Ma Lan in Shenzhen: Without a Meal Buddy
Editor’s Note
Few culinary traditions are as strictly bound by religion and woven into the fabric of ethnic life as Halal. After spending time with Muslim friends from northwest China, I realised that once they leave predominantly Muslim regions to work in the south, their options for affordable Halal dining are often limited to little more than Lanzhou beef noodle shops.
How does one sustain a diet that aligns with religious doctrine and faith? Can one be afforded adequate respect and convenience? Or is compromise inevitable? Through Malan’s meals, we observe that the simple act of eating becomes akin to a persistent, low-grade ache, constantly reminding her that her choices are constrained and that she remains largely overlooked by the mainstream.
*The Migrant Worker’s Table* is a series dedicated to documenting and shedding light on the lives of labourers, supported by Foodthink’s “Lianhe Creation Project”. The first article, Housekeeper Amei Wants to Eat Well, captures her labour and daily life through the lens of housekeeper Amei’s three meals a day. This second instalment chronicles the Halal journey of Malan, a Muslim woman from Ningxia, navigating life far from home in Shenzhen.
The three points trace a winding L-shaped route, totalling just one kilometre.
Sometimes, the three shrink to two: the flat and the office. Because Malan cooks for herself, she no longer needs to visit the Lanzhou noodles shop for meals.
Other times, she steps off this fixed track and adds a temporary stop: the market. A 1.5-kilometre journey from home, she visits at most once a week to buy enough vegetables to last the week.
Then there is a more distant point: a halal food shop nine kilometres away, where Malan buys her meat, necessitating a visit only once a month.
Every point that marks Malan’s days is connected to eating.
I. From Xiji to Shenzhen
In the central and southern parts of Ningxia lies a region known as “Xihai’gu”. In 1972, the UN World Food Programme described it as “one of the least hospitable places on Earth for human habitation”.
Xihai’gu is a predominantly Hui settlement. Malan’s hometown is Xiji County, situated within this area. According to the 2020 Seventh National Population Census, Xiji County had a registered population of 475,000, of whom 284,000 were Hui.
Eight years ago, Malan left Ningxia, and four years ago she transferred her household registration to Shenzhen. Under the city’s talent introduction policies at the time, her bachelor’s degree entitled her to a municipal settlement grant of 15,000 yuan.
Between Xiji’s arid Loess Plateau and Shenzhen’s bustling coastal metropolis lies a distance of 2,000 kilometres. Everything in Shenzhen felt different from home. The summer heat, humidity, and lingering length of the season were unbearable for her. “I’d be dripping with sweat even if I just sat there doing nothing.” It was not just the climate she struggled to adapt to, but the food as well.
Shenzhen draws together cuisines from across China and around the world. Its diverse dining landscape caters to the tastes of more than 17 million residents, and halal restaurants form part of that picture.
Yet for Malan, this “diversity” is fundamentally Han-centric. Over eight years in Shenzhen, walking through streets and alleys, she rarely paid attention to the types of restaurants lining the roads. Dishes that most people take for granted—luosifen (snail rice noodles), wooden bucket rice, malatang, hot pot, Hunan cuisine, Cantonese rice rolls, cakes, and bread—are all strictly off-limits to her.
For most Muslims, Lanzhou beef noodles remain one of the few everyday dining options.
III. “Lanzhou Beef Noodles”
“When we first arrived, the person who brought us there said there wasn’t any food suitable for Hui Muslims, so they were planning to just sort us out with biscuits, instant noodles, and the like.” They milled about outside the factory when one of her classmates suddenly cheered—at a short distance away stood a Lanzhou lamian shop with a ‘Halal’ sign posted up.
*Note: The Chinese term ‘Qingzhen’ (清真) corresponds to the Arabic word Halal, meaning ‘permissible according to Islamic law’. Increased trade and population mobility have made it harder for individuals to verify what is halal, prompting the emergence of halal certification to safeguard the rights of Muslim consumers.
From then on, she noted a pattern: in the south, as long as you weren’t in a particularly remote corner, a Lanzhou lamian shop could always be found within a few kilometres.
These halal noodle shops emerged alongside the southward migration of Muslims from China’s northwest in search of work. According to a 2022 report, there are roughly 2,000 halal restaurants in Shenzhen, with halal lamian shops accounting for more than 80 per cent of them.
Halal lamian restaurants underpinned the mobility of Muslims in the Han-majority regions of the south. After graduating from university in 2016, Ma Lan headed straight to Shenzhen to look for work; from that point on, these noodle shops would remain a constant fixture in her life away from home.
Across countless Lanzhou lamian shops, Ma Lan worked her way through every dish on the menus—soup noodles, noodles with toppings, rice with toppings, stir-fried dishes—until everything began to taste exactly the same.
