self with religion, family, and social circles has always been part of my upbringing. Even in front of my relatives, I find it hard to express this internal struggle. Our different upbringings drove a wedge between us. I didn’t know how to find a middle ground. I kept asking myself, "How should I choose my own identity?" But there were no clear answers.
I traveled between Xining and Guangzhou. I used my camera to document families, searching for signs of changing traditional ways of living. I also wandered around Guangzhou's Xiaobei, an enclave of Muslim immigrants from the northwest. I wondered whether cultural pluralism would become more visible—or disappear.
I began using the red color of henna as a visual guide to weave together my fragmented memories: red prayer mats, candies with Arabic printed on the packaging, crimson dates, pink hijabs, scarlet burqas, and high heels. These moments gave me a sense of happiness and belonging—or a metaphorical kind of pain. The inside and outside of the window represented two kinds of outcomes for henna: retaining a traditional way of living or stepping outside of it.
I spoke with many young Muslim girls and took portraits of them. We discussed topics that should have remained hidden—like hijab, periods, sex, taboos, and love. I also met girls who faced similar identity problems. What they wanted to avoid wasn’t religion, but rather the expected role of women in the family, patriarchal systems, the custom of “the younger the bride, the higher the bride price,” and arranged marriages that seemed doomed to fail.
I also noticed a growing sense of feminine power among them. Like feminists from other backgrounds, they were studying and working hard to become financially independent. Even in less visible corners, women’s empowerment was undeniably taking shape within the Muslim community. These women sought to break away from traditional roles and establish their own identity. Whether it was the short blonde hair set off by the backlight or rhinestones swaying on the veil, it brought to light the vitality of women.
In these stories, I may have found the courage to embrace who I am. Yet despite all this exploration, many questions still remain unanswered.
红色海娜，一种长在西部的植物
从小到大，有一个问题我总是难以回答，那便是：“你是穆斯林吗？”
小时候问我这个问题的人通常是我身边的回族、撒拉族同学，长大后问这个问题的通常又是其他对穆斯林文化不甚了解的人，我一般会回答：“我的妈妈是回族，是穆斯林。”
我出生在一个非常不典型的穆斯林家庭，因为我的父亲是一个蒙古族。在回族家庭中，我因为自己是户籍上的蒙古族而认为自己是不同的那个，像一个局外人。在蒙古族家庭中，我既不和他们生活在一起，不会说蒙语也没有蒙古族名字，对于亲戚家中成吉思汗的画像也常常感到陌生。我大概只记得自己有一个堂哥叫巴特尔，后来他也去学艺术了，去学马头琴的演奏，但我怎样都想不起他的样貌来。
我好像并没有问过父母为什么两个不同少数民族的人可以结婚。我只知道我的身份是无法改变的一件事情。
