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When were the earliest teahouses born? Nobody can answer this question with certainty. The first written sources which seem to mention teahouses are poems from the Tang dynasty (618-907). But the maximum splendour for teahouses was reached during and after the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). According to historical records on Sichuan's provincial capital Chengdu, for example, the town counted 516 streets and 454 teahouses in 1909, and in 1939, it counted 667 streets and 599 teahouses, almost a teahouse per street. Nowadays one still can find some tiny streets with two or three teahouses in them. But the municipal policies towards the old part of the city are sweeping away all of them.
The Sichuan people like to go to the teahouse; it is their special custom. The teahouses are all over the city and the suburbs. They have not only a very long history, but also some unique styles. Whichever tea house you go into, you can appreciate the strong flavor of Sichuan: the bamboo chairs, the square tables, the particular tea sets, the copper teapots and the special skill of filling water of the waiters. And all of these will give you some very deep impression.On the table, there are three important things. They are the porcelain teacups, porcelain lids and the metal trays. The trays are like the boat, so they are called the tea boat, too. And also they have some advantages: the volume of the teacups is just right, the top is larger and the bottom is smaller.
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.
Some people earn their meagre income in teahouse: blind people offering massages, shoe-polishers, fortune-tellers, musicians, singers, portrait painters and a variety of peddlers selling snacks or bric-a-brac. But the undisputed most original characters are the ear-pickers, the 'first character' in many scenes of local life. Wandering around the teahouses with ten kinds of ear-picking tools and making noise with his clips, the car-picker picks scrapes and scratches. Chengdu people are fond of ear-picking not because they want to have their ears cleaned but because it gives them a lethargic feeling which leads into a little nap. It suits very well the ideal of a quiet and nonchalant life many Sichuanese seek.
In traditional Chinese culture, tea-sipping was considered as a refined activity and tea-culture was synonymous with elegance. Nowadays, Sichuan teahouses display many elements of this earlier tea-culture, but they also have a 'vulgar' side to them. They are pleasant environments where people relax and chit-chat but, at the same time, they also gather many petty criminals. They are the reflection of society at any given time, and have always followed the evolution of local life. Despite a break of 15 years during the Cultural Revolution and the appearance of new leisure activities stemmed by consumer trends such as gambling and video projections, they are still standing in the whole province. Sichuan teahouses are definitely worth a visit!
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