PRM inv. nr: 1917.28.13
Brick of tea, also currency
Yunnan 1896
Helen Saberi : Tea bricks
Tea leaves were compressed into bricks, sometimes called cakes, from ancient times in China, antedating the T’ang Dynasty and long before Lu Yü published the Ch’a Ching, c. 780. This was the earliest book about tea, how prepare it and drink it. In the chapter, ‘The Tools of Tea’, he describes the tools and method for making tea bricks or cakes. [The Classic of Tea, 62-69 – I could add more detail here?]
Tea bricks zhuan cha were the most produced and used form of tea in China prior to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). They were usually made from mature coarse dried tea leaves and although they were slightly fermented they were not aged. The leaves, either whole or ground, were steamed. Sometimes they were mixed with binding agents such as flour, rice water or even blood or yak dung to help hold the leaves or ground leaves together. The tea was then placed into one of a number of types of press or mold which were various sizes and shapes and compressed into a solid form. The presses often left an intended imprint on the tea, such as an artistic design, Chinese characters or simply the pattern of the cloth with which the tea was pressed. Some were imprinted with a cross and this was probably how the tea was broken for sale or for use.
An early description of how to infuse pressed tea is found in an extract from the Kuang Ya, a dictionary of the c. 4th century AD:
‘… the leaves were plucked and made into cakes in the district between the provinces of Hupeh and Szechwan; the cakes were roasted until reddish colour, pounded into tiny pieces, and placed in a chinaware pot. Boiling water was then poured over them, after which onion, ginger and orange were added.’
Salt was also often added. At this time tea was a bitter medicinal drink used as a remedy for various ailments including stomach problems, lethargy and even bad eye sight. The roasting was probably done to destroy any infestation by moulds or insects which may have occurred during storage but also gives a pleasant, toasty flavour to the tea. At times the powdered tea, when added to hot water, was whisked to a froth before serving.
Tea in the form of bricks or cakes was easier to transport long distances and kept for longer. They could be sewn into yak skins to withstand knocks and bad weather. The bricks were traded along the ancient Silk roads and Tea roads. They were carried on their perilous journeys across deserts, jungles and mountains by yak, camel, horse or even men.
There were five recognizable grades of tea bricks. The lowest was called ‘Sing ja’ or ‘wood tea’. It contained wood chips, twigs and soot (said to give the tea a richer colour). When used, a piece was broken off and boiled with salt until the liquid was almost black. The highest quality was made for export to Russia, the lowest grade went to Tibet.
Tea in brick form was the favoured beverage in many parts of Central Asia for hundreds of years and was also made into a kind of soup for added sustenance. For herding peoples, whose traditional diet was meat and milk products, tea was ideal as an aid to digestion and a source of vitamin C. Brick tea was not only regarded as a refreshing beverage but also as a medicine against coughs and colds.
Two French missionaries, Père Huc and Père Gabet, who travelled through Central Asia in 1846-8, commented on the benefits of brick tea. Huc kept a detailed record of their experiences and notes that before starting out they collected their provisions which consisted of ‘five bricks of tea, two sheeps’ paunches of butter, two sacks of flour and eight sacks of tsampa’ (barley meal). After setting up their camp for the night they brewed tea outside their little tent. The two missionaries were often given hospitality and Huc describes how the tea was made: ‘They take a tea-cup half filled with boiling tea; to that they add some pinches of tsampa, and then mix those materials into a sort of wretched paste, neither cooked nor uncooked, not hot nor cold, which is then swallowed and is considered breakfast, dinner or supper as the case may be.’ For the two Frenchmen this meal was no doubt an ordeal but they soon appreciated that the tea, especially enriched with butter, kept out the cold and sustained them on their long journey.
The British traveller Thomas Atkinson described his own experience of brick tea in 1860. A chief of the Khirghiz tribe served him a bowl of tea with clotted cream, salt and millet meal added. He said ‘I cannot say that the beverage is very bad or particularly clean; still hunger has often caused me to make a very good meal of it. I think of it as rather tea-soup than tea. The Tibetans, it is said, enjoyed their brick tea by boiling it with yak butter in a large cauldron.’ [quoted from article by Ken Bresset, Tea Money of China.]
The universality of brick tea in Tibet and surrounding areas led to its use very early on as a form of currency for bartering. In fact, tea bricks were often the preferred form of currency over metallic coins for the nomads of Mongolia and Siberia. They became an accepted medium of exchange that could pass the same as silver and other trade items. They could be bartered against practically anything. Workmen and servants were routinely paid in tea bricks. In 1891 the American ethnographer William Rockhill followed local customs by paying nomads in north-east Tibet a small brick of tea for a sheet and a piece of cloth. [Rupert Falkner Tea East and West, p. 60-65]
When the trading route from China to Russia, known as the Tea Road, was opened in the late seventeenth century the tea transported at that time was usually in loose form, not bricks and this continued until the 1860s when the Russians established several tea factories making tea bricks in Hankow’s British concession in China. Hankow was a major tea trading centre on the banks of the Yangtze River in Hubei Province.
They used machines powered by steam to press the pulverized tea into cakes stamped with the respective company’s insignia. The reverse of large bricks was usually scored for dividing into equal portions. [I could go into more detail here?] In 1872 Ivanov & Co set up the first brick tea factory in Fujian, pressing tea bricks out of black tea dust previously regarded as a waste product. Three years later, two Russian firms with factories in Fujian produced almost 5 million lb of brick tea destined for Russian tea tables.
The Tibetans are still well known for their ‘butter tea’ (po cha or bo-jha) which can be made in a number of ways and is usually made from brick tea. Chunks of tea are broken off the brick, which are first toasted over a fire then crushed or pounded into powder. This is then put in cold water which is then heated and boiled for about five minutes until dark and strong. Sometimes a small amount soda, obtained from the shores of the lakes on the northern Tibetan plateau, is added and gives a reddish tinge to the brew and draws out the flavour. [Rupert Faulkner, Tea East and West, pp 60-65]. The tea is strained through a brass or horsehair strainer into a wooden or bamboo tea churn called a cha dong. Yak milk, yak butter and salt are added and the mixture is churned vigorously with a stick or plunger until the mixture is emulsified. This repetitive churning may well be accompanied by the Tibetan tea song evoking the origins and the meeting together of the ingredients:
‘From the Chinese country comes the tea flower beautiful.
From the northern plain comes the small white salt.
From the Tibetan country comes the yak butter like gold.
The birthplace and dwelling place are not the same –
But they all meet together in the little belted churn’
(quoted from East and West, p. 62)
When ready to drink the tea is poured into teapot and served in wooden tea bowls. Rinjing Dorje in Food in Tibetan Life (1985) describes how Tibetans would carefully blow all the butter that was floating on top of the tea to one side and when the tea is nearly finished, some tsampa (roasted flour, usually barley) is mixed with the remaining tea and butter in the cup and formed into a kind of dough which can then be rolled into little balls and popped in the mouth. He also explains that at least three to five cups of tea are drunk every morning and a prayer of offering to the holy ones is said before drinking.
