We’re done! It’s great! Thank goodness… After hundreds* of hours of research, mapping, building, cooking, videoing, and Prezi manipulation, our project is complete. To know that our maps will be forever enshrined in the Guilford Silkroad homepage is quite the honor. With digital humanities, our stories will really last forever and are accessible to all (which is why out of those hundred hours we proofread for hundreds** more).
This will be the first time a piece of work I’ve done has been entirely public facing and available to critique. It’s safe to say that this provided both an added stressor as well as an added piece of motivation to make sure my facts were well-sourced and my research was reliable. I am happy with what our group turned out with our final product and I think we took the ideas we had and used all the digital tools provided to make it a success. Originally we were unsure whether Storymaps were the way to go, given our theme as a meal. However, in the end we have five individual Storymaps linking out from items on the table. Pretty ironic. Even so, I’m proud that we didn’t succumb to re-arranging our unique ideas for the sake of technology, and pushed through with our Prezi and food theme.
Another thing I’m extremely grateful for was our group dynamic. Team projects are difficult. Effort, opinions and ideas for the end product can easily come into conflict with each other. In this case, this wasn’t the case. Once we settled on a theme as a group, each of us had our objectives outlined. Deadlines were met (for the most part). Communication was solid. Friendships were both made and retained. The only casualty was Zach’s forearm hair that was incinerated straight off, during our tandoor experiments along with a few naan bread that were sacrificed to the coals.
I’m excited to see what other groups have come up with and am honored to be part of the class that began this venture in digitally mapping the silk road. It will be interesting to look back and see what this website has become 5 or 10 years from now. It’s been an enlightening journey, and for some of us just the beginning, as we prepare to travel the silk road over January Term. I suppose we’ll find out whether our Xinjiang cuisine can hold a candle to the real deal. Thank you for joining us on our journey. I’m sure that it won’t stop here!
*Probably not an exaggeration
**Probably an exaggeration

Coming to you today from the journey of Team Tongue is a brief recap of our most recent escapades. As chief photographer and video editor, I was tasked with the exciting goal of filming the process of cooking our Uyghur meal. Teammates Billie and Zach built our tandoor oven over the course of several hours this past Thursday (Props to them for some crazy hard work). Billie was also able to capture much of the process which I am currently editing together for a portion of our final project.
With the Tandoor complete, our essential structure for cooking the meal out of the way, we began preparing our dishes early afternoon on Saturday. For nearly seven hours our group toiled over our eternally smoking (and as Zach found out, highly-flammable) homemade, oven. Our aim was to cook the entire meal using traditional means and in my humble opinion we were most successful.
Interestingly enough, our cooking session coincided with a reading assignment concerning the Uyghur people and the Xinjiang region. As it should happen, our three dishes matched up with three of the “local specialties,” mentioned in the book, Xinjiang, the Land and the People. If anything, it was good to know we were on the right track.
Seven hours later we sat down to nang bread, chicken kebabs, pilaf and tea. I was hardly able to take a few pictures of our display before Zach tucked into the heavenly spread. This commenced the consumption of absorbent amounts of food. Worth the wait, the singed arm-hair, and a shirt that will eternally smell like the inside of an earthen oven. 100 percent.
Below you will find some photos-a teaser-preceding the unveiling of the main event.

Permits have been received. Our team is officially building a Tandyr Oven on Guilford’s campus by the farm. We’re excited for the potential of this project not only in the bounds of our class but for its future application as well. We hope, of the few things that Guilford can do splendidly, that one of them is making naan bread in our oven. Thoughts president Fernandes?
At this point in time, we are looking to create our whole meal using the oven. Currently on the table are the following dishes: Naan bread, Polu (Lamb Pilaf), Lamb Kebabs and Tea. We’ll be cooking this meal next weekend and using it as the photograph for our canvas online. The photo will include all elements of the meal and focus in on each to highlight the history or specifics about the particular dish.
Speaking of history, Eric recently unleashed an infamous map test upon us in which we were tasked with memorizing the political, geographic and historical landscapes of central Asia. Despite the strenuous nature of the assignment and the entire notebook of redrawn maps I now own, the test helped me better place our project work as a whole. Knowing the geography of a location, and establishing a sense of place is (not so surprisingly) valuable when creating story maps of food and spices. Connecting our ideas to a place and knowing the geography, cities and other landmasses around it adds a new dimension to research that is often ignored when looking for specifics.
Specifics are what we’ve been looking at so far. And I’m particularly excited about figuring out how to display our meal, the photographic elements and the video that we’ll compile of our experience. This is pretty much the center piece in our prezi presentation, so no pressure. I’m quite thrilled at how our project is coming along and can’t wait to present consume it. I am already feeling slightly disappointed that the final project is due in less than three weeks. While we’ve done immense amounts of research and narrowing down of topics and group meetings, I really think this could have been a year-long course with the first semester focused on research, the silk road and its geography while the second half would be solely a project based class. It’s just really hard to do justice to the silk road…

