Tea Houses, Coffee and Bubble Tea in China
China now has more coffee shops than the United States and a tea house tradition that predates all of it. Where to sit, what to order, and why the coffee costs less than the tea.
Two things about drinking in China surprise most visitors.
The first is that the tea house is not a museum piece. In Chengdu it is where people spend entire afternoons, and it is one of the best things a traveller can do with a day.
The second is that China has become, in under a decade, one of the largest coffee markets on earth. Luckin Coffee alone passed 33,000 stores globally in early 2026 — more outlets than Starbucks has anywhere — and its competitor Cotti runs around 16,000. A cup costs a fraction of what it does in Europe.
Both are worth your time and they are entirely different experiences.
Tea houses
Chengdu, where it is a way of life
If you do one tea house in China, do it here.
People's Park in central Chengdu contains the Heming Teahouse, an outdoor tea garden under trees, filled with bamboo chairs, where people sit for four or five hours. You pay a modest amount for a lidded cup — a gaiwan — with leaves in the bottom, and staff come round with long-spouted copper kettles to top up the hot water indefinitely.
That is the whole thing. You sit. You read, talk, play cards, watch. Nobody hurries you.
The ear cleaners work the tables with tuning forks and long picks. This is a genuine Chengdu tradition, not a tourist invention, and whether you take them up on it is entirely your business.
Give it two hours minimum. After four days of walking around monuments, an afternoon doing nothing in a tea garden is the best thing in the Sichuan itinerary.
Elsewhere
Hangzhou — the Longjing tea villages in the hills west of West Lake. Tea houses among the terraces, and you can visit during the spring picking season.
Suzhou and the Jiangnan towns — garden tea houses, quieter and more formal than Chengdu's.
Beijing — Lao She Teahouse near Qianmen puts on performances alongside the tea, which is a show rather than a tea house. The hutong tea shops are more genuine.
Yunnan — pu'er country. Tea shops in Kunming, Dali and Lijiang where you will be given multiple brews to taste, in small cups, in sequence. See the Yunnan itinerary.
Fujian — the source of oolong and the gongfu brewing style, and the tea culture is correspondingly serious.
Ordering
绿茶 (lǜchá) green — the everyday default, Longjing being the famous one. 红茶 (hóngchá) — literally "red tea", what English calls black tea. 乌龙 (wūlóng) oolong — partly oxidised, from Fujian and Taiwan. 普洱 (pǔ'ěr) — fermented, from Yunnan, aged, earthy. 茉莉花茶 (mòlì huāchá) jasmine — common in the north. 白茶 (báichá) white — light, from Fujian.
Gongfu (功夫茶) service means small pot, small cups, many short infusions. You will be poured a thimbleful at a time and it will be refilled repeatedly. The first infusion is sometimes discarded to rinse the leaves.
The refill is free and expected. Sitting for hours on one order is the normal use of the space.
The tea shop sales pressure
Worth knowing, because it is a common tourist trap.
Tea shops in heavily touristed areas — around West Lake, in old towns, near major sights — sometimes run a tasting that becomes a high-pressure sale of expensive tea. The classic version is the tea ceremony scam, where a friendly English-speaking stranger invites you to a tea house and you receive a bill for several thousand yuan.
The rule: do not go to a tea house on the invitation of someone who approached you on the street. Choose your own, check the prices before you sit, and be comfortable saying no to the leaves at the end. The scams guide covers the pattern.
Ordinary tea houses used by locals — People's Park in Chengdu, for instance — have posted prices and no pressure whatsoever.
Coffee
The chains
Luckin (瑞幸) is everywhere, app-first, and cheap. You order in the app, walk in, collect from a rack. The coffee is competent, the promotions are aggressive, and prices are a fraction of Western equivalents — though Luckin has been raising them as it moves upmarket.
Cotti (库迪) is the direct competitor, founded by Luckin's former executives, similar model, similarly cheap.
Manner is the Shanghai-born specialty chain — small stores, decent espresso, cheaper if you bring your own cup. The best of the large chains for coffee quality.
Starbucks is present in force and priced above the Chinese chains.
