Bazaar: a culture show
Chapter 7
Entertainment center
(1)
Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
Рынок Чорсу, Ташкент, 2024
In the Middle Ages, all spectacles in the bazaar took place at a choyxona, or a tea house. Here, one could see the circus performance ‘Dorbozlik' with tightrope walkers and fire tricks, the national wrestling ‘Kurash', humorous performances like ‘Hangoma' and ‘Khandalak', regional dances, and traveling puppet theaters.
Behind closed doors, more intimate forms of entertainment were also organized, such as hookah smoking and dances by teenage boys, known as ‘Bacha bazi'.
A modern teahouse functions more as a café and a ‘pitstop' for visitors moving through the bazaar. Typically, large bazaars have several of them—located at the exits and in the center. Nowadays, street musicians playing national melodies can be found in the tourist aisles, but this is not a regular practice and is usually a spontaneous act.
Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
Tourism as an activator of scenography
(2)
Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
The element of representation and entertainment, typical of oriental markets, has undoubtedly persisted in the very nature of trade. A bazaar is always a presentation of both goods and the people who participate in a trade—sellers and buyers alike. Bargaining is an essential part of this performance, bringing satisfaction to both sides. Overall, the entire process of showcasing products is staged like a theatrical performance.
Such a performance, besides achieving the final result—a concluded deal and connections for the future—also acts as a catalyst for socialization, engaging buyers who were often previously unfamiliar with each other in playful interactions, while attracting tourists and increasing the chances of a successful sale.
Bread rows at Chorsu market, Tashkent, 2024
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Bread row at Chorsu market, Tashkent, 2024
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Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
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The price of products, especially those aimed at tourists, is often determined by the quality of storytelling: the more engaging and vivid the story behind an item, the more profitable the sale. It raises a certain level of negativity among locals, as it has generally increased the prices. However, this mainly applies to the tourist-oriented products in specific rows, rather than to all goods offered to the local population.
Product presentation is an art. And a successful presentation is the key to free marketing. Thus, the modern stage design of the sale combines the influence of social media and eastern traditions.
Chorsu, Tashkent, 2019
The openness of borders has become in many ways a catalyst for the development of this aspect of trade. Sellers use music, humor, and involve customers in a sensual experience—they offer to taste, smell, and touch the product. Poetic metaphors and emotional language are often used when describing products—this helps break down barriers, including language, and facilitates closing the desired trade.
In many ways, this theatrical approach is supported by new technologies and the development of social networks. Sellers themselves often offer to take photos, and when arranging their goods, they pay attention to whether their stall is ‘instagrammable'. If it is visually appealing to tourists, with colorful mountains of spices and pyramids of perfect fruits.
Jewelers' dome in Bukhara, 2024
Museum of Today´s Culture
(3)
The bazaar also functions as a kind of museum of modernity, with a constantly changing exhibition — a living representation of the country’s material culture, gathered in one place. It acts as a cultural map, where instead of natural landscapes, rivers, and heights, the regions are represented through textures, colors, smells, and patterns.
Jewelers' dome in Bukhara, 2024
Chorsu Market, 2024. Hikoyat Salimova’s photo archive
Many traditional Uzbek motifs have gained popularity abroad, leading to the mass production of certain goods, such as painted ceramics, adras chapans (coats), dresses, skullcaps, bags, and jewelry in the national style.
Thus, the market functions as a place where one can observe the ongoing transformation of local cultural elements into widely recognized ethnic symbols.
As jadidism, the ideology of Islamic modernism and pan-Turkism, has revived, Abdullah Qodiri’s novel ‘Days gone by' gained new popularity. So, the Chust skullcap with white embroidery on a black background, worn by the main character, became widely perceived as the Uzbek national men’s headdress.
Interestingly, popular regional motifs are increasingly seen as national, gradually pushing out competing styles. For example, in the past, skullcap designs varied significantly—by their patterns and cuts, one could determine the wearer’s region of origin.
Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
One can distinguish two trends at Chorsu at the same time. On the one hand, there is adaptation to the tastes of visitors and tourists, when traditional patterns, fabrics, or materials are applied to non-typical goods: bags made of adras fabric, jewelry with ceramic elements, ethnic-style decorative items, or gadget stands with carvings.
On the other hand, a product’s origin from a specific region is seen as a mark of quality and a part of its story. This is no longer a flatbread, but an Urgench flatbread. No longer a pepper, but Ferghana pepper which has its own character.