The butter tea (gur gur cha or shrusma cha) of Ladakh is described by Gabriele Reifenberg in her book Ladakhi Kitchen (1998):
‘This is the drink no household is without. Usually a supply will be made in the morning, put in a thermos – or in the villages a clay samovar heated with cow dung – and served at frequent intervals throughout the day. Often extra butter will be put in the tea to be soaked up by bread; tsampa may also be added at times, anything from just one pinch to quite a lot.’
Tea leaves which are ideally from brick tea (or large leaved Indian tea leaves) are boiled in an open pot until the liquid is greatly reduced, then drained and boiled up twice more, but the third time the liquid should not evaporate. The liquid remaining is called chathang and this is poured into a jug or jar and stored. This is the basis for the drink and can be kept for a few days. The tea leaves are fed to the cattle. When tea is required another pot of water is boiled and a ladleful of the chathang is added. Butter, milk and salt are put into a churn (or mixer), the tea added and all is then churned or mixed. The mixture poured back into the pan, heated through and then placed in a thermos or samovar to keep hot. Reifenberg advises that foreigners should think of gur gur cha as soup rather than tea. She also says that some people add soda (pul) which comes mostly from the Nubra Valley.
In Mongolia tea is prepared in a similar way and after the tea has boiled and then cooked for a few minutes at a low heat, milk and salt are added. In Xinjiang in the far west the milk is cooked with the tea.
PRM Inv. nr. 2000.45.1
Brick of tea made for export from China.
China, 2000
"The endless knot symbol is one of the Eight Glorious Buddhist Emblems, the most common decorative symbols in Tibetan art.
Tea brick originated centuries ago when Chinese tea makers compressed dust from tea into bricks to use as currency for trading with their neighbours, Mongolia and Tibet. Tea was a valued commodity and traders often preferred tea to coins. The tea bricks were often scored across the back so that they could be easily broken up into change . "
Helen Saberi: Bricks of Tea
Tea leaves were compressed into bricks, sometimes called cakes, from ancient times in China, antedating the T’ang Dynasty and long before Lu Yü published the Ch’a Ching, c. 780. This was the earliest book about tea, how prepare it and drink it. In the chapter, ‘The Tools of Tea’, he describes the tools and method for making tea bricks or cakes. [The Classic of Tea, 62-69 – I could add more detail here?]
Tea bricks zhuan cha were the most produced and used form of tea in China prior to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). They were usually made from mature coarse dried tea leaves and although they were slightly fermented they were not aged. The leaves, either whole or ground, were steamed. Sometimes they were mixed with binding agents such as flour, rice water or even blood or yak dung to help hold the leaves or ground leaves together. The tea was then placed into one of a number of types of press or mold which were various sizes and shapes and compressed into a solid form. The presses often left an intended imprint on the tea, such as an artistic design, Chinese characters or simply the pattern of the cloth with which the tea was pressed. Some were imprinted with a cross and this was probably how the tea was broken for sale or for use.
An early description of how to infuse pressed tea is found in an extract from the Kuang Ya, a dictionary of the c. 4th century AD:
‘… the leaves were plucked and made into cakes in the district between the provinces of Hupeh and Szechwan; the cakes were roasted until reddish colour, pounded into tiny pieces, and placed in a chinaware pot. Boiling water was then poured over them, after which onion, ginger and orange were added.’
Salt was also often added. At this time tea was a bitter medicinal drink used as a remedy for various ailments including stomach problems, lethargy and even bad eye sight. The roasting was probably done to destroy any infestation by moulds or insects which may have occurred during storage but also gives a pleasant, toasty flavour to the tea. At times the powdered tea, when added to hot water, was whisked to a froth before serving.
Tea in the form of bricks or cakes was easier to transport long distances and kept for longer. They could be sewn into yak skins to withstand knocks and bad weather. The bricks were traded along the ancient Silk roads and Tea roads. They were carried on their perilous journeys across deserts, jungles and mountains by yak, camel, horse or even men.
There were five recognizable grades of tea bricks. The lowest was called ‘Sing ja’ or ‘wood tea’. It contained wood chips, twigs and soot (said to give the tea a richer colour). When used, a piece was broken off and boiled with salt until the liquid was almost black. The highest quality was made for export to Russia, the lowest grade went to Tibet.
Tea in brick form was the favoured beverage in many parts of Central Asia for hundreds of years and was also made into a kind of soup for added sustenance. For herding peoples, whose traditional diet was meat and milk products, tea was ideal as an aid to digestion and a source of vitamin C. Brick tea was not only regarded as a refreshing beverage but also as a medicine against coughs and colds.
Two French missionaries, Père Huc and Père Gabet, who travelled through Central Asia in 1846-8, commented on the benefits of brick tea. Huc kept a detailed record of their experiences and notes that before starting out they collected their provisions which consisted of ‘five bricks of tea, two sheeps’ paunches of butter, two sacks of flour and eight sacks of tsampa’ (barley meal). After setting up their camp for the night they brewed tea outside their little tent. The two missionaries were often given hospitality and Huc describes how the tea was made: ‘They take a tea-cup half filled with boiling tea; to that they add some pinches of tsampa, and then mix those materials into a sort of wretched paste, neither cooked nor uncooked, not hot nor cold, which is then swallowed and is considered breakfast, dinner or supper as the case may be.’ For the two Frenchmen this meal was no doubt an ordeal but they soon appreciated that the tea, especially enriched with butter, kept out the cold and sustained them on their long journey.
The British traveller Thomas Atkinson described his own experience of brick tea in 1860. A chief of the Khirghiz tribe served him a bowl of tea with clotted cream, salt and millet meal added. He said ‘I cannot say that the beverage is very bad or particularly clean; still hunger has often caused me to make a very good meal of it. I think of it as rather tea-soup than tea. The Tibetans, it is said, enjoyed their brick tea by boiling it with yak butter in a large cauldron.’ [quoted from article by Ken Bresset, Tea Money of China.]
The universality of brick tea in Tibet and surrounding areas led to its use very early on as a form of currency for bartering. In fact, tea bricks were often the preferred form of currency over metallic coins for the nomads of Mongolia and Siberia. They became an accepted medium of exchange that could pass the same as silver and other trade items. They could be bartered against practically anything. Workmen and servants were routinely paid in tea bricks. In 1891 the American ethnographer William Rockhill followed local customs by paying nomads in north-east Tibet a small brick of tea for a sheet and a piece of cloth. [Rupert Falkner Tea East and West, p. 60-65]
When the trading route from China to Russia, known as the Tea Road, was opened in the late seventeenth century the tea transported at that time was usually in loose form, not bricks and this continued until the 1860s when the Russians established several tea factories making tea bricks in Hankow’s British concession in China. Hankow was a major tea trading centre on the banks of the Yangtze River in Hubei Province.
