Cantonese Breakfast

Having dim sum and tea as the breakfast, is a highlight of Cantonese culture. Also, there is a unique table manner about it.

Background research


Almost all my friends who comes from outer southern China or had no acquaintance of Cantonese would ask a question that are people being paranoid when they wash dishes and bowls with tea in Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong? And this led to a question about customs and etiquette in Chinese dining.


Most Cha Chaan Teng (Tea Restaurants) in Hong Kong and Shenzhen would offer a cup of tea (the staff would call them "Gaat Sui", literally "empty water") to each customer after they are seated. The tea is bland and Hong Kong people would usually use it to clean the eating utensils. The hygienic condition of some of the Cha Chaan Teng* might not be satisfactory, so the utensils would be washed by the cup of tea before using them.

It is not only for hygienic condition, but also like a placebo to people. To begin with the Utensils washing customs, it is sort of Cantonese table manner which could be traced back to the late Qing dynasty. Nowadays, Cantonese people love to wash all plates and utensils with hot water before they use those utensils, especially chopsticks that touch food firstly. Then a restaurant staff would put a big glass bowl on the table for containing the wasted hot water that being used to wash the utensils. After washing these plates and utensils, water in the teapot decreased, at this moment, the lid will be put slanted on the top of the teapot and it means that water in the teapot is not enough, the stuff needs to pour more water in the teapot.

Personal research

As an action itself, putting a lid slanted on the teapot is meaningless, but after people empowers it, this action becoming a custom. In other words, it is a signal telling the stuff in restaurants that “Would you please pour more water to this teapot?” Or, like the action “slide and unlock”, hundreds of millions of people doing this action every day, but without the context of using a smart phone, it would be another meaningless action.

I would like to do a project about this “meaningless action”, and I ‘m curious about the situation when it gets rid of the context it was in.


My Project

Ceramic teapots, which are common to see in daily life, can be in other way. I intend to design a luminous ceramic teapot (most teapots in the Chinese restaurants are ceramic ones). Unfortunately, technology and craftsmanship I acquired doesn’t meet the level to achieve the idea that when the lid is placed slanted, then ceramic teapot start to shine, presenting a luminous teapot. It was controversial that a teapot like this should be an installation or a full functional product? Considering the situation of time and resources, which were limited, I was not allowed to achieve my full plan that I pictured. So, I preferred to make it an installation project.

Anyway, in order to make this idea come true, I collected a variety of ceramic teapots that made of different materials. When all teapots I ordered online have arrived, I started to study the visual effect of the transparency of them. The ceramic teapot samples were made of materials like Yixing clay, Kaolinite and Celadon. It was small, unique lithium –cell charging light bulb that I put in the teapot to test the transparency of each different teapot. After comparing those different transparency of ceramic teapots through setting a light bulb inside, here comes the result that teapots made of Kaolinite and Celadon had the most appropriate and soft transparency to convey the light. Those teapots made of Yixing clay have zero transparency.

As known that the teapots made of Kaolinite and Celadon have the best visual effect, I bought more of them with miscellaneous look. To avoid the problem of light wane, I replaced the small light bulb with short LED light bars. Therefore, teapots were no longer being single ones for the circuit constructions. In order to connect the wires linked to the light bars and power, I had to drill a hole on the button of every ceramic teapot.

Drilling a hole on the button of a teapot

All the drilling work have been done, then I spend an afternoon to connect the wires. Then I found an issue that if someone take away the lid, LED light bars would just directly been seen, which is harmful to our eyes. My remedy to this problem was to cover LED light bars with small matte plastic sheets.

Done with welding job of LED light bars

In case the wires will be exposed without any cover, I put a piece of cloth with undertints under all the ceramic teapots to hide them. For a better display I placed some short shelves to enhance the spatial relationship between each ceramic teapot.

Thanks to these high-quality ceramic teapots, watching light passed though the smooth ceramic surface was beautiful.

At last, this project lost the interactive part (it supposed be like when the lid is placed slanted, then ceramic teapot starts to shine, being like a luminous teapot), becoming some sort of furnishings than an installation work. I were disappointing at myself that I couldn’t finish the original plan I have. Although this project was not being accomplished the way I expected, it impressed a large number of audiences during the one-month long exhibition.

What surprised me was that after the opening of the exhibition, this installation was not only reported by a local TV channel, but also won a second prize of Guangdong Universities Industrial Design Competition. Anyway, the wide-acceptance of audiences is not the only stander of my work. After all the ups and downs during the whole project, I felt like I have an ugly baby, but when the baby grows up, it become a supermodel. But, still, I will try to accomplish my original plan in the future.


*Via Cha chaan teng on Wikipedia