CNN has listed the Rohat chaikhana (teahouse) located in Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, among eleven of the world’s best teahouses.
Literally translated chaikhana means "teahouse," and they can be found all over Tajikistan, CNN says.
Folks — mainly men — once gathered inside chaikhana for discussions, but these days they're a place for anyone to socialize over a cup of tea.
The ornate Rohat in Dushanbe is one of the finest places to lounge and sip tea while enjoying city views, according to CNN.
Tea House 278 in Bar Harbor, Maine (serves teas from family-owned tea farms in China and Taiwan); Rangoon Tea House, Yangon, Myanmar; Leaf Tea Bar, Rochester, New York; Sengan-en, Kagoshima, Japan (the UNESCO World Heritage site of Sengan-en is a stately home and garden. The Shimadzu family has passed the house down many generations for 350 years and it now serves as a museum and tea house for visitors); Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House, Lake Louise, Canada; the Random Tea Room & Curiosity Shop, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Proper Tea, Manchester, England; Anne Hathaway Cottage Tea Room, Staunton, Virginia; and Rx Tea Time, Cheyenne, WyomingPin Von Teahouse, Suzhou, China are also listed among eleven of the world’s best teahouses.
Meanwhile, Rohat teahouse has not been inscribed on the list of sites of historical and architectural significance in Dushanbe
Recall, the Ministry of Culture noted in April 2016 that only four sites in Dushanbe are considered to be of historical and architectural significance. These sites reportedly include the building of the Opera and Ballet Theater, the building of the Parliament, the Ismoili Somoni Memorial Complex (1999), and the Ancient Settlement of Dushanbe (3rd Century BC).
Plans to demolish some of the most popular landmarks in Dushanbe have sparked outrage. In a desperate bid to halt the destruction, hundreds of city residents in October 2015 signed an online petition addressed to the president and the Dushanbe mayor.
Reacting to a wave of Internet grumbling, Nourali Saidzoda, First Deputy Head of the Committee for Construction and Architecture under the Government of Tajikistan, told Asia-Plus that time that the buildings selected for demolition were of negligible value and needed replacing with modern hi-tech substitutes.
Thus, Tajikistan’s oldest, Mayakovsky Theater, was demolished last year. In its first incarnation, the building that went up in the late 1920s in a shabby village-cum-town then called Stalinabad served as the House of Peasants, a clubhouse for farmers. The construction was the first completed in Dushanbe as a “capital building” — that is to say designed with foundations for long-term use. It was in the House of Peasants that on October 19, 1929, Tajik statesman Nusratullo Makhsum declared the creation of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic.