They used machines powered by steam to press the pulverized tea into cakes stamped with the respective company’s insignia. The reverse of large bricks was usually scored for dividing into equal portions. [I could go into more detail here?] In 1872 Ivanov & Co set up the first brick tea factory in Fujian, pressing tea bricks out of black tea dust previously regarded as a waste product. Three years later, two Russian firms with factories in Fujian produced almost 5 million lb of brick tea destined for Russian tea tables.
The Tibetans are still well known for their ‘butter tea’ (po cha or bo-jha) which can be made in a number of ways and is usually made from brick tea. Chunks of tea are broken off the brick, which are first toasted over a fire then crushed or pounded into powder. This is then put in cold water which is then heated and boiled for about five minutes until dark and strong. Sometimes a small amount soda, obtained from the shores of the lakes on the northern Tibetan plateau, is added and gives a reddish tinge to the brew and draws out the flavour. [Rupert Faulkner, Tea East and West, pp 60-65]. The tea is strained through a brass or horsehair strainer into a wooden or bamboo tea churn called a cha dong. Yak milk, yak butter and salt are added and the mixture is churned vigorously with a stick or plunger until the mixture is emulsified. This repetitive churning may well be accompanied by the Tibetan tea song evoking the origins and the meeting together of the ingredients:
‘From the Chinese country comes the tea flower beautiful.
From the northern plain comes the small white salt.
From the Tibetan country comes the yak butter like gold.
The birthplace and dwelling place are not the same –
But they all meet together in the little belted churn’
(quoted from East and West, p. 62)
When ready to drink the tea is poured into teapot and served in wooden tea bowls. Rinjing Dorje in Food in Tibetan Life (1985) describes how Tibetans would carefully blow all the butter that was floating on top of the tea to one side and when the tea is nearly finished, some tsampa (roasted flour, usually barley) is mixed with the remaining tea and butter in the cup and formed into a kind of dough which can then be rolled into little balls and popped in the mouth. He also explains that at least three to five cups of tea are drunk every morning and a prayer of offering to the holy ones is said before drinking.
The butter tea (gur gur cha or shrusma cha) of Ladakh is described by Gabriele Reifenberg in her book Ladakhi Kitchen (1998):
‘This is the drink no household is without. Usually a supply will be made in the morning, put in a thermos – or in the villages a clay samovar heated with cow dung – and served at frequent intervals throughout the day. Often extra butter will be put in the tea to be soaked up by bread; tsampa may also be added at times, anything from just one pinch to quite a lot.’
Tea leaves which are ideally from brick tea (or large leaved Indian tea leaves) are boiled in an open pot until the liquid is greatly reduced, then drained and boiled up twice more, but the third time the liquid should not evaporate. The liquid remaining is called chathang and this is poured into a jug or jar and stored. This is the basis for the drink and can be kept for a few days. The tea leaves are fed to the cattle. When tea is required another pot of water is boiled and a ladleful of the chathang is added. Butter, milk and salt are put into a churn (or mixer), the tea added and all is then churned or mixed. The mixture poured back into the pan, heated through and then placed in a thermos or samovar to keep hot. Reifenberg advises that foreigners should think of gur gur cha as soup rather than tea. She also says that some people add soda (pul) which comes mostly from the Nubra Valley.
In Mongolia tea is prepared in a similar way and after the tea has boiled and then cooked for a few minutes at a low heat, milk and salt are added. In Xinjiang in the far west the milk is cooked with the tea.
PRM Inv. nr 1917.53.804
Tea brick,
Russia 1917
Collected in 1893
" Tea brick used as currency, stamped at the centre of one side with an impressed rectangle and the letter 'K '."
Helen Saberi : Bricks of Tea
Tea leaves were compressed into bricks, sometimes called cakes, from ancient times in China, antedating the T’ang Dynasty and long before Lu Yü published the Ch’a Ching, c. 780. This was the earliest book about tea, how prepare it and drink it. In the chapter, ‘The Tools of Tea’, he describes the tools and method for making tea bricks or cakes. [The Classic of Tea, 62-69 – I could add more detail here?]
Tea bricks zhuan cha were the most produced and used form of tea in China prior to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). They were usually made from mature coarse dried tea leaves and although they were slightly fermented they were not aged. The leaves, either whole or ground, were steamed. Sometimes they were mixed with binding agents such as flour, rice water or even blood or yak dung to help hold the leaves or ground leaves together. The tea was then placed into one of a number of types of press or mold which were various sizes and shapes and compressed into a solid form. The presses often left an intended imprint on the tea, such as an artistic design, Chinese characters or simply the pattern of the cloth with which the tea was pressed. Some were imprinted with a cross and this was probably how the tea was broken for sale or for use.
An early description of how to infuse pressed tea is found in an extract from the Kuang Ya, a dictionary of the c. 4th century AD:
‘… the leaves were plucked and made into cakes in the district between the provinces of Hupeh and Szechwan; the cakes were roasted until reddish colour, pounded into tiny pieces, and placed in a chinaware pot. Boiling water was then poured over them, after which onion, ginger and orange were added.’
Salt was also often added. At this time tea was a bitter medicinal drink used as a remedy for various ailments including stomach problems, lethargy and even bad eye sight. The roasting was probably done to destroy any infestation by moulds or insects which may have occurred during storage but also gives a pleasant, toasty flavour to the tea. At times the powdered tea, when added to hot water, was whisked to a froth before serving.
Tea in the form of bricks or cakes was easier to transport long distances and kept for longer. They could be sewn into yak skins to withstand knocks and bad weather. The bricks were traded along the ancient Silk roads and Tea roads. They were carried on their perilous journeys across deserts, jungles and mountains by yak, camel, horse or even men.
There were five recognizable grades of tea bricks. The lowest was called ‘Sing ja’ or ‘wood tea’. It contained wood chips, twigs and soot (said to give the tea a richer colour). When used, a piece was broken off and boiled with salt until the liquid was almost black. The highest quality was made for export to Russia, the lowest grade went to Tibet.
Tea in brick form was the favoured beverage in many parts of Central Asia for hundreds of years and was also made into a kind of soup for added sustenance. For herding peoples, whose traditional diet was meat and milk products, tea was ideal as an aid to digestion and a source of vitamin C. Brick tea was not only regarded as a refreshing beverage but also as a medicine against coughs and colds.
