Innovative tea drinking (dian cha)

Chinese culture has been steeped in tea drinking ever since the legendary Shennong (god of agriculture) serendipitously discovered this drink some five millennia ago.

Built on the rapid progress in tea plantation, tea processing and tea culture studies in previous dynasties, the Song eras saw a huge breakthrough in the way of tea drinking.

Unlike the Tang people who cooked tea with spices and ate the tea leaves afterwards, Song people revolutionized the practice with a new tea drinking method called dian cha, which was enjoyed as a recreation by people from all walks of life, as evidenced by a large number of tea houses depicted in the famed painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival (Qingming Shanghe Tu), which reenacted the bustling street scenes of the Northern Song (960-1127) capital Dongjing, today's Kaifeng in Henan province.

Dian cha, which inspired Japan's matcha tea ceremony, involves whipping the mixture of water and ground tea powder with a bamboo brush in a bowl to create a fine frothy drink. Tea connoisseurs were often drawn to tea-whisking contests where the winner was the one whose froth lasted the longest.