Beaten, Hammered, Burnished: Xinjiang’s Copper and Brassware Tradition
The Sound of a Hammer in the Bazaar
You hear it before you see it. Walking the back lanes of any old Xinjiang market, under the spice stalls and the fabric piles, there is a rhythmic ting-ting-ting that turns out to be a coppersmith. I followed that sound in Yining one afternoon and found a workshop where a man in his sixties was raising a teapot from a flat disc of metal, his hammer never stopping, his son feeding the charcoal fire. The pot, when done, would sell for 180 yuan and outlive everyone in the room.
Xinjiang’s copper and brass tradition is one of the region’s oldest continuous crafts. Long before mass-produced cookware, every household from Kashgar to Hami cooked in copper, ate from copper, and warmed water in copper. The craft survives, barely, in the hands of families who have done it for generations.
Why Copper, Why Here
Copper is abundant in the mountains of Xinjiang, and the Silk Road brought the techniques. The work divides roughly into two: thick, functional cookware (pots, trays, basins, samovar-style tea urns) and thinner, engraved decorative pieces. Brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, is used where a golden look is wanted without the cost of gold. You will see both, often side by side in the same stall.
The signature piece is the choynok, the large engraved teapot or urn used to serve the endless tea of Central Asian hospitality. A good one holds three or four liters and is decorated with a scroll pattern cut by hand. In Urumqi’s grand bazaar you will find tourist-grade versions; in working neighborhoods you will find the real thing, blackened by use.
The Engraver’s Alphabet
The decoration is not random. A trained eye reads a copper piece the way another traveler reads a map. The most common motif is the pomegranate, cut as a round fruit split to show its seeds, a symbol of abundance that shows up on everything from teapots to door panels. Around it runs the grape vine, a looping line of leaves and small circles that can stretch the full circumference of a tray. Then there is the tulip, drawn with three pointed petals, and the scrolling vine that has no beginning and no end.
These patterns are passed down by copying, not by drawing. An apprentice learns the border first, cutting a straight repeating line until his hand stops wobbling. That alone can take a full year. Only then does a master let him attempt a pomegranate. The result is that two workshops a few streets apart can have completely different visual dialects, and a local will know which family made a given pot at a glance. When you shop, ask the maker to name the pattern. The answer tells you not just about the metal but about the workshop’s hometown and lineage.
The engraving tools are modest. A small steel chisel, a light hammer no bigger than a paperweight, and a steady bench. The deepest cuts go on the lid of a teapot, where they catch the light when the pot is lifted. A fully engraved four-liter urn can carry eight to ten hours of pure cutting on top of the four hours of raising the body. That labor is the real reason a good piece costs what it does.
The Making
I watched a full pot get made in about four hours, though a master will tell you a lifetime of practice is in those four hours. The process: cut a disc, heat it, hammer it over a stake anvil into a hollow, anneal it repeatedly so it does not crack, then engrave. The engraving is the art. Patterns are flowing vines, pomegranates, and Arabic calligraphy, all cut freehand with a small chisel. No two are identical.
Where to See and Buy
The best working workshops are not in the shiny tourist bazaars but in the old Kashgar quarter and the back streets of Hotan and Yining. Look for the sound of hammering and follow it. A small engraved bowl runs 40 to 80 yuan; a full teapot set 150 to 400 yuan depending on size and detail. Bargain gently. These are not factory seconds.
For a curated experience, the handicraft streets of the bigger cities group coppersmiths with knife-makers and weavers, which makes for an easy afternoon of shopping without racing across town.
Three Cities, Three Markets
The three great copper towns reward different approaches. Kashgar is the easiest to combine with other sightseeing. The working coppersmiths cluster in the Uyghur quarter a short walk northwest of Id Kah Mosque, roughly 800 meters through the lane grid. Go in the morning, before the tour groups reach the area around ten. A small engraved bowl runs 40 to 80 yuan there; a full teapot set 150 to 400 yuan. The Sunday bazaar on the city’s edge sells cheaper stamped goods, so keep the two separate in your head.
Hotan sits about 510 kilometers southeast of Kashgar on the G3012 expressway, a six and a half hour drive if you stop once. Its coppersmith row runs near the old jade market on the east side of town, about 3 kilometers north of the main hotel strip. The Hotan style favors deep, narrow engraving and heavier gauge metal, and prices run a little lower than Kashgar for similar weight, with bowls starting around 35 yuan.
Yining, in the Ili valley near the Kazakh border, is the most relaxed of the three. The coppersmiths work out of low workshops in the Russian-style district about 2 kilometers from the city center, and because the town is green and cool in summer, you can linger. The teapot I described at the start cost 180 yuan there in July. From Yining you can also reach the smaller craft villages of southern Ili, where a few families still make the tall, narrow milk pails used by herders.
