It's common to see a barista (咖啡师) create coffee art, but it's a whole different ball game doing the same thing with tea. Han Zheming,80-year-old Shanghai resident, has managed(perfect) the skill, creating tea art in cups, or dian cha (点茶) in Chinese, which used to be a routine during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Over the past decades, he(use) tea and spoons to create nearly 200 patterns(base) on ancient paintings.
It's also his intention to bring the old ritual back to modern life and have more people appreciate(it) charm. Dian cha in modern brewing enhances the taste of tea, Han says. ‘‘It is similarthe foam on top of a cup of coffee, except that it is made of tea rather than milk."
Chinese tea culture started to enjoy(popular) during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and flourished throughout the Song Dynasty,tea had become a necessity for almost everyone, from nobles and scholars to common people, just like other important items, such as rice, oil and salt, as suggested by Song politician and thinker Wang Anshi.
(total) different from the method of brewing tea during the Tang period, in the Song Dynasty, the popular way of having tea was through dian cha. The action of pouring hot water over fine powdered tea is called dian, hence the name dian cha, which(list) as an intangible cultural heritage of Runzhou district, Zhenjiang city, Jiangsu province, in 2019.
