Around 1376 the 30-year-old Lin Nu visited Ormuz in Persia, converted to Islam, and married a Semu girl (“娶色目女”) (most likely Persian or Arab) and brought her back to Quanzhou in Fujian.
It is believed that the marriage of the Hormuzian Persian girl to Lin Nu which accompanied his conversion to Islam is what caused the other branch of the family to change their surname which is why the same family uses two surnames, Lin and Li, since they were very much against conversion to foreign religions and marriage to other ethnicities in the atmosphere after the Yuan dynasty collapsed and the harsh discrimination (four caste system) by the Yuan rulers against Southern Han Chinese.
[22][23] The biography of Lin Nu says he married a Semu girl and converted to Islam at a mosque in Hormuz in 1384 before coming back to China.
This represented a general xenophobic attitude[26] The genealogy refers to the Ispah rebellion and cruelties perpetrated by the Semu armies.
The xenophobia and resentment against Lin Nu by his Han family for marrying the Persian girl and converting to Islam stemmed from this.