Laocha — “Papa tea”

What “Papa tea” means

Laobacha literally means “Papa tea”. The name comes from the older men who go every day to the small street-side teahouses, sit together for hours, drink tea, eat snacks and talk about everything new in town. Nobody urges them to leave; nobody brings the bill unasked.

Laocha isn't one particular place but a way of life. There are teahouses under trees with plastic chairs, simple halls with fans and now also modern tea salons. What they all share: a pot of tea, a few plates and a lot of time.

Coffee and tea from the Southern Sea

The roots go back more than a hundred years. A chronicle of the island from the Republican era noted that many Hainanese lived abroad, especially in Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong, where they ran hotels, taverns and teahouses. When many of them returned from the 1920s and built the arcade houses in Haikou, they opened teahouses in them on the model they knew from Southeast Asia.

Two folklorists described in the 1930s how the new fashion spread: every market town suddenly had three, four or more than ten teahouses, packed to the last seat on market days. They served Chinese tea but also “Western drinks” — coffee, milk, black tea, cocoa — with buns and pastries.

From private café to state enterprise

After 1949 the private teahouses were turned first into joint and then into state enterprises. Until the end of the 1970s practically all the teahouses in Haikou belonged to the state. They bore names that suited the times: “Red Flag”, “Red Island”, “Workers, Peasants, Soldiers” or “Morning Sun”.

People kept drinking tea, but the choice was narrow and supplies short. What remained was the habit of meeting in the teahouse.

Rebirth after 1981

With China's opening, private teahouses came back. In 1981 one of the first reopened in Haikou, with low prices and simple food, and was full immediately. Within a few years there was one on every street corner again.

One reason for the success lies in the island's cuisine. In the countryside people used to eat mainly watery rice porridge, which doesn't keep you full for long. So there was traditionally a snack in the afternoon — and the teahouse still fills exactly that gap today.

Two schools

Travel round the island and you soon notice that laocha isn't the same everywhere. In Haikou the influence of Guangdong is clear: people drink oolong or pu'er, and the snacks resemble Cantonese dim sum.

In Qionghai and Wenchang, the emigrant regions, laocha tastes more of Southeast Asia. There people drink coffee with sweetened condensed milk or black tea with a dash of condensed milk, just as in a kopitiam in Malaysia. If you've been to Xinglong, you'll recognise the taste.

What comes to the table

The choice is large and varies from shop to shop: sweet buns with a sugar crust, called “pineapple buns” here as in Hong Kong although there's no pineapple in them, steamed dumplings, rice-flour cakes, fried snacks, fried noodles, sometimes a bowl of Hainanese rice noodles. The plates are small; you order bit by bit.

Tea and hot water are topped up as often as you like, usually at no extra charge. You pay at the end, often by counting the empty plates or from a slip the server fills in. For tea and a few snacks in a simple teahouse you usually pay ten to thirty yuan per person.

The city's living room

The teahouse is more than a place to eat. News is exchanged, deals are set up, cards are played and television is watched. When neighbours or relatives quarrel, they often meet in the teahouse to settle the matter over a pot of tea.

The open-air teahouses are especially lovely. In Fucheng, the old county town in the south of Haikou, there are teahouses under big trees whose shade shelters the tables, where you can watch street life all afternoon. Fucheng isn't far from the Temple of the Five Lords and combines well with it.

For visitors that's the real appeal: you sit in the middle of the city's everyday life without having to perform. Nobody expects you to speak Chinese. A smile and a finger pointing at the next table are enough.

Heritage and change

The custom is now on the province's list of intangible cultural heritage. The guests are no longer just older men but families, young people and tourists, and some teahouses have become famous on social media.

Old-school owners have mixed feelings about this. Some places use ready-made products instead of home-made snacks, others sell laocha as a chic dim sum bar. If you want the real thing, look for plastic chairs, loud conversation and lots of older guests.

How to do it

It's best to go in the morning or afternoon, when the teahouses are fullest. Sit down, order tea — if in doubt just point at the pot on the next table — and then pick snacks bit by bit. With a translation app you can photograph the menu.

And then: stay seated. That's the only real rule. If you leave after twenty minutes, you haven't understood laocha.