East Asian tea ceremony

An East Asian tea ceremony, or Chádào (), 茶道 or Dado (다도 (茶道)), is a ceremonially ritualized form of making tea (茶 cha) practiced in East Asia by the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. The tea ceremony (), literally translated as either "way of tea", "etiquette for tea or tea rite", or "art of tea" in any of the three East Asian languages, is a cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of tea. The Japanese tea ceremony and Korean tea ceremony were influenced by the Chinese tea culture during ancient and medieval times, starting in the 9th century when tea was first introduced to Japan and Korea 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 the very rudimentary level, East Asian tea ceremonies are a formalized way of making tea, in a process that has been refined to yield the best taste. Historical classics on the subject include the 8th-century Chinese monograph The Classic of Tea (茶经 Chájīng) and the 12th-century Chinese book Treatise on Tea (大观茶论 Dàguān Chálùn). Chinese tea ceremony 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 (weiqi), and enjoy tea, and young people often meet at tea houses for dates. Japanese tea ceremony In Japanese tradition a tea house ordinarily refers to a private structure called a chashitsu (茶室) designed for holding Japanese tea ceremonies. This structure and specifically the room in it where the tea ceremony takes place is called 茶室 with its entrance called a roji (露地).