Western people are accustomed to treat guests with coffee while Chinese people prefer tea. Generally, the rule of “tea 50% full and wine 100% full” should be observed when serving tea in cups. Hot tastes better and it will get cool down if the guest can not finish a full cup of tea. When there is only 1/3 of the brew left in the cup, the host should re-fill the cup.
Though tea can help people digest, it is bad for the stomach if one drinks it with an empty belly. So when treating guest with tea, the host usually serves some delicious snacks as accompaniment. Tea is to show not only welcome but refusal as well. In the world of officials in the Qing Dynasty, there was a custom of “serving tea and showing the door”.
When a guest came to an official’s home, he was generally treated with tea. But tea drinking was different from wine drinking. The host might persuade his guests to take tea, but he wouldn’t raise up the cup for a toast as in wine drinking. If the host didn’t like the visitor, or he had urgent affairs in hand, he would raise his own cup and ask the visitor to drink, hoping that he would leave as soon as the tea was finished. The guest normally understood and took his leave without actually drinking up the tea.