Traditional Teahouse

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Meal Name:Traditional Teahouse

This is an article from the China in Focus magazine. Gwenaële Chesnais explores the world of Sichuanese teahouses. Her work on many aspects of tea culture has included a translation of the Chinese Classic of Tea and a Sino-French glossary of technical terms concerning tea.
As Europe is well-known for its cafes and pubs, China has her own gathering place, the teahouse. At the beginning of the century and until the 50's, they were widespread throughout the country. Nowadays, Sichuan province is the only place where they still play a major role in people's daily life.

Although teahouses are slowly reappearing in other parts of China like Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou, Sichuan remains the only province where teahouses do play a role in everyone's daily life. In Sichuan, in fact, there are three places in a person's day: home, office and teahouse.

Drinking tea is not the exclusive pleasure of going to the teahouse. Other leisure activities include reading newspapers and playing Chinese chess or majiang (mahjong). Sichuanese people flock to teahouses to chat and exchange news and gossip. Before the era of television, teahouses were the first places where one could gather some information on the latest events.

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