There was a period when the sight of a Lanzhou lamian sign would fill her with aversion. “Once I got close enough to smell that broth, I didn’t even want to step inside.”
Ma Lan now works at a grassroots-level unit in Shenzhen. When colleagues noticed she rarely ate in the staff canteen and asked why, she replied, “There aren’t many dishes there that I can eat.” Once it became known that she was Hui, some couldn’t resist pressing for answers: “Is it just pork you avoid, or is it meat in general? If it’s everything, how have you managed to stay so strong?”
Ma Lan found it exhausting. She had tried to explain that she didn’t shun meat altogether; rather, she avoided anything that wasn’t halal. Within north-western Hui communities, any meal that isn’t halal is collectively referred to as “Han-style food”, while “big meat” is a colloquial term for pork. Very few outsiders understand this distinction.
Whenever her workplace organised team-building days or group dinners, Ma Lan would simply order takeaway from a local Lanzhou noodle shop. She’d bring it along while everyone else tucked into the table’s shared dishes; she’d eat from her own container. The evenings always wrapped up without a hitch.
This quiet marginalisation rarely catches the eye. Yet an invisible wall stands between her and most people. “I eat alone every day,” she says. “I cook alone, and even when I go to a Lanzhou noodle shop, I eat by myself.”
During Shenzhen’s pandemic lockdowns, even the Lanzhou noodle shops were forced to close. “I was out scanning health codes and doing community checks every day; the workload was immense. Because of the pandemic, the sub-district canteen’s conditions worsened dramatically. The only thing I could eat was vegetables, and even those tasted terrible.”
It was over food that Ma Lan’s emotional reserves finally gave way.
It is the only time she has used the word “breakdown” when it comes to her meals. After she poured her heart out on WeChat Moments, some Hui friends she’d met at the mosque saw her post and mailed her a care package of proper halal treats.
“Who doesn’t love good food, really?” she asks. She longs for street-stall staples like egg-stuffed pancakes, oden, and xiaolongbao. She had tasted properly halal versions of these snacks back in the north. Now, whenever she stumbles upon a halal eatery she likes, she makes a point of becoming a regular. “I just hope the owners keep thriving and the place stays open.”
III. Food as Faith
During her primary school years, her cousin took her to visit a Han Chinese classmate’s home. She watched the classmate’s mother go out of her way to wash the cooking pots several times before starting. Yet when the meal was served, Malan, torn by inner conflict and guilt, ended up not eating a single bite.
To this day, Malan’s mother continues her daily prayers, while her father attends the Friday congregational prayer, known as Jumuʿah (the weekly congregational prayer held by Muslims on Fridays), at the mosque. For her, faith is a matter of conviction and sincerity of mind, while daily life serves as its outward expression—diet being one such aspect.
Were it not for this interview, Malan would not dwell on matters of identity and faith in her everyday life. When asked what “halal” actually means, her immediate reaction was: “Why do we always have to turn the ordinary details of life into abstract concepts?”
“Halal simply means pure,” she eventually shared her own understanding. “It has to be clean and hygienic, and in line with religious teachings.” The core principles of a halal diet are straightforward: no pork, no animals that have died naturally (for instance, from illness, injury, or old age), no animal blood, no meat slaughtered without the recitation of prayers by an imam, and no alcohol.
*Note: In China, “imam” is the respectful title used by the Hui and other Muslim communities for religious clergy.*
Malan recognises that the values underpinning a halal lifestyle—purity, health, and reverence for life—spring from faith rather than rigid scientific doctrine.
When she steps into an unfamiliar halal restaurant, Malan quickly scans the surroundings and the staff. Once she notices a worker laying vegetables directly on the floor during prep, she immediately decides the place falls short of her standards for cleanliness and heads for the door.
With so few options for dining out, cooking for herself became the obvious choice. In fact, Malan had already learned how to cook back in her second year of primary school, while still living in the countryside.
In the layout of self-built homes in urban villages, the kitchen is invariably squeezed next to the bathroom. Malan’s spacious single room, which she rents for 750 yuan, is no exception. The proximity made her uneasy, so she moved all her groceries and crockery onto storage shelves inside the main room, leaving the kitchen strictly for the gas hob and a small fridge.
The entire room is visible at a glance. Two wardrobes, a bookshelf, a set of storage racks, a desk, a bed, and a washing machine make up her entire suite of furniture.
Everyday odds and ends are kept neatly tucked away.
Near the window stands a shelving unit: the top two tiers hold groceries and spices, while the bottom two store crockery and cookware.
