Zhongdian Tibetan Wooden Bowls

Last updated 2026-11-09 — Zhongdian is a county in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province. Almost everyone who visits Zhongdian buys a set of locally made wooden bowls as a souvenir. Zhongdian wooden bowls are an essential daily utensil for the Tibetan people and also a practical handicraft with ethnic characteristics. Due to their livelihood primarily based on animal husbandry, the Tibetan people lead a highly mobile life, making fragile ceramic bowls and expensive, heavy metal bowls inconvenient to use. Lightweight, practical, affordable, and well-made wooden bowls have thus become popular and widely loved. These bowls are carved from knots of birch trees and other hardwoods. The production process involves several steps including material selection, drying, rough shaping, boiling, refining the shape, and varnishing. A complete set consists of three bowls—two large and one small. The two larger bowls can be used to encase the smaller one, forming a flat, round "wooden ball," which is both ingenious and charming. Moreover, the wooden bowls are hard in texture, smooth on the surface, with clear grain patterns, and resistant to deformation or cracking over time. As a result, they are favored by people of all ethnic groups, leading to high demand and often selling out quickly.