Two French missionaries, Père Huc and Père Gabet, who travelled through Central Asia in 1846-8, commented on the benefits of brick tea. Huc kept a detailed record of their experiences and notes that before starting out they collected their provisions which consisted of ‘five bricks of tea, two sheeps’ paunches of butter, two sacks of flour and eight sacks of tsampa’ (barley meal). After setting up their camp for the night they brewed tea outside their little tent. The two missionaries were often given hospitality and Huc describes how the tea was made: ‘They take a tea-cup half filled with boiling tea; to that they add some pinches of tsampa, and then mix those materials into a sort of wretched paste, neither cooked nor uncooked, not hot nor cold, which is then swallowed and is considered breakfast, dinner or supper as the case may be.’ For the two Frenchmen this meal was no doubt an ordeal but they soon appreciated that the tea, especially enriched with butter, kept out the cold and sustained them on their long journey.
The British traveller Thomas Atkinson described his own experience of brick tea in 1860. A chief of the Khirghiz tribe served him a bowl of tea with clotted cream, salt and millet meal added. He said ‘I cannot say that the beverage is very bad or particularly clean; still hunger has often caused me to make a very good meal of it. I think of it as rather tea-soup than tea. The Tibetans, it is said, enjoyed their brick tea by boiling it with yak butter in a large cauldron.’ [quoted from article by Ken Bresset, Tea Money of China.]
The universality of brick tea in Tibet and surrounding areas led to its use very early on as a form of currency for bartering. In fact, tea bricks were often the preferred form of currency over metallic coins for the nomads of Mongolia and Siberia. They became an accepted medium of exchange that could pass the same as silver and other trade items. They could be bartered against practically anything. Workmen and servants were routinely paid in tea bricks. In 1891 the American ethnographer William Rockhill followed local customs by paying nomads in north-east Tibet a small brick of tea for a sheet and a piece of cloth. [Rupert Falkner Tea East and West, p. 60-65]
When the trading route from China to Russia, known as the Tea Road, was opened in the late seventeenth century the tea transported at that time was usually in loose form, not bricks and this continued until the 1860s when the Russians established several tea factories making tea bricks in Hankow’s British concession in China. Hankow was a major tea trading centre on the banks of the Yangtze River in Hubei Province.
They used machines powered by steam to press the pulverized tea into cakes stamped with the respective company’s insignia. The reverse of large bricks was usually scored for dividing into equal portions. [I could go into more detail here?] In 1872 Ivanov & Co set up the first brick tea factory in Fujian, pressing tea bricks out of black tea dust previously regarded as a waste product. Three years later, two Russian firms with factories in Fujian produced almost 5 million lb of brick tea destined for Russian tea tables.
The Tibetans are still well known for their ‘butter tea’ (po cha or bo-jha) which can be made in a number of ways and is usually made from brick tea. Chunks of tea are broken off the brick, which are first toasted over a fire then crushed or pounded into powder. This is then put in cold water which is then heated and boiled for about five minutes until dark and strong. Sometimes a small amount soda, obtained from the shores of the lakes on the northern Tibetan plateau, is added and gives a reddish tinge to the brew and draws out the flavour. [Rupert Faulkner, Tea East and West, pp 60-65]. The tea is strained through a brass or horsehair strainer into a wooden or bamboo tea churn called a cha dong. Yak milk, yak butter and salt are added and the mixture is churned vigorously with a stick or plunger until the mixture is emulsified. This repetitive churning may well be accompanied by the Tibetan tea song evoking the origins and the meeting together of the ingredients:
‘From the Chinese country comes the tea flower beautiful.
From the northern plain comes the small white salt.
From the Tibetan country comes the yak butter like gold.
The birthplace and dwelling place are not the same –
But they all meet together in the little belted churn’
(quoted from East and West, p. 62)
When ready to drink the tea is poured into teapot and served in wooden tea bowls. Rinjing Dorje in Food in Tibetan Life (1985) describes how Tibetans would carefully blow all the butter that was floating on top of the tea to one side and when the tea is nearly finished, some tsampa (roasted flour, usually barley) is mixed with the remaining tea and butter in the cup and formed into a kind of dough which can then be rolled into little balls and popped in the mouth. He also explains that at least three to five cups of tea are drunk every morning and a prayer of offering to the holy ones is said before drinking.
The butter tea (gur gur cha or shrusma cha) of Ladakh is described by Gabriele Reifenberg in her book Ladakhi Kitchen (1998):
‘This is the drink no household is without. Usually a supply will be made in the morning, put in a thermos – or in the villages a clay samovar heated with cow dung – and served at frequent intervals throughout the day. Often extra butter will be put in the tea to be soaked up by bread; tsampa may also be added at times, anything from just one pinch to quite a lot.’
Tea leaves which are ideally from brick tea (or large leaved Indian tea leaves) are boiled in an open pot until the liquid is greatly reduced, then drained and boiled up twice more, but the third time the liquid should not evaporate. The liquid remaining is called chathang and this is poured into a jug or jar and stored. This is the basis for the drink and can be kept for a few days. The tea leaves are fed to the cattle. When tea is required another pot of water is boiled and a ladleful of the chathang is added. Butter, milk and salt are put into a churn (or mixer), the tea added and all is then churned or mixed. The mixture poured back into the pan, heated through and then placed in a thermos or samovar to keep hot. Reifenberg advises that foreigners should think of gur gur cha as soup rather than tea. She also says that some people add soda (pul) which comes mostly from the Nubra Valley.
In Mongolia tea is prepared in a similar way and after the tea has boiled and then cooked for a few minutes at a low heat, milk and salt are added. In Xinjiang in the far west the milk is cooked with the tea.
PRM Inv. nr 1928.10.3
Rectangular brick of tea with Chinese character stamped in the centre on one side.
China, 1928
Helen Saberi – Tea bricks
Tea leaves were compressed into bricks, sometimes called cakes, from ancient times in China, antedating the T’ang Dynasty and long before Lu Yü published the Ch’a Ching, c. 780. This was the earliest book about tea, how prepare it and drink it. In the chapter, ‘The Tools of Tea’, he describes the tools and method for making tea bricks or cakes. [The Classic of Tea, 62-69 – I could add more detail here?]
Tea bricks zhuan cha were the most produced and used form of tea in China prior to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). They were usually made from mature coarse dried tea leaves and although they were slightly fermented they were not aged. The leaves, either whole or ground, were steamed. Sometimes they were mixed with binding agents such as flour, rice water or even blood or yak dung to help hold the leaves or ground leaves together. The tea was then placed into one of a number of types of press or mold which were various sizes and shapes and compressed into a solid form. The presses often left an intended imprint on the tea, such as an artistic design, Chinese characters or simply the pattern of the cloth with which the tea was pressed. Some were imprinted with a cross and this was probably how the tea was broken for sale or for use.
An early description of how to infuse pressed tea is found in an extract from the Kuang Ya, a dictionary of the c. 4th century AD:
‘… the leaves were plucked and made into cakes in the district between the provinces of Hupeh and Szechwan; the cakes were roasted until reddish colour, pounded into tiny pieces, and placed in a chinaware pot. Boiling water was then poured over them, after which onion, ginger and orange were added.’
