Essay · 4 min · EN
The Ashura She-Camel
On the Shiization of Safavid Iran, the ritual camel sacrifice in Isfahan, and the nexus of religious mourning, public violence, and sovereign power.
Writing
Essays and field notes
Essays, field notes and research by Noam Backner on China, Inner Asia, Buddhism, the Silk Roads, food, agriculture and the lived experience of place.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Fifth Month and the Dragon Boats
On the most perilous month of the Chinese calendar, protective rites, Qu Yuan, and the pendulum swinging between sickness and health, order and chaos.
Essay · 5 min · EN
Iranian Jews and the Baha'i Option
On the historical encounter between Iranian Jews and the Baha'i movement, and the possibilities for identity, equality, and modernity in the late Qajar period.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Fasting of the Heart
Exploring the Chinese tradition of 'zhai' as a holistic preparation for the sacred, and Zhuangzi’s radical concept of internal emptiness.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Gap in the Smile: Ritual Tooth Extraction in Ancient China
Once a marker of identity and marriage in the Neolithic heartland, the custom of tooth ablation migrated south, eventually becoming a mark of the 'barbarian' other in later Chinese history.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Windcatchers of Hyderabad
On the badgir towers of Sindh, climatic architecture, and the shared heritage of Iran, Central Asia, and the Subcontinent.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Yellow Dragon
On water management, political legitimacy, and the ancient tension between control and chaos along the Yellow River.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Chinese Hamburger
From ancient 'barbarian bread' to the modern Big Mac: how China absorbed the Western sandwich into its own culinary soul.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Eight Flavors of Beijing
On the unique role of sweetness in Chinese cuisine and the crumbly paradise of the capital’s traditional pastry shops.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Foundation of the Chinese Home
On the domestication of the pig, the economic shift southward, and the role of pork in Chinese agriculture, cuisine, and morality.
Essay · 2 min · EN
Yizhan: Notes from the Imperial Road
The relay stations of the Chinese Empire and the strange new life the concept has found in the modern world of logistics.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Chromium Myth of the Terracotta Army
What actually preserved the bronze weapons in the First Emperor's tomb, and what metallurgy reveals about the first Chinese state.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Elm Coins of Spring Hunger
On the young samaras of the elm tree: an ancient survival food turned seasonal delicacy in the cuisine of Gansu.
Essay · 3 min · EN
How Food Crosses Borders
From the imagined Burma of Mandalay Sauce to the absorption of foreign crops into the grammar of Chinese cuisine.
Essay · 2 min · EN
A Cabbage at the Doorstep
The humble Chinese cabbage: a nutritional pillar, a migratory crop, a courtly delicacy, and a national treasure carved in jade.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Eid al-Adha Market in Kashgar
Fat-tailed sheep, desert economics, and the tension between public sacrifice and inner transformation.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Arrival of Botany in China
From Materia Medica to Genus and Species: A new scientific language, an imperial crisis, and the birth of a dual system of meaning.
Essay · 2 min · EN
Locusts on the Sabbath Table
An improvised Sabbath dish blending eggplant, shan yao, and spicy grasshopper dip in the style of southern Yunnan.
Essay · 4 min · EN
A Memory Map of the Beijing Metro
Station names serve as windows into the walls, markets, villages, and infrastructure buried beneath the modern city.
Essay · 2 min · EN
Flowers in the Yunnanese Kitchen
On pomegranate blossoms, rhododendrons, and the foraging traditions that bridge the garden, the mountain, and the stove.
Essay · 4 min · EN
Coffee and Tea at Heaven’s Gate
A brief munazara between two noble beverages and their spiritual traditions.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Seven Necessities
On fuel, rice, oil, salt, soy, vinegar, and tea—and the home as a complete network.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Last Farmers of Dali
From the view through my window to the challenges of 2026: observing the vanishing world of intensive agriculture in the Erhai Valley.
Essay · 3 min · EN
Dali’s Market Basket
A seasonal dispatch on wild mushrooms, orchid tubers, and the art of the market find.
Essay · 3 min · EN
Beyond the Five Pungent Roots
A vegetarian kitchen on practice days: navigating Buddhist tradition through the raw abundance of the market.
Essay · 3 min · EN
Not Gazing Enough at the Mountain
On observation, landscape painting, and the mountain as a site for the practice of thought.
Essay · 4 min · EN
The Bone Shaker
The mule carts that connected Beijing, North China, and the trade networks of the late Empire.