Before bed, Ma Lan grabs a handful of purple and glutinous rice, rinses them thoroughly, and places them in the rice cooker. She then washes a few red dates, corn, and yams, sets them in the steamer tray atop the cooker, and presses the timed porridge setting. By morning, breakfast is ready.
Between lunch and dinner, she prepares at least one meal each day, and when feeling particularly industrious, she cooks both. “These days, I’ve taken to putting rice, meat, and vegetables—potatoes, carrots, and the like—all into the rice cooker to cook together.”
When the meat in the fridge starts running low, she hops on her electric scooter and makes the forty-minute ride to a local halal butcher.
Before she’s even parked her scooter, the shop’s owner recognises her. Walking in, Ma Lan readily accepts the lamb pastry she’s offered. Having bought beef and lamb here for over a year, she’s well acquainted with the couple running the place. Dropping her voice, the owner asks how things went with the young man she set her up with last time; Ma Lan replies straightforwardly that he wasn’t a match.
The couple are from Gansu and opened the halal shop here in 2019, supplying nearby halal restaurants with meat, oils, and groceries. A price list is posted on the wall, showing that their beef and lamb cost little more than the thirty to forty yuan per jin found in ordinary markets.
Working in tandem, they operate a meat cutter, dicing large cuts of beef imported from Malaysia into three-centimetre cubes, ready to dispatch to a catering company that’s placed an order. Behind them, a chiller displays lamb racks and shanks, while a neighbouring commercial fridge is packed with pre-portioned meats. With over thirty million Muslims in China, the country is the primary export market for Malaysian halal food.
The shop owner speaks with quiet certainty: “Han Chinese customers who know about us make a special trip just to buy meat here. First, the slaughter process is completely trustworthy. Second, we never inject our meat with water.”
Each time she visits, Ma Lan buys two or three jin each of beef and lamb, plus some chicken. She loads it all home, freezes it, and it lasts her for a month.
As a child, during Ramadan, Ma Lan would wake before dawn to eat, then abstain from food and drink all day until sunset. Now, after fasting for four or five days, she stops. “Mainly because I can’t get up in the morning.”
Since leaving home, aside from keeping up her dietary habits, she feels she has “little faith left.” “I haven’t really read the books on my shelf. Now, I wouldn’t dare say I believe, nor would I dare say I don’t.” Faith reveals its true colours in the fabric of daily life, yet runs aground when belief and sincerity are put to the test.
IV. Breaking the Precepts
Take bread, for instance. “Some varieties use shortening. I didn’t know this before and would just buy whatever. Later, someone told me that shortening is largely made from lard. Now I carefully check whether it contains shortening or meat products.”
But the rule of avoiding Han Chinese cuisine whenever possible had also been breached.
Two years ago, at the sub-district office where she had previously worked, outsourced staff were also entitled to a welfare allowance of “five yuan for three meals”: “one yuan in the morning, two at lunch, and two in the evening.”
“Poverty forced me to lower my standards,” Malan admits without shame. She began eating in the canteen, sticking only to vegetables, fish, and eggs. “We eat only what we can.”
In previous years, her life was turbulent and she had managed to save nothing. “I felt incredibly anxious and insecure, so reluctant to spend even on meals.” A bowl of Lanzhou beef noodles cost twelve yuan. Each time she ordered one, an unshakable sense of guilt would follow. “I’ve spent money again.”
By extension, Malan refuses to judge Muslims drifting in a foreign land who occasionally slip into eating Han Chinese food. “When my cousin came to Shenzhen to work, he’d sometimes eat vegetable dishes stir-fried alongside non-halal beef and mutton, as long as they didn’t contain large chunks of meat.”
Is this comparable to vegetarians who eat “pot-rim vegetables” (vegetables cooked in pans that have also been used for meat)? On the spectrum of halal dining in non-Muslim countries, is there room for “pot-rim halal”?
Someone told Malan that recruitment ads for factories in the Dongguan–Shenzhen area often included a specific requirement for Hui workers: no dietary restrictions. In industrial zones populated by migrant workers with mixed eating habits, the demand for “no dietary restrictions” has replaced “halal”, quietly diluting a distinct food culture into ambiguity.
Last year, when Malan moved to her current employer, the canteen subsidy was scrapped. She surrendered her meal card. After work in the midday and evening, she would walk two hundred metres back to her flat, leaving enough time to prepare a simple meal.
On days off, a close friend or two would occasionally join her to track down the halal restaurants scattered across the city. When the mood struck, their search would even take them to neighbouring cities.
Over eight years, her efforts to maintain a halal diet have been turbulent – marked by steadfastness, compromise, autonomy, and disappointment. Yet, few have ever asked whether dining as a Muslim in Shenzhen is convenient for her. Malan says she does not believe she deserves special consideration.