Salt was also often added. At this time tea was a bitter medicinal drink used as a remedy for various ailments including stomach problems, lethargy and even bad eye sight. The roasting was probably done to destroy any infestation by moulds or insects which may have occurred during storage but also gives a pleasant, toasty flavour to the tea. At times the powdered tea, when added to hot water, was whisked to a froth before serving.
Tea in the form of bricks or cakes was easier to transport long distances and kept for longer. They could be sewn into yak skins to withstand knocks and bad weather. The bricks were traded along the ancient Silk roads and Tea roads. They were carried on their perilous journeys across deserts, jungles and mountains by yak, camel, horse or even men.
There were five recognizable grades of tea bricks. The lowest was called ‘Sing ja’ or ‘wood tea’. It contained wood chips, twigs and soot (said to give the tea a richer colour). When used, a piece was broken off and boiled with salt until the liquid was almost black. The highest quality was made for export to Russia, the lowest grade went to Tibet.
Tea in brick form was the favoured beverage in many parts of Central Asia for hundreds of years and was also made into a kind of soup for added sustenance. For herding peoples, whose traditional diet was meat and milk products, tea was ideal as an aid to digestion and a source of vitamin C. Brick tea was not only regarded as a refreshing beverage but also as a medicine against coughs and colds.
Two French missionaries, Père Huc and Père Gabet, who travelled through Central Asia in 1846-8, commented on the benefits of brick tea. Huc kept a detailed record of their experiences and notes that before starting out they collected their provisions which consisted of ‘five bricks of tea, two sheeps’ paunches of butter, two sacks of flour and eight sacks of tsampa’ (barley meal). After setting up their camp for the night they brewed tea outside their little tent. The two missionaries were often given hospitality and Huc describes how the tea was made: ‘They take a tea-cup half filled with boiling tea; to that they add some pinches of tsampa, and then mix those materials into a sort of wretched paste, neither cooked nor uncooked, not hot nor cold, which is then swallowed and is considered breakfast, dinner or supper as the case may be.’ For the two Frenchmen this meal was no doubt an ordeal but they soon appreciated that the tea, especially enriched with butter, kept out the cold and sustained them on their long journey.
The British traveller Thomas Atkinson described his own experience of brick tea in 1860. A chief of the Khirghiz tribe served him a bowl of tea with clotted cream, salt and millet meal added. He said ‘I cannot say that the beverage is very bad or particularly clean; still hunger has often caused me to make a very good meal of it. I think of it as rather tea-soup than tea. The Tibetans, it is said, enjoyed their brick tea by boiling it with yak butter in a large cauldron.’ [quoted from article by Ken Bresset, Tea Money of China.]
The universality of brick tea in Tibet and surrounding areas led to its use very early on as a form of currency for bartering. In fact, tea bricks were often the preferred form of currency over metallic coins for the nomads of Mongolia and Siberia. They became an accepted medium of exchange that could pass the same as silver and other trade items. They could be bartered against practically anything. Workmen and servants were routinely paid in tea bricks. In 1891 the American ethnographer William Rockhill followed local customs by paying nomads in north-east Tibet a small brick of tea for a sheet and a piece of cloth. [Rupert Falkner Tea East and West, p. 60-65]
When the trading route from China to Russia, known as the Tea Road, was opened in the late seventeenth century the tea transported at that time was usually in loose form, not bricks and this continued until the 1860s when the Russians established several tea factories making tea bricks in Hankow’s British concession in China. Hankow was a major tea trading centre on the banks of the Yangtze River in Hubei Province.
They used machines powered by steam to press the pulverized tea into cakes stamped with the respective company’s insignia. The reverse of large bricks was usually scored for dividing into equal portions. [I could go into more detail here?] In 1872 Ivanov & Co set up the first brick tea factory in Fujian, pressing tea bricks out of black tea dust previously regarded as a waste product. Three years later, two Russian firms with factories in Fujian produced almost 5 million lb of brick tea destined for Russian tea tables.
The Tibetans are still well known for their ‘butter tea’ (po cha or bo-jha) which can be made in a number of ways and is usually made from brick tea. Chunks of tea are broken off the brick, which are first toasted over a fire then crushed or pounded into powder. This is then put in cold water which is then heated and boiled for about five minutes until dark and strong. Sometimes a small amount soda, obtained from the shores of the lakes on the northern Tibetan plateau, is added and gives a reddish tinge to the brew and draws out the flavour. [Rupert Faulkner, Tea East and West, pp 60-65]. The tea is strained through a brass or horsehair strainer into a wooden or bamboo tea churn called a cha dong. Yak milk, yak butter and salt are added and the mixture is churned vigorously with a stick or plunger until the mixture is emulsified. This repetitive churning may well be accompanied by the Tibetan tea song evoking the origins and the meeting together of the ingredients:
‘From the Chinese country comes the tea flower beautiful.
From the northern plain comes the small white salt.
From the Tibetan country comes the yak butter like gold.
The birthplace and dwelling place are not the same –
But they all meet together in the little belted churn’
(quoted from East and West, p. 62)
When ready to drink the tea is poured into teapot and served in wooden tea bowls. Rinjing Dorje in Food in Tibetan Life (1985) describes how Tibetans would carefully blow all the butter that was floating on top of the tea to one side and when the tea is nearly finished, some tsampa (roasted flour, usually barley) is mixed with the remaining tea and butter in the cup and formed into a kind of dough which can then be rolled into little balls and popped in the mouth. He also explains that at least three to five cups of tea are drunk every morning and a prayer of offering to the holy ones is said before drinking.
The butter tea (gur gur cha or shrusma cha) of Ladakh is described by Gabriele Reifenberg in her book Ladakhi Kitchen (1998):
‘This is the drink no household is without. Usually a supply will be made in the morning, put in a thermos – or in the villages a clay samovar heated with cow dung – and served at frequent intervals throughout the day. Often extra butter will be put in the tea to be soaked up by bread; tsampa may also be added at times, anything from just one pinch to quite a lot.’
Tea leaves which are ideally from brick tea (or large leaved Indian tea leaves) are boiled in an open pot until the liquid is greatly reduced, then drained and boiled up twice more, but the third time the liquid should not evaporate. The liquid remaining is called chathang and this is poured into a jug or jar and stored. This is the basis for the drink and can be kept for a few days. The tea leaves are fed to the cattle. When tea is required another pot of water is boiled and a ladleful of the chathang is added. Butter, milk and salt are put into a churn (or mixer), the tea added and all is then churned or mixed. The mixture poured back into the pan, heated through and then placed in a thermos or samovar to keep hot. Reifenberg advises that foreigners should think of gur gur cha as soup rather than tea. She also says that some people add soda (pul) which comes mostly from the Nubra Valley.
In Mongolia tea is prepared in a similar way and after the tea has boiled and then cooked for a few minutes at a low heat, milk and salt are added. In Xinjiang in the far west the milk is cooked with the tea.