Essay · 3 min · EN
Harmony, at Times, Comes Down to a Plate
Lake Erhai, the Bai people, and the delicate link between solo garlic, water flowers, and ecological restoration.
Essay · 4 min · EN
Chinese Thought in a Fractured World
On Confucius, Han Fei, the Daoists, and the possibility of contemplating the present outside the political din.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Hall of Idleness
A return to Yunnan and reflections on the labor of sloth, the weight of purpose, and a poem by Bai Yuchan.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Lidai Fabao: Memory, Lineage, and the Living Dharma
A look at the Dunhuang Buddhist chronicles, the radical Bao Tang school, and the collision of faiths in Tang-era China.
Essay · 4 min · EN
Ti-Yong and the Iranian Crisis
Viewing the structural collapse of the Islamic Republic through the lens of Chinese political philosophy.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Long Road to Spice: How the Chili Pepper Conquered China
From New World curiosity to the soul of Sichuan, Hunan, and beyond.
Essay · 4 min · EN
The Book of Swindles
Deception, commerce, and the erosion of social trust in late Ming China.
Essay · 3 min · EN
Today’s Bandits, Tomorrow’s Rebels
On highway robbery as a barometer of dynastic power—and the arteries of sovereignty in Imperial China.
Essay · 4 min · EN
My Dad, the Dragon
From the cosmic Long of the imperial court to a weary dragon riding the subway.
Essay · 3 min · EN
The Double Skies of Chinese Islam
A meditation on the life of Ma Dexin, the resilience of faith, and the delicate art of belonging to two worlds at once.
Essay · 4 min · EN
The Humid South: Miasma, Body, and Space in Southern China
On the perception of the Chinese South as an ecological and metaphysical frontier—and how a landscape of danger became the empire’s economic and intellectual engine.
Essay · 3 min · EN
Rivers and Lakes
“When the springs dry up, the fish huddle together, gasping to keep one another moist; it would be better if they could forget each other in the rivers and lakes.” (Zhuangzi)
Essay · 4 min · EN
Between Mysticism and Revolution: The Poetry of Khomeini
On Persian verse, mystical insight, and the fine line between spiritual transcendence and political authority.
Essay · 1 min · EN
Spies and the Twilight of Empire
Frederick Marshman Bailey in the uniform of an Austrian soldier.
Essay · 3 min · EN
Of Tobacco, Bottles, and Birds
Tobacco, a New World nightshade, arrived late to Chinese shores. Yet its appearance at the end of the 16th century sparked a quiet revolution, reshaping the consumption habits of every social stratum in the Middle Kingdom.
Essay · 3 min · EN
Listen to the Reed!
Marking 746 winters since the wedding of Jalal ad-Din Rumi and the return of his shell to the dust, we recall his immense contribution to the spirit that moves through those who fill their lungs with it and exhale its essence in the proper direction.
Essay · 2 min · EN
Faces of Eternity
Plaster is famously suited for mending what is broken, but in the hands of the Tashtyk, it served a more permanent purpose: fixing the dead in place for the afterlife.
Essay · 4 min · EN
Invaders, Braids, and Borders
From the streets of Kingston to the alleys of Mea Shearim, human hair is never a trivial matter.
Essay · 1 min · EN
Khoja Nasreddin: The Art of the Border Crossing
Beyond his flirtations with the sublime, the legendary Khoja Nasreddin was a master of the science of smuggling.
Essay · 1 min · EN
The Skeptic of Khorasan
One late summer afternoon, Mullah Nasreddin paused to rest beneath a walnut tree on the outskirts of Bukhara.
Essay · 4 min · EN
The Tulip Cult of the Turks
Many flowers once graced the gardens of Islam, but above the fragrant rose, the sapphire hyacinth, and the heady narcissus, one stood alone: humble, low-lipped, and divine.
Essay · 1 min · EN
Doomsday Raki
A certain Sufi sat in the town square at midnight, pondering the things Sufis ponder at such hours, seasoning his thoughts with a bottle of raki.
Essay · 5 min · EN
The Tamed Wild: Control and Artifice in the Classical Chinese Garden
Chinese culture is celebrated for its affinity for the raw and natural, yet its famous gardens reveal a sophisticated effort to neutralize the dangers of the wild.
Essay · 1 min · EN
Vipassanā Vespers
With back withered, search / where is Lake Biwa / the crow's cry.