If you are driving, the spine road from Kashgar to Hotan is flat and fast, and the desert stretch between them is good for a single long day. Budget fuel at roughly 7.5 yuan per liter for a typical sedan, about 300 yuan round trip in fuel for the Kashgar to Hotan leg.
Buying Smart
Two things to check. First, weight. Real copper is heavy. A suspiciously light “copper” teapot is aluminum with a coating. Second, the inside. Traditional cookware is sometimes lined with tin to prevent copper from reacting with acidic food. If you plan to actually cook in it, ask whether it is tin-lined (qalay). Unlined copper is fine for tea but not for tomatoes.
Shipping a heavy pot home is awkward but doable. Most vendors will wrap it in newspaper and bubble wrap for a small fee, and China Post will take it. I shipped a 2-kilo teapot to Europe for about 120 yuan and it arrived intact.
Carrying Copper Home: Shipping and Customs
Once you have bought a pot, the next question is the flight home. Copper is dense, and a four-liter urn can weigh two and a half kilos before packing. Most airlines allow checked baggage up to 23 kilos per bag on international routes, so one pot is no problem, but two or three will eat your allowance fast. The simplest move is to carry it on if it fits, wrapped in clothing inside a hard case, though security may ask you to open the case at the checkpoint.
Shipping is the better path for anything large. China Post EMS will take a well-packed teapot; a 2-kilo piece to Western Europe runs about 120 yuan and to North America roughly 160 to 200 yuan, with delivery in ten to twenty days. Ask the vendor to double-box it: bubble wrap next to the metal, then a second cardboard shell with packing peanuts. I have seen pots survive a fall off a cart this way. For the paperwork, mark the contents as “handicraft, copper, used” and state a realistic value. Travelers report that copper handicrafts clear European and North American customs without duty when declared as personal souvenirs under the usual allowance, but rules change, so check your own country’s limit before you buy the fourth pot.
One practical tip: buy a small roll of cling film at any supermarket and wrap the pot mouth to stop the bubble wrap from sliding into the body during transit. It takes thirty seconds and saves a scratched engraving.
Care and Use
Copper tarnishes. That is normal. Clean it with lemon and salt, or leave the patina if you like the aged look. A well-used copper pot that has turned brown-black from years of tea is, to a local eye, more beautiful than a polished new one. Do not put it in a dishwasher. Ever.
Before you cook in a new tin-lined pot, warm it with plain water and a spoon of rice or flour, swirl, and discard; this seasons the surface and takes any factory dust off. Dry it upside down on a rack so no water pools in the base, since trapped moisture is the only thing that will rot a tin lining faster than use. For a decorative, unlined piece you never cook in, a light coat of olive oil on the inside once a season keeps the metal from spotting in humid hotel rooms. Store teapots with the lid ajar so air circulates and the inside stays dry on the long flight home.
A Driving Loop for Copper Hunters
If you are in Xinjiang on a self-drive trip, the copper towns fit a clean loop. Start in Urumqi and take two relaxed days southwest to Kashgar, about 1,470 kilometers on the G3012. Spend two full days in Kashgar for the old quarter and the coppersmiths. Then drive the 510 kilometers to Hotan, overnight there, and on the third copper day visit the workshops near the jade market. From Hotan you can return north via the Taklamakan desert highway to Luntai, a 522-kilometer straight shot of desert road, then east and north to Urumqi, roughly 1,000 kilometers more. The full loop is about 3,500 kilometers and wants a minimum of seven days with driving.
Timing matters. April through June and September through October are the comfortable windows, with daytime highs around 20 to 28 degrees in Kashgar and Ili. Skip July and August in the south if you dislike heat; Turpan on the loop’s northern edge can hit 45 degrees, and the desert highway bakes. Winter is quiet and very cold but cheap, and the workshops still run because the hammer does not care about the calendar.
Carry cash in small bills for the old-town workshops, since some do not take cards, and keep a translation app ready for the word “qalay” when you ask about tin lining. A notebook to sketch the pattern you like helps too, because showing a maker a drawing communicates faster than adjectives.
Why It Is Worth Your Time
The coppersmiths are a shrinking trade. Younger people leave for the cities, and cheap stainless steel has taken the daily kitchen. Buying a real piece is not just a souvenir; it is a small subsidy to a craft that may not last another generation. And unlike a mass-produced souvenir, a copper teapot is something you will actually use for the rest of your life. I brew my morning tea in the one I bought in Yining, and every cup reminds me of that hammer’s rhythm.