PRM Inv. nr 1905.38.25
Sample of malted millet for beer-making.
KwaZulu, Nguni. Natal, Umkomaas River South Africa
Collected in 1905 by Henry Balfour
PRM Inv. nr. 1920.101.88
Coffee-berries (some whole, some powdered) in cylindrical finely coiled basket with lid.
The basket is coiled around a cylinder of gourd. The plant fibre is woven in a zigzag pattern of plain, brown and dark brown lozenges.
Uganda Western Region (Hoima, Kibale, Masindi districts) / Bunyoro-Kitara Cultural Group: Nyoro
Collected by John Roscoe Mackie Ethnological Expedition, 1919
PRM Inv. nr 1910.73.10
Pottery vessel in the shape of an animal lying on a rectangular base, suckling a smaller animal.
A long narrow spout coming out of the rear end of the animal.
Peru. Lima Region Ancon, unnamed cemetery, 1910
PRM Inv. nr 1884.40.5
Spanish Botijo
"Buff ware pot with spout and funnel (for cork), and ring and handle on top. Two ridges at the base of the neck. Incised wavy lines on and above the shoulder, which is also slipped a buff/green colour."
Spain, 1884
Vicky Hayward: The Spanish Botijo
When Julian Pitt-Rivers published The People of the Sierra (1952), his ethnographic study of a small southern Spanish town in Cadiz province, he included close to the opening a photograph of pottery water-jars lying in the town’s fountain. Among them was a botijo, or self-cooling bottle, a humble domestic item now symbolic of Spanish customs’ enduring relevance. The earliest known example, a small cylindrical clay bottle with a round carrying handle, dates back to c 1.700 BC and was found at a Bronze Age Argaric archaeological site near Beniaján in Murcia. Modern botijos are not so very different. Sitting on a small circular base, generally spherical, they keep the round carrying handle, and now have a narrow drinking spout as well as the filling mouth. Thrown by hand on the potter’s wheel, unglazed, they cool water by up to 15°C via evaporation or “sweating” through porous clay.
Until well into the 1960s botijos were found in everyday use in Spanish households of all income levels. In the 1st century AD the Andalusian born agricultural writer Columella had recommended clay as the material for pipes channelling drinking rainwater and once public fountains became universal features of villages and cities, journeys to fetch water in botijos were to become part of family life.
In the 20th century the botijo was usually filled before lunch, often by children, and was placed on the table for pouring or drinking directly from the bottle. Where larger quantities required fetching in a single journey women would carry the botijo in one hand after large cántaros , or water pots, were lifted on to their head and hips, a balancing act one can see in photographs taken in Madrid’s sprawling southern suburbs in the 1950s, when self-build communities grew around scarce water taps. Equally important was the role of the botijo for agricultural workers working away from home, often in intense heat. In his book The Pueblo, A Mountain Village in the Costa del Sol (1973), oral historian Robert Fraser quoted Salvador Torres, a day labourer who began working as a child in the 1930s. He recalled work gangs on the southern wheat plains passing out from thirst. The cook, usually one of the men’s sons, also had the job of providing water when required. He started work at 2 or 3am to provide a breakfast soup by 7am, a gazpacho at noon, a chickpea stew at 6pm and more gazpacho at nightfall. In such nomadic work cultures the botijo served as both bottle and pouring utensil.
A landmark 1971-73 study of Spanish potteries by a team of German ethnologists revealed red, buffware and black clay botijos being made in 90 towns around the country. Some were designed as functional domestic ware, others as decorative objects. Among those catalogued just as they were disappearing were glazed winter botijos, flat-sided ones for farming work, and moulded bottles with spiral bodies ( de rosca ) or animal forms. Known as the potixe in the Basque country, botín in Galicia, càntir in Catalunya, búcaro in Andalusia and rallo in Soria, the botijo’s design diversity is now preserved in the Museo de Cerámica Nacional in Chinchilla de Montearagón (Castilla La Mancha) and the Museo del Càntir in Argentona (Catalonia). Among exhibits are plain clay botijos, or búcaros of the kind which appeared in Murillo’s, Zurbaran’s and Sorolla’s paintings, 16th to 18th century Catalan blown-glass botijos for water and wine and, at Argentona, visual artists’ bottles including four creations by Picasso.
Today’s plain functional botijos can still be spotted wherever drinking water needs fetching, from petrol station forecourts to railway stations, allotments and roadworks. Cooks use them to collect and keep soft spring water for stewing pulses, making gazpachos and preserving olives, while environmentalists advocate botijos as preferable to plastic bottles. A myth that the clay improves the fragrance of the water is probably due to a drop of anis traditionally added when botijos are filled, although earthenware’s alkalinity may help to correct water’s pH balance.
Spain’s main production centre is now Agost, which sits in the dry mountains of Alicante province. Here the making of buffware pots like one of the four in the Pitt-Rivers collection, is fine-tuned to guarantee durability. After dissolving the clay in water, the potters sieve it mechanically to remove grit and add marine salt for porosity and to bleach the mix. Called pasta blanca, it is preserved in damp blocks until hand-thrown in batches of up to a thousand bottles a day, finished when dried with moulded handles (pellas), thrown drinking spouts (pitos or pitorros) and filling mouths (bocas) . Agost’s designs include the bulbous Valencian botijo, pear-shaped bottles, the chato, which is flattened to fit on a fridge shelf, and the tall cylindrical botijo designed for small modern working spaces. Low-temperature firing takes three days in domed kilns bricked up and sealed with mud and sand to prevent any chance of cold draughts cracking the pots. Cooling and unpacking the ovens is a delicate, slow task.
Experiments to check Agost’s botijos’ cooling powers began at Madrid’s Escuela Técnica Industrial de la Universidad Politécnical de Madrid in 1987. Eight years later Professor Gabriel Pinto and Dr. José Ignacio Zubizarreta Enríquez published the cooling formula in Chemical Engineering Education (1995, Vol. 29). The maximum rate, 15°C, took place in a half-full spherical botijo over a period of 7 hours, after which the water’s temperature began rising.
PRM Inv. nr. 1935.6.1
Wine vessel, Iran 1935
“I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. (…) So my father gave me a palm-tree farm which was nine miles square and it contained 560,000 palm-trees, and this palm-wine tapster was tapping one hundred and fifty kegs of palm-wine every morning, but before 2 o’clock p.m., I would have drunk it all; after that he would go and tap another 75 kegs in the evening which I would be drinking till morning.”
From: Amos Tutuola - The Palm Wine Drinkard (1953)
PRM Inv. nr 1913.17.11
Preserved milk ( haklilt)
Algeria, Aurès Mountains, Chaouia Berber 1913
PRM Inv. nr 1993.64.5
Textile used to cover the stove and people's legs while they sit around the stove drinking tea.
