Butter tea

What it is

Butter tea is a hot drink of the high Himalaya and Central Asia. Tea leaves are boiled, then churned with yak butter, salt and water; roasted barley flour called tsampa is often added too. Cow's butter is now widely used instead of yak butter, because it costs less and is easier to find. The finished drink is thick, closer to a stew or a heavy oil than to a thin infusion. Names for it differ from place to place: po cha or bho jha in Tibetan, cha süma, sūyóu chá in Mandarin, gur gur cha in Ladakhi, and etken chay in Uyghur. In Tibet today the drink remains common, and some Tibetans take as many as sixty small cups in a day.

Origins and history

Tea reached Tibet from China along trade routes, and tea drinking there goes back to the 7th century, in Tang dynasty times. A legend tells of a Chinese princess who married a king of Tibet and helped open those routes. By the 8th century tea was common in Tibet. Butter tea itself only became popular around the 13th century, under the Phagmodrupa dynasty, and in that same century tea began to be used in Tibetan religious ceremonies. Butter, already a staple of Tibetan cooking, was added to the brew.

Making and serving

There is no fixed ceremony for making butter tea. The tea is boiled long and dark, then churned with butter and salt, and kept warm in pots over a brazier. A tall wooden churn is traditional, though an electric blender is now common. The pots and cups a family uses are a sign of its standard of living: most households have ceramic, while copper or bronze may appear in wealthier homes. At Ganden Monastery in Lhasa, monks make tea each night in large cauldrons for the whole community. Each step is accompanied by a prayer, and a gong tells the monks when it is ready.

Etiquette for a guest

Butter tea is a regular part of Tibetan daily life and is always offered to visitors. The custom is to drink in small sips. After each sip the host fills the bowl to the brim, so a guest's bowl is never empty. If a guest does not want more, the polite course is to leave the tea alone until it is time to go, then drain the bowl. The host is not offended, and the etiquette of the house is kept.

Ceremonies and occasions

Butter tea is drunk at different Tibetan ceremonies even though its making has no formal rite. The relatives of someone who has died invite mourners into the house with a cup of it at a Sherpa funeral. Families celebrate a child's birth a few days afterwards, and guests bring gifts that include yak butter tea. During Losar, the Tibetan New Year, monastery ceremonies run for three days, and monks start their morning with the tea and a sweet rice dish before long afternoon prayers. In Bhutan, suja is served at weddings and Losar, often with zao, rice puffed and roasted with butter and sugar. Monks also take the tea twice a day.

How Butter tea is kept

A host pours butter tea into small bowls and offers them to everyone present. A guest sips, and the host tops the bowl up again, so it stays full. Tibetans commonly drink several bowls before starting the day, and it is served to visitors at any hour. Monks at Ganden Monastery make it each night; one gong call gathers the community once it is ready. Monks take it twice a day and may eat paksuma, a rice porridge, with it. At funerals, weddings and Losar it is passed round again, the same bowl refilled.

When and where

Butter tea is not fixed to a single date. Tibetans drink it every day, often several bowls before work. It is also served at ceremonies that follow the Tibetan calendar, such as Losar, when monastery rites last three days, and at weddings and funerals whenever they fall.

It belongs to the Himalayan and Central Asian highlands. The sources place it in Tibet and western China, Xinjiang, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, especially Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. It is a Tibetan drink above all, and Lhasa is the city most tied to it.

What Butter tea means

To Tibetans, butter tea means welcome and daily comfort in a cold, high place. It gives a great deal of energy, and the butter is held in high regard in Tibetan Buddhism, where monks recite a prayer for each step of its making. The bowls and pots a family keeps are read as signs of its standing. The drink also marks a child's safe arrival: families gather a few days after a birth to clear away the bad luck thought to come from the mother's womb.

Days Butter tea is marked

Questions people ask about Butter tea

See also

Gongfu teaA skilled Chinese method of brewing tea in small teaware with precise heat and timingSamovarA heated urn that brews tea for a slow, sociable pour, from Russia to Iran and KashmirHong Kong tea cultureMorning tea with dim sum and milk tea through the day, in Hong Kong's teahousesJiaoziCrescent Chinese dumplings filled with meat or vegetables, eaten for fortune and feasts

Good reading and sources

• Butter tea on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.