With less than a month left of work, our group has turned up the heat. Not only is this in relation to researching and creating our Kashgar food map, but also we’re planning to make a Tandyr (Tandoor) oven.
This is no small feat. However, we believe we have the tenacity to take this on, and definitely the stomach to eat whatever comes out of it. Our current plan of action involves the following steps:

1. Getting permission to create the oven
2. Creating the oven
3. Cooking the food
   1. this will most likely be a traditional Kashgar naan bread and kebabs if we get adventurous.
   2. Fellow tongue teammate and chef Zach is spearheading this effort. And it’s safe to say that we have full confidence in his culinary expertise
4. Eating the food.

Depending on how this works, we will include a meal as part of our presentation of the final project. Incorporating it as part of the digital map in itself will be more challenging. However, we’ve thrown around the idea of creating a short video explaining the building experience.
After meeting as a group on Thursday, we revised our timeline and set out clear goals for completing parts of our project. As we have solidified our project and responsibilities, we are feeling that storymaps may be deterring out creativity. After speaking with Tierney—Who provided some solid advice—Our group might be looking at alternative documentation methods, provided they can coexist with the work of the other teams.
One of these forms is using the digital tool Prezi. Fifty percent of our group, including myself, has a not-so-positive view of the program because of past interactions with it. Despite this, we’ve come to find that our Kashgar food customs might look killer if presented on the canvas-like layout that Prezi offers. We have yet to confirm whether or not we are able to use this program. More news next week.
On the completed side of things, I was able to finish a historical timeline on the diffusion of Cumin around the world. The Timeline JS program was especially useful to highlight years and provide a short narrative surrounding each location featured. The timeline crosses 5 continents and over 4000 years, following Cumin and its uses in all sorts of civilizations. I found a wealth of information surrounding the spice as I mentioned in a post before, but what was really interesting was how each culture used the plant in its own special ways.
Quote from group member Zach,
“I just want to cook food!”

Upon reading several websites, blogs and viewing pictures, the common theme is that Kashgar is a pretty killing city. Some blogs described it as a city out of another time, while others noted that while it’s in China, it really isn’t Chinese (Wei). This is mostly because of its traditional markets, mostly farmer population and the predominant language spoken being Uyghur. Despite its traditional aspects, Kashgar and the entire Xinjiang region is encountering modernization. The Chinese government has developed several sections of the old city, often wiping out many of the cultural heritage locations in the process. This is decidedly uncool for the people who live there given that it is their traditional lifestyle that is being decimated, not the Han Chinese. However, the government has stated that this is in the name of progress and that their infrastructure and development will benefit the area in the long run.
Despite these modernization projects, Kashgar maintains its “old city” allure. A big attraction is the Sunday Markets which draw over 100,000 people to the pavilions and open fields. Because nearly 90 percent of Kashgarians are farmers, their income mostly comes from selling excess crops and selling their animals (Wei). A sheep is about the same price as my two-way flight from Raleigh to Beijing ($900) according to some bloggers. However, the Kashgar New Land International Travel Service Company puts the price of a sheep at a mere $230. Either way, sheep are fascinating and are the livelihood of many Kashgar residents today and thousands of years in the past.
More about sheep: A high nose bridge, long ears, and a big tail, makes a good sheep. So next time you’re out at Walmart, keep that in mind. The Kashgar sheep are famous according to the same website, as many inland Chinese like to have their Kashgar mutton and transport it from Xinjiang. Mutton is primarily used in stews and Kebabs but is also the meat of choice among Uyghurs as they must respect the Halal preparation rules.
Sheep are a big deal, but so are camels. The History Department of the University of Washington calls camels “the most important animal for the development of the long-distance overland trade across Asia.” Camels are not only useful for carrying 500 pounds worth of stuff, their milk is used in yogurts as well as to make a drink called shubat. Both camels and sheep were used for clothing purposes as well.
That’s quite enough about livestock for now. Next time we’ll take a look at what the livestock becomes after it has lived its glorious life. Kebabs, clothing and dishes, what can you make from your camel?
Finally, a quote from a human by the name of Alitash, found in Clarissa Wei’s blogpost about Kashgar and its markets, published on Vice.
“Camel milk is good for tuberculosis. Camel meat is the cheapest type of meat. Pregnant women won’t eat camel meat because it’s said to elongate their pregnancy by months.”

