1.Introduction

Traditional Chinese culture is the crystallization of thousands of years of wisdom among the Chinese people. Chinese tea culture, as one of the most excellent traditional cultures in China, has a history of thousands of years since its invention. Meanwhile, Chinese tea culture is also one of the symbols of China. However, in the context of a new era where the pace of life is gradually accelerating, the development and promotion of tea culture is largely limited due to its special requirements for time and overly outdated forms. In order to revitalize and widely disseminate tea culture, new media has been identified as the main medium, taking into account the dissemination of other traditional cultures. Daeho Kim stated that while the scale of the media industry continues to expand, there has also been a shift from traditional media such as newspapers and radio to the internet and mobile media [1]. Relying on its intuitive, vivid, interconnected, and rapid dissemination advantages, new media has been implemented in all aspects of life and has become people's main source of information. Meanwhile, in the process of new media dissemination, there are also factors such as false information that hinder the promotion of tea culture. This paper will analyze the shortcomings of Chinese tea culture in the context of the new era through examples and data and analyze the help and obstacles of new media to it. The report will also propose practical improvement suggestions and a combination.

2.Current Situation

2.1.The Current Situation of Chinese Tea Culture

Undoubtedly, Chinese tea culture is one of the longest preserved and most widely spread traditional Chinese cultures, as it was invented during the Tang Dynasty and has continued to this day. Li Min-rong stated that tea is known as one of the three major beverages in the world. Currently, more than 2 billion people drink tea, and over 60 countries and regions grow tea [2]. This indicates that in the past, Chinese tea culture played a crucial role in traditional Chinese culture. However, the current situation of Chinese tea shows a bleak market operation. Based on Huang Wenfu's survey data, the Chinese tea market is not optimistic, with over 70000 physical tea enterprises having revenue far below that of an ordinary beverage company [3]. Not only the tea itself but also the derivative industries of Chinese tea, such as tea sets, have ushered in a cold winter of sales. This fact was discovered during field research: most stores have only a few customers, as a mall with over 50 tea shops has less than 80 people visiting on a day off. Moreover, many high-quality tea leaves and sets are sold at low prices. Another current situation of Chinese tea culture is the youthfulness of the main body. More and more young people are willing to learn about Chinese tea culture and purchase more tea. "Many post-80s and post-90s generations who have grown up in the internet era have become the user group that Chinese tea brands are currently facing" [4]. Nevertheless, due to the relatively backward promotion methods and sales models of Chinese tea culture, their understanding of it is very limited.

2.2.The Current Situation of New Media

New media has the characteristics of strong information timeliness and diverse forms of expression. Compared to traditional media, new media also enhances interactivity, giving people a greater sense of participation, allowing them to freely choose information, achieving personalization, and providing instant feedback. New media has developed vigorously recently, increasing usage while transforming form. "The media industry has grown in size, and the number of operators and people participating has increased. In addition, there has been a change from traditional media such as newspapers and broadcasting to the internet and mobile-oriented media" [5]. Kim's words have been well validated. By observing the usage charts of media devices in 2016 and 2017 as Fig1, it can be seen that while the number of media users is increasing, People are also starting to use more mobile, more convenient, and advanced media devices.

Figure 1: Proportion of media device usage [6]

At the same time, active users of new media are also developing towards youthfulness. According to Weibo's 2019 user data, its active users have reached 446 million, with 61% of users aged 19 to 25. These all prove that new media has become the main way for people to obtain information and is inseparable from social life.

3.Chinese Tea Culture in New Media

Integrating traditional culture into new media has been one of the main ways of disseminating traditional culture in recent years. This enables traditional culture to be understood by more people in the new era and thus to continue. There is also a fusion with Chinese tea culture. The following will analyze the factors that help and hinder the dissemination of tea culture through new media.

3.1.Support

3.1.1.Fun

Firstly, the "Fun" assistance of new media to Chinese tea culture is well understood, simplifying abstract things, fragmenting the huge Tea culture system, and adding more interesting elements at the same time. Wu Qin-yao explained that Chinese tea has put down its "high profile" in new media, and most highly specialized tea evaluation terms and overly exaggerated tea health benefits have been removed. At the same time, new media translates abstract culture into specific reading information, making it more vivid and readable during the dissemination process, enriching the fun, thereby expanding the scope of dissemination and improving the speed and efficiency of dissemination [7].

3.1.2.Interactivity

The second advantage is the improvement of interactivity. This represents that the people have become proactive in accepting culture and become disseminators of Chinese tea culture. Unlike traditional communication methods such as newspapers and magazines, users can actively search for content that interests them in new media, which provides many people interested in tea with more opportunities to understand Chinese tea culture. At the same time, the fragmented dissemination of new media also gives users a higher level of initiative in culture. Lin Xi mentioned in her article the voluntary activity of experiencing jasmine tea products in WeChat, and the widespread response of the masses greatly promoted the dissemination of jasmine tea. When the masses learned about the production methods of jasmine tea and began to produce it actively, the promotion of jasmine tea entered a new cycle [8]. It can be seen that new media has greatly increased the masses' initiative, thereby promoting the dissemination of Chinese tea culture.

