Tea culture and the choyxona

Returning and the half-full bowl

In Uzbekistan the day begins and ends with tea. The traditional brew is green, though black tea is drunk everywhere too. The pot is rinsed with boiling water, the leaves added and steeped; then the host pours a bowlful and tips it back into the pot, two or three times over. This ‘returning’, qaytarish, helps the tea brew quickly and evenly. Tea is poured by the host or the youngest person present, and a bowl is handed to a guest with the right hand, the left resting on the heart.

A guest’s bowl is filled only halfway, which people read as ‘we will keep topping you up — stay longer’; a brimming bowl can be taken as a hint that it is time to go.

The choyxona and the gap

The choyxona, or teahouse, is a public place to drink tea, eat and rest; teahouses have long stood by caravanserais, bazaars, neighbourhood squares and pretty corners of the mahallas. The menu is short — plov, samsa, lagman, qozon kabob, dimlama, shurpa — and traditional teahouses serve no alcohol. Guests sit on a so‘ri, a raised platform spread with quilted mattresses, around a low table. One teahouse custom is the gap: a circle of friends, classmates or colleagues meets regularly, each member hosting in turn, and women have their own gaps. For a traveller, lunch at a neighbourhood choyxona is the easiest window onto local life.