Tea Off
Cool outdoor houses for supping fragrant stuff

by Iris Leithold

The sun's fuzzy orange mouth sucks the air back in through the Beijing haze as the cab lurches forward one last gasp along the Second Ring Road.

Amidst the angry horns, a man comes on the radio, reports more massacres in Kosovo, killings in Kashmir and 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. Oh boy. It's that-last-summer-before-the-end-of-the-world feeling.

But What to Do?

"One should clean out a room in one's home and place only a tea table and a chair in the room with some boiled water and fragrant tea. Afterwards, sit salutarily and allow one's spirit to become tranquil, light, and natural," suggested Li Ri Hua.

Ming Dynasty scholar Li was not the first to commend tea drinking to calm the spirit and clear the mind. Ever since Shen Nung sat under a camellia tree 5,000 years ago, tea has been the beloved national beverage.

Tea is a way to immortality, a drink for body and soul, according to the Tang Dynasty scholar and poet Lu Yu.

In 760, during the Tang Dynasty, Lu Yu published his Cha Jing (Classic of Tea), a sort of "Tao of Tea": three volumes, 10 chapters and 7,000 words expounding on the techniques, virtues and philosophy of tea.

Suzhou Style

"According to Lu, there are 24 steps to preparing tea. Miss one step, and it's a total waste of time," explains Zhu Jinhong, manageress of Fuyinxuan on Suzhou Street in the Summer Palace.

Cha Jing scrolls hang as the centerpiece of this Suzhou-style teahouse.

A pipa and a san xian player sing and narrate pingtan opera twice a day for visitors. There are outdoor tables, and the inside is a quiet, cool place decorated with traditional square wooden tables and red lanterns.

For a teahouse in the middle of a major tourist zone, it's a wonderful escape although the Suzhou touches do not extend to the full 24 steps.

Bejing teahouses took a beating during the Cultural Revolution and their revival in the city began through places like Fuyinxuan, ostensibly catering to tourists.

Today, the capital abounds with cool outdoor places where sensitive souls can while away the wee hours over a delicate cup of the fragrant stuff. Most of them are fairly new.

Drinking Tea at the Green

A waterside pavilion, Yinlu (Drinking Green), was once the Summer Palace angling site for the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908). Today, you can sup away in the same place where eunuchs secretly dove into the water to hang fish on her hook.

To find the special part of the Xiequyuan (Garden of Harmonious Delight) teahouse, enter the Summer Palace via Bei Ru Yi gate, then walk left for about five minutes towards the garden. A pathside pingmen (vase gate) marks the spot: Enter here and descend the sloping corridor into the secret garden.

First built in 1751, Xiequyuan was burnt to the ground in 1860 by the British and French armies. Rebuilt in 1891, the building is composed of 10 pavilions, halls, terraces and 100-odd winding corridors. The main palace in the garden is the Hall of Bestowing Favors, once Cixi's living room.

Today, this is a fully functioning ordinary folks' teahouse with a warm, friendly staff and swarms of adorable children. It's a useful place to get to know as it stays open long after the Summer Palace officially closes.

Dreamy House

Built like a farmhouse near the former residence of Cao Xueqing, this new teahouse is a sleepy little affair with stone benches and tables.

The author of "The Dream of the Red Mansions" might enjoy tasting tea out of one of the Huang Ye Cun Jiu Guan's (Yellow Leaf Village Inn) delightfully tactile clay teapots.

Only the odd bugu (Chinese cuckoo) disturbs the calm as tatty red lanterns flutter in the breeze. Fish leave little bubbles in a nearby pond. A tourist train chugs past in the distance towards Sleeping Buddha Temple.

Surrounded by bamboo fences, the teahouse doubles up as a barbecue picnic spot, seating large parties tucking into deer at 30 yuan, beef, mutton, chicken, fish at 20 yuan and 5-yuan mushrooms, onions and sweet potatoes. Sauces cost 10 yuan.

Lu Yu would not have approved. By his definition, Yellow Leaf would not qualify as a teahouse. His idea of classical tea was a pure, serene drink taken without food and untainted by milk, rice, sugar, ginger, scallions or "a myriad of vulgarities" the peasants liked to put in their tea.

Drink Tea, Live Forever

Lu might well have approved, however, of the Sheng Lan Xuan Teahouse, Qing Nian Hu Gong Yuan (Youth Lake Park).

This is a seriously cool teahouse and a popular park retreat that rewards its loyal customers by storing their own tea, a little like personalized beer mugs in a local English pub.

It's not much to look at from the outside, but inside it's well worth the investment.Young couples and middle-aged Beijingers take out tall glasses in the various rooms of this air conditioned, light emporium parked atop a little island -- Huxindao (central island) in the 24-hour park not far from Andingmen.

In these high-rise Beijing days, the park is a popular place for a walk, crammed full of children and families by day, serene and romantic at night.

Students from the Central Conservatory come to perform gu zheng (a traditional Chinese music instrument) every Saturday and Sunday, 2-5pm.

If you order a box of wuloong tea, the waitresses in the house will deliver a free tea ceremony performance. The unfinished tea is stored with other customers' boxes or can be taken away for a further three yuan.

It's a good deal for locals and regulars. Next visit, they just pay 10 yuan for water and drink the tea stored there.

This impressive update of a traditional teahouse includes the loan of mahjong sets (15 yuan), cards, Chinese chess and Go (10 yuan).

Time Gentlemen, Please

In ancient times, Beijing teahouses were often regarded as retreats for gentlemen, and later for businessmen. Deals would be discussed and sealed in the neutral, relaxed surroundings of a teahouse, rather than in offices.

Courts of law are not spots where Chinese traditionally feel at ease. Jing Hua Shi Yuan Teahouse in Longtan Lake Park is the kind of quiet summer teahouse where disputes could be settled amicably over tea.

"Making money is not the purpose of this teahouse. It is about friendship," says manager Liu Yanling. "Muslims love tea. That's how I got this job."

The revenue from customers alone could not support the teahouse, she admits. They make up a little of the difference by selling exquisite novelty pots of just about anything: a frog, a star, a bird, an elephant, a basket, a water well and a book when we visited.

The teahouse caters to the prestigious guests of the next door restaurant, while also welcoming tourists and park visitors.

This is perhaps the most authentic of all Beijing's outdoor teahouses.

According to our pal Lu, water from a slow-moving mountain stream should be boiled over a smokeless fire of charcoal made from olive pits. The water should then be poured over a quarter ounce of tea leaves in a white porcelain cup, thrown out, and more water should be added. The tea is then fit to be tasted.The water at Jing Hua Shi Yuan does not meet his exacting ancient standards. But a train brings it from Hangzhou.

"It's very important. In the south of Beijing, the water's too hard. Whenever you pour the water, you can see something floating on the surface," says Liu Yanling.

Hangzhou water, on the other hand, she says, is so naturally viscous that it's possible to float a coin on it. Lu would surely approve.

Future of Teahouses

While tea to Beijingers was never quite the obsession that it was for their southern cousins, teahouses were still quite popular in the city before the revolution. Like Peking Opera, it may need foreigners to lend a helping hand to complete its revival.

Though its history is indeed lengthy, the art of tea drinking is not without competition. The introduction of coffee by the West, along with its own culture, is believed by some to be destroying the virtues of tea drinking in the modern age.

Today coffeehouses in Taiwan outnumber their tea-peddling counterparts. If history is not set to repeat in Beijing, then these vital outdoor teahouses may be the answer not only to summer heat, but to preservation of a vanishing culture.