A little dismayed by the inability to do much research this week, I was afraid I’d have little to post about in this blog. However, during class today we discovered the amazing world of story maps and time lines as well as how to use them. During my test map I researched a bit about spices for my side of the project concerning the food of Kashgar. One of the main spices used in the region is Cumin. This was an interesting find given that during my travels in China I did not experience many dishes that were flavored with cumin. Cumin however, is extremely popular in the Mediterranean as well as in India and Nepal (I’d soon find out it was a big deal elsewhere). The curries and sauces that are made in these regions are heavily influenced by spices like cumin and turmeric.
As for the history of cumin itself, I found several intriguing accounts online including an entire blog dedicated to the history of cumin. Go figure. According to several websites, the origin of cumin can be dated back to the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia around 4,000 years ago. Incredible. Even more incredible is the fact that the word Cumin is derived from the Sumerian word Gamun, which was written in their cuneiform script.
Moving on. The popularity of cumin in the Mesopotamia region cannot be overstated. It even made an appearance in the world’s oldest recipe collection; aka “The Yale Culinary Tablets.” In the 9th Century B.C.E. Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II threw a party where he specifically boasts about the amount of cumin he has on his table.
Just when I thought I knew enough about this legendary spice, it turns out that cumin was also used as a drug in multiple scenarios. Greek medical texts list cumin as a medicinal option that can prevent women from experiencing hysteria and Pliny the Elder, in his work Natural History, says that women who smell cumin during intercourse are more likely to conceive. The Greeks knew their spices.
But so did the Romans. A cookbook, compiled by only the snobbiest food critics of Rome, listed cumin as a “pantry essential,” a spice every well-stocked home should have. In a moment of genius, traders spread cumin into the northern regions of Europe. So popular was this spice that by the 13th century, there is record of early Britons paying their rent in cumin. Cumin was now a currency.
But you’d better believe this isn’t the end. Cumin is like the McDonalds of spices. Everywhere. Realizing that cumin must not be unique, early European traders went in search for more spices like it when they traveled on their rickety trading ships into Asia and also into the Americas. When Spanish explorers set foot in the “new world,” you’d better believe they had their cumin seeds with them. By 1600 cumin was growing in modern day New Mexico and like everywhere else, it took over and became a staple on the table.
By the 19th century, the only place Cumin hadn’t been, was inside the Whitehouse. Then came Lady Bird Johnson, first lady to the 36th President. Her “Pedernales River Chili” called for a teaspoon of cumin seeds. Cumin had touched every surface of the globe before the internet was invented. Never before was a spice so universally accepted and popular. Cumin, whose roots are so near Kashgar made its way around the world in the form of medicine, currency and finally as a condiment.
I leave you with this fantastic quote from the above blog:
“(Cumin) was thought to promote love and fidelity. People carried it to weddings and walked around with it with their pockets. It was reputed to keep lovers and chickens from wandering.”

