The teahouse is a microcosm of society. For a long time, the tea house was mistakenly believed by the elite of the time and later scholars to encourage people to do nothing, breed inertia, and be detrimental to the healthy development of society. However, the multi-layered, complex socio-economic and cultural function of tea houses is overlooked. The evolution of society has always been accompanied by a change in the concept of time, but this new concept of time is also limited to the new elite influenced by the West. Most ordinary citizens still maintain a traditional concept of time, and how they use their time depends on their personal habits, education level, occupational and family background, financial situation, etc. "Idle" and "busy" can be alternate roles at different times, and the teahouse provides a space for both to use. Even after the advent of many "modern" entertainment venues, teahouses remain the most acceptable public living space for most citizens.
In the past, tea houses were very closely linked to people's daily lives, but we are accustomed to seeing tea houses as just a place to relax, but in fact, tea houses are a very complex public space. In modern Chinese cities, I am afraid that no citizen of any other city relies more on teahouses like the people of Chengdu. Therefore, today I will mainly focus on Chengdu to investigate the tea house.
Chinese teahouses have many similarities with Western cafes, hotels and salons, and their social roles are more complex, their functions have gone far beyond leisure, and the pursuit of leisure is only a superficial phenomenon of teahouse life. Teahouses are both a place of leisure and entertainment, a stage for the activities of various characters, and often become the center of social life and local politics.
When Huang Yanpei visited Chengdu during the Republic of China period, he wrote an oil poem depicting the leisure of the daily life of Chengdu people, two of which were: "One person counts the stone slabs on the street without incident, and two people sit in the tea shop from morning to night." The educator Shu Xincheng also wrote that what impressed him most in Chengdu in the 1930s was the slow pace of people's lives: in the teahouse, "no matter which one, from sunrise to sunset, it is full of friends, and often without gaps." Xue Shaoming also found that "many people living in Chengdu do not raise a fire all day long, and their dietary problems are solved by restaurants and tea houses." Eating in a restaurant, you must go to the tea house to drink tea, which is the life procedure of everyone in Chengdu. The meal is eaten a little faster, and the tea is drunk for three or four hours."
It is not surprising that outsiders have this impression of Chengdu, because Chengdu people themselves are consciously or unconsciously promoting such a culture, and Chengdu residents also laugh at the city's "three more": there are many idle people, many tea houses, and more toilets. The local folk proverb is called "a city resident and a half tea guest". Chengdu's teahouses and their culture are well-known and part of their traditions. Chengdu people are also proud of their tea house culture, and even think that only they deserve to be called "tea guests", and only Sichuan is the real "tea country".
Who are the regulars of the teahouse? It is said that there are two types of people: one is the "idle class" and the other is the "busy class". According to the general understanding, the "idle class" are those local literati, retired officials, rich people and other upper classes of society. The "busy class" is divided into several types: one is to use the tea house as a stage, such as book critics and opera artists; the other is to borrow the tea house as a workplace, such as merchants, fortune tellers, langzhong and handicraft workers; and the third is to use the tea house as a market, such as small traders and peddlers and coolies to be hired. It should be recognized, however, that the concepts of "idle class" and "busy class" are very loose and are not strictly divided into classes. Although we often use the term "leisure class" to describe people who do not have a serious job and enjoy life, they are not an independent class and can have different economic backgrounds. However, the words "busy" and "idle" do encompass all kinds of people in the teahouse. Whether it is the upper elite or the lower class, the rich or the poor, the idle and the busy, they all operate in the public space of the teahouse.
Public space and its economic and cultural colors
The characteristics of Chengdu Tea House come from its special social and ecological environment, and of course, it is also closely related to the tea house owners, tangku, hawkers, artists and customers in the event. As a cultural and commercial city, Chengdu needs convenient and comfortable public places as a place for people's activities, and tea houses have adapted to this demand.
Opening a teahouse is of course a commercial activity, and like other businesses, it is for the pursuit of profit, and has formed a very unique way of opening a teahouse in Chengdu. Opening a teahouse generally does not require a lot of capital, as long as there are tables and chairs, tea sets, stoves and a dark room, the conditions are basically available. With proper planning, starting a teahouse can start from scratch. In addition, butcher shops and food stalls often rely on tea houses to attract business, and they are willing to participate in investment. This way of raising money to open a teahouse reflects the interdependence of people in a community.
The tea set and furniture of the Sichuan Tea House are also unique. Tea sets are generally composed of tea bowls, tea lids and tea boats (i.e. tea trays or tea trays), which is why the Sichuan people call it "gai bowl tea". Tables and chairs also have local colors, generally small wooden tables and bamboo chairs with armrests. Tang Kui is an important role in chengdu tea house culture, which may be called "Mo Shi", and some people are called "Tea Doctor". Tang Kui is the "soul" of the Chengdu Tea House, and a folk song describing Tang Qi sings: "I have traveled thousands of miles a day without going out, although the officials have not managed the people, the silver wallet is full during the day, and there is no half a text around the waist in the evening." The most praised is their tea blending technology. Tang Kun carried a copper teapot in one hand and a stack of tea sets in the other hand, often as many as more than 20 sets. Before he could get close to the table, he sprinkled the tea boat tea bowl on the table, and the tea bowl flew into the tea boat impartially, and it happened to be in front of one person. The different types of teas requested by customers are also not bad. I saw him lift a teapot a few feet away, boiling water like a silver snake flying into the tea bowl, and not a drop of water splashed on the tabletop. Then he took a step forward and used his little finger to hook the tea lids into the tea bowl one by one. The whole process was completed in one go, which stunned the foreigners.
