Bishkek

The city began as a caravan stop on the Chüy river where the road from the Fergana valley met the route east along the Tian Shan. In 1825 the Khanate of Kokand built a mud-brick fort called Pishpek to tax that traffic. Russian forces destroyed it in 1860, and a Russian settlement was established on the site in 1868; from 1877 the imperial government redeveloped it, drawing in Russian peasant settlers, and it was laid out on the rectangular grid the city still follows, with irrigation ditches along every street and rows of poplars and elms that gave Bishkek its reputation as a green city.

Soviet rule made it a capital. The town was renamed Frunze in 1926 after Mikhail Frunze, the Red Army commander born there, and became the capital of the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and then, from 1936, of the Kirghiz SSR. Factories were evacuated here during the Second World War and stayed, and the city filled with Russian, Ukrainian and German engineers and workers alongside Kyrgyz families moving in from the villages. Broad avenues, a university, theatres and the museum quarter around the central square date from those decades.

In 1991 the city took the name Bishkek and the country became independent. Much of the Soviet-era industry closed, and the trade economy of the bazaars replaced it. Since then the central squares have been the stage for the country's politics: the uprisings of 2005 and 2010 that removed two presidents, and the unrest of 2020 that followed a disputed parliamentary election. New towers, shopping centres and suburbs have gone up on the plain, and the population has grown far beyond what the Soviet plan anticipated.

Bishkek is the most cosmopolitan place in Kyrgyzstan, and the most Russified. Russian is heard as much as Kyrgyz in the streets of the centre, and Kyrgyz, Russians, Dungans, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Koreans and Kazakhs live in the same districts, with Orthodox churches, mosques and a synagogue within the city. Younger residents increasingly move between the two main languages in a single sentence, and there is a steady public argument about the place of Kyrgyz in schools and government.

The epic of Manas underlies national culture here as everywhere in the country: the hero's statue stands on the main square, manaschi reciters perform at national holidays, and phrases from the epic appear in speeches. Alongside that the city keeps a strong Soviet-era high culture — an opera and ballet company, the philharmonic's orchestra and komuz players, drama theatres in both languages — and a contemporary scene of galleries, small publishers, film-makers and musicians that has made Bishkek a regional centre for Central Asian art.

Everyday manners are warm and formal at once. Hospitality is close to obligatory: a guest is fed, and refusing food outright can offend. Elders are greeted first and given the best seat, and the word aksakal, literally white beard, still carries weight. Kok-boru, the horseback game played with a goat carcass, is the national sport and is shown on television from the hippodrome, while football and wrestling fill the city's own stadiums.

About 1.2 million people live in Bishkek, and an estimated 400,000 of them, close to thirty per cent, live in the novostroiki, the unplanned settlements ringing the city built by migrants from the villages and small provincial towns, many of them slow to get secure title, electricity, running water and paved roads. Registration matters, because it governs access to schools and clinics, and the gap between the planned grid and the ring around it is the city's central social issue.

Work is mostly in trade, services, construction and government. The bazaars are the largest employers: Dordoy alone supports tens of thousands of traders, drivers and porters, and re-exports to Kazakhstan, Russia and Uzbekistan. Remittances sent home by Kyrgyz citizens working abroad, above all in Russia, are a major part of household income across the country and visible in the new houses going up on the city's edge.

The daily rhythm starts early, with bazaars busy soon after dawn and offices opening at nine. Families eat at home, and the main meal comes in the evening. Summer life moves outdoors into the parks, the fountains and the chaikhanas, and to the lake at weekends. Winter is harder: coal-fired heating and household stoves in the ring settlements push air pollution to among the worst readings in the world on still days, and a new water and heating infrastructure is a constant subject of complaint.

Bishkek eats the national repertoire with a strong Uzbek, Dungan and Uyghur accent. Laghman, hand-pulled wheat noodles either fried with mutton and peppers or served in a broth, is the city's everyday dish, and plov, rice cooked with lamb, carrot and onion, is made for guests and celebrations. Manty, large steamed dumplings of minced mutton and onion, come with sour cream or vinegar, and samsa, meat pastries baked on the wall of a tandyr oven, are sold from street ovens all over town.

Beshbarmak, the national dish of boiled meat shredded over broad flat noodles and served with an onion broth, is a feast dish rather than a restaurant one, though the larger Kyrgyz dining halls prepare it. Dungan food is well represented: ashlan-fu, a cold, sour noodle dish with starch jelly, chilli and vinegar, is sold in bazaar stalls, and Korean salads of carrot, cabbage and beans occupy a whole row at Osh Bazaar, a legacy of the Koreans deported to Central Asia in 1937. Shashlik grilled over charcoal is the standard summer evening meal.

Bread is central: flat round lepyoshka baked in tandyr ovens, and boorsok, small squares of fried dough piled on the table for guests. Drinks are green tea with almost everything, maksym and chalap, fizzy fermented grain and yoghurt drinks sold from barrels on the pavement in summer, and kymyz, fermented mare's milk, brought in from the pastures. The city also has a well-developed café scene, Russian-style bakeries and locally brewed beer.