Videos, more than anything, have been the most helpful so far. Because we are studying food, seeing the food itself and how people eat it has been a great way to better understand what we’re looking at regarding food cultures and customs. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do as much research on my specific topics as I’d have liked. But there has been some great resources that I’m excited to look into once given a free afternoon.
Hopefully that afternoon can be tomorrow and I’ll have more substance to put into a blog post. Until then…

Marco Polo was an intrepid fellow.
I’ve been reading many of his accounts that follow his journey along the silk road to get a better understanding of what the terrain, people and other features were prominent during the time. Polo, who traveled with his father (and initially some priests which were sent along to convert pagans), speaks about the land and the people of places he visits. He seems to have an incredible talent for linguistics and grasps many of the languages of the people whom he interacts with.
He is also more curious than afraid. The priests who I mentioned above, took off when they heard that the next city had been invaded by a ferocious army. Honestly, from the accounts, Polo doesn’t really seem to care. He and his father (Nicolo) are hoping to arrive at the Great Khan’s court before he dies, so they keep trudging along from Baghdad to Hormuz.
Along the way down the Tigris river, Polo talks of a new “breed” of people who are inhuman in nature and acted like wolves. The Kurds were of course just normal people, who happened to be attacking Marco and his party. The fact that he describes them as “the savage and vindictive race who dwelt in those fastnesses, and whose occupation it was to rob and murder,” doesn’t really give them a great rap. Unfortunately, we don’t know what the Kurds thought of Polo and his party of flashy armor, strange amulets and terrifying weapons…
This just reminds us of the fact that having a written language and keeping records, skews the perspective of history toward the victor (and often the European). The Han Chinese wrote about the Xiongnu pastoralists in an uncannily similar manner, calling them “Barbarians and animals from the North.” Quite interesting how the “opposition” is related to animals, both from the Han China and Italian point of view.
After a few paragraphs dedicated to insulting the Kurds, Polo finds himself in the port-town of Hormuz. He then proceeds to insult the Persian ships docked at harbor. I judgmental character to say the least… However, not all is bad. Setting out from Hormuz, Polo remarks on the beauty of the natural landscape with in all its flowering magnificence. In fact, he spends the same amount of time discussing the nature around him as he spends describing an attack in which he and his father had to kill 3 bandits before barely escaping with their lives!
The trails of the silk road are already proving treacherous for our venetian explorer. Will he make it to the hall of the great Kublai Khan, or will he succumb to the dangers of the barren deserts? All will be revealed next week. Until then, a great quote from our drama king:
“(Polo and his squad) leading their horses and camels, sometimes on a path so narrow and so high above the gorge by whose side it ran, that it seemed inevitable that the travellers would fall and break their necks.”
Charming.

Process posts will, believe it or not, reflect on the process our group is through in researching our topic and completing this project. After getting together today to research and brainstorm, I’m feeling much more confident about our current path. We’ve highlighted personal responsibilities, our research outlines and have even managed to schedule a weekly meeting time (incredible, given our various schedules).
Though we primarily researched on our own during the hour, we also bounced ideas off one another regarding how we’ll be presenting the final product as a narrative. Unfortunately, as of right now, we don’t have much knowledge of the story map program we’ll be using for the final piece and what its capabilities are. Our goal however, is to write our research out as a story, following specific people’s lives in Kashgar. We’re thinking about placing the audience around a dinner table and zooming out to different aspects of the meal from there. We even drew up a fantastic diagram of what this could look like which I tried to attach, but upon previewing it, could not see it clearly.
Given these posts are meant to include some reflection on research, I’ll be attempting to throw in a piece of information or quote I found interesting with each post. Here’s an appetizing description of a popular Kashgar snack according to the website Chinatouronline.com.
Lungs and Intestines. “A traditional snack and Uyghur favorite, Lung and Intestine poured with Flour and Rice is made of the lungs and intestines of sheep. The lung poured with flour is soft and the intestines are tasty, causing tourists at home and abroad to praise its special flavor.”

