In this once mainly Buddhist and Islamic enclave of Gansu Province in China's remote and rugged west lies a small town that is slowly burying the violence of its recent past and returning to its religious roots.
Hezuo, like so many towns in China's far west, lies off hard, bumpy dirt roads that wend through some of the country's roughest but most beautiful and dramatic mountain terrain.
Like others too, Hezuo is embossed with the upheaval of China's industrial modernization. Active smokestacks veil crisp blue skies in grim sheets of acrid cloud, while cranes erecting cheap, white tile-trim buildings rise above the clutter of nondescript 1970s low-rise blocks.
Despite its ramshackle architecture, Hezuo, nestled in a narrow valley six hours by bus from Xiahe, a more well-known tourist destination, is testament to the durability of the country's cultural traditions in the face of senseless violence.
After decades of oppression by the Chinese Communist Party reached its nadir during the Cultural Revolution, the centuries of Buddhist, Islamic and even Chinese Daoist teachings have made a quiet but triumphant return to this town of about 200,000 residents.
On a recent Sunday, as the smoke from ceremonial dung fires mingled with the echoes of Buddhist chants, streams of multi-ethnic Chinese headed to their respective temples of worship to pay their respects.
"The Muslim faith and this temple is an integral part of life here," Qingzheng Mosque caretaker Ma Bulu said amid the buzz of some 3,000 Chinese Hui gathered for midday prayer.
"This temple was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt in 1980," said Ma, a member of the Hui, China's largest Muslim minority.
"After the reform and opening up of China, things began to change and people began to return to the temple," Ma said.
During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards rampaged through much of the country, pillaging cultural symbols that were deemed as hostile to communism.
Hezuo saw its temples robbed and burned, the small scars of which remain in the form of whitewashed ruins next to the rebuilt Milarepa monastery built in 1678 in the architectural style of the Potala palace.
"A lot of people died, some ran away. Let me tell you this way, there were more than 500 monks here in 1955, now there are only 150," said a 67-year-old Tibetan monk, a witness to the violence.
"Of course, times are different now. Many people suffered then including Chinese," said Xing Jiguang, who was collecting donations for renovations at the Langmiaoshang Temple.
Fifty meters above the mosque on a verdant hill, Langmiaoshang is today filled with Chinese bringing gifts of grains, bananas and apples to the Buddhist deities.
"I'm just coming to pray for my family's safety, for my friend, good grades in school and success in general," said Nico Li, 20, a student at the local teachers' college.
Evidence remains that minorities such as Tibetans and Hui, who even today make up about 60 percent of the local population, suffered more in places like Hezuo.
For one, it was their buildings of worship that were destroyed, while Liaoshangmiao stayed open.
"The temple fell into disrepair but was never closed," Xing said.
Today in Hezuo, residents appear to have the freedom to worship as long it is exercised with caution, and that in itself is a great improvement, they said.
"Things are okay today, much better than before," the monk at Milarepa said with a sigh.
The authorities do not even mind that pictures of the Dalai Lama, the exiled religious leader of Tibet, hang at the ticket sales window and inside the Milarepa.
"In Tibet the pictures are not allowed, but here the government does not care," he said, warning though that "you can't pledge allegiance to the Dalai Lama."
"You can cherish him in your heart and 95 percent of us do, but you have to be careful how you act or otherwise they take you away in handcuffs," he said.
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