Gai Wan Cha

SiChuan Province is the most populated province in China. It is also one of the most prosperous areas. Gai Wan Cha has been the drink style for SiChuan people since the Jian Zhong period (780-783 AD) in the Tang Dynasty. It was invented by the local general governor Cui Ning's daughter. She noticed the tea cups was too hot for the drinkers to hold in hand. She designed a small dish to be used as a tray to hold the cup. Later on people added a lid to the cup. The tea tray, the cup ("Wan") and the lid ("Gai") can set up to hold together firmly. The whole tea set is also called "San Pao Tai" (the three-piece emplacement) according to its shape.

In SiChuan cities, Gai Wan Cha tea house can be found in everywhere. It has been a characteristic lifestyle in SiChuan Province. SiChuan people are well-known for their slow life pace, enjoying the leisure time instead of hard working, and Da Wan Cha is the center of their social lives. SiChuan is a kingdom of bamboos, the tea houses are often made from bamboo stems in temples, by the rivers, or in the busy markets. The furniture is usually made from bamboo too. There are always dozens or even hundreds of people crowd in the big tea houses. Many people spend their whole day in the tea house, just by chatting, playing cards, reading papers, eating snacks or listening to the folk singers and story tellers' performance. This is called "Long Men Zhen" and has been the major life style for SiChuan people for hundreds of years.

The tea houses also functioned as social community center and offered places for family parties, business meetings, or even for the local gang's activities. In the old times, the local gang in SiChuan was called "Pao Ge" (Gang in robes) and they often met the other gangs in the tea houses to make allies, solve problems or even smuggle opium or weapons.

The SiChuan tea houses usually offer jasmine tea or green tea, sometimes chrysanthemum tea as well. The waiters in the tea houses are called "Cha Bo Shi" ("Dr. Tea"). Dr. Tea usually has an amazing akill to pour the tea soup into the cups: the huge bronze tea pot is 5-8 liters with a super-long spout stick out of the body. The Dr. Tea holds the teapot a few feet away from the table, the hot water travels a long way after it leaves the teapot spout, then pours into the tea cup and stops right at the edge without a single drop out of the cup. The three-piece "San Pao Tai" is the typical equipment for Gai Wan Cha. The lid (Gai) of the cup is especially useful for the local people's tea-bond lives. The young mothers uses lid upside down as another smaller shallow cup to cool the hot tea, so that they can feed their babies. If the Dr. tea sees some customers put the lid beside the cup on the table, that means they are requiring for refill. When people are leaving the tea house temporally, they just put the lid on their chairs, so that the Dr. tea will not clean the table and bother for the bill. These rules are still working in many tea houses in SiChuan now.

When the other parts of China are welcoming the modern tea houses instead of the old ones, Sichuan people are still keeping their tradition and enjoy Gai Wan Cha in bamboo tea houses. This has been an icon for the Sichuan people in any towns and country sides.