Rather, she worries that clinging to halal eating in Shenzhen might stand out too starkly, so she repeatedly emphasises, “This is a personal choice.” In recent years, a noticeable shift has occurred: Malan has grown more sensitive to “cultural tension.”
V. Looking for a Meal Buddy
The white-and-green main structure rises amid the surrounding darker buildings, gleaming brightly. Its modern architectural style, woven through with Islamic cultural motifs, aptly complements Shenzhen’s self-image as a “diverse, inclusive international metropolis”.
The mosque serves every facet of Muslim life — prayer, scripture study, reading, communal meals, matchmaking, and more…
Ma Lan has taken part in a few social gatherings organised by the mosque, where she has met some of her Muslim friends. The journey from her home to the mosque takes an hour and a half by subway. Last year, she even enrolled in an Arabic language course held there.
Stepping out of the mosque, Muslims who might otherwise be lost among the city’s millions instead gather in close-knit circles on WeChat. There are groups for food lovers, second-hand swaps, board games, matchmaking, and flat rentals… A simple greeting of ‘salaam’ and a wish for peace is enough for Muslims to recognise one another.
*Note: ‘Salaam’ means ‘peace be upon you’. It is the most common greeting among Muslims, serving as a way to express friendship, goodwill, and blessings.
In one of the foodie groups, a member tracked down the city’s scattered halal restaurants and compiled a guide to Shenzhen’s halal eateries. On weekends, someone will propose a group meal, drawing plenty of takers. The pent-up appetite from surviving on Lanzhou beef noodles is finally let loose.
Ma Lan attends these gatherings too, though not solely for the food. ‘The board game group was set up this year. I just want to get out more and see if I can meet someone from the Hui community,’ she says, describing a ‘deep longing’ to spend time with people who share her background.
She once dated a man of Han ethnicity who was happy to adjust his eating habits to match hers. Over time, however, Ma Lan came to feel it was unfair to him. ‘The differences will always be there,’ she reflects. She knows that some Hui–Han couples have to keep two separate sets of cooking pots at home to navigate dietary restrictions — one for standard dishes, one for halal meals — each serving its own purpose without crossing over.
After they parted ways, Ma Lan resolved to look for a Muslim partner for the future. ‘Not being able to share a meal is quite a hassle,’ she says.
Yet it hasn’t been easy.
Three years ago, she began dating a Hui man, only to discover later that he was a fraud. ‘He even swindled me out of several tens of thousands of yuan.’ Still fuming after the split, Ma Lan took legal action and sued him in court.
One weekend morning, a new notification pops up on WeChat: someone in the board game group is organising a roast whole lamb dinner for the evening. This time, she decides against going. ‘It hurts my wallet. A single roast lamb dinner runs to a hundred or two hundred yuan a head.’
Her parents are always urging her to return to Ningxia. She did go back for a while, spending six months as a supply teacher at a rural primary school. But she eventually left again and returned to Shenzhen. By the end of 2020, armed with a newly earned vocational qualification, she secured her current position at a local grassroots organisation.
Now that her income is stable, Ma Lan ‘lends’ 1,500 yuan a month to her younger sister for university living expenses. After accounting for her own monthly outgoings of just under 2,000 yuan, plus the nearly 20,000 yuan she sends to her parents each year for various needs, she still manages to put a little aside.
She jokes that she now frequently ‘treats herself to a feast’ — which means heading to a Lanzhou beef noodle shop on weekends and ordering two stir-fried dishes, a meal that costs sixty or seventy yuan. ‘I just want to have two dishes, but one person can’t possibly finish that. It would be wonderful to have a dining companion.’
The day after International Women’s Day, Ma Lan made a trip to Guangzhou to attend another singles mixer. Finding a dining companion is perhaps the one pressing matter on her mind right now. ‘At least we’d be able to share a meal,’ she says.
Author’s note 1: In 2024, the global Muslim population reached 2 billion, accounting for 25% of the world’s total. Domestic media have previously cited figures from Malaysia’s Department of Promotion of Halal Industry (JAKIM), noting that as early as 2014, the annual global halal food trade had already reached $500 billion.
Author’s note 2: “To achieve alignment and mutual recognition with halal standards in Muslim nations worldwide” (Xinhua News Agency), five provinces and autonomous regions—Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, and Yunnan—jointly drafted the *General Rules for Halal Food Certification* in 2013. By 2018, these rules were successively repealed.
* Ma Lan is a pseudonym used to protect the interviewee.
Following multiple rounds of interviews by a six-member jury, 18 projects were selected for support under the Foodthink Lianhe Creative Project. Five have already been published:
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Editor: Xu Youyou