Uzbek people like to drink tea very much. This is not just a simple fact about statement of devotion of one country population, because Uzbek people's love for tea is something different than German's love to beer or Finn's love to coffee. It does not just like for tea, if they talk they drink tea, anyone who was in Uzbekistan can continue this file of associations for ever and ever.
"Uzbek Air Magazine", Winter 2005
Tea is the drink of hospitality, offered first to every guest, and almost always drunk from a piala (small bowl). From a fresh pot, the first cup of tea is often poured away (to clean the piala) and then a piala of tea is poured out and returned twice into the pot to brew the tea. A cup filled only a little way up is a compliment, allowing your host to refill it often and keep its contents warm (the offer of a full piala of tea is a subtle invitation that it’s time to leave).
Pass and accept tea with the right hand; it’s extra polite to put the left hand over the heart as you do this. If your tea is too hot, don’t blow on it, but swirl it gently in the cup without spilling any. If it has grown cold, your host will throw it away before refilling the cup.
Tea hospitality may seem totally different in Khorezm. Christopher Aslan Alexander describes a tea hospitality in his book "A carpet ride to Khiva":
"Always green and impossible to drink with their salty desert water. And do you know what?" She turned to a third woman who was sitting in rapt silence. "They give you your own teapot." This elicited an audible gasp. "Yes, they just leave the teapot beside you and expect you to pour yourself. The host does not even say "iching, iching", just leaves it for you to pour yourself."
Chaikhana Etiquette
Teahouse or chaikhana, a time- honoured place for men to gather on carpeted dais and swap the latest news over chai and Uzbek favourites like shashlik, plov and laghman. To drink chai in a chaikhana is to follow a long and venerable Central Asian tradition. Hot green tea (kok chai in Uzbek; zilyoniy chai in Russian) not only quenches thirst and cools the body, it also aids the digestion of greasy foods.
Aboard the wooden dais (chorpoy in Uzbek, tapchan in Russian), be conscious of the great respect shown towards the round non bread. Before a family departure, like a son leaving for military service, he bites a fresh non which is hung up to safeguard his return, when he can finish it with his friends. At a meal, break the bread into pieces and share them round the table but never place non face-down, i.e. keep the patterned, seeded side uppermost. Never leave non on the ground or throw it away in public. Anyone who finds a piece on the ground should pick it up, kiss it and touch it to their forehead three times.
To study that part of their lives which is before the public eye, we must first pay a visit to the tea-booths, which are the resorts of all classes. The Bokhariot, and the remark applies indeed universally to all Central Asiatics, can never pass by a second or third tea-booth without entering, unless his affairs are very urgent indeed.
Vambery, Arminius; Sketches of Central Asia, (1868)
Tea should be brewed by pouring it three times into the piala cup and three times back into the pot. When pouring for the fourth time, do not fill another's cup to the brim (this signifies that it is time for him to leave) but instead pour less, more often. The first piala-full is normally used to wash and sterilize the cup and should be passed and received with the right hand. To cool the tea, swirling is preferred to blowing. A green, powdered tobacco known as noz is also taken at teahouses, skilfully shovelled under the tongue, rendering attempts at even basic communication almost futile.
At the end of a meal, when passing a mausoleum/cemetery, or starting a journey, the fatiha-the Muslim gesture of holding out cupped palms to receive God's blessings, and then running hands over one's face-is generally performed as a sign of thanks and blessing.
