Pulan wooden bowl

Pulan wooden bowl

　　Wooden Bowl

　　Wooden bowls are commonly used household items among the Tibetan people and are also exquisite traditional handicrafts. When visiting a Tibetan family, guests usually drink tea and eat tsampa using their own wooden bowls. Especially in rural Tibet, herders often carry wooden bowls with them even when going to others’ homes, so that the host can serve them tea and tsampa. This is a local custom and is not considered impolite. Tibetans also have a special emotional attachment to wooden bowls. A very famous Tibetan love song vividly portrays the relationship between a person and their wooden bowl: “It’s hard to part with my lover, but taking the lover away feels shameful. If only my lover were a wooden bowl, I could keep it close in my bosom all the time.”

　　Wooden bowls come in various sizes and are generally flat and round, with an orange-yellow hue. Larger ones are used for serving tsampa, while smaller ones are for drinking butter tea. Locally, the distinction may not be so strict. The advantages of wooden bowls include being lightweight, durable, and easy to carry. Food served in wooden bowls doesn’t easily lose its flavor, nor does it burn the mouth. The production of wooden bowls mainly uses high-quality wood such as birch, tung tree, and cengba tree. Tree knots that are large and have many protrusions are considered the best material for making bowls because they are solid and the resulting bowls are less prone to cracking. Moreover, the grain is fine and aesthetically pleasing. Crafting a wooden bowl requires meticulous workmanship—the bowl walls must be of even thickness all around, and the base must be stable. Many domestic and foreign tourists who visit Lhasa buy an inexpensive wooden bowl or two as souvenirs of their trip to Tibet. Some wooden bowls even come with silver lids or have silver plating on the rim and base, turning them into precious handicrafts. These are not only practical for home use but also make great gifts for family and friends. The wooden bowls produced in Pulan County are especially renowned.