3.1.3.Integration

The enhancement of the integration of Chinese tea culture by new media lies in its integration of tea itself with popular topics such as spiritual culture, lifestyle, and healthcare. Expanding the extension related to tea while decomposing tea culture into various forms such as tea customs, tea books, tea art, and tea dance. This integration has increased the frequency of the emergence of Chinese tea culture in new media, allowing people interested in other content to indirectly understand Chinese tea culture, thereby helping its dissemination.

3.2.Drawbacks

As the main means of disseminating information in the fast era, new media will inevitably have some shortcomings in the integration process with the relatively slow Chinese tea culture. It is mainly summarized into three points: the distortion of culture, excessive commercialization, and neglect of regional differences.

3.2.1.Distortion of Culture

Due to the high degree of freedom and interactivity of new media, it is often difficult to effectively control the authenticity of Chinese tea culture knowledge. Chen Jing described that some disseminators, to attract the audience's attention, sacrifice the connotation and seriousness of traditional culture and distort its content. The content they upload does not have authenticity, but compared to correct knowledge, it must be more gimmicky [9]. For example, many bloggers warn people not to drink tea before bedtime, which can lead to insomnia. The public widely accepts this statement, but Chinese tea actually has the effect of calming the nerves and helping sleep. These bloggers only try to gain more traffic, which has distorted traditional culture. This distortion of culture due to traffic is one of the reasons why new media cannot play a maximum role in promoting Chinese tea culture.

3.2.2.Commercialization

Excessive commercialization is also one of the reasons why Chinese tea culture cannot be further promoted. Tea culture is essentially a combination of material and spiritual elements, and its ultimate goal of promotion is to make more people aware of this healthy traditional culture rather than making profits. Nowadays, new media has excessively commercialized Chinese tea culture and even introduced products that violate the rules, such as ice green tea. This has sparked dissatisfaction among some cultural communicators who resist using new media.

3.2.3.Neglect of Regional Differences

The rapid dissemination of new media has overlooked many details of Chinese tea culture, with the most obvious neglect of regional differences. Tea has formed distinct regional characteristics over thousands of years, and new media often confuse different regions. For example, oolong tea in northern Fujian grows on trees in high mountains, and the finished product is black, while oolong tea in southern Fujian grows on tea trees in plains, and the finished product is green. However, on some social media platforms, the two are confused. This will make users feel confused. As a result, it hinders the promotion of Chinese tea culture.

4.Suggestions

In summation, New media has a great positive effect on the promotion of Chinese tea culture, as it can help tea be more exposed to the public eye, and its fun can allow people to gain knowledge in this area while being happy. New media has brought the distance between Chinese tea and people closer, making people more willing to try cultural activities related to tea. However, the commercialization, entertainment, and rough handling of information in new media have also somewhat hindered the promotion of Chinese tea culture. Some measures need to be taken to mitigate the impact of these characteristics on its promotion. There have been many successful cases of the integration of traditional culture and new media, which can be directly applied to Chinese tea culture.

4.1.Strengthen supervision

Strengthening the supervision of content on new media platforms is a powerful means to improve the quality of Chinese tea culture output and promotion efficiency. Today's new media platforms have too much freedom and lack supervision over the quality of content, resulting in many low-quality content being seen by the public. To address this issue, new media platforms should improve drug production in terms of management and technology and strictly supervise the quality of Chinese tea culture content. At the same time, as Chen-Jing said, it can fully leverage the positive role of opinion leaders in the dissemination of Chinese tea culture and eliminate the negative impact of pan entertainment [10].

4.2.Cultural Modernization

In order to truly integrate into people's lives, the connotation of Chinese tea culture should develop with the development of the times. This can attract the attention of the audience while gaining widespread dissemination. For example, the classic kraft paper packaging of tea can be replaced with a more innovative gift box packaging, and the tea book can be made into a modern short drama to attract more people's interest.

4.3.Bundled promotion

Bundling and promoting Chinese tea culture with other traditional cultures can simultaneously increase the visibility of both cultures. The reason for doing so is that this promotion can attract users interested in different fields in new media and learn about a new field through their familiar culture. For example, Chinese tea culture can be combined with tea cultures from different countries in new media, attracting fans of different tea cultures by comparing their similarities and differences. This will increase the visibility of all cultures together.

5.Conclusion

This paper finds through analysis that the interesting, interactive, and integrated features of new media born in the context of the fast era highly meet the needs of users. Although there are still shortcomings that have not yet been improved, the promotion of Chinese tea culture through new media is gradually being applied to the dissemination of tea culture. With the continuous development and popularization of the internet, the dissemination of Chinese tea culture in new media will inevitably move towards modernization and high-tech development. However, in this rapid development, what needs to remain unchanged is the core of traditional culture, which cannot blindly meet user needs and distort the essence of Chinese tea culture. In summation, the combination of Chinese tea culture and new media has great benefits for its promotion and continuation, but strict control is still needed in the promotion process to ensure the quality of cultural dissemination. Although this paper has a large amount of theoretical basis, it lacks real-time data and specific examples. The timeliness of existing data is also not strong. In order to ensure the credibility and accuracy of the conclusion, some tea sellers and internet users interested in Chinese tea culture will be interviewed in subsequent work. At the same time, a certain number of survey questionnaires will also be distributed to obtain more general data with timeliness.