Citizens' "Free World"
Westerners in the early 20th century compared Chengdu tea houses to British pubs, where they were interested in the "social chatter" of people and observed their important role in the community. A foreign teacher was so impressed by the "cozy tea shop" in the alley where he lived, which he thought was "the social center of this alley." People go to teahouses to meet friends, trade, sell, sell art, make small talk, or do nothing and watch the pedestrians on the street. Chengdu citizens basically do not have fixed working hours, as long as they do not work, whether day or night, they can stay in teahouses.
A teahouse is an unfettered place for a man. If he feels hot, he can strip off his clothes and go topless; if he needs a haircut, the barber can serve in his seat, regardless of the fact that the cut hair often flies into his and others' tea bowls; it doesn't hurt to take off his shoes and let the pedicureist trim his toenails in the teahouse; if he feels lonely, he can listen to others or join in, even if they don't know each other; in the teahouse, there is no time limit, if there is an urgent matter, just push the tea bowl to the center of the table and tell the church to "keep", and after a few hours, you can come back to continue tasting the cup of tea.
For tea drinkers, small talk – known to Chengdu people as the "swinging dragon gate array" – is perhaps the most attractive thing about tea houses. People are there talking about everything. There are not many records of the specific content of people's conversations in the teahouse, but there is a column in the National Gazette that records what the reporter saw and heard, some of which was obtained from the teahouse, so we learned that people complained about the world' customs in the teahouse, discussed the newly promulgated regulations, exchanged various social news, and often got pleasure from some of the small episodes in the teahouse. However, some sociologists believe that rap is "a form of social interaction." Whether it is a goodwill exchange or a malicious rumor, it is part of the daily life of citizens.
The teahouse is also an entertainment center, where many artists sell their art for a living, and the teahouse also attracts customers with wonderful performances. In fact, the early theater in Chengdu was born in the tea house. At night, the streets and alleys are dark, and the lower classes of people gather in the bright and crowded tea houses to listen to the commentaries. Mr. Storyteller's skill attracts listeners to the same place day after day, even year after year. Mr. Storyteller not only provided entertainment, but also popularized knowledge of Chinese history. They unconsciously spread orthodox values, instilling in the minds of those who are not educated, who can also be regarded as educators of the masses. Various folk artists make the tea house culture more abundant, most of them are locals, but some are from other provinces, such as singing drum books from north China. Most of these artists have fixed performance venues, and the audience knows where to enjoy their favorite plays or actors. Others, such as crosstalk and money boards, are scattered throughout the teahouses.
Economic activities and civil disputes
The teahouse can be said to be the epitome of a complicated world, where the three religions and nine streams are gathered. For example, a teahouse can be a "free market" where artisans and other hired workers sell their skills or labor, while hawkers roam between tables and chairs to drink their selling items. In the travel records of Westerners, it can be seen that "merchants are anxious to meet their business partners in tea houses, and peddlers use whistles, small gongs, castillos, etc. to attract buyers." Some hawkers use "stunts" to please customers, such as when they can grab out the number of melon seeds requested by the customer. It can be seen that the hawkers not only sell goods, but also bring entertainment to tea customers. The shisha vendors in the teahouse provide services with "smoking guns" that are several feet long, and if the smoking guns are not long enough, they also have spare pipe connections. In this way, in a crowded and noisy teahouse, they can deliver cigarettes to customers without moving.
Tea houses provide livelihoods for many people, with artisans there repairing various items such as fans, shoes, etc., fortune tellers there to predict the murder, pedicures and shavers there to provide services. Some beggars even sell "cool breezes" there – fanning customers to earn money, which is actually a form of begging in disguise. When a beggar comes uninvited to fan a tea guest, if the tea guest feels comfortable and in a good mood, he will give the beggar a few small dollars, otherwise he will be impatiently driven away. The most interesting profession in the teahouse is the ear digging master, who uses more than ten different tools to dig, dig, scrape, scratch, etc., and does everything to make customers enter an indescribable comfortable state.
Merchants have their fixed tea houses to negotiate business, and "many transactions are made in tea houses". The Grain and Oil Guild hall is located in the Anle Temple Tea House as the trading place, the Cloth Gang lives in the Tea House, and a tea house on the south gate has become a business place for rice shop owners and rice farmers because of its proximity to the rice market. Those underworlds that smuggled opium and weapons operated in the Tea Tasting Club. Exactly how many transactions are made in teahouses each day is unknown, but it is certain that the number is very impressive.
At the same time, the tea house plays an important role in developing social relations between people and maintaining social stability, in a sense, the tea house is a "civil court". In Chengdu, an unwritten rule has been formed, and conflicts between citizens are generally not resolved in court. Huang Zongzhi pointed out that county-level civil litigation in the Qing Dynasty generally went through three stages, the first stage being mediation. But in fact, before the intervention of Zhixian County, that is, before a civil lawsuit is formally formed, there is a more basic stage - social mediation, many disputes have been resolved by social mediation before litigation, and this social mediation is carried out in the tea house, called "tea house reasoning" or "eating and talking tea". Teahouse reasoning is generally when both sides invite an elder with "high moral standing" or a local influential figure to be a referee, which is the main reason why "real fights rarely happen" in Chengdu in the past.
[This article is excerpted from "Tea Houses and the Daily Life of Urban People: Dr. Wang Di's Lecture at East China Normal University, originally published in Wen Wei Po Weekly Lecture, January 8, 2006)]
Author: Wang Di
Editor: Chen Yu