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

My experiences with Naan have usually been different.  Most of the time when I have Naan it is served before the meal and is a light fluffy flatbread with a light structure inside, this Naan was completely different. It had a dark seasoned crust and was much larger and heavier than the other Naans I have had. Additionally, the Naan had poppy seeds as well as sesame seeds on the outside of it and was brushed with butter.   The bread was also served with the main course and was a perfect utensil to scoop up the other food. Naan
Naan seems like an integral part of the dining experience in Uyghur cuisine. In my experience, I have found this to be a commonality amongst many Muslim communities  across Asia and Africa.  Another thing that I found different about this Naan compared to others I have  tasted is that it was more salty and yeasty. It tasted like the dough had plenty of time to rest and develop. Something that I look forward to tasting is the difference in the yeastiness of the bread when I get to taste it in Kashgar.

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.

Buenas Noches readers,
I hope your day’s been swell!
The Tongue Team is getting down to the nitty gritty topic we’ve all been waiting for……….FOOD!
Since the focus of our whole digitized project is cuisine in Kashgar, we thought it appropriate to present and serve a meal during our presentation, and to focus our Prezi points on a photograph of a meal we create. We’ve long been discussing the logistics of building a tandoor oven, and through fire permits, changing locations, and fluctuating prices, Billie and Zach finally got it built today! The original plan was to donate it to the Guilford Farm, but the oven would need to be under a structure to prevent rain decay, which would violate fire codes. Therefore Zach now has it stationed in his backyard.

(I’ve provided a very low-quality view of the inside. Video credits to Billie)
Saturday Zach and I, perhaps Chris and Billie, are venturing to Costco to purchase the ingredients for the meal. Here’s the very rough shopping list we formulated (that is by no means complete):
-Kabobs

• Lamb or chicken
• Cumin
• Chili Flakes
• Fennel Seeds

-Naan

• Dry active yeast
• Salt
• Sugar
• Flour
• Sesame Seeds
• Poppy Seeds

-Pilaf

• Chicken
• Jasmine Rice
• Carrots
• Onions
• Garlic

-Tea

• Black tea

I’ll be providing the wok for the pilaf, Zach the tandoor oven and the hand tools, and we’re all hunting for a porcelain teapot and dishware (or at least good replicas). Billie has searched Goodwill, but we’re continuing to search HomeGoods and thrift stores.
To append to Billie and Chris’s Honor’s project over the J-term trip, we’re filming every aspect of the process: building the tandoor, purchasing the ingredients, practicing the food preparation, cooking the meal, and serving it. We thought cuisine too three-dimensional a topic to simply be read about, and it certainly lends itself to being interactive. We’re going to incorporate it as a series of videos on our map and site page.
 Fortunately, tonight’s reading coincided with a main focal point in our project: the Uyghurs!
One of the first sources stated that “Uighur” is not a romanization of “Uyghur” (or vice versa) but a completely different ethnic group! I was immediately concerned, because I wasn’t sure that all of us delineated between the two in our findings due to the fact that we thought them identical. However I could find no articles supporting this statement, though I did find many stating that the people themselves prefer the “Uyghur” spelling because it is more in accordance with phonetics of their native language (“Uighur” violates vowel harmony). Other sources went in depth to the rise of Islam in Xinjiang, evidencing why Kashgar has such a religious focus. The Karakhanids established their capital in Kashgar, and sometime later Yusuf Khass Hajib wrote “Wisdom of Royal Glory”, which referenced the Quran and hadiths, providing stark evidence of Islam. Kashgar became a Muslim religious center but was eventually taken over by the Manchus, though Yakub Beg later established an independent khanate to return Muslims to power.
I realize that was a fairly brief update on the multi-faceted beast of this course, but I hope it suffices! Many more insights to come.
Have a wonderful night!
Regards,
-Delaney

Ciao readers,
I hope you’re well!
There’s been much that’s occurred since I last blogged.
Last Tuesday, most of the course trekked to Chapel Hill to see esteemed Sufi musician Youssou N’Dour perform an amalgamation of religious and “pop” music. Although Eric and a fellow professor I was riding with seemed to be ecstatic over him, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Would the music have more auditory similarity with African music than Arab? Would the music be restrained, or lively? Would it have an overt religious focus? I could’ve easily browsed his repertoire on Youtube, but I wanted to be surprised, letting the live concert be my first experience. As soon as the first musician approached centerstage, the auditorium was awash with color from the embroidered robes and caps, and booming with a cacophony of instruments. I recognized some of the drums spoken of during the little pre-concert presentation we attended, and mulled over the fact that to play ⅔ drums displayed one must be born into a genealogy of drummers. This theme of genealogy seemed an integral theme in the Sufi tradition, because apparently most of the songs Youssou sings are recitations of family histories. Sometimes people are even hired to memorize family trees and sing them at events! Another tradition, or perhaps just a one-time event, I found curious was the collection of money by the performers. One older gentleman with the surname Mbaye (who was N’Dour’s musical inspiration as a child) incited viewers to swarm the stage during his performance, offering bills which he swiftly pocketed. Later a younger performer made rounds with a basket. Overall, I found the concert incredibly engaging. Instead of a somber, dignified affair, it was lively and struck something in me solely with the sounds, as I couldn’t understand a single word.
To switch gears to the Tongue Team’s project, we’re currently in the process of compiling individual research. My focus on culture and customs has narrowed to hover around the practices surrounding lokantas and tea. Lokantas are Turkic cafes, mostly frequented by those of the Uyghur ethnicity, that serve snacks and conversation between community members. They are often divided into sections for men, women, and children. To simplify, they could be compared to Western cafes. I’ve found many recent sources documenting these establishments, however I ran into a complication with my historical research: “lokanta” was (and is in some places) also a general Turkish word for restaurants. This means that most of my search results in academic databases are in Turkish (without translation) and the results are broad, not honing in on the specific type of lokanta I’m seeking. I peddled around for awhile trying to avoid taking on the bear of translation, but most of my other lokanta sources were just blogs/first-hand accounts and not proven as scholarly, so I thought I still needed something to supplement them. This Monday I met with Rachel, the research librarian at Hege, to discuss my hindrances with this topic. She provided me with a myriad of options I hadn’t previously considered:
-Finding a Turkish speaker at Guilford through the Study Abroad office or the Learning Commons
-Contacting the Islamic or Turkic  Studies department at UNCG
-Getting sources from NPR cultural pieces
-Using other sources like anthropology databases
She assured me that I could use blog or more contemporary sources as long as I felt them legitimate.
We also got into a discussion about tea, from whence she recommended “A History of the World in 6 Glasses” by Tom Standage, which contains a whole portion on tea. I’ve requested for the library to order it and am excited to see what it holds!
Below I’ve attached an exterior example of a lokanta:

Thank you for reading! Bis dann!!!!
Regards,
-Delaney

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.

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…