This tea ware cabinet in red clay body was a unique feature of the Chaoshan gongfu tea drinking culture. In Chaoshan it was called a chadan. It was made of low-fired pottery, and would have been used to store and display all kinds of tea wares.

Although the chadan would come in different sizes, they would be designed to accommodate similar kinds of items.

In his book Gongfu Cha, the late Qing/ early Republican period writer Weng Hui-dong (1885-1965) lists 18 types of tea wares, including the tea pot, the tea bowl and the tea cup, and the final item on his list is the chadan tea ware cabinet. It does seem, then, that the chadan was very common in the Chaoshan area.