Teahouses·Citizen Culture·Social Change

The remote history of teahouses in Hangzhou can be traced back to the middle of the Tangdynasty. Up till South Song Dynasty, being one of the essential parts of the services in capital city, the scales and the business of the teahouses had been fully developed. Meanwhile, they played a vital role as a vehicle in spreading tea culture with profound cultural diversities. In Yuan and Ming Dynasty teahouses declined a bit, but they picked up at late Ming and early Qing Dynasty and the prosperity lasted to late Qing Dynasty. Modern China witnessed great changes, which influenced greatly on the local teahouses concerning their scale, location and business characteristics with striking traits. The teahouses in Hangzhou are not only one part of the public economy, but also are the media for transmitting the public culture. The development, offering an access for better understanding of the modern local economy and culture in Hangzhou, showed the characteristics in commerce on one hand, and featured the local culture and the complexity of the vivid public on the other. Besides their traditional functions such as place for recreation, talks and information-sharing, the modern teahouses in Hangzhou provided a public space for economic and cultural activities to various people in and out of the town. They became the rich sources for civil knowledge and local masterpieces of operas and arts, closely relating to the public social and economic life. In a word, in the modern social life of Hangzhou, teahouses played a vital role in various aspects such as connecting people, performing its extensive and comprehensive social functions and displaying the colorful and live citizen lives of the local public. The evolution of the modern teahouses in Hangzhou furnishes us with effective evidences for the study on the tea culture, the citizen culture, the social change and their interactive relations in-between.