Last weekend, as timekeeper, I roughly outlined a schedule for the Tongue team and then as a team we went through it to make it our official timeline for the rest of the project. While organizing and scheduling usually takes away some anxiety and stress this seemed to take my vague anxieties for the project and solidify them into very real and scary due dates and approaching deadlines. We are too close to finishing this…
What I love about my team is our ambition and our passion; however, the requirements for this project have downscaled and we are still moving ahead on our fairly elaborate goals. I think we have a chance of pulling them off, because we have been working pretty hard from the beginning with research and planning, but it’s still extremely daunting. I can’t tell if I think we are being slightly unrealistic or if I am just really stressed about the amount of work it will require. Hopefully I am overthinking it and it will be more doable that I am expecting.
We have definitely gotten all our ideas in order, though, and have concrete goals and ideas. One of the questions we have been having is how we will be a part of the storymap since our project is different from the standard idea. Our team is writing the narrative of a meal in Kashgar and had hoped early on to have an image on the class’ map set in Kashgar of our scene (a table with each component of the meal). We have been trying to come up with ways to do this with the technology we have been given, but have found it extremely restricting instead of inspiring, which is the whole point of the class’ focus on digitalization. Our most recent idea has been to link a Prezi presentation of an image of our meal and each of our separate research on each component. I gave it a quick try during our last team meeting with a randomly chosen image from google images of a table with multiple dishes on it and it is very similar to what we had hoped for! We think this might be our best option, despite the fact that Prezi is a pretty horrible system to work with – it is extremely frustrating and arduous in regards to the technology/site’s abilities and parameters.
I kept working on that example Prezi of what our project might look like for the sake of demonstrating our group’s end goal as well as tinkering around on Prezi to get familiarized with it. Here it is: http://prezi.com/hsvs-xr8snsw/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
Side note:
I contacted a photographer, Ramdas Iyer, who has a whole page on his site dedicated to magnificent open markets along the Silk Road, including Kashgar (http://ramdasiyer.travellerspoint.com/40/). He said we would be able to use all and any of his images free of charge because they will be used for educational purposes. Here is one photo I think is incredible… because I love bagels!

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!”

你好,
I hope you’re doing well! (And am mildly proud of myself for finding a Chinese keyboard)
Last week, following her comment on my post, Tierney linked me the instructions to create a Gigapixel StoryMap. The online example was enthralling: focused on a famous Impressionist painting, each slide zoomed in with remarkable detail, even going so far as to comment on an individual brushstroke. Our group was very excited for the possibilities. We proposed that we could zoom in on each individual dish and ingredient in the meal, and then provide information on point from there. While this sounded great in theory, Tierney brought up an important point I hadn’t considered. In order to get such a high quality zoom on the map, we would need an incredibly high resolution photograph. This outed our idea of simply scanning a sketch of a meal we fabricated, taking a picture of a pre-existing meal, or photoshopping one together.  We also proposed going ahead and generating our points on the map and placing a background later and shifting points around, but Tierney informed us that the site doesn’t function in that manner. However Tierney stated that she may have misunderstood our project ambitions, and will continue searching for other sites and applications.
In Friday’s class, she introduced us to GIPHY and hipster ipsum, both valuable resources to spice and mock up our website while it’s in the developmental stage.
In addition to these new applications, Eric provided valuable clarification about the final product. We need an amount of points vastly smaller than we had anticipated, which makes it much easier to formulate a cohesive map.
Up until this class, and perhaps even after, I think everyone in our class was anxious about the expectations for the map. This being a new course, we had no model to base our own projects of off. But I know I personally was greatly relieved with hearing the dimensions and specifications for the project. It focuses on quality, not quantity.
In the spirit of the interwebs, here are two parting Gifs to represent my feelings about this project.
Before Friday:
http://lookhuman.com/
Now:
http://iheartcatgifs.tumblr.com/post/12968948480
Thanks for reading!
Regards,
-Delaney
 

Hello readers,
I hope you’re well!
I write to you from the comfort of my couch, basking in my first official day of Fall Break. This has provided me some much needed time to reflect on our group’s project and progress.
This Thursday, the Tongue group met to gauge our project and discuss recent research. As Recorder, I drafted notes through the meeting.
We began by solidifying each of our specific areas of research:
-Billie is researching porcelain, the chekish used to stamp naan, and the human body as a tool
Zach helped Billie create a more comprehensive list of ways the hands are used in
cooking. Pleading dumplings (the motion used to close them), kneading dough, pulling
noodles, hand flicks and rotations used with a wok, grating noodles, etc.
-Chris is focusing on kebabs and mutton, cumin, chili, tea, yoghurt marinade and other sauces
-Zach is continuing to research tandyrs and their relation to Indic-Turkic cultural diffusion, and the dichotomy between the use of rice and noodles
-I am looking into lokantas (Turkic cafes) and their Italian origins, fan and t’sai (ying and yang of food), and the 5 elements (wood, water, fire, wind, metal) and their integration into food
Billie suggested looking into the Five Elements, harking back to a project she completed
in high school
In addition to narrowing our research topics, we all set goals for ourselves over break:
-Chris hopes to have a completed timeline for his spices, and will explore StoryMap as host (the account under which the map is created)
-Zach hopes to develop, but not finish, a timeline for the cultural diffusion of earthen ovens and tandoors, and perhaps one on rice and noodles
-Billie hopes to organize, cite, and digitize all of her resource, and maybe play around with Photoshop to see if we could manufacture a picture of a meal
-I hope to cite all of my sources and draft a timeline for lokantas
Jumping off of Billie’s topic, we spent some time researching some really innovative cooking techniques. We gleaned that in the Kashgar region they occasionally roasted animals in mud, barbequed on rocks, covered foods in clay before the rise of using boiling water.
A book that Billie ordered to Guilford for us on Kashgar was sent back to its origin, due to the fact that we didn’t retrieve it in time. Whoops! Luckily we can reorder after break. Other book woes relate to a very informative book we found: “A History of Food Culture in China” by Rongguang Zhao. There are no physical copies in any close vicinity to Guilford, nor can they be ordered, and Guilford doesn’t have access to the PDF copies at other universities. If we find it a very crucial source we’ll contact Rachel, but otherwise we may leave it be.
As for our tandyr-making plans, they’re looking up! Chris succeeded in getting funding from the International Club, and Zach has proposed creating a “Tandyr Club”. After break we also plan to take a group trip to Home Depot to price materials.
Thanks for reading! Bis dann!
Regards,
-Delaney
 

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.”

While this is probably extremely basic and obvious, it has taken me this long in my research to come to the realization that the body is a tool of its own in cooking and that there is a history and culture to the body as a tool.
To make noodles, people in Kashgar as well as many other places in China use a very specific technique of stretching, folding and, basically, slapping to thin dough into noodles. This technique is highly unique and the use of the fingers and hands are so integral and specific to the process and end result. How did this technique come to be? I must know! Hopefully more to come on this front.
To make naan and bagels in Kashgar, bakers have to shape the dough in order to get the right shape. Tools such as rolling pins and a chekish might get used, but no tool can replace the hands for certain steps of this process.
Hands molded the pots used, carved wood into certain kinds of utensils, slap naan onto the walls of ovens, knead dough, roll dough into balls, pick vegetables and fruit, pick up bread to dip into tea or dinner. What else? Are other parts of the body important to different steps of cooking or handling of food? What specialized tasks do fingers have in different cooking scenarios? Are feet ever used for kneading dough, making grapes into wine, etc?
I believe this is really where my epiphany came from: I was so focused on tools, utensils and modes/methods of cooking that got created over time that I completely forgot about the one thing that is present in every kind of cooking everywhere: the human body. I am still focused on tools created for cooking, but now I have a whole new avenue of research to go down! This is getting me super jazzed about research (which might also have to do with the time of day -2am- and amount of coffee consumed) and I can’t wait to go through videos, photos, and texts to study how people in Kashgar use their hands, their arms, their feet, and any other part of their body to cook.

So far photographs and videos have been much richer in information and content than anything I have read, in regards to food and its preparation. For instance, I have found this travel blog site with a section dedicated to Kashgar entitled, “Pictorial Essay and Record of a Historic City Salted for Destruction.” The pictures are incredible and there are small stories written in between some of the photographs that go into the feel of Kashgar as a city that are fascinating. The pictures depict pottery and metal (copper?) pots and naan and bagels; I want to know so much more about the those men and women making and selling those products, where they picked up the trade and the history behind their practices. The pictures can’t tell me all of those details, but those photographs seem to hold more information than most of my database searches. Why is that? Is what I am searching on these databases or in google searches not the right avenue of research? Am I not using the right keywords? I feel as though I have tried going less specific with searches and gotten nothing that pertains to subjects I need, and then getting absolutely no results from more specific searches. And then the middle ground to those searches only get my toes wet in terms of the information I hope to gain or the topics I hope to delve into.
I have tried searching in Mandarin and then google translating websites, but even then my results are few and lacking substance. My most substantial sources of information have been YouTube videos (that I linked in a previous post) in Mandarin.
Now that I have become slightly burnt out on the naan and bread-making front, I have turned to porcelain. Porcelain has been proved a better topic of research so far. I have found a fair amount through databases, but I have not read through all of the possible articles and journals so I cannot say so far whether or not this avenue of research will be successful or not. Pottery in general in Kashgar, however, has been a trickier topic of research than expected. Again… why?????? I see incredible forms of pottery in photographs or wooden utensils used for cooking (such as special rolling pins for rolling out the naan), but can not find those details that look so important in photographs and videos in written form or documentation.  These cooking tools and methods are important and should absolutely have an interesting and influential history and significance, which is why I am being so stubborn in my research. There should be way more information available than what I have found!
The articles, blogs, and websites I have found on the making of naan or pottery  are all modern, and the vast majority of them are not made by Chinese citizens or citizens of Kashgar. The creators or writers are, instead, Westerners who write about parts of Kashgar that seem to be novel or special. This perspective that keeps coming up in my searches is not necessarily surprising, as modern documentation is significantly easier and more accessible, but it is also important to look critically at these sources, because they do not hold multitudes of valuable information, but rather fairly surface level information. I also am thinking critically about the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much in-depth or non-western sources of information in the searches I have done. Were cooking practices in Uyghur communities or in Kashgar not documented or uncovered? Am I, for the most part, only going to find research on what the West has found important? For instance, I have found significantly more on white porcelain than I have on the history of bakers of naan or potters. I assume this is because white porcelain is world renounced and recognized by the world as an important outcome of trade from China. The documentation and history of naan is probably not as important to the western world, but it is very important to me and my research.
I will continue to dig deeper and try new ways of researching in order to find information from more perspectives (than just western perspectives).

 
Hallo,
Hope you’ve had a great week!
With all my other activities and obligations I neglected to do multiple blog posts this week, so hunker down; this one’ll be lengthy!
First off, research: Thus far I’ve found a myriad of contemporary sources, with historical context, but very few historical accounts themselves. I’ve sifted through accounts of Muslim food customs in the Uyghur region, accounts of Kashgar’s famous Sunday Bazaar, and an article on the significance of travelers on the Silk Road in Kashgar, to name a few. They’ve been helpful in deepening my understanding of contemporary culture, but I’m striving to find more dealing with the roots of the customs and meals.
Some interesting facts I gleaned are:
-If invited to wash your hands (which you will be), wash thrice and don’t shake off the water
-You must drink all the tea in your bowl before you leave the table
-When given a gift of food, always return the container with more food in it
-When serving naan guests must see that it is whole before you split it to serve
I also discovered a little wooden tool with spikes that the Uyghur people use to pierce the naan in cyclic, almost flower-like patterns. Although I’m focusing more on the cultural aspects of the meal, since it is a utensil used in preparation and Billie was enthralled with it, I’m letting her research it. I’m very excited to learn what they’re called, if they’re standardized, if they’re used for foods other than naan, etc.
Researching all of these customs sparked an idea: if the Tongue Team ends up culminating in an oral presentation revolving around food, we should strive to be as true to the customs as possible. We’ll serve all the food with two hands, display the naan from our tandyr before breaking it, and make sure to provide the meal in stages. I’m trying to look deeper into the traditional garb worn to eat or serve, if it even exists. It would be a very interactive way to present to the class (and possibly the Heges), and demonstrate that we understood that customs are more than something to be studied off a sheet of paper. Now the challenge is to portray these customs faithfully.. And the whole appreciation vs appropriation debacle. But we’ll cross that bridge when/if we come to it.
In our Tech Lab today, the culminating instructional one according to Tierney, the main focus was on the framework we’re going to use to erect a final product. The two websites, which can be used exclusively or in conjunction, are StoryMap JS and Timeline JS. StoryMap JS is more of an interactive, not necessarily chronological journey, while Timeline JS can still incorporate media but is restricted to a linear proceeding. While playing around on the StoryMap site, we discovered that the format or focus of the map can be altered according to the delineations of the project. For very specific locations you can switch to Open Street Maps, which you can even drop coordinates into. To highlight topography or physical markers, you can switch to Stamen Maps: Terrain.
More closely related to our project, Tierney mentioned a version that makes the StoryMap less map-based and more image-based, which would work really well with our idea of a “table narrative”, zooming in and out on certain dishes or ingredients, However I’ve played around with the site and have yet to discover how to do it. The Tongue Team will definitely need to inquire about that.
Although we didn’t have ample time to discuss, one of our team’s new ideas after this tech session is to create one large narrative about the food in Kashgar, but embed sub-timelines for each individual “character”. Therefore the Timeline JS application would be useful in formulating those sub-stories. Hopefully we’ll narrow this down in our meeting tomorrow!
Even after all the instruction, my personal confusion, which I believe coincides with the group, relates to how much evidence and research do we actually need. As visual tools we don’t want to weigh StoryMaps and Timelines with too much information or readers will get lost/disinterested. I understand the need for a narrow narrative, but I’m not quite sure how wide we should be casting our nets. Should I go deeper with my current research findings, or continue finding tangent topics?
Eric also brought up the issue of citing sources, finding locations, and identifying purposes in different languages. He suggested that if it’s Chinese we ask Zhihong to help translate, but otherwise we’ll just work through it. I’m not adept at any languages other than English besides Latin, German, and a little Spanish, which are good to know but haven’t popped up often (a.k.a once) in the Kashgar region. I’m just afraid of missing sources or links because I can’t understand what they lead or refer to.
Overall, I’m pleased with the direction our group is heading! Hopefully I’ll have an update on Apple China tomorrow night!
Thanks for sticking through this extensive post!
Regards,
-Delaney

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.”