Tea’s Youthful Chinese Consumers

Tea culture is thriving among young Chinese consumers in the country’s first-tier cities. The ancient custom of Wei Lu Zhu Cha – cooking tea by the stove – has taken off on Douyin among those born after 1995, and videos tagged with the activity have garnered 980 million views, as of December 2022.

This new enthusiasm for the traditional pastime stems from a post-pandemic desire among younger Chinese people for a sense of community and a chance to connect in the outdoors.

While many of these youthful tea drinkers are choosing to do so at home (a boon for traditional tea set sales), following the country’s long lockdowns, this phenomenon is also driving the revival of tea-based hospitality, with the hashtag “new Chinese-style teahouse” amassing more than nine million views on local lifestyle-sharing app Xiaohongshu, as of June 2023.

Hoping to capture this young audience, in May 2023, luxury fashion house Fendi teamed up with popular Chinese brand Hey Tea to open a pop-up outdoor tea lounge in Beijing. Guests could sip on limited-edition co-branded passion-fruit-and-mango green tea drinks. Meanwhile, China’s state-owned post office is also getting in on the action by opening a modern teahouse.

In addition to more traditional hot tea, bubble and fruit teas are also mainstays for this group. In a 2022 survey, more Chinese consumers born between 1990 and 1999 had drunk bubble tea (59%) in the past three months than coffee (54.2%) (Toluna, 2022).