Shot in the summer of 2002, Green Tea was one of three films directed by Zhang Yuan that year (including the earlier I Love You and the subsequent Jiang Jie).
The film was photographed by established Hong Kong-cinematographer Christopher Doyle, whose work gives Green Tea a more polished look than many of Zhang's earlier independent features.
[1] Shy, ordinary, and glasses wearing Wu Fang (Zhao Wei) is a graduate student at Beijing University who goes on a sequence of blind dates despite never successfully attracting a partner.
She always orders a glass of green tea, and is perceptive, nuanced, and quietly pretty, though this goes unnoticed with the men who are often curt and uninterested, put off by her conservative clothing and awkward demeanor.
On the next date, she meets Chen Minglian (Jiang Wen) and discusses how her friend is clairvoyant, and can read a stranger's fortune by swirling and observing their tea glass, to which Mingliang scoffs at.
She describes her friend as someone who can make even smoking cigarettes look graceful and beautiful, who changes boyfriends faster than the weather, and whose father is extremely terrifying, who she met on one occasion.
Over the course of several conversations, Wu Fang divulges further that he forced his wife to wear gloves at all times, even in sleep, claiming that they smelled of death.