The Tibetan Tea Culture

Tibetan tea culture is an integral part of Tibetan traditional civilization. It contains both the spiritual and the material wealth created by Tibetans during long history of the social practices and life experience . Tibetan tea culture is composed of legend, history, producing processing of tea and the phenomena of social culture which concerned with tea. The forming and development of Tibetan tea culture has a long history. Nowadays under the strong influence of globalization, the content and function of tea culture has also changed. So with a view of Tibetans' realistic lives, in order to further understand the unique Tibetan tea culture, it is necessary to study Tibetan tea culture from methodology and knowledge of different disciplines with scientific approach. Such kind of study will play a active role in maintaining Tibetan traditional culture and developing economy of Tibetan society.Based on materials in Chinese, English, and Tibetan, with theories of cultural anthropology, this paper aims to study the whole Tibetan tea culture by means of document analysis. In addition, the present thesis will compare the origin, representation, and character of Tibetan tea culture with that of the Han people. The focus of the paper is the speciality of Tibetan tea culture.The paper consists of four chapters: The forming of Tibetan tea culture, its effect on Tibetan social politics and economy, the representation of Tibetan tea culture and the trends of its development. Following are the main contents of each chapter:Firstly, the thesis studies the developmental factors of Tibetan tea culture, such as environment, historical and social situation, and reviews the popularization of tea culture. Secondly, The close political, economic and cultural contact between the Tibetans and the Han nationality hadplayed an important part in the development of Tibetan tea culture. The author analyzes the developmental process of Tibetan tea culture and expounds that Tibetan tea culture is the fruits and the bands of the intercourse in the same time. Thirdly, Tibetan tea culture origins from the Han nationality, but not copies the tea culture of the Han nationality. By selectively absorbing, the Tibetans developed the tea culture in a creative way. For showing its unique feature, this paper also exhibits the form and content of Tibetan tea culture in details. Lastly, the author discusses how the Tibetan tea culture adapt to the rapid changes of the times the traditional culture generally facing. With the recent reports on field investigations and studying contributions of the spiritual and material aspect of Tibetan tea culture, for instance, the process of tea making, this paper gives a presentation of the status quo of Tibetan tea culture. Integrating the theory about development of culture, the author makes constructive comments about the action of subjective and objective elements in the development of Tibetan tea culture, and infers that Tibetan tea culture is supposed to keep on taking in different things as a reference with courage and wisdom, and get to accommodate each other. Therefore, Tibetan tea culture will have its long-live life and be more brilliant in the future.