Chinese tea for visitors: what to drink, how a tea house works, and how to buy without being fleeced

Tea in China is not a drink so much as the thing that happens between all the other things: the glass of leaves on every taxi dashboard, the pot that arrives before the menu, the hour in a tea house that a guide uses to explain the city. Australians who arrive thinking of tea as a bag in a mug leave with a new habit and, often, half a suitcase of it. This guide covers what to drink, how, where, and how to buy it.

The six families

Chinese tea is all one plant; the processing makes the family.

• Green (lü cha): unoxidised, fresh, grassy, delicate. Longjing from Hangzhou is the famous one (our Hangzhou guide covers the farms); Biluochun from Suzhou is the other great eastern green. Brewed in a glass so you watch the leaves, at well below boiling; the spring picking is the prize.
• White (bai cha): barely processed buds, pale, sweet, subtle. Fujian’s Silver Needle and White Peony.
• Yellow (huang cha): rare, a green tea with an extra step that mellows it; worth tasting once if offered.
• Oolong (wulong): partly oxidised, the most varied family, from floral (Tieguanyin from Fujian) to roasted and mineral (Da Hong Pao from the Wuyi cliffs, Dancong from Guangdong). Brewed gongfu-style in small pots, many short infusions.
• Black (hong cha, “red tea”): fully oxidised, the family Australians know. Keemun from Anhui, Dianhong from Yunnan, Lapsang from Fujian; smoother and less tannic than Indian blacks.
• Dark (hei cha), including pu’er: fermented and aged, earthy, from Yunnan; “raw” pu’er ages for decades, “ripe” is pile-fermented to taste old quickly. Sold in pressed cakes; the one tea that is collected and traded.
• Scented: jasmine (green tea scented with flowers) is the everyday tea of northern China and the one on most restaurant tables.

If you drink one of each on a trip, you will know which family is yours. Most Australians find they are oolong people.

How a tea house works

A traditional tea house (chaguan) charges by the tea, not by the pot: you choose a tea from a list priced per serving or per gram, and the server brings the leaves, a small pot or a lidded cup (gaiwan), tiny cups, and a kettle or a flask of hot water that is refilled as long as you sit. You brew yourself, or the server does a round first to show you.

The rhythm: rinse the leaves with the first pour and discard it; infuse for a short time (seconds for oolong, a minute or so for green); pour into the small cups; drink in two sips; repeat, lengthening each infusion. Snacks (nuts, dried fruit, seeds, small pastries) are ordered alongside. Nobody hurries you; two hours is normal. Tapping two fingers on the table when someone pours for you is a silent thank-you, a habit worth adopting.

Modern tea shops (the chains selling bubble tea and fruit tea) are a different thing, popular and fun, and the food guide covers them with the drinks.

Where to go

• Shanghai: the Huxinting teahouse on the zigzag bridge at Yu Garden, two centuries old and touristy and still lovely at opening time; the tea houses of the French Concession, from quiet traditional rooms to design-led ones; the tea markets at Tianshan and Daning for the serious.
• Hangzhou: the Longjing villages (Meijiawu, Longjing) for tea at the farmhouse where it was picked, and the China National Tea Museum.
• Suzhou: canal-side tea houses on Pingjiang Road, and the Master of the Nets Garden’s evening tea performances in summer; the Suzhou guide has the day.
• Beijing: Lao She Teahouse near Qianmen for tea with opera and acrobatics, a tourist show that is a good one; and the Maliandao tea street, a kilometre of wholesalers.
• Chengdu, if you go: People’s Park, where the tea house is the city’s living room; the far destinations guide covers it.

Buying tea

Tea is sold by weight, in sealed foil or vacuum packs, loose in tins, or pressed in cakes. Prices range from a few dollars for everyday jasmine to several hundred for top-grade spring Longjing or aged pu’er, and the same name covers both ends. The rules:

• Taste before buying. Any proper tea shop will brew for you; that is the sale. Buy the tea you drank, not the one in the display.
• Buy where you sat. A farmhouse in Longjing, a tea house you spent an afternoon in, a department-store tea counter, a market wholesaler with a guide. Not a shop a stranger led you to.
• Grade and season matter more than name. “Longjing” means little; “pre-Qingming West Lake Longjing” from a named village means a lot and costs accordingly. A guide can read the packaging.
• Vacuum-sealed packs travel and keep; loose tea in a tin is for drinking soon.
• Pu’er cakes are a collector’s market with its own fakes; buy small and from the shop’s own range unless you know what you are doing.

The tea ceremony scam

The only thing to fear in Chinese tea is the invitation. Friendly English speakers on Nanjing Road, the Bund or outside the Forbidden City suggest a “traditional tea ceremony”; the tea is poured, the bill is hundreds of dollars, the door is watched. Decline every invitation from a stranger in a tourist district. A tea house you chose yourself, with prices on the menu, is the real thing; the scams guide covers the rest.

Bringing tea home

Australian biosecurity allows commercially packaged tea, including loose leaf, for personal use; declare it on the arrival card (it costs nothing and avoids a fine), keep it sealed, and avoid anything with seeds, fresh plant material or unlabelled herbal mixes, which may be seized. Tea does not count toward the alcohol or tobacco limits and only toward the A$900 goods allowance if you spent that much; the shopping and customs guide has the rules. Tea sets, pots and gaiwans are fine; wrap them well.

With a guide

An afternoon in a tea house with a guide is, in our experience, the hour when guests understand the trip: the city explained over a dozen infusions, the tea bought afterwards from the same counter at the right price. We build one into most day guide bookings and into the Shanghai essentials tour, usually on the Suzhou or Hangzhou day, and the tea comes home in the suitcase.