即使我的父亲并不是穆斯林，但自我记事起，我也拥有一个属于自己的穆斯林专有的“经名”——索菲亚。索菲亚在英文中的释义是聪明与智慧，在我的世界里，索菲亚还有另一层意思：穆圣的一位妻子的名字。
盛大的节日来临前，老人们会拿出海娜粉，将它与茶水混合涂抹在孩子们的指甲上，一觉醒来，双手便多了一抹绯红。这是我对穆斯林身份最真切的童年记忆。在翻阅老照片时，妈妈告诉我，我出生的农家院里，姥姥也种了一株海娜。
童年时，我对于宗教只知道禁忌而非其他，比如：忌讳面部形象，不穿短衣短裤，买零食的时候关注“清真”的标识，饭前要念“清真言”，见到长辈要问“赛俩目”，知道穆斯林少女九岁以后要带头巾对行为举止要更注意。在童年的记忆中，我的玩具如果有面部或眼睛，姥姥会拿布或者纸掩盖住这些眼睛或者面部形象。具有眼睛形象的物品被老人称为伊比利斯（Iblis，意为魔鬼）。表哥在床头贴了许多奥特曼的比巴卜贴纸，老人也会把贴纸眼睛刮去。长大后，我听着老人对于外出求学的年轻一代的担忧：在哪里吃饭，有没有乱谈恋爱？
我生命的前十八年都在西宁度过，那是湟水河边的一个东西狭长的小城，有汉族、有藏族、回族、土族、撒拉族、蒙古族等世居民族。不同民族的历史一般也有联系和渊源，不同民族的孩子自幼就玩在一起，大家似乎对不同民族的宗教没有特别的关注与区分。但童年的玩伴也会以每个人家庭中的教门去判断对方是不是一个“好穆斯林”。
小学同学会嘲笑我“血统不纯”，又或是被认真地教育：你的教门不够严格。我小学时在学校门口吃辣条，同班的穆斯林女孩说：你的“伊玛尼”（意为信仰）没有了。现在的我似乎已经忘了那天我是多么难过。
但记忆里那个崩塌的瞬间，的的确确是在那个时候发生的。从可以自由支配零花钱的那天开始，我就会认真查看每个零食的配料表，“好多鱼”某个口味的配料表里就有猪肉提取物。我吃了“好多鱼”，但我不知道怎么去和我的母亲说这件事。在教义里，浪费食物是犯罪，我选择把剩下半袋“好多鱼”给爸爸吃。
父亲和母亲结婚时也被安了一个经名，叫：约瑟夫。我把“好多鱼”给父亲吃的行为是非常恶劣的，是哄骗穆斯林吃下不清真的食物的恶行，这个恶行比不慎吃“好多鱼”更为严重。那种难以言说的内疚与歉疚，似乎持续了几个月、几年、甚至更久。在那之后，我再也没有吃过“好多鱼”了，但我也没有勇气与家人说这件事——我害怕被穆斯林这个身份所抛弃。
2017年我前往广州上大学。在长夏无冬的岭南，一切都是那么陌生：难以听懂的语言、迥异的饮食习惯、陌生的祠堂与神明。学校食堂只有一个“西北风味”窗口，学校隔壁的商场有一家兰州牛肉面，还有一家因为老板是汉族而没有认证清真标识的新疆炒米粉，身边只有自马来西亚的留学生依然会包着五彩缤纷的头巾。就像我在拍摄前进行访谈时了解到的那样，许多初次来到东南沿海的西北穆斯林女孩都会把对故乡的思念寄托于去清真寺礼拜，以获得暂时的归属。
但我不会诵经，没有裹头巾，不会做礼拜，也没有封斋。面对学校“西北风味”食堂里陌生男孩关于“你是不是穆斯林？”的搭讪，我支支吾吾不知所言。当我第一次被拉进穆斯林同学组建的微信群，我选择了退群。
2018年，我转专业来到新闻系，我和同学在课程中完成了名为《西北穆斯林务工迁移城市适应性分析》的田野调查。调查内容很简单，就是去学校附近的拉面馆，再以参与式观察和半结构化访谈的方式与来自青海化隆的老乡聊天。
我认识了已经辍学在家中饭馆帮工的拉面店的女儿们，我与她们那么不同。
在十六七岁就按父母之命嫁人的人生模式下，“婚姻”几乎可以与这些女孩子的“未来”和“人生”画上等号，而青春期情感萌动所带来的思考，可能是她们为数不多能够进行自我审视的时刻。她们会散着头发用B612自拍，会告诉我她们和哪个QQ上的少年网恋，又或者向我倾诉父亲如何限制她们的活动范围。只有在那些时刻，我们是亲近的。
我依稀还记得在我结束课程田野离开拉面店的那个时刻，我与小女儿有一段短暂的谈话。在我为她囿于宗教和民族、家庭及家庭背后老家一整个生活圈的各种限制时，她也在为我没有接受过伊斯兰经堂教育，无法寻到身心灵的归属而叹息。那一刻，我才明白，即使我和她来自同一片土地，我们同在一个不属于自己的城市生活，我和她也已经进入平行时空的两种人生状态。
其实她说得很对，自我意识与宗教、家庭及家庭背后的家族产生的纠葛，确实伴随着我的成长。但即使面对亲人，我也无法言说。而迥异的成长经历，将我身上同属于她的那一切撕开，我不知道该如何寻觅到一个中间地带？我不断拷问自己：“我究竟该如何选择自己的身份？”但没有确定的答案。
我辗转于西宁和广州两地，将相机对准家庭，去寻找传统生活发生改变的痕迹。或是流连于广州“小北”这样一个属于西北穆斯林移民的“飞地”，思考多元文化碰撞后所产生的文化不确定性：更加显现，抑或是消失。
我开始以海娜的红色作为视觉线索去串联那些碎片化的记忆。红色的礼拜毯、印着阿拉伯语的糖果、深红色的椰枣、粉红色的头巾、绛红色的巴服、高跟鞋。那些让我幸福的可以寻觅到归属的瞬间，又或者是隐隐做痛的隐喻本身。
窗户内外，看上去是海娜的两种归宿：停留在传统生活中，又或者出走。
我与许多年轻的穆斯林女孩交谈，并为她们拍摄肖像。我们讨论那些隐匿的话题，关于头巾、关于月经、关于性、关于禁忌、关于爱情。
我也结识了和我有着相似身份困扰的女孩。她们想逃避的，更多是宗教之外的家庭与家族中的女性归宿，逃避传统中从夫居的主干家庭结构，逃避“年龄越小彩礼越高”的婚育价值，逃避那些“说亲”之后注定会充满矛盾的婚姻关系。
我也看到了正在萌发的女性力量：也同其他身份的女性主义者一样，她们努力学习工作，以获取经济独立，她们也在尝试以个人的方式唤醒着“小媳妇”们的主体性，这种谈话可能发生在妯娌间、在舅妈与姨娘、又或是姐妹当中。穆斯林世界并不缺乏女性的平权实践，尽管这一切都被隐匿在不可见的角落。她们渴望的不仅仅是冲破家族与传统观念，拥有做自己的权利；她们也渴望超越世俗与大众的偏见，留存一份属于自己的差异性。无论是逆光衬托的金色短发，还是头纱上摇曳的水钻，无疑都是一种生命力的彰显。
在她们身上，我可能终于有勇气去承认我自己是谁？虽然这一切好像还没有答案。