The timeline for this project is slowly narrowing – 2 weeks now – and the time has come for me to get all of my thoughts and ideas that are floating up in the air, and bring down the few that I can actually finish in two weeks. The two topics that proved the most fruitful in research and the most interesting to me were porcelain and bread (specifically naan/nan).
Porcelain is similar to silk, although not quite so illustrious and famous, in the way it originated in China and spread west on the Silk Road. Porcelain was made out of a very specific type of clay, kaolin clay, that could be found in parts of China. China began firing this clay in cities where kaolin clay was abundant, such as Jingdezhen, and keeping the details of this production secret. The beautiful white, hard, semi-translucent ceramics became coveted in the regions of Persia, but they held neither the means of production nor the knowledge of how to obtain those means. In places such as Iraq, potters began to emulate Chinese porcelain with materials they had access to, but could not recreate the porcelain imported from China along the Silk Road.
In Kashgar, porcelain cups are used for tea in tea houses or within personal homes at meals. These cups may be the simple, white porcelain or the blue and white porcelain that is often thought of as “china” or Chinese porcelain. On the Tongue team’s table of a Kashgar meal, black tea will be served in porcelain cups and we will tear off pieces of our naan and dip them into our tea.
Nan is huge in Kashgar, as I have previously discussed in blog posts. Many associate nan with India, which is not wrong, but it is important to highlight the similarities in bread and the way it is baked and prepared throughout Asia. Nan is traditionally Persian and its connections with China through the Silk Road resulted in the use of the tandoor oven and the baking of this thin, round bread. As Kashgar was a very central location along the Silk Road, and one that  very much connected the East of China and the West of Persia, it is not surprising that nan is a staple in everyday life.
Besides the brief history of nan and tandoor ovens (only as the oven relates to nan, though, as Zack will be going in-depth about tandoor ovens), I will mainly be talking about the preparation of nan and the ways in which it is both cooked and served. The narrative of nan within the Tongue Team’s meal is crucial, because it acts as both a stand alone component of the meal and a utensil in which to eat other parts of the meal.
In the next few days I will be writing out the narratives and the plans for my map/prezi points for these two topics as well as uploading all of my artifacts into SharedShelf.