page_title: Tea ceremony
section_title: Tea houses and tea gardens
hierarchical_section_title: Tea ceremony / Tea houses and tea gardens
caption_attribution_description: English: The Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco
context_page_description: A tea ceremony is a ritualized form of making tea practiced in East Asia by the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. The tea ceremony, literally translated as "way of tea" in Japanese, "etiquette for tea" or "tea rite" in Korean, and "art of tea" in Chinese, is a cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of tea. The Japanese tea ceremony was influenced by the Chinese tea culture during ancient and medieval times, starting in the 9th century when tea was first introduced to Japan from China. One can also refer to the whole set of rituals, tools, gestures, etc. used in such ceremonies as tea culture. All of these tea ceremonies and rituals contain "an adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday life", as well as refinement, an inner spiritual content, humility, restraint and simplicity "as all arts that partake the extraordinary, an artistic artificiality, abstractness, symbolism and formalism" to one degree or another.
  At a very basic level, tea ceremonies are a formalized way of making tea, in a process which has been refined to yield the best taste.
context_section_description: In Japanese tradition a tea house ordinarily refers to a private structure designed for holding Japanese tea ceremonies. This structure and specifically the room in it where the tea ceremony takes place is called chashitsu (茶室, literally "tea room"). The architectural space called chashitsu was created for aesthetic and intellectual fulfillment.
  The tea garden was created during the Muromachi Period (1333–1573) and Momoyama Period (1573–1600) as a setting for the Japanese tea ceremony, or chadō (茶道). The style of garden takes its name from the roji, or path to the teahouse, which is supposed to inspire the visitor to meditation to prepare him for the ceremony. There is an outer garden, with a gate and covered arbor where guests wait for the invitation to enter. They then pass through a gate to the inner garden, where they wash their hands and rinse their mouth, as they would before entering a Shinto shrine, before going into the teahouse itself. The path is always kept moist and green, so it will look like a remote mountain path, and there are no bright flowers that might distract the visitor from his meditation. Early tea houses had no windows, but later teahouses have a wall which can be opened for a view of the garden.
  In China, a tea house (茶室 cháshì, 茶館 cháguăn or 茶屋 cháwū) is traditionally similar to a coffeehouse, albeit offering tea rather than coffee.  People gather at tea houses to chat, socialize, play xiangqi or go, and enjoy tea, and young people often meet at tea houses for dates.The Guangdong (Cantonese) style tea house is particularly famous outside of China (See Yum cha).
  In the Korean tea ceremony (다례; 茶禮), central to the Korean approach to tea is an easy and natural coherence, with fewer formal rituals, fewer absolutes, greater freedom for relaxation, and more creativity in enjoying a wider variety of teas, services, and conversation. This leads to a wider variance of teahouse design, tea garden entries and gardens, different use and styles of teawares, and regional variations in choice of tea, choice of cakes and biscuits and snacks, seasonal and temporal variations, and the acoustic and visual ambiance of Korean teahouses.
caption: A Japanese tea garden
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