Uzbekistan,. Samarkand 1993. Cultural Group: Urgut
Or Rosenboim: The importance of the unique form of eating, seated on a 'tea bed' covered with beautifully embroidered textiles
The experience of eating is a paradox: aimed at the nutrition of the individual body, it is an act most commonly shared with others. We eat with family, with friends, even with strangers, sharing plates and tables, sharing memories and pleasures. Contemporary societies celebrate sometimes the emancipatory aspects of eating alone, liberated from the constraints of tradition: new cookbooks offer today recipes for one, and TV shows hail the pleasure of savouring food uninterrupted by conversation. Yet such acts of apparent rebellion only underline the centrality of shared eating to global human cultures. The sacred act of breaking bread and sharing a meal is central to many cultural and religious rites. It brings together human societies all around the world, extending the consumption of food beyond physical survival, towards a celebration of conviviality and community.
Eating together necessitates, first of all, an adequate setting. First, there should be a table, large enough to accommodate all the culinary offering. Chairs should be placed, to allow diners to relax in a comfortable and pleasant position. The height, form and design of the chairs and the table are left, of course, to interpretation. In the desert oasis city of Samarkand, now in Uzbekistan in Central Asia, for example, the preferred format is the bed-table: an elevated wooden or metal structure resembling a double bed frame with an elevated table in the centre. The whole structure is covered with embroidered textiles and soft cushions. The diners take off their shoes off, climb onto the bed and sit down comfortably around three sides of the table. As meals in Samarkand may last long hours from sunset into the night, diners often relax lying down on one side, sipping black tea with butter between one bit and another. Tea beds can be large or small, accommodating from three to fifteen people around a communal table. Often they were located outside, in the internal court of the family house, under a canopy of vineyard stretched on metal cables to improbably heights, or by a mulberry tree.
In the long and hot summer of the desert oasis, eating outdoors was common enough. But in the dead of winter, with the snow heaping in the roads and gardens, dinner was eaten indoor by the stove. A special textile was served for this purpose: a weaved cotton flat carpet was used to cover the stove. It is called a Sandilpush , or Sandalik pos h and has a specific domestic function. In the cold Central Asian winter, a charcoal stove is placed in a pit specially prepared in the earthen floor of one of the interior rooms. The stove can even be a simple bowl or brazier full of charcoal, which is placed in the pit and covered with a wooden or metal frame frapped with felt or quilts. On top of the quilts was placed the beautiful sandilik posh. The small stove provided warmth as well as a centrepiece for the living room, as the diners could snugly fit their feet under the covered frame to keep warm. Tea was served on the embroidered or weaved sandilposh, that covers both table and quilts. As a functional textile, it is specific to the settled life-style, and many found it ‘the most charming domestic article’ in Uzbek tradition. 1)
Samarkand lies at the heart of Central Asia. Populated by Uzkeks and Tajiks of Turkic origins “it is responsible for the production of some of the world’s most visually dramatic textiles.” 2)
Textiles are a central part of the Samarkandi culture: from coats to hats, rugs to table cloths, the Samarkandi take pride in the beauty of local expert stitch and needle work. As Janet Harvey suggests, ‘the weaving of cotton cloth was the most common domestic handicraft of the oasis towns and villages until the nineteenth century”.3)
Usually a craft reserved for women, the creation of decorated fabrics is an ancient tradition in the region. Many of the textiles created and designed for everyday household use rather than exclusive artistic creations. Thus, as Caroline Stone has argued, these textiles remained confined to living rooms of local families and escaped the attention of scholars and museums. Decorative hand embroidered fabrics called Suzani reflect the style and social status of home-owners, yet relatively little scholarship is dedicated to their history. Every region and city have their own decorative style and colour scheme: wealthy city of Bukhara embroidered textiles are easy to recognise for their ample use of gold thread on black velvet background. In Samarkand, the preference is for lighter colours, usually using a light cream atlas silk background. Today we associate central Asian textiles with silk production, but as John Gillow suggests, “silk-rearing in Central Asia is comparatively recent phenomenon as an important industry. Indeed the territory covered by the modern republic of Uzbekistan was and is ideal cotton-growing country”. 4)
The embroidered Suzani was often matched by beautifully weaved carpets, with patterns representing local flora and fauna in bright colours. Similarly, carpets and rugs aimed for domestic use have received relatively limited attention from scholars interested in Central Asian crafts. Yet these are the decorative elements that defined and shaped the Central Asian home through their practical functionality and individual design. Rather than relying on expert craftmanship, the rugs and textiles of the Samarkandi home were shaped according to the preferences, skills and knowledge of the family’s women, who adorned their abode with their hand-made creations.
The exemplar conserved at the Pitt Rivers suggests an artistic origin in Samarkand, where traditionally rugs were designed with a light-coloured background. It is weaved in simple cotton yarn, suggesting that it was supposed to be used daily in a setting that demanded robustness. The pattern reflects the use of the rug: small tea pots for a tea stove cover. The carpet-weaving craft flourished in Early Modern Samarkand. Alongside the famed ikat silk textiles and embroideries, carpets were one of the most important local traditional crafts exported on the sill roads to Europe and East Asia. Rugs were weaved using cotton yarns, as this one, as well as silk threads. The colourful dyes were achieved thanks to the expertise of local dye masters, many of whom were Jewish, in the ancient cities of Samarkand and Bokhara. The ability to extract stunning hues of indigo blue, red from oak gall and madder root, yellow from fried pomegranate rinds, brown from walnut husks was a closely kept secret passed from father to son. If the difficult and physically demanding art of dyeing was mainly masculine, the weaving was a feminine art. In each house, there was a small manual wooden loom, used to weave carpets and textiles for domestic use. The Samarkandi women would use locally dyed yarns to create original designs, often inspired by local flora and fauna or by domestic items, which they would weave carefully at home, alongside their ‘usual’ domestic chores of cooking, cleaning and child-rearing.
In the traditional Uzbek culture, women were mostly confined to their homes; houses were built around a small patio or garden, which typically had a well and a hearth for cooking. The living room and the bedrooms, sparsely furnished, were located around the patio and the whole building was separated from the street by a high wall. The realm of domesticity was primarily feminine, while men went out to the market, to the workshops or the fields, on their everyday jobs. Thus, the carpets and textiles were not only created by women, they also made up the aesthetic landscape that surrounded women most of the day at home. Objects of common domestic use such as the stove rug can therefore be particularly indicative of the lives and preferences of their creators and users. Yet the stories behind such items often remain untold, as no evidence of authorship, usage or design has survived to our days. In a sense, the stove rug is a silent witness of a rich and important segment of history centred on women as protagonists of everyday life in Central Asia.
