Teahouses and Tea Customs · FFET10079
Bai Three-Course Tea
Bai three-course tea entered the fourth national heritage batch as an extension item, served as bitter, sweet and aftertaste tea.
A hand pours water from a long-spouted copper kettle into a lidded tea bowl from a height, the lid set by its saucer, beside them sit a dish of tea leaves and a platter of pastries, and a stone bridge and waterside houses lie behind.
Tea in teahouses, and everyday tea customs such as the lidded bowl and the pouring of tea.
On the China Intangible Cultural Heritage website, the item "Tea Custom (Bai Three-Course Tea)" is classed as a folk custom and listed as an extension item, declared by Dali, Yunnan, and was added to the fourth batch of the national representative list in 2014; the protection unit is the Dali Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection and Management Office. The item page says the custom "originated in the Nanzhao period of the 8th century"; the first course is bitter tea, also called "thunder tea", the second is sweet tea and the third is aftertaste tea, read as a view of life in the words "first bitter, then sweet, then aftertaste".