QUOTE (Yun @ Aug 8 2004, 12:23 PM) 
Marco Polo described Quanzhou in glowing terms as one of the two greatest harbours in the world (the other being Alexandria), while another famous traveler, the Moroccan Ibn Battuta, felt compelled to correct himself in 1345 and give it credit as the greatest.
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To impose ethnic assimilation from above, Mongols and Semu were forbidden from marrying within their own kind. Highly-sinicised Quanzhou Arabs like the Ding of Chendai village, who had migrated from Suzhou in the late Yuan, still faced official suspicion: their patriarch was unjustly imprisoned for a year for alleged links to the banned White Lotus Buddhist sect. The descendants of the Ding and Pu are today quite indistinguishable from other Chinese, and many have forgotten their origins, having accepted assimilation completely.
[…]
To impose ethnic assimilation from above, Mongols and Semu were forbidden from marrying within their own kind. Highly-sinicised Quanzhou Arabs like the Ding of Chendai village, who had migrated from Suzhou in the late Yuan, still faced official suspicion: their patriarch was unjustly imprisoned for a year for alleged links to the banned White Lotus Buddhist sect. The descendants of the Ding and Pu are today quite indistinguishable from other Chinese, and many have forgotten their origins, having accepted assimilation completely.
Arabist Tim Mackintosh-Smith hosted a three part BBC documentary called “The Man Who Walked Across the World”, which traced Ibn Battuta’s journeys from Morroco to China. In the third episode, Tim met with an elderly member of the Ding Clan who told him that the first Ding came to China 700 years ago. The Ding elder said the name of their patriarch was Xi Xing Ding (It might be something else, I could not hear it clearly) and Tim noticed that the name sounded similar to an Arabic nickname that translates as “the son of religion”. Tim explains this moniker was usually bestowed on important personages, including Ibn Battuta. He then suggested that Ibn Battuta could have possibly been the patriarch of the Ding family. However, he does note that Ibn Battuta's travel log does not mention him taking a wife or concubine in China.