The rug’s provenience from the town of Urgut near the historical city of Samarkand suggests that it may have been acquired in the local market, still famed today as a preferred location for trading in high quality antique textiles, that were typically put into everyday use in central Asian households. The pattern of the carpet seems to represent an oil lamp or maybe a kettle, which would be particularly appropriate as drinking tea would be the ideal activity around a warm stove in the winter. If the tea-bed provided a unique space for gathering around food and drink in the summer, the Uzbek stove provided such a space in the winter, when the fertile valleys of Central Asia were covered with snow. Drinking and eating around the stove was a habit of sheer necessity – keeping warm – but also a cultural tradition that shaped the form of the meal and the design of the furniture. Yet the meaning of the rug cannot be understood without appreciating the centrality of tea to the Samarkandi culture.
The Samarkandi dinner opens with a cup of hot tea. Tea arrived in Central Asia from China, along the Silk Roads, and was soon adopted as the preferred beverage by the local inhabitants, who were mostly Muslims. Both green and black tea are widely drunk. As most of the region’s inhabitants are Muslim, tea became the staple drink long ago. Yet tea is not only an alternative to forbidden alcohol, it is a cultural heritage of the nomadic caravan merchants. In the heat of summer, a hot cup of tea revives and refreshes. Some legends suggest that Jewish merchants on the silk roads brought the precious tea leaves from China to Samarkand. While such myths are difficult to prove, it is true that Samarkand and Bokhara had a thriving Jewish community of merchants and traders, who lived in sumptuous palaces and contributed to the cities’ wealth and prosperity. Drinking tea became a cornerstone of local culture: guests and visitors are often welcomed with a cup of tea, typically half full, and refusing a drink is taken as an offence. Tea drinking has become, of course, as much Russian as Chinese. The samovar – hot water container for tea-making in Russia – is a common sight in Uzbek houses, tea gardens and even trains to this day, connecting the local habits with the traditions in the wider Russian-speaking world. Interestingly, the cultural influence in tea drinking can be traced also to the mountainous regions of Tibet and Nepal which may have inspired also the past tradition of serving Black tea with a dollop of salted butter, which enhances its flavour and richness. This habit is now largely lost in Uzbekistan, but tea is still served in the traditional blue cups, called piala, that are sold in every market.
The small cups are decorated with the white cotton bud that is today considered the national flower of Uzbekistan. Cotton has always been grown in Central Asia, but only with the Soviet occupation it became a monoculture crop that outbid all others cultivations in this fertile part of the world. During the American Civil War, the Russian Tzar feared a lack of supply of American cotton to his empire, and decided to plant his own fields of cotton to respond to local demand. Central Asia, and in particular the fertile valleys of today’s Uzbekistan, were deemed the most appropriate location for the Russian cotton agricultural industry. Today, the omnipresence of cotton in Uzbek life is evident even in this daily moment of tea drinking by the stove: the cups feature the cotton flower, and the stove is covered by a rug weaved with cotton threads. If the early golden age of Samarkand was marked by local production and trade of precious silk, in the twentieth century the focus turned to cotton. The duality of the cotton – a blessing and a curse for the local economy – remains a constant feature of life in contemporary Samarkand.
Along with tea, the meal opens with fresh fragrant Non bread, a plump round loaf brushed with oil, with a flat core punctured with a floral pattern. In Uzbek, ‘non’ simply means bread, and there are various types of baked loafs offered at the dinner table. The bread is still baked locally in clay ovens, but nowadays bakers use gas and not wooden heat. There is also a pita-like flat bread rich in butter, or a drier round loaf typical to Samarkand and famed for its longevity. An alternative bread, which was common in Jewish festivities, is Non Tokh’i, a flat and crispy bread, baked in a hot taboon.
The diners tear pieces of bread as more plates change hands: fresh fruit in the summer and dried fruit in the winter. Green and white melons, juicy red watermelons, plump grapes freshly cut from the vine, peaches and apricots, glossy cherries and deep purple mulberries, plums in every colour and shape, soft dates and dark raisins, almonds and walnuts, sun dried apricots and figs, and thin sheets of ‘leather’, a sticky and delicious dried apricot paste. Sugar coated almonds are also a common delight in the region. In summer, a fresh salad of cucumbers, tomatoes and onions is unavoidable, alongside a salad of shredded carrots, fried aubergines and heaps of chopped dill. The tea pot is continuously filled with fresh boiling water, and tea is continuously poured into the cups to be slowly sipped as the meal progresses.
Relaxed and comfortably sitting by the warm stove, the diners may wish to go on sipping hot tea, or to proceed and engage with the main course of the meal. But in either case, it is worth lingering to reflect on the aesthetic value of the meal. The Samarkandi carpet serves a double function: preserving the heat of the stove around the diners’ feet, as well as enhancing the beauty of the dining experience. The colours, patterns and material were chosen by the expert craft maker to generate aesthetic pleasure in simple surroundings. The rug reflects the importance, in Samarkandi culture, of merging functionality and aesthetics into a feast of colours, flavours and scents.
Today, the staple main course in Uzbek cuisine is Plov, a rice dished traditionally cooked in an outdoor metal pot over charcoal or hearth. It includes carrots, dried fruit, and a juicy, fatty meat, often mutton. Different versions of plov include also barberry, a local tangy berry, hard boiled eggs, beef or chicken. The rice is cooked in lamb fat in a large metallic pot, and served to the table in a central dish, to be shared by all diners. Yet historical accounts and oral testimonies suggest that other dishes were common before the Soviet rule, dishes that reflected the ethnic and religious diversity of the region in the 19th century. For example, the Jewish community of Samarkand was known for its special dishs, Baxsh and Sirkaniz: the first is a rice dish with heaps of coriander and large chunks of liver, to be eaten with fresh pomegranate seeds. The second is a vegetarian rice dish with carrots and beetroot, dill and chickpeas, served with a hot sauce of garlic fried in oil or fat. These dishes disappeared from the culinary horizons of Samarkand with the emigration of the Jewish community, initially in 1922, and in later waves in the 1970s, yet they can still be found in Samarkandi restaurants in Israel today.
Even if different communities had their own unique dishes and culinary preferences, the setting of the meal was similar across ethnicities and religions in Central Asia. The act of eating is a lengthy feast of sharing, lingering, sipping and talking, around a common table or a warm charcoal stove. It is a slow, convivial meal, informal in its presentation and structure, yet rich with rituals and habits. Singing and playing music were common during Samarkandi meals: the doira’ drum was a common feature at the dinner table. The informal sequence of courses and the lengthiness of the meal provided the perfect setting for a musical pause, when guests enjoyed a simple tune or a joyful song while sipping tea.
Notes:
1) John Gillow, Textiles of the Islamic world , Thames and Hudson, 2010, p 190.
2) Gillow, Textiles of the Islamic world, p. 184.
3) Janet Harvey, Traditional textiles of Central Asia, Thames and Hudson, 1996, p. 93.
4) Gillow, Textiles of the Islamic world p. 184.
