Lidded Bowl Tea 盖碗茶

Lidded Bowl Tea (盖碗茶) is tea brewed with rock sugar and dried fruit in a three-piece lidded bowl called a sanpaotai (三泡台, also written 三炮台), and in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture (临夏回族自治州) a bowl is the first thing set before guests. Linxia grows no tea of its own; the prefecture's media centre links the habit to the tea-horse trade that ran through the area on old routes including the Silk Road and the Tang–Tibet road (唐蕃古道).

Ingredients

Tea leaves go in first, with rock sugar and dried fruit. A Linxia City maker lists longan, red dates, dried apricot, goji berries, raisins and figs. In the Dongxiang (东乡族) tradition, spring-tip tea (春尖茶) is preferred, at 3 to 5 grams a bowl, and the red dates are roasted until charred and the longans cracked open first. Among the Dongxiang, the number of extras shows how much the host honours the guest: 'three-fragrance tea' (三香茶) has only tea, rock sugar and red dates, while five-fragrance or eight-treasure tea (八宝茶) adds longan, goji and raisins for important visitors.

How it is made

The sanpaotai has three parts: a saucer (掌盘) that catches spills and keeps the hands from the heat, the bowl itself, and a lid with a hollow for the thumb, which is used to scrape the leaves. Dongxiang makers boil the water until the bubbles open like a peony. Tea goes in first, then the dried fruit, then the rock sugar. A first splash of boiling water is poured off to rinse the tea, then the bowl is filled to about two-thirds, covered and left for one to two minutes.

How it is drunk

The drinker lifts the saucer in one hand and scrapes the lid across the tea with the other, then sets the lid at a tilt and sips through the gap. A Linxia saying runs: first scrape sweet, second scrape fragrant, third scrape clear. After the first scrape the melted sugar comes through, after the second the tea and fruit are at their most fragrant, and after the third only a light tea is left. The bowl can be topped up with boiling water several times. Many people in Linxia want a bowl after mutton eaten by hand (手抓羊肉).

Where it comes from

Sanpaotai lidded-bowl tea is a Linxia Prefecture intangible heritage item. The Dongxiang lidded-bowl tea technique entered the prefecture's fifth list in 2021 and Gansu's fifth provincial list in 2024. In Dongxiang, the betrothal gift a groom's family pays is called 'tea money' (茶钱), and the Maogou (毛沟) food street in Dongxiang County (东乡县) serves the tea with local dishes. Ding Shijun (丁世俊), a prefecture-level heritage bearer who runs a Linxia City tea company, has built a lidded-bowl tea museum in the Bafang Shisan Xiang (八坊十三巷) scenic area.