The Tea Master of Zibo’s Kung Fu Hustle

Celebrating New Sinology

酱爆瘋批茶道

The Tea Master of Zibo is a second-hand car salesman who produces short videos under the name ‘Exploding Sweet-sauce’ 二手醬爆. His Tao of Tea 醬爆茶道 is rebellious, rambunctious and ridiculous. After the fad for Zibo barbecue 淄博燒烤 in 2023, the Tea Master made a name for himself with this Kung Fu Tea hustle.

[Note: 醬爆 jiāngbào dishes in northern Chinese cuisine uses a sweet bean paste.]

The Explosive Sweet-sauce Tao of Tea. Screenshot from a Second-hand Jiangbao video on YouTube

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Reading Leads the Way

讀書使人進步

書中自有顏如玉
書中自有黃金屋
滿腹經綸無人問
喝茶還得真功夫

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Two Types of Tea Culture

南北茶異

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The Kung Fu Tea Hustle

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In The Strange Tales of Aladdin Dogballs, a chapter in Celebrating New Sinology focussed on a theatrical group in Rizhao 日照, we noted that the culture of Qi-Lu 齊魯 — modern-day Shandong province — brackets the Chinese tradition. At one end there are thinkers like Confucius, Zhuangzi and Mencius, while at the other is Pu Songling (蒲松齡, 1640-1715).

Pu’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 聊齋誌異 is an unruly collection hundreds of stories and anecdotes on a bewildering variety of ‘strange’ themes. First printed in 1766, long after Pu’s death, Strange Tales would soon be considered the pinnacle of fiction in the classical Chinese language, just as The Story of the Stone (aka, Dream of the Red Chamber) is seen as the pinnacle of fiction in the vernacular.

The Strange Tales of Aladdin Dogballs 阿拉丁狗蛋, produced by a theatrical troupe in rural Rizhao county, Shandong province, offer a twist on late-traditional themes. The stream of mock heroic short vertical videos populated by cosplaying larrikins draws on Chinese history and myth, martial arts fiction and its various screen adaptations, as well as on Japanese anime series like Naruto and One Piece. There are also frequent references to Kung Fu Hustle, a contemporary movie classic directed by Stephen Chow 周星馳.

Like Pu Songling, Second-hand Exploding Sweet-sauce 二手醬爆 is a native of Zibo and this rapscallion whose slapstick videos mock the invented traditions of Kung Fu Tea warrants a niche in the New Strange Tales of a Chinese Studio. Drawing inspiration from films like Kung Fu Hustle, the Tea Master’s balletic nonsense also reflects the manic martial arts antics of actors like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, as well as the wuxia novels of Jin Yong. His chaotic tea ceremonies are punctuated with pseudo martial arts poses which he names using well-known clichés and set expressions 成語, playing on the fact that 招式 zhāoshì — term for kung-fu techniques and poses — is the same as that used for the punctilious, and poetically named, stages in a modern kung-fu tea session (for details, see below).

Tea Master Second-hand not only cocks a snook at the po-faced affectations of Tea Culture 茶藝/茶道/茶技 in contemporary China but also at the foreign (mostly American) Chinese tea poseurs and aficionados who trade on today’s invented traditions and the auto-orientalist fashions of the People’s Republic.

The term 瘋批 fēngpī in the title of this chapter is a popular online expression meaning ‘crazy arsed’, ‘unhinged’ or ‘off-the-wall’.

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In this chapter of Celebrating New Sinology, Tea Master Jiangbao provides a necessary counterbalance to the all-too-often tendentious discussions of contemporary China. His chaotic videos reflect a humour familiar to anyone living in The Other China. See also:

The Zhang Family of Huayin;
Tired of Winning Yet, China? — The Band Slap Has Some News for You; and,
The Strange Tales of Aladdin Dogballs

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
4 January 2026

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The Tea Master of Zibo:

二手醬爆, Instagram
Second-hand Jiangbao, YouTube
二手酱爆, Douyin/ TikTok
二手酱爆本人, bilibili

