The Guangming Sweet Tea House [Photo/China Tibet Online]

The leisurely city of Lhasa can be best embodied by those slow-tempo sweet tea houses distributed on the streets and alleyways.

Tibetan people drink butter tea at home, yet when they want to drink sweet tea, most of the people will go to sweet tea houses, because sweet tea processing takes quite a long time, and only the sweet tea found in sweet tea houses tastes authentic.

A day will be started every early morning when people go to the sweet tea houses to drink a cup of sweet tea and have a bowl of Tibetan noodles.

Sweet tea houses are also a good place to visit for Lhasa citizens and tourists. People come here to sip tea and chat, enjoying the free and leisurely time.

Signboards of sweet tea houses can be seen on both sides of Lhasa streets. The Guangming Sweet Tea House is the most well known one.

It was said that sweet tea was originally a foreign thing that was drunk just by foreigners at first. Up until the early 20th century, more and more foreign people came to Tibet; Tibetan people also went abroad more and more: children from noble families studied abroad in Britain and India, businessmen went to South Asia to do the business, and slowly they acquired the habit of drinking sweet tea, therein bringing this foreign cultural phenomena with them back to Tibet.

Therefore, apart from buttered tea and highland barley wine, sweet tea has also become one of Tibetan people’s favorite tea-drinking items which is followed by many sweet tea houses opened in Lhasa. 

Sweet tea [Photo/China Tibet Online]