The Nanguan Mosque — Nanguan Qingzhen Dasi — is the largest mosque in Ningxia and one of the largest in China, a modern structure built in the early 1980s to replace a historic mosque destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Its architecture is deliberately non-Chinese: a white-domed central hall flanked by four minarets, the whole complex built in the style of a Saudi or Gulf mosque rather than the Chinese temple forms that characterise the historic mosques of the northwest. This is itself a historical statement — the community chose to rebuild in a style that asserted a global Islamic identity rather than a local Sino-Islamic one.
The mosque serves the large Hui Muslim population of Yongning county and draws worshippers from across the region. During Ramadan and on Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha the mosque and its surroundings fill with tens of thousands of people — an impressive and welcoming event for respectful visitors. The site is open to non-Muslim visitors outside prayer times; dress modestly, remove shoes before entering the prayer hall, and be prepared to be welcomed rather than tolerated.
The mosque's scale and modern idiom make a useful contrast with the Ming-dynasty Tongxin mosque to the south, which represents an earlier and very different solution to the same question of how Islamic worship should look in a Chinese context.