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Chinese Muslims

leave for Haj

BEIJING: Muslim farmers from China's poverty-stricken Ningxia province have begun the Haj pilgrimage to Makkah Islam's holiest city, the Xinhua news agency said.

A total of 219 Muslims from the northwestern province flew to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, it said.

Most of the pilgrims were farmers who paid about 22,000 yuan ($2,650) to make the trip, the agency reported late on Wednesday.

In the four decades up to the 1980s, poverty had made the pilgrimage impossible for Ningxia farmers and only seven people from the province had been able to reach Makkah, it said.

But in the last five years more than 980 Ningxia Muslims had made the trip, it said.

About 1.6 million people, or a third of Ningxia's population, are members of the Hui minority. The Hui are ethnic Chinese who have for centuries believed in Islam.

There were now more than 2,000 mosques in the province, up from just 200 in the early 1970s, Xinhua said.-Reuter