Further Reading and Viewing:

A Tea Addict’s Journal, January 2006-
Zibo: The Best Barbecue in China, RealTime Mandarin, 29 April 2023
Harry (@Lason787), tea ceremony parodist

Tea in China Heritage Quarterly (March 2012):

W. Gilbert Walshe, Ways that are Dark: Taking Tea
Zhang Dai 張岱, Old Min’s Tea 閔老子茶
Scott Writer, The Cultivated Aesthetic in Taiwanese Tea Art
Loretta Kim 金由美 and Lawrence Zhang 張樂翔, A Quintessential Invention: Genesis of a Cultural Orthodoxy in East Asian Tea Appreciation
John Calthorpe, The Gentle Art of Tea Drinking
Lin Yutang 林語堂, On Tea and Friendship
Zhou Zuoren 周作人 et al., Tea People Talk Tea
Lawrence Zhang 張樂翔, A Tea Addict’s Journal
The Sophisticate’s Guide to Tea

The Strange Tales of Pu Songling:

Tea Etiquette, Influencers and Parodies:

Jesse’s Teahouse, an American tea adventurer and merchant
Dylan, a tea science PhD
Dart Alonge, a self-styled ‘teapot slinger’
Pure land Tea, a San Francisco tea business ‘sharing Yunnan tea, wisdom and love!’
Harry, Chinese tea etiquette parody on Instagram. See, for example, this short

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The Affectations and Poses of
Tea Art for a Covered Bowl

蓋碗茶的招式

The Eight Stages of Tea Art 行茶八式 is a widespread modern confabulation that is based on a local tradition of tea etiquette:

刮沫、挫茶、搖香、入海、碟舞、展茗、落碟、歸一
The skimming of foam, the infusion, releasing fragrance, filling the sea, the dance of the butterfly, displaying the leaves, settling the cup stand and return to unity
And, finally, there’s 品茗: drinking tea

[Note: For more on this subject, see Loretta Kim 金由美 and Lawrence Zhang 張樂翔, A Quintessential Invention: Genesis of a Cultural Orthodoxy in East Asian Tea Appreciation.]

Another note on the Kungfu Tea Hustle:

潮州工夫茶藝，是廣東省潮汕地區特有的傳統飲茶習俗。潮州工夫茶是融精神、禮儀、沏泡技藝巡茶藝術、評品質量為一體的完整的茶道形式，既是一種茶藝，也是一種民俗。把軍事術語套用到喝茶，大概也是中國人的一大發明。斟茶時，四個茶杯並圍一起，以衝罐巡回穿梭於四杯之間,直至每杯均達七分滿。此時罐中之茶水亦應合好斟完，剩下之余津還需一點一抬頭地依次點入四杯之中。潮汕人稱此過程為”關公巡城”和”韓信點兵”。

關公巡城：茶壺依次低斟，使茶湯均勻入杯。
韩信点兵：壶中剩少量茶水时，逐杯点入。

Seven Stages in a Daoist Tao of Tea 三清宮道茶的茶藝

洗杯（老道拜月）、賞茶（觀音賞曲）、投茶（葛洪獻丹）、洗茶（神龍戲松）、出湯（飛蟒出山）、分湯（三龍出海）、奉茶（猴王獻寶）

— 道家茶文化：曲觞流转觅古音，新華網，2015年6月12日

The Eighteen Dragons of Mount Mengding, the home of tea
蒙頂山派茶技龍行十八式

第一式：蛟龍出海第二式：白龍過江
第三式：烏龍擺尾第四式：飛龍在天
第五式：青龍戲珠第六式：驚龍回首
第七式：亢龍有悔第八式：玉龍扣月
第九式：祥龍獻瑞第十式：潛龍騰淵
第十一式：龍詠天外第十二式：戰龍在野
第十三式：金龍卸甲第十四式：龍興雨施
第十五式：見龍在田第十六式：龍臥高崗
第十七式：吉龍進寶第十八式：龍行天下

— 蒙頂山派茶技——龍行十八式，2020年1月11日

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