Lunchtime at the restaurants in Beijing's well-known Muslim neighborhood Niujie looked little different from any other part of the city.
Groups of patrons, several wearing white skull caps characteristic of Islamic devotees, picked their way with chopsticks through mutton hotpots, stirred fried beef and lamb-filled dumplings.
The crowd was lighter than usual, but other than that, few visitors would have guessed this was Islam's most important month, Ramadan, a period of supposedly mandatory fasting for able-bodied Muslims from sunrise to sundown.
"I'm not fasting," Wang Yachen, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate with fake painted brown eyebrows, double-hole ear piercing and tinted reddish hair, stated unashamedly.
"You can't eat anything if you fast, you can't even drink water," Wang said, turning up her nose.
She and her two friends admitted they've never fasted in their life.
They have no problems dating non-Muslim boys and rarely step foot in the neighborhood mosque, just a couple of blocks from their apartment complex.
"I don't eat pork. That's it," Wang said, summing up her Muslim identity.
Unbeknown to many, China is home to 20.3 million Muslims, one of the largest populations worldwide, but in a country whose people are voraciously chasing after money and where the government has no interest in promoting religion, it is a struggle to maintain Muslim beliefs and traditions.
Muslims say the task is especially difficult in the Chinese capital, which has many Muslims of the Hui ethnic group -- the largest group of Muslims in China, followed by the Turkish-speaking Uighurs in the northwest.
"Few Muslims in Beijing wear headscarves. Beijing people can't accept it," said Na Zhenyu, a 26-year-old housewife, covered in a jade-green silk scarf, one of the few people donning a headscarf.
"When I go to other neighborhoods, people give me funny looks. Only older people keep the traditions. Few young people do," Na said, as she loaded several bags of groceries from one of the few city's few halal supermarkets.
In the countryside in Muslim-populated parts of China, such as Ningxia, Xinjiang or Gansu provinces, Muslims still adhere to tenets of their religion, including praying to Mecca five times a day and staying away from alcohol and cigarettes.
But pressures to earn a living have forced many young Muslims to move to the cities and once there, a growing number of them are abandoning their long-taught practices.
"We have friends who started smoking and drinking after coming to Beijing," said Mi Lei, a 21-year-old noodle maker at a Muslim fastfood cafeteria.
He was unhappy that the canteen sells beer, despite advertising itself as a Muslim eatery.
"It's no use complaining," Mi said.
He is one of the few Muslim migrants who is fasting and one of the few young people who rises for pre-dawn prayer at the mosque, which mainly attracts elderly people.
Muslims blame the accelerating pace of life and sweeping economic changes for making it difficult to adhere to the faith.
"I fast, but my children don't because they all have to work hard. They can't go without lunch," said Li Qihui, deputy director of the Islamic Association in Beijing's Xuanwu district where the Niujie Mosque is located.
China's rules against proselytizing do not help. Books from the Koran to the Bible cannot be sold in bookstores.
Even at the Niujie Mosque, the oldest and largest in Beijing, the five-times-a-day call to prayer could not be heard.
The Hui Muslim mosque remains low-key, hidden behind a large cement wall.
Li, the Islamic leader, however said the mosque and others have in recent years received government funding for repairs, arguing government policy was now much more favorable compared to during the political chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when Muslims were punished for fasting.
The 76-year-old said Muslims, like all religious practitioners, must first and foremost be patriotic.
"We first abide by the policy of loving country and religion at the same time. Without our country, we don't have our religion," Li said.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, Uighur Muslims in China's Xinjiang region have come under increasing pressure as the government uses the global anti-terrorism campaign to suppress dissent, hoping to quash separatist tendencies by some Uighurs.
Muslim children have come under pressure not to fast or wear headscarves in schools and many are forbidden from going to mosques, overseas Muslim rights groups said.
Even for the Huis, who unlike the Uighurs do not look different from the Han Chinese majority, it's a struggle to maintain their religion and frictions are bubbling just under the surface.
"This neighborhood used to be for just Huis. Now there are many Hans. They raise dogs, which we don't raise because they're dirty," said Xiao Jingwu, an elderly Hui man.
Hui residents in the Niujie neighborhood criticised the local government for allowing a liquor and tobacco store to open, but were powerless to stop it.
"What can we do? The fact of the matter is China is run by the Communist Party, not an Islamic government," said Xiao.