A young Muslim's marriage during the on-going Chinese Spring Festival celebrations drew great admiration from locals in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, major habitat of Chinese Muslims.

Yang Bo, the 23-year-old bridegroom of Hui nationality, said he left his hometown in 2005 to work as an Arabic interpreter in Yiwu city of the economically advanced Zhejiang Province in east China.

He can earn about 3,000 yuan (nearly 375 U.S. dollars) a month, equal to a household's yearly income in the village of Tongxin County of Wuzhong City where he is from.

The growing businesses with Arabic countries in east and south China's coastal areas require more and more Arabic interpreters, and many young Arabic interpreters come from Wuzhong City as it boasts a big Hui population with a tradition of Arabic-learning.

In the business and trade city of Yiwu alone, there are more than 2,000 Arabic interpreters coming from Ningxia, an autonomous region which accommodates over 2 million people of Hui nationality, or 33 percent of the region's total population, and there are about 2,300 mosques, almost one in every village that Muslim people reside.

25-year-old Ma Xuefu started learning Arabic at 6 and has worked in Yiwu for 5 years.

Ma now operates 4 gift shops in Yiwu in cooperation with a Spanish businessman which brought him huge profits.

With the expansion of his businesses, he introduced over 40 Arabic interpreters from his hometown to Yiwu.

Ma Hanguo, an official in charge of labor and employment of Tongxin, said more and more young people from the Hui nationality are now eager to learn Arabic so as to earn a better living.

Ningxia is now China's biggest exporter of Arabic interpreters with dozens of Arabic language schools that attract more and more young local Muslims.

Source: Xinhua