Highlights
- Taste and compare China’s 6 classic tea categories
- Visit a wet market with your local host family to shop for fresh ingredients
- Learn to make dumplings or classic Chinese dishes in a family kitchen
- Enjoy genuine cultural exchange with a local English-speaking Shanghai family
Description
You’ll begin with a guided tasting of China’s 6 classic tea categories: green, white, yellow, oolong, black, and pu’er. Led by an English-speaking guide in a Shikumen lanehouse setting, you’ll taste each type side by side, learning how geography, processing, and season create entirely different cups from the same plant. It’s a crash course in Chinese tea culture that will permanently change how you drink tea.
From there, you’ll make your own way to your host family’s home, where they’ll take you to their neighborhood wet market — the kind of daily market Shanghainese families have relied on for generations. Your hosts will show you how to pick the freshest ingredients, navigate the stalls, and think about food the way locals do.
Back at their home, you’ll roll up your sleeves and cook together. Depending on the season and your group, you might make dumplings from scratch, or learn a few classic Chinese home-style dishes passed down through the family. Your hosts don’t speak from a script — this is their real kitchen, their real recipes, and their genuine hospitality.
When the cooking is done, everyone sits down together for a shared meal. Loud, warm, and completely authentic.
Want to make an evening of it? Add on a mahjong session with your host family after dinner. Stay at the table, learn the tiles and the rules, and play real rounds in the most natural setting possible — a local home, with the people who grew up playing the game. It’s the kind of evening most visitors to Shanghai never get to have.
Includes
English-guided tea tasting session (6 tea categories with full tasting notes)
Wet market visit with host family
All cooking ingredients
Home-cooked meal shared with the host family
Excludes
Transportation to/from meeting point
Host family’s local transportation costs
Additional beverages beyond tea provided
Gratuity (optional)
Easy cancellation
Cancel up to 24 hours in advance for a full refund
