The new station, in contrast, was designed with a gorgeous Islamic motif, which is appropriate as Ningxia is designated as the Hui Autonomous Region in China. (The Hui people--one of China's 56 ethnic minorities--are Muslim Chinese descended from Arabic traders many centuries ago.) Here's the new station:
Pretty nice, eh? In addition to to those great cathedral arches, the windows there contain some beautiful green and white stained glass. Here's a magnification of the same picture:
So we've established that the new station is much more attractive than the old station, and it incorporates some traditional Muslim architecture and decoration. Is that alone enough to make it my favorite of all of the Chinese train stations? No--there's more. Remember when I said that Yinchuan is infrequently visited by Western tourists? If I had to take a totally out-of-thin-air guess, I would say that this station handles fewer than 500 Westerners per year. In comparison to the hundreds of thousands of Chinese folks that pass through (again, just a ballpark estimate), Westerners are a rare breed 'round these parts. And yet every single sign in the station had an English translation underneath the Chinese. This is not too common in some of the smaller cities in China, even provincial capitals. But Yinchuan didn't stop there. They took it one step further and added good English translations to all of the spoken announcements that came over the station's loudspeakers. This is really rare in China. Even some of the big coastal cities don't offer this courtesy to English speakers.
Now, of course I realize that I'm in China, a country where they speak (believe it or not) Chinese, so I make it a rule to never expect English anywhere. That would be mighty arrogant. That being said, if a restaurant, hotel, or train station does offer English translation (especially when it's not a ploy to drum up some extra tourist money), it really makes you feel welcome. It shows that they've gone out of their way to cater to a very small portion of their clients. They don't have to--they just do.
So there you have it. Congratulations, Yinchuan Train Station. You're my new favorite station in China.
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