More than daily bread

Customers can watch as their fare is shaped and baked in outdoor tandoors, where dough is carefully molded like clay and forged in the heat of the kiln.

The verbs for making naan translate more like "strike" than "knead". The dough is slapped against the oven's clay wall, where it sticks and sizzles to char the crust.

True mastery in producing the perfect loaf lies in balancing not only the ingredients but also the volume and intensity of the embers pulsing at the tandoor's bottom. That's the trick that conjures the wonders these wizards pull from their magician's hats.

Although this tandoor's Chinese name, nang keng, translates as "naan pit", it's also used to roast kao baozi (meat-stuffed buns encased in a crackling skin), chickens and whole sheep. The largest pits can accommodate an entire camel.

They're a foundational cornerstone of traditional Uygur courtyards, where people eat, chat and sing beneath the shade of canopies knit by trellised grapevines.

The museum's shop will ship naan and qiegao (traditional Uygur nutcakes) to buyers' hometowns or fill WeChat orders from anywhere in the country. Visitors can even carry their purchases home in cute naan-shaped backpacks embroidered with mustachioed smiley faces.

These modern services offer swifter ways to transport this age-old staple compared with the plodding pace of camel caravans. But the notion of naan as a mobile meal endures across time and space.

And so, the journey that begins by stepping through the bite of bread comes full circle. You leave with a full stomach and take away food for thought.

The museum shows naan is much more than just daily bread.

It portrays how Xinjiang's diverse customs, landscapes and ancestry are kneaded into the region's essence. These immaterial ingredients of its immortal identity are as indivisible as the granules of flour baked into each fresh loaf.

Naan nourishes not just the body but ultimately the soul of the people who call this land home — and those who visit from afar.

Contact the writer at erik_nilsson@chinadaily.com.cn