Independent specialty coffee is excellent in Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, Guangzhou and Beijing. Shanghai's former French Concession has one of the densest specialty coffee scenes of any city in the world.
How to order from Luckin
The app is Chinese-only and the mini-programme inside Alipay is the easier route — see the Alipay guide and the delivery guide, which works the same way.
Or walk in and point. Staff at chain outlets in major cities handle this routinely.
Useful characters: 美式 (Americano), 拿铁 (latte), 冰 (iced), 热 (hot), 少糖 (less sugar), 无糖 (no sugar), 燕麦奶 (oat milk).
Note on sugar. Chinese coffee chains sweeten heavily by default, particularly the flavoured drinks. Specify 无糖 if you do not want it.
Yunnan coffee
Worth knowing: China grows coffee, almost all of it in Yunnan, and the quality has improved sharply. Specialty shops across the country now feature Yunnan single origins.
If you are in Yunnan, drink the local coffee. It is a genuine and recent development and most visitors have no idea it exists.
Bubble tea and new-style tea drinks
An enormous category and a real part of contemporary Chinese street life.
Chagee (霸王茶姬) — tea-forward, milk tea with real leaf bases, currently the most fashionable. Heytea (喜茶) — the brand that started the premium wave, known for cheese-foam-topped teas. Nayuki (奈雪的茶) — larger cafés, tea plus bakery. Mixue (蜜雪冰城) — the enormous budget chain, very cheap, snowman logo, everywhere. Guming, Chabaidao and a dozen others.
Ordering: sugar level and ice level are both specified. 三分糖 (30% sugar), 五分糖 (50%), 无糖 (none). 去冰 (no ice), 少冰 (less ice), 热 (hot).
Default sweetness is very high. Order 三分糖 unless you know you want it.
Toppings: 珍珠 (tapioca pearls), 芋圆 (taro balls), 布丁 (pudding), 奶盖 (cheese foam cap).
Queues at the fashionable chains can be long and are managed through the app. Order ahead through the mini-programme and collect.
Buying tea to take home
The best souvenir from China and the one most likely to be bought badly.
Where to buy. A proper tea shop with posted prices, a supermarket's tea counter, or a specialist chain like Wuyutai in Beijing. Airport shops are convenient and overpriced. Tourist-area tasting rooms are the trap described above.
Prices vary enormously and legitimately. The same nominal tea — Longjing, say — spans a range from a few tens of yuan for a large bag of everyday leaf to several thousand for pre-Qingming first-picking from a specific village. Both are real products. Decide your budget before you walk in.
What travels well. Pu'er, which is meant to age and is sold in compressed cakes that survive a suitcase. Oolong, which is robust. Black tea. Jasmine.
What does not. Delicate green teas lose a great deal within months and should be drunk fresh — buy a small amount and drink it soon rather than a large tin you will finish in two years.
Ask to smell the dry leaf and, in a good shop, to taste it. This is normal and expected in a real tea shop, and it is not the high-pressure tasting.
Vacuum-sealed packets travel better than loose tea in a tin.
Customs. Tea is generally unproblematic to bring home, but agricultural import rules vary by country — Australia and New Zealand in particular are strict about plant material. Check your own country's rules before buying a kilo. See the customs guide for what leaving China permits.
Teaware. A gaiwan and a couple of small cups is a better gift than a large teapot, packs flat, and is what people actually use.
Baijiu as a gift is worth a mention here too: it is duty-free-shop territory and the drinking guide explains what the styles are so you buy something the recipient will drink.
What to do with this
One tea house afternoon somewhere it is a living tradition — Chengdu above all.
Coffee as the practical default for a caffeine fix, because it is cheap, fast and everywhere.
One bubble tea, ordered at 30% sugar, to understand a genuinely significant part of modern Chinese consumer culture.
Buy tea as a gift from a proper shop where prices are posted, not from a tasting you were invited to.
Related
- Regional Cuisines of China: A Traveller's Map
- Common Tourist Scams in China and How to Avoid Them
- Ordering Food Delivery in China as a Foreigner
- Tipping and Etiquette in China
Chain lineups, pricing and store counts change quickly in this sector. Figures reflect the position as reviewed.
Last reviewed: 30 July 2026.