An earthen kitchen stove caught my attention on a recent visit to the Tibet Museum, such as a stove, commonly used by the Tibetans only a dozen years ago, can hardly be found today in the region.

Varieties of Stoves

Tibetans used a variety of stoves in the past. For instance, they used rectangular stoves with several pots, and oval stoves to press edible oil. Monastery monks adopted types that were sometimes as large as a small room. Ordinary Tibetans had the following four kinds of stoves for cooking:

--Longte, which refers to those built for use in ordinary families, especially urban households. Generally, one Longte has three feeding holds, with two smaller ones flanking the middle larger one; but, there are some with four or five holes each.

--Tebu, which refers to earthen stoves fueled with wind, with the flames fanned by billows. Such kind of stoves demand dried cow dung and easily combustible firewood.
Bema grass is used to light the fire initially.

--Zalha, which refers iron stoves used for heating purpose. Any kind of fuel can be fed into them, such as dried sheep dung; no kindling wood is needed to light the fire.

--Three-stone stove, which refers to stoves each built with three pieces of rock.
Other stoves include leather ones similar to the air-blowers used in China¡¯s hinterland that is called Biba in Tibetan.

Biba is made of sheep hides. It has a metallic pipe extending into the area where the fire is located. When used, a piece of stone is inserted in the leather bag fixed onto wooden bars to keep it balanced.

Portable Iron Stove

Zalha is a kind of stove that can be easily carried here and there. Made of pottery
Or iron, it has three legs on top of which is the stove chamber.

The stove has a hole on four sides. This not only helps with ventilation, but also conforms to the Tibetan love of seeing a fire burning inside the stove. In their eyes, fire constitutes the soul of a human being. If one cannot see the fire, then the person has lost his/her soul.

As the stove is light in weight, some Tibetans lease it to visitors, along with firewood and cooking utensils. Firewood combusts readily in the chamber, but this means that it consumes a great deal of wood, prompting Tibetans to think it was invented by a demon called Ngaqoin. They also think the Biba stove consumes comparatively less firewood and that King Gesar invented it.


Three-Stone Stove

This is the only one of the four aforementioned stoves to be used for camping purposes. Actually, nomadic herders first developed it.

Today, when people go camping, they still love to put up a stove with three pieces of rock to cook their food and tea. Although they may have modern facilities, they still favor such indigenous stoves for fun.

Setting Up a Stone After Marriage

The Tibetans have adopted kitchen ranges and stoves for thousands of years. Their customs related to such stoves include one for the young to set up a new stove when they marry. Called Tezu in Tibetan, the new stove is built on an especially chosen auspicious day, and relatives will come to offer their congratulations.

In Tibet today, when the young marry, they still follow the tradition. But in the
cities a gas stove replace such stoves.

Kitchen God

For Tibetans, the kitchen range is holy, as it is under the rule of the Kitchen God and is home also to the daughter of the Dragon King.

In the days leading up to New Year¡¯s Day, the Tibetans paint a scorpion (which is the incarnation of the daughter of the Dragon King), auspicious patterns and prayer words on the kitchen wall. Some rich families inlay coral and gems into the wall to pray for a thriving future. Some families bring out historic objects used by Living Buddhas and thus regarded as holy. They believe the stoves of this kind cook more delicious and healthier food. It was said that one family in Kangma still preserves an earthen stove used by Gar Tongtsan some 1,000 years ago.

The kitchen range in a monastery is huge mainly because the chefs have to cook food and tea for all the lamas. Monks believe food cooked with the range is tastier. They have the following taboos:

--Burn nothing considered filthy, such as bones, droppings of dogs and cats, and hairs.

--Do not stand bare-footed and half naked when getting close to the stove for warmth, and do not walk across the stove, which would offend the kitchen god and the daughter of the dragon king.

Some Tibetan families follow strict rules, including that no fish should be cooked in the kitchen and the front living chambers (cooking and eating fish only in the courtyard); leaving no empty pot on the stove when not in use; and putting any remaining cooked food on the middle chamber of the stove. After camping in the wilderness, campers scatter zanba (roasted highland barley flour) over the embers of the fire. Some wives leave buttered tea made in the morning on the kitchen range as a token of first service to the god.

Source: China's Tibet
BY PUNCOG ZHAXI