Teahouse Culture · Covered-Bowl Tea
Gaiwan Tea (盖碗茶)
Photo: Difference engine / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
In Chengdu's People's Park teahouses, ear-cleaners and fortune tellers still work table to table while patrons refill the same lidded bowl for hours.
Gaiwan tea is served in a lidded three-piece bowl — saucer, cup, and lid — used to steep loose green or jasmine tea right at the table, refilled endlessly by roving kettle-wielding servers. Chengdu's bamboo-chair teahouses, where people linger for hours playing mahjong, are the classic place to drink it.
Why it's made this way: Sichuan's slow-paced teahouse culture, built around the gaiwan, turned tea drinking into one of the province's defining social institutions.
More from China
Roujiamo (Braised Pork in Flatbread)
Chuan'r (Grilled Meat Skewers)
Youtiao (Fried Dough Stick)
Tanghulu (Candied Hawthorn Skewers)
Malatang (Self-Serve Spicy Broth)
Beibingyang (北冰洋) Orange Soda
Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries.
Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below.
Photo credits.