Fashion Center
(4)
Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
Bazaars retain their function as fashion trends guides. Among Uzbeks, there is a concept called bozordagi eng yangi, eng zur nasr (the newest, best thing in the bazaar), used as an indicator of products or service’s high value. The bazaar also functions as a tester of fashion trends, where supply and demand meet in a common space. At the same time, the preferences of tourists have an impact on women’s fashion in Uzbekistan.
One of the most highly anticipated products among tourists is women’s dressing gowns, or chapans made of adras, which have also become very popular even among locals. Due to sharply increased demand, the variety of styles has expanded significantly. These outfits differ greatly from traditional ones, as they are now made according to modern patterns. At the same time, however, they are still perceived as national clothing, thanks to the characteristic patterns and embroidery elements revived from old photographs.
Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
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Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
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Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
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Umid
Oriental gowns seller, Chorsu Market
I’ve been at the bazaar since 2019. Most of the items I sell are made in the Ferghana Valley, where there is both an adras factory and a sewing workshop. Unfortunately, however, many of our manufacturers still struggle to adapt to the needs of modern business: they either fail to update patterns, produce garments of bad quality, or set prices too high. Therefore, I order some of the goods in neighboring Kyrgyzstan. Some things I bring from India, like these bags, and some from China, like fabrics for woolen capes. And here, we handle the fabrics and embroider the national ornaments in the very same Ferghana.
My product is seasonal and depends on the flow of tourists, with the most popular periods being spring and autumn. But even in Uzbekistan itself, it has recently become very popular to wear local clothing. Many people wear such outfits for weddings, national holidays, or for photo shoots. Even my sister wears it at school sometimes.
Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
Tashkent, 2024
Due to tourism popularization, craft shops began to appear and grow around the market again. But today, craftsmen face competition not only from modern versions of their products, but also from cheap imitations that have flooded the market.
Some cannot withstand this rivalry and are forced to close their businesses, while others adapt by adding more affordable items to their range—some even passing off imported goods from India and Turkey as their own products. And some managed to stand out from the others due to their unique craft and high product quality.
Behruz Kurbanov
Head of the Bukhara Branch of the Samarkand Institute of Archaeology, Candidate of Historical Sciences
Crafts are currently undergoing significant transformations: many are disappearing, while others are adapting. The government is trying to support artisans, but these efforts are not always successful. For example, a law was passed some time ago stipulating that gifts for the administration and government must be purchased only from local craftsmen. Seemed like a marvelous idea to support the craftsmen. But at the end of the day, representatives of the administration went to the bazaar, bought Chinese tea sets, and asked the craftsmen to sign them.
Domes of the trading place in Bukhara, 2024
Bread rows at Chorsu market, Tashkent, 2024
Хлебные ряды на рынке Чорсу, Ташкент, 2024
Gastrotourism
(5)
Chorsu is the most important tourist attraction in Tashkent, both for its historical significance and its gastronomy. The section where food is prepared and bread is baked has become a tourist destination, where guides bring groups of visitors.
Here, you can find more than a hundred types of breads and sweet pastries, and watch the entire process—from kneading the dough to pulling hot flatbreads out of the tandoor.
This place is not only popular among tourists—locals also come here and bring their children for an excursion, as many modern Tashkent residents living in apartment blocks don’t have the opportunity to use their own tandoor.
Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
Hikoyat Salimova
PhD candidate at the University of HafenCity, Hamburg
Since childhood, I have loved the moment of pulling freshly baked flatbread out of the tandoor. As children, we grabbed the hot bread with our bare hands, burning ourselves as we tore off the long-awaited first piece. Every time I smell the hot flatbread in the market, I flashback to that moment, and I always buy a fresh flatbread and eat the first piece right there, just as I did as a child.
Chorsu Market, Tashkent, 2024
The bazaar is a place for demonstrating oneself: skills, status, goods, and knowledge. It is a place of constant interactions between people, things, ideas, assessments, values, and news. Here, supply and demand are intertwined with religious and political ambitions, tastes and preferences compete, and the value standards and exchange equivalents form.
It is here that the cultural past and the ethnographic present are most intensively enriched and transformed from symbolic capital into tangible economic capital.
Siyob Bazaar, Samarkand, 2024
Visiting the market is a sensory experience—an opportunity not only to taste the national cuisine, but also to do so alongside the locals, for whom lunch at Chorsu on market day is part of the routine.