What an immense task it is to choose a specific topic out of a region spanning three continents and over 2000 years. The Silk Road is full of interesting history, cultural diffusion, empires, nomads, languages and more.
As part of the Tongue Team, I can attest that we were initially overwhelmed. Our focus drifted from examining empires and social structures, to looking at translators and the maritime trade route. Our interests were then piqued by the nomadic Xiongnu peoples of the steppe in central Asia, who’s milk wine and pastoral lifestyle grabbed our attention. However, upon realizing this group of people left no traces of a written language, we shifted our scope yet again to concentrate on the city of Kashgar, the Uyghur people, and the Xinjiang region of Western China.
Despite figuring out a location, we were left to pinpoint our interests to form a coherent and feasible project. Our interests in the history of the region coupled with Kashgar being a landmark city throughout the history of the Silk Road, made choosing a time period especially challenging. Several members of our group—myself included—had expressed particular interest in Chinese cuisine. In a moment of brilliance, the thought of using a contemporary meal as a vehicle for examining the customs, history and society of Kashgar, was put on the table (pun intended).
While we have yet to decide the components of the contemporary meal of choice, many options are available to choose from. The importance of breads such as nan, spices like cumin, tea and other beverages as well as livestock, provide a variety of choices regarding traditional meals. Similarly, the traditions behind preparation, storage and eating habits will certainly play a role in our research in the weeks to come. As the tongue group, we had ironically shifted our stance from the tongue being a symbol of language to a symbol of food.
Having chosen food as our focus, roles for our group simply grew out of food itself. My interest in cuisine stems from eating food in China. The unique dishes, cultural values and symbols food has in certain areas are fascinating, not to mention how incredible the food itself tastes. As a fan of spices, noodles and street food, I’ll be examining the diffusion of peppers, the significance of grains and also the importance of livestock to the Xinjiang people throughout history. My research will likely take me from the Mediterranean to the Ming dynasty in search of why people eat what they eat in Kashgar.
Unfortunately, in my research so far, food has not been commonly documented. Following spices from place to place will require considerable browsing through first-person accounts as well as merchant records if available. I’m predicting that this is the main area where our group will need technical assistance. How to effectively find articles that will prove useful to our project may require some outside help. Though this could be a deterrent, our focus on contemporary food will give us a good starting point for our research, as we won’t be blindly searching for the traditional meals of 12th century Xinjiang residents. It so happens that a previous teacher of mine identifies as Uyghur and lived in Xinjiang much of her life. I am looking forward to speaking with her about this project and the valuable insight she may provide through personal experience.
As far as our group’s experience on this topic goes, we have very little background. However, I have no doubt in the creativity of this team—definitely a strong suite—which was realized during the brainstorming process. The connections and ideas that were discussed for our proposals were often ambitious but exciting. Personally, I want our final project to be a creative product that really draws in the viewer. Not only are these much more interesting to our audience, they’re more fun to create. If there is some way to share a meal through a narrative with characters, almost in the form of a story, I think we’d enjoy the creativity it would bring. Another option could be sharing in the style of a first-person account of their experience with food customs in the Xinjiang region.
No matter what way we decide to present our project, I still feel quite out of my league regarding my knowledge base in this area. While our subject of study is slowly taking shape, I’m worried that we may constantly be discovering new avenues of research that despite being interesting, pull us away from our core element of the meal itself. Following the strands of evidence through the history of the Silk Road is much like following the Silk Road itself: exhausting. I hope we don’t lose our passion for our theme midway through the project, or somehow find all available resources exhausted. Despite these concerns, I know that working as a group will be a motivational factor behind staying interested and responsible for progress.
Progress that I hope to make surrounding the digital aspects of our project include learning more about web design and the graphics involved in creating a visually appealing website. It is easy to tell when browsing through webpages today, which websites were created by professionals and which were thrown together haphazardly. Unfortunately, the ones that are haphazard are often a gold mine of information that gets ignored. I hope we are able to display our research with style and flair. Following the design aspects, I’m unsure about how programming and writing code will contribute to the creation of pages, I’d be interested in dabbling in the programming behind the website itself if it seems applicable.
Besides these technological interests, I am particularly excited to research food itself. It is an inescapable, essential part of culture, and in my humble opinion one of the greatest parts. At the completion of this course, our January Term journey will take us through the same regions we are studying. Having an appreciation for the history and cultural values around the food will surely enhance the enjoyment of eating the meals themselves.