I loved the fancy restaurant we went to one night. The table had 8 chairs but unlike Canada where the 8 chairs would be evenly spaced around the round table, these 8 chairs are in pairs in the 4 quadrandts of the room so couples sit together.
I wasn't paying close attention but tea was interresting the first time. Tea is served to the 4 of us, piping hot and very very weak. Too hot to drink (I've learned to follow others lead so I don't touch anything until someone else does). Well, good thing, they take the tea and pour it out into their rice bowl, rinsing the big white spoon and cleaning the tea cup. Nina's best friend even used her spoon to scrape out some imaginary something from her tea cup. All the dumped tea is then poured into a bowl in the center of the table and taken away. The next round of tea is to drink.
The tea house was even cooler. The tea comes delivered to the table with a gas fired heater and a tray with 3 small tea pots and one small tea pot with no lid. We each got a tiny little tea cup. The tea pot is filled with water and the first round is dumped directly into the tray which has a false bottom to allow for spills. When filling she made sure to pour hot water over the sides of the tea pot to rinse it off. Then more hot water is poured in and that's the tea we drink. Nina would fill our cups (mine first) then grab her cup, I'd grab mine, we'd toast and sip, sip, finish the cup, then put it down (on a cute little wooden tray) and she would refill the cups. Repeated nearly a hundred times over the course of supper. Tea with supper is hands down the best thing in the world. Spicy hot food, no problem, rinse with tea. Yucky slimy noodles, no problem, rinse with tea.