Tea

Tea is drunk throughout China. The Chinese have been showing their love for it since the ancient times. We feel cool when drinking green tea in summer, and warmwhen drinking black tea in winter. Oolong tea keeps us healthy in spring and autumn.and Pu er tea serves as our good companion all year around. Besides, scented tea smellsgood, yellow tea has bright colour, white tea serves as herbs and dark tea tastes mellow. To be short, the Chinese tea is such an irresistible drink. Tea makes your life better, andthe teahouse is a place worth visiting.

The Chinese teahouses"came into being in the Tang Dynasty, and thrived in the Song Dynasty ". One can see from the famous drawing Along the River at the Qingming
Festival， wine shops and teahouses standing on both banks of the Bianhe River. Teahouses during the Song Dynasty were much the same as those today in holding many entertaining activities, such as quyi ( Chinese folk art forms, including ballad singing,storytelling, comic dialogues, clapper talks, cross talks, etc. )and games. Especially,there was a very interesting activity called doucha(tea competition )in teahouses during the Song Dynasty. When fresh tea was first brought onto the market, tea lovers gathered to have a competition on the quality of tea leaves, the technique of tea-making, the tast of tea and so on. This kind of tea competition could be seen as an early form of tea art.

Today's teahouses are lively places too. A teahouse can be likened to a society and a culture. Teahouses today welcome people with different purposes. You can come here the most to drink tea, relax yourself, negotiate on business, or experience culture. Sinceimportant culture for a teahouse should be the tea culture embodied firstly by the art oftea making, almost every teahouse is creating and innovating its own tea art.