Gheyret Mehelle : Aniliq Chay

A Bahar Chay (Spring Tea) in Gheyret Suburb, Almaty, 2019
Alongside the meshrep revival in Kazakhstan, a less well-known women’s chay revival has flourished. It has focused on the same goals of education, cultural revival, social cohesion and mobilisation, and often works in tandem with men’s initiatives at local level. Like meshrep, chay gatherings (essentially tea parties) assume complex ritual and social meanings in contemporary Uyghur society, and they overlap with a range of other non-life-cycle gatherings.
Today, playing chay is a common social activity; almost every Uyghur woman in Kazakhstan takes part in a chay, probably two or three. Women play chay with their neighbours or relatives, with their classmates, or women from their hometown. Chay gatherings are not exclusively associated with women. In contemporary Almaty, for example, mixed gender groups of co-workers or school friends may attend regular chay. But women-only chay are notable for the work they do in providing a forum for women’s networking and socialising; for managing the affairs of the local community; for mutual assistance; for sustaining Uyghur language and customs; and as a form of community credit.
According to our interviewees, in 20th century Kazakhstan women’s chay served as important spaces for transmitting culture and sharing knowledge and skills: learning how to make classic Uyghur dishes, dress making or embroidery. Expressive culture - music, songs, poetry or joking - also played a part in chay gatherings. There might also be a religious element to chay, especially for older women. Some chay took the form of games surrounding mutual hospitality - Qarliq Chay (snow tea) or Towuq Chay, a game with a sheep’s knuckle bone - but the greater significance of chay was in the regular role they play in the day-to-day organisation of communal life.
Uyghur women engaged in different kinds of chay throughout their lives, using them as spaces to plan and organise the different challenges facing their particular age cohorts. Young unmarried women may form a chay to discuss wedding etiquette. Young mothers met to discuss the rules of how to manage a household. More mature women held match-making tea (Qudilar Chay) to discuss marrying off their children, and consultation chay (Meslihet Chay) to discuss how to organise celebrations.
Women’s chay in contemporary Kazakhstan differ from the chay played by their mothers and grandmothers in the Soviet period in several ways. They respond directly to emerging social problems and rapidly changing lifestyles, and to a developing sense of social responsibility and ethnic identity amongst Kazakhstani Uyghurs. In Almaty, chay are also used to strengthen the new migrant Uyghur communities which grew in the 1990s as thousands of Uyghurs fled the impoverished rural regions to seek new lives in Almaty’s suburbs, requiring the established communities to find ways to incorporate this diverse group of newcomers into the neighbourhood. Chay provide an important tool for their incorporation and socialisation.
Uyghur Meshrep Project
Towards an alternative model of heritage as sustainable development: Uyghur meshrep in Kazakhstan
For more info :
www.meshrep.uk/...

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