National Tea Museum

Address : Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou City, Longjing Road, Shuangfeng Village
Website : www.teamuseum.cn
The China National Tea Museum is at West Lake in Hangzhou. It is composed of four separate buildings, each with a separate form and function. The first, a two-story building, contains exhibition halls. This building displays the history of tea, and includes six sections on tea implements and tea customs. The Tea History Hall begins with a section on Lu Yu (733-804), a Tang-dynasty figure who is revered as a tea saint and who excelled in the Way of Tea. A chronology of tea then systematically gives the development of tea in China, from Yunnan trees, to seeds, to growth of the industry. A following hall displays all kinds of tea-processing methods that result in green tea, black tea, white tea, flower tea, pressed tea, Oolong tea and so on.
These are accompanied by photographs from tea-growing regions of China. The Tea Affairs Hall introduces the planting, plucking, processing, preserving, and steeping of tea, all the various technologies that have to do with tea. The exhibition shows historic processing as done in the Tang and Song dynasties, but also has photographs of modern tea factories and models of modem tea-processing factories. In this hall are also modern methods of testing, connoisseurship about tea waters, and so on. The concluding portion of this hall displays photographs and information that describes the beneficial health effects of tea.
On the second floor are the Tea Implements Hall and the Tea Customs Hall. The treasures of the museum are located here. Some two hundred exquisite objects are displayed that were used as tea implements from early times to now. They include bowls, trays, bottles, kettles, cups, and so on. Song-dynasty ceramics include various famous glazes of the period, Ming-dynasty and Qing dynasty pieces include imperial examples from the Palace Museum. Some items on display are from Japan, and there are a umber of tea objects from Korea. One particularly noteworthy object is a large tea kettle used during the Minguo period (1912-1949). It stands some seventy centimeters high and has a diameter of around fifty centimeters and is an example of kettles that were in common use in Minguo tea houses.
The Tea Customs Hall shows scenes from five main tea-drinking regions of China. It reveals the variety of customs that have grown up around the culture of tea. Tibetan tea-drinking is shown here, for example, with a full set of implements and tea-related objects. A traditional scholar's tea-making arrangements are displayed. From Jiangnan or south of the Yangtze, the Han people's tea-drinking customs are shown. From Yunnan, a bamboo pavilion is created that shows bamboo-segment tea containers and other tea-drinking customs of people in Xishuangbanna.
There are also examples of gong-fu tea from Chaozhou, Guangdong, covered-bowl tea from Sichuan and so on. The third building in the Tea Museum, which is set off by itself, contains five rooms with different and appropriate dcor for serving different kinds of tea. The visitor can enjoy Japanese tea in a Japanese tearoom, Yunnan tea in a bamboo pavilion, Ming-dynasty tea in a Ming-dynasty teahouse. Guests are welcome to enjoy the variety and pleasures of tea.