Song Fang Maison de Thé

Song Fang Maison de Thé was founded in 2007 by Florence Samson, a Parisian who had served as General Manager of Veuve Clicquot China before leaving that post in 2003 to pursue tea instead. By the time she opened Song Fang, Samson had lived in Shanghai for more than a decade, and the tea house reflects that dual vantage point: a French luxury-industry background applied to Chinese tea culture from the position of a long-settled outsider rather than either a purely Chinese or purely French concept.

The shop occupies a restored three-story lane house from the 1930s on Yongjia Road, in Shanghai's former French Concession — wooden floors, vintage 1920s and 1930s Chinese tea and biscuit tins on open shelves, wicker furniture, and floral prints sourced from markets in northern China filling out a room built to feel inhabited rather than curated for tourists. The ground floor operates as a retail shop; the floor above runs as a tea salon.

Samson's teas are selected and blended by both Chinese and French tea masters working from the same list, sold loose or brewed to order in the salon, alongside decorative objects sourced in the same spirit as the room itself — arguably one of Shanghai's most distinctive tea rooms, and a rare case of French luxury-retail sensibility applied directly to Chinese tea rather than to a French import.