Essay · 4 min · EN
The Way of Khoja Nasreddin
“One night, a knock was heard at Khoja Nasreddin’s door.”
Essay · 8 min · EN
Whispers of Paradise: A Journey into Sufi Music
From Sassanid legends to the ecstatic rituals of the Mevlevi and Qawwali traditions, music has long served as the bridge between the human soul and the Divine.
Essay · 6 min · EN
The King of Cuisines: Central Asian Plov
When the sun dips below the mountains and the cold begins to bite, nothing warms the soul like a steaming bowl of something rich and fatty.
Essay · 3 min · EN
To the Sufis of China
The Menhuan is the Chinese expression of the Sufi Tariqa—a spiritual lineage tracing back to the Arab and Persian sheikhs who first brought Islam to the Middle Kingdom.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Pichok: Central Asia’s Living Blade
For generations, the heart of the Silk Road was a world-renowned center of blacksmithing and blade-making.
Essay · 4 min · EN
Thus Spoke the Old Camel Owner
Zoroastrianism, the ancient faith of the Iranian peoples, shaped the moral landscape of the East and left an indelible mark on the monotheistic world.
Essay · 2 min · EN
The Purple Apples of the Tian Shan
Central Asia is more than a cradle of religion and art; it is the ancestral home of the species that built the human economy.
Essay · 5 min · EN
Of Rebels and Black Pots
The kazan is the quintessential vessel of Central Asia. Long before the modern kitchen and its discontents, this cauldron served every culinary need of the nomadic steppe and the farming villages to the south.
Essay · 5 min · EN
Song of the Mad Lark
Moments before he breathed his last, Amin plucked out the melody of “The Lark’s Song.” When he was gone, his mother hung his dutar on the mud wall facing his deathbed.
Essay · 8 min · EN
Caravanserais: The Strongholds of the Soul
From frontier ribat forts to Safavid road inns — the architecture that made long-distance trade possible, and the metaphor it became.
Essay · 6 min · EN
In the Gates of Turan
Why the Shahnameh's oldest quarrel is an ecological one: the sown land against the sea of grass.
Essay · 12 min · EN
A Mouthless Crow and Crazy Clouds
“Conceal your path / with fallen pine needles / so that no one may discover / your true dwelling.”
Essay · 6 min · EN
Demons, Ascetics, and the Black Pen
Anyone who read 'Where the Wild Things Are' as a child will recognize the kindred spirits in the work of Mehmed Siyah Qalam—the mysterious 14th-century artist known as "Mehmed of the Black Pen."
Essay · 4 min · EN
Outlines of the Heart
The art of writing as a spiritual discipline.
Essay · 8 min · EN
Architecture #3: Gates, Domes, and Eternal Tears
The Muslim conquest of Iran and Central Asia (633–751) fundamentally transformed the region's social order, yet its architectural legacy remained deeply rooted in the past.
Essay · 11 min · EN
Mongols, Cheetahs, and Slaves on Horseback
In September 1260, the Mongol general Kitbugha clashed in the Jezreel Valley with the Mamluk regiments of Sultan Qutuz—a collision that would reshape the medieval world.
Essay · 2 min · EN
Verses from Cold Mountain
猪吃死人肉，人吃死猪肠。猪不嫌人臭，人反道猪香 猪死抛水内，人死掘土藏。彼此莫相啖，莲花生沸汤
Essay · 8 min · EN
Zen Stones
If you break open the cherry tree, / Where are the flowers? / But in the spring time, see how they bloom!
Essay · 5 min · EN
German Trenches and Parthian Shots
On July 1, 1916, one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War broke out.
Essay · 3 min · EN
A Sufi Imam at Chabad House
Readers of Russian literature may know Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat, but few realize the story’s protagonist was a Sufi warrior whose legacy lives on in a famous Hasidic melody.
Essay · 5 min · EN
Architecture #1: The Science of Mud
Buildings are the mold of their native landscape—the product of its climate, geography, and geology.
Essay · 6 min · EN
Moonlight Over the Brothel
In the humid summer of 1950, a musicological delegation from Beijing’s Central Conservatory arrived in Wuxi to document the folk traditions of eastern China.
Essay · 5 min · EN
Trees in Trays
When I was fourteen, my grandmother gave me a small olive tree, a few shallow pots, and a strange pair of shears she had brought back from Japan.
Essay · 3 min · EN
When Asia Was the World
Let’s take the Joker out of the deck, shall we?