The voice of a new generation in Uzbekistan

I have given last-minute lectures at architecture schools for many years, and I never know what makes an audience turn out to be successful. Sometimes there is a full house, sometimes no one shows up. Since most of my lectures are extracurricular and not mandatory, I tend to think it is the degree of curiosity among students that determines attendance. Here at Tashkent University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, the curiosity was big. The school clearly had a cross-cultural appeal, with a highly diverse group of students in front of me.

I spoke about my experiences so far, and my motivation for undertaking this journey. I shared my observations from exploring Tashkent, ranging from the obvious highlights of Soviet modernism, recently complied into a special architecture smartphone app, to random encounters with Tashkent people on streets, coffee houses and parks.

But this was not what interested the students the most. After the lecture, we engaged in a lively conversation about how this journey interacts with the destiny of their country Uzbekistan, beginning with the question of why a professor from Shanghai, with a track record in The Netherlands, would choose Tashkent for a voluntary speech. I was impressed by how these students were able to moderate their own opportunity to have a debate and forge the relevance for themselves. Within an hour, I also learned that it was not just a discursive skill that mattered. It was the will to develop their own purpose in a country whose position for centuries had been determined by big powers, and hence by big narratives that weren’t theirs.

As a token of appreciation, the dean came to see me after the speech and handed me a souvenir of Tashkent. But no gift could have been more powerful than the energy of the young students that morning.

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This post contains a preview of a forthcoming book about Journey to the East, highlighting the perpetuating tensions and sometimes awkward dialogues between East and West as found on my quest for a New Silk on an Old Road.