Uyghurs Love China…Dishware, That Is

Home » Featured, uyghurs February 28, 2010 4 Comments

This store would be a mother’s worst nightmare.

All four walls are stacked from floor to ceiling with glass teapots, bowls and dishes leaving just a tiny square in the middle from which to browse the collection. It feels as if the whole display is only one sneeze away from total chaos. The local Muslim woman who manages the store is part of the Uyghur minority here in Xinjiang and she moves around the confined space effortlessly, apparently unaware of any potential disaster.

Uyghur Dishware Store

This is an ordinary Uyghur dishware store. It’s size is misleading because it underscores the important role this dishware holds in a modern Uyghur home.  When receiving guests, the main table is usually packed with glassware and dishware each filled to the brim with fruits, raisins, candies or other snacks.  The guests are served tea from ornately decorated bowls, decorations which display little – if any – Chinese influence.

A set of Uyghur dishware

Some of the dishes are made of glass with jagged edges that play with the light while others are shiny porcelain.  In some areas such as Kashgar’s Old City you can still find hand-made earthenware sold along the remaining narrow streets, although now-a-days this isn’t bought for daily use in the home.  Each type of dishware is relatively cheap but make for a difficult souvenir because of its weight and tendency to break.

A Uyghur dining room tableIn English we would normally refer to this dishware in the same way we refer to the country in which Uyghurs call home: “china”.  Interestingly, the Uyghurs use the same name with a slightly different pronunciation: “chee-na”.  In the Uyghur language, however, this word isn’t a homonym.  The Uyghur word for the People’s Republic of China is zhong guo, the same name name used by the Chinese themselves, although again pronounced slightly differently.

So, technically, one could find unsettling irony in the phrase “Uyghurs love china”.

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4 Comments

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  • China Tour said:
    March 3rd, 2010 at 5:50 am

    Wow! I love Chinese dishware and have few of them in my kitchen. I'll be going to Travel to China very soon. Do you think I can bring some of these crockery back home? They need to be packed very carefully. I hope the shopkeeper will be able to help me with this!!!

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  • bluepaper said:
    September 1st, 2010 at 3:08 pm

    People usually use the most expensive dishware for just decorating. They place them in a glass cupboard so that it shines from inside. It looks pricey and expensive.
    some houses use the whole set, which looks like in the picture above.In my opinion, it is a fad between hosueholds to change over different dishwares every time they have holidays.
    PS: I guess you can carry them to your country, but you have to be very very careful with packaging and you need to carry them by hand all the time. I guess it worth for a troublesome.

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  • ChinaMatt said:
    March 16th, 2012 at 8:42 am

    I’d be afraid to set foot in that little shop.

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    Josh says: March 16th, 2012 at 12:54 pm

    I’m with you, Matt…and it’s as cramped as it looks too! My wife and I bought a few pieces but we had to go in one at a time to figure out which piece we wanted :)

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