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There are many types of Chinese tea cups in the Chinese Tea Ceremony, the gaibei or lidded cup. The wen xiang bei for smelling the fragrance of the tea. There is the cha bei, which is the cup for drinking tea from, and there is the chawan which is the bowl used for drinking tea.

Tea house (Chaguan), are special place for the Chinese to have tea, very popular in the Yangtze River area. Mostly called tea house (Chalou) in provinces like Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan, and 'Tea Pavilion' (Chating) in Beijing and Tianjin of north China. Historically, there are some other names for it, such as Chaliao, Chafang, Chasi, Chashe, Chayuan, Chawu and Chashi. Although these names vary, the forms and contents are basically the same.

Tea booths, 'Chatan' and small tea houses, 'Chaliao' have existed for a long time in China. During the Song Dynasty, Chasi and Chafang, where tea was sold, were already ubiquitous. The tea shop industry was further developed in the Ming Dynasty. At the same time, the business of selling big bowls of tea began prosperous in Beijing and was included as a formal industry into 360 industries. During the Qing Dynasty, since the Manchu aristocracy often spent their time in tea houses, they become important places of activity for people from all walks of life, such as high officials, merchants and underlings.

To the Chinese people, tea houses, similar to cafes in western countries, are social places where various kinds of social information are gathered and spread and where customers taste tea and talk about birds, news and daily things.

In order to attract customers, stages are built in some tea houses to play tom-tom, Storytelling, 'Pingshu' and Beijing opera, making these tea houses amusement places. The drama Tea House, written by famous Chinese writer Lao She, revealed vividly the unstable society of the last phase of the Qing Dynasty through describing various kinds of people's words and behaviours in a tea house.

The rise of Tea House is closed related with Chinese tea culture. After several thousand years of development, the Tea House has become a part of life for the Chinese people. Now, people who come to Beijing will be attracted to those famous tea houses to experience Chinese tea culture.

 Title: BBC Chinese tea, Duration: 03:58

Description: China's tea tradition goes back many centuries and has now been revived with a vengeance. As a result, tea-shops and tea-houses have sprung up everywhere in even the most modern cities. But tea-drinking has not always been favoured. Regarded as bourgeois during the Cultural Revolution, tea-houses were torn down by political extremists.

Chinese Tea Ceremony

China has tea-shrubs as early as five to six thousand years ago, and human cultivation of tea plants dates back two thousand years. Tea from China, along with her silk and porcelain, began to be known the world over more than a thousand years ago and has always been an important Chinese export. All tea trees in other countries have their origin directly or indirectly in China. The habit of tea drinking spread to Japan in the 6th century, but it was not introduced to Europe and America till the 17th and 18th centuries. Now the number of tea drinkers in the world is legion and is still on the increase.

Restful Chinese Tea House over water

People throughout China drink tea daily. Because of the geographic location and climate, different places grow various kinds of tea. In general, there are five kinds of tea classified according to different technique involved in the making of tea:

Green tea is the variety which keeps the original colour of the tea leaves without fermentation during processing. This category consists mainly of Longjing tea of Zhejiang Province, Maofeng of Huangshan Mountain in Anhui Province and Biluochun produced in Jiangsu.

This represents a variety half way between the green and the black teas, being made after partial fermentation. It is a specialty from the provinces on China's southeast coast: Fujian, Guangdong and Taiwan.

This kind of tea is made by mixing fragrant flowers in the tea leaves in the course of processing. The flowers commonly used for this purpose are jasmine and magnolia among others. Jasmine tea is a well-known favourite with the northerners of China and with a growing number of foreigners.

Black tea, known as "red tea" (hong cha) in China, is the category which is fermented before baking, it is a later variety developed on the basis of the green tea. The best brands of black tea are Qihong of Anhui, Dianhong of Yunnan, Suhong of Jiangsu, Chuanhong of Sichuan and Huhong of Hunan.

This is the kind of tea which is compressed and hardened into a certain shape. It is good for transport and storage and is mainly supplied to the ethnic minorities living in the border areas of the country. As compressed tea is black in color in its commercial form, so it is also known in China as "black tea". Most of the compressed tea is in the form of bricks, it is therefore, generally called "brick tea", though it is sometimes also in the form of cakes and bowls. It is mainly produced in Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

Tea House Entrance

The word for tea leaves or tea as a drink in many countries are derivatives from the Chinese character "cha". The Russians call it "cha'i", which sounds like "chaye" (tea leaves) as it is pronounced in northern China, and the English word "tea" sounds similar to the pronunciation of its counterpart in Xiamen (Amoy). The Japanese character for tea is written exactly the same as it is in Chinese, though pronounced with a slight difference.

In the past dynasties, people not only formed a special way of tea-drinking, but also developed an art form called tea-drinking. This art form comprises of many aspects. The most noticeable ones are the making of tea, the way of brewing, the drinking utensils such as tea pot. The art of making tea is called "Cha dao", which was soon accepted as one of the most important cultures that Japan learned from China.

Street Tea House

In Hangzhou, there is a tea museum, the only national museum of its kind, in which there are detailed description of the historic development of tea culture in China.

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