MindGym Hosting a group of Friends From USA

"Hospitality and sharing Chinese tea culture knowledge has always been our prior objective here at Mindgym tea house. Enthusiasm reaches the peak whenever we are expecting a group of guests. This time it was a group of 12 people from USