Teahouses

Introduction

The Tang invented the Tea Master, the Song the teahouse. After the tremendous success met by the first teahouses, they quickly mushroomed to rival taverns in number. Before the end of the Song Dynasty teahouses had spread throughout the Empire and could be found in small remote villages and some quite unexpected places. Truly omnipresent, teahouses came to occupy such an important place in Chinese daily life that one wonders how they had previously gotten along without them (Evans 1992). One entered any teahouse and chose a vacant seat at any tea table. In multistoried teahouses, a cup of tea cost proportionately more as one went higher up.  Almost as soon as one was seated a teahouse waiter asked the customary question, what kind of tea would you like, Sir? It was possible to order steeped tea or spicy, sugared ginger tea or any of several varieties of name-teas. Other beverages such as sour plum drinks, spring water, and warm wine were available as well. On each table sat a bowl of salted pine nuts, walnuts, or melon seeds, offered free of charge because eating them caused a thirst that would be quenched with a paid drink. Every teahouse prepared snacks and light meals, often providing restaurant and catering service as well (Evans 1992).

 

 The fare varied depending on the culinary talents of each teahouse cook but generally teahouse food was excellent, the most delicate and tasty food in all China. A hundred different dishes, including piping bowls of noodles, meat, and fish dishes, hot steamed buns, date pudding, and an infinite assortment of imaginative pastries might be found on the copious menu.  People began and ended their day in the teahouse, which acted as both a business and social center. Traders used the teahouse as an office, receiving clients at the tea table and conducting all their business over steaming cups of tea. Soothsayers and marriage brokers were permanent fixtures in large teahouses, where the only trades not plied seemed to be dentistry and tattooing. Even criminals met in the teahouses, and a most lucrative arrangement for any teahouse owner was renting out a private room in the back for the illicit dealings of very shady men (Dingbo & Murphy 1994).  These eyeless and earless rooms brought a teahouse owner a bounty of taels of silver if he warned the criminals of the arrival of the police in time to escape. Teahouse owners frequently showed as much business acumen as tea knowledge. It was well known that teahouses always had plenty of cash on hand; many acted as unofficial banks to guarantee gamblers’ wagers or accord loans at usurious interest rates for marriage dowries, buying a house, setting up a shop, or funding business deals such as trading in tea, precious metals, or real estate. Several teahouse owners made enough money to prepare sons for the Civil Service Exams and many a great mandarin counted among his ancestors a hard-working teahouse owner. Teahouses were best known, however, as places where one could relax and have a good time (Dingbo & Murphy 1994).  Teahouses have been an important part of Chinese culture and tradition.  To keep Chinese tea culture at Hong Kong traditional shop house it should make sure that it maintains concepts such as efficient service, low priced products, hospitality to all clients and excellent ambiance.

Chinese Tea Culture influences on Architecture

 

Chinese Tea significance on ceremony

 

Lao Tzu and his followers regarded tea as a natural agent that, properly used, could help beneficially transform the individual human organism and, as such, was a tool for the advancement of personal salvation. Confucius, who lived at about the same time as Lao Tzu, saw in the ceremonial use of tea a powerful reinforcement of the conventionalized relationships indispensable to an ethical society. Confucius ennobled the ancient Chinese li, or ritual etiquette, into a moral imperative. He taught that, when conjoined with the requisite attitude of sincere respect, conduct guided by decorous ceremony such as ritual tea drinking cultivated the person and allowed him to live harmoniously with his fellows (Bealer & Weinberg 2001). These were the early cultural precursors to the development of the tea ceremony. But its most immediate sources, as it has come to be practiced for more than a thousand years, were the rituals and beliefs of Ch’an Buddhism. Ch’an, one of the three streams into which the Indian Mahayana Buddhism diverged on entering China, and which was to become the progenitor of Zen Buddhism in Japan, taught that nirvana, Buddha hood, or salvation could be sought through the austere cultivation and emptying of the mind and could be attained in a sudden flash of insight, or Enlightenment. The tea ceremony, in which a commonplace of life attains a kind of mystical, contemplative, and emblematic dimension, became the external embodiment of their religious quest (Bealer & Weinberg 2001).  The ceremony of Chinese Tea is an important aspect of the Chinese Tea culture, thus any building that Chinese Tea will be offered should be constructed in a spacious way.

Systematical and proportions design

Design advice and the critical evaluation of building proposals often address the means adopted to meet objectives. The advice explains ‘how to’ design and build appropriately: what procedures to follow and checks to make, what materials to use, where a building should be oriented, how to construct features that are held to have desirable characteristics. An evaluation of a design checks that these means have indeed been adopted in the design (Bennetts, Radford & Williamson 2002). The preparation and presentation of almost all such design advice or prescriptive evaluation checklists are based on a premise of universality. It is assumed that it is possible to present information about how environmental issues should be addressed in building design in terms of solutions that are not specific to a time, place or client. This creates a theoretical image that such information can be applied directly, or adapted, to a variety of design situations. The concept of meeting needs is an integral component of most definitions of sustainable development, with a clear implication that needs can be determined independently of their context. The idea of meeting needs has a resonance with thinking on building design, because the idea that buildings must satisfy users’ needs has been part of this discourse over many years. An architect’s images about a good design often relate to the satisfaction of the users needs (Bennetts, Radford & Williamson 2002). The design would feature a wide space that will allow one to perform ceremonies. The design would be simple but attractive so that one can replenish his/her soul while drinking a tea or any other refreshment.

 

Hong Kong architects and their influence on modern architecture

In Hong Kong today, history is both a matter of great urgency and strangely absent. A large part of it seems to have slipped away into some other dimension, migrated elsewhere not without leaving its mark on the cultural space of the city. Hong Kong’s history is perceptible not directly but only through the effects it has on things around it. Tracing this other history, of migrancy and disappearance, requires a shift in attention away from the immediacy of events to the space in which they take place (Cairns 2004). Such a spatial history will have to count architecture and cinema among its primary sources of historical evidence. In Hong Kong architecture there is no obvious use of distorted grids and few surprises. Nevertheless, the combination of stable building forms in the midst of an unstable problematic history creates its own distortions. In Hong Kong there is more building and rebuilding taking place than in practically any other place in the world, but very little reflection on building. These are architecture’s self-imposed limits; it limits itself to the praxis of building and ignores the parapraxis. But in keeping to the straight and narrow, Hong Kong architecture shows its historical myopia: it does not see that techniques of construction are part of a larger cultural field (Cairns 2004). Hong Kong architects have given contribution to the structure of most buildings in Hong Kong at the present. The contemporary architects illustrated various techniques and practices that helped in making sure that the building will be designed with simplicity but can endure all types of disasters.

Nature and Architecture

Architecture is not just an activity or an event or a collection of artifacts. It is not even simply an art. Architecture is fundamental to all human affairs; it stands at the very beginning of civilization, for without it there would be no possibility of civilization or culture. Architecture is inescapable, universal, endless and continuous. It is also elementary. It spans between the crudest forms of accommodation in a cave to the most complex kind of sophisticated, artificial environment (Farmer & Hentie 1993).  But whatever its scale and whatever its complexity, for the most part it means shelter. Until the advent of powered transport, the architecture of every place tended to be constructed from the materials of that place. If the primary task of architecture is to offer shelter, then the climate of each locality on earth requires its own particular response-for example, excluding or filtering bright light in some climates and taking full advantage of weak light in others. For much of the last two hundred years these special properties of individual places were either played down or ignored. Technological progress, increased communication through exploration, political expansion and global trade, all broke down natural barriers to cultural interchange and influence. Universal ideals for all humankind led to concepts of equally universal architectural ideas (Farmer & Hentie 1993).  Architecture makes use of the various products of nature such as trees, sand and others to create buildings and monuments. It is architecture’s duty to make sure that they will not consume all of nature products and it is architecture’s duty to try to replace all materials they have used. 

Chinese Tea culture influences on furniture design

The radical changes in furniture design were explained by the availability of different types of imported woods with different properties enabling, for example, more delicate members and finer carving, or expanses of veneer to exploit the decorative qualities of a highly figured grain (Attfield 2000). Among traditional makers there was never any question of furniture being made from any material other than wood. Reproduction is a very particular category of furniture in the furniture maker’s vocabulary, referring directly to the typical repertoire of classical period styles, but by its own announcement a simulation of the real thing (Attfield 2000). Furniture is a product area that is often heavily loaded with social significance. A look around many offices will reveal that the size of a person’s desk can be a fairly accurate indicator of that person’s status within the organization. Certainly, there seems to be a perception that the bigger the desk, the more powerful the person sitting behind it is. Indeed, this can sometimes be intimidating for the person sitting on the other side. Ideo-pleasure pertains to people’s values. These include, for example, tastes, moral values and personal aspirations. The issues that fall under ideological pleasure are, then, important in defining how people do and would like to see themselves (Jordan 2000).

 

One way in which people can differ markedly is in their attitudes towards modern technology. Whilst some may enthusiastically embrace technology and enjoy seeing technology around them, others may enjoy the benefits of technology, but may not enjoy technology per se. People’s attitudes with respect to technology may influence the types of design aesthetic that they are likely to appreciate (Jordan 2000). People with positive feelings towards technology may prefer aesthetics that emphasize the technological aspects of a product, whilst those with negative feelings towards technology may prefer aesthetics that play down the technological aspects. Similarly, a piece of furniture, such as a table, may have a number of patterns carved into it. Such patterning was very common during the Victorian era. Such a piece of furniture might be formally defined as ‘ornate’, as opposed, for example, to organic or geometric. Whilst ‘ornate’ is not a property that is measurable in the same way as the top speed of a motorcycle, it is, nevertheless, a property that would be recognized and interpreted fairly universally amongst designers. It may be thought of, then, as still being a formal property. Experientially, however, this ornate ness may be interpreted in a variety of different ways depending on the person making the interpretation. Some people may see ornate ness as being traditional, others may see it as fussy, others as dated, others as attractive and still others as tacky. So, the formal property ornate could be linked to one or more of the experiential properties traditional, fussy, dated, attractive or tacky depending upon the person or people experiencing the table (Jordan 2000).

 

Along with residential architecture, furniture and craft objects shaped the material environment and culture of late Ming and Qing living. Such objects embodied aesthetic tastes but also participated in the organization of social life and the expression of values. Best known among later Chinese furniture are the plain hardwood types, especially those known as huanghuali and zitan, often referred to in English as rose woods. These dense and fine grained woods presented several kinds of choices even before they were shaped into furnishings. They were expensive woods imported from far southern China or Indochina that showed to best advantage when the grain patterns were unpainted. The hardwoods therefore represented an alternative to colorful, deeply carved lacquered or inlaid furniture (Thorp & Vinograd 2001). Hardwood furniture also became linked to scholarly tastes and thus associated the owner with qualities of simplicity and refinement, whatever his or her actual status or personality. These furnishings depended for their effect on the color and grain of the wood, the artfulness of joinery without nails, clean lines and careful balancing of proportions, and subtle carved decoration. While modern collecting practices tend to focus on pieces as individual works of art, furnishings were objects of daily use as well as appreciation and were displayed in groups as part of architectural interior arrangements. Gender relationships could be embodied in furniture along with social and cultural roles. Large canopied beds could function almost as self-contained rooms when equipped with curtains, cushions, and portable armrest and tables. Furniture thus addressed requirements for the practical necessities of domestic life, cultural activities, and displays of social status all at once (Thorp & Vinograd 2001).  The design of the furniture will be affected by Chinese Tea culture. Elements and concepts in the Chinese tea culture will affect the design of the furniture that will be used.  Traditional wood materials will be used in furniture design.

Chinese Tea culture influences on heath and society

The tea plant has been grown in Asia for thousands of years, originating in China. The Chinese have drunk tea for over two thousand years, and dominated the tea trade up until the mid-19th century. Until the early 1800s, Canton was the only port in China through which trade with the rest of the world could pass. It was the primary supplier of tea to Europe, and the British Empire in particular. The British East India Company dominated the tea trade out of China throughout the British Empire and colonies. This trade route ran from Canton to London and then to the East Indies. From the East Indies, the tea would then travel to the American British Colony of Boston, and later to New York Prance & Nesbitt 2004).  However, this trade route was not straightforward and involved trading opium from Calcutta with the Cantonese in exchange for their tea. All parties would exchange goods offshore under cover of darkness. If any money exchanged hands, it was always in silver. Since the 1960s, tea-producing companies have tried many new and different ways to package and market their product. Developments of the late 20th and early 21st centuries included tea bags and dehydrated instant tea (Prance & Nesbitt 2004).

 

Antioxidant properties of tea that lead to health-protective effects have been reported, mainly in relation to various types of cancer, coronary heart disease, and inflammation. The different types of tea undergo different manufacturing processes. To produce green tea, freshly harvested leaves are rapidly steamed or pan-fried to inactivate enzymes, thereby preventing fermentation and producing a dry, stable product. Epicatechins are the main compounds in green tea, accounting for its characteristic color and flavor (Nehlig 2004). The use of Chinese tea gave health benefits to the user. The concepts found on a Chinese Tea house and the use of tea created the social reform that China desired. China’s reform is a multifaceted process whose key elements include greater latitude for market, mobility, modernization and internationalization. Viewed from the centre, these policies are intended to transform Chinese socialism in ways that will accelerate economic growth, bolster party authority, and strengthen China’s international position (Perry & Selden 2003). Viewed from the perspective of the diverse social forces promoting the reforms, they afford an opportunity to expand autonomy and facilitate a range of activities previously circumscribed by the party-state. From the multiple perspectives of those who are disadvantaged or disappointed by elements of the reform program, however, the object is often to preserve the benefits and ideals of a bygone era. In sum, reforms generated both from above and from below have brought far-reaching, even cataclysmic, changes to the economy, society, politics and culture, changes that touch every citizen and extend to every corner of the land to redefine China’s place in the world (Perry & Selden 2003).

 

 One component of China’s modernization-urbanization-as well as the marketization or commercialization of suburban land has generated enormous levels of conflict over the past few years. As cities modernize, they eat up suburban land; since the mid-1980s, cities have expanded at a furious pace. Moreover, the zone fever that swept China accelerated the pace with which cities have swallowed up their suburban rural land (Perry & Selden 2003).  Also, city mayors are rapidly turning suburban land, formerly owned by rural collectives and managed by individual households, into bedroom communities. Commercialization of suburban and rural land is one of the most incendiary issues in Chinese society today Among 236 cases filed under the Administrative Litigation Law 21 per cent, were over land use, urban zoning and real estate.  Why? First, the process of urbanization mirrors the reforms in general, where economic changes, commercialization, new opportunities and the generation of wealth occur before the establishment of new economic and legal institutions that regulate the distribution of market opportunities. Thus, the formal legal framework needed to manage the emergence of a land and suburban housing market, as well as the informal norms that could moderate political and economic confrontations, are only beginning to develop. Land laws are easily ignored by business interests, and much of the confiscated land is simply used as collateral for getting loans from the bank; after that, the land is left to lie fallow.  Because the market has outpaced the consolidation of legal institutions-such as land and real estate laws-enormous political problems have emerged as market and economic dynamisms leave political institutions constantly striving to catch up with reality (Perry & Selden 2003). The tea culture introduced health consciousness among the Chinese. The concepts and ideas acquired from the tea culture introduced the need for social change but the country still has a long way to go in terms of complete social change.

Chinese Tea culture influences on regions and religion

With few exceptions, the most developed industrial and commercial centers of China are located in the coastal and northeastern provinces. Although China was not traditionally a maritime nation, modern industry spread to China under the influence of the Japanese in present day Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces and of the Europeans in other coastal enclaves including Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tianjin. Climatically and topologically, the region varies considerably (Putterman 1993). As people probe the regional, provincial, and county level statistics of China, what emerges is, not surprisingly, a picture of great diversity. Perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from this is that the distribution among localities of the signs of structural change and economic development is a highly skewed one. That is, the average level of economic development, as measured by, say, income per capita or the nonagricultural share of total gross output value, is below the national mean in the great majority of localities (Putterman 1993).

 

The question of religion or religions is useful for recalling to mind the shared heritage called Chinese culture, which is inseparable from the religion(s), whether these be Confucianism, Taoism, or Buddhism. It also accounts for much that is common among the religions themselves, and for the phenomenon called popular religion. It is perhaps to be expected that the ruling dynasties of native origin would tend to favor Confucianism and Taoism, whereas those of alien or mixed backgrounds offered more protection to Buddhism. Taoism and Buddhism offered a sense of escape and consolation during times of disunity, whereas Confucianism contributed more directly to social and political cohesion during times of national unity. The three religions actually complemented one another, since they attended to different areas of human concern. During and after the Ming dynasty and until today, they converged in a syncretistic pattern; and Confucius, Lao-tzu and the Buddha have sometimes been linked in veneration and worship. The happy harmony of traditional Chinese society existed more as an ideal than as fact. Among other factors, the three major teachings were never the only religious traditions in China (Ching 1993). The country has also known Islam and Christianity, although the adherents of these Western religions have always been a minority in the population, and Muslims have usually come from specific ethnic groups, refraining from making converts from the majority. In more recent times, China faced the onslaught of Western intrusions, both political and cultural. This has been a most severe test for the Chinese soul, and the occasion for a long period of self-doubt and self-criticism which has not yet ended. As traditional society found itself in the process of disintegration, Western ideas and beliefs were introduced of religion as well as of science and government. The Chinese dilemma has been how to modernize without losing a cultural identity and a rich heritage, and how to distinguish between Western rationality and credulity, their excesses and limitations (Ching 1993). The Chinese tea culture gave China’s region the qualities they need to prosper and survive threats from internal and external forces. The Chinese tea culture influenced the Chinese in their decisions on what religion to follow and what god to believe in.

 

Summary

Teahouses have been an important part of Chinese culture and tradition.  To keep Chinese tea culture at Hong Kong traditional shop house it should make sure that it maintains concepts such as efficient service, low priced products, hospitality to all clients and excellent ambiance. The ceremony of Chinese Tea is an important aspect of the Chinese Tea culture, thus any building that Chinese Tea will be offered should be constructed in a spacious way. The design would feature a wide space that will allow one to perform ceremonies. The design would be simple but attractive so that one can replenish his/her soul while drinking a tea or any other refreshment. Hong Kong architects have given contribution to the structure of most buildings in Hong Kong at the present. The contemporary architects illustrated various techniques and practices that helped in making sure that the building will be designed with simplicity but can endure all types of disasters. Architecture makes use of the various products of nature such as trees, sand and others to create buildings and monuments. It is architecture’s duty to make sure that they will not consume all of nature products and it is architecture’s duty to try to replace all materials they have used.  The design of the furniture will be affected by Chinese Tea culture. Elements and concepts in the Chinese tea culture will affect the design of the furniture that will be used.  Traditional wood materials will be used in furniture design. The tea culture introduced health consciousness among the Chinese. The concepts and ideas acquired from the tea culture introduced the need for social change but the country still has a long way to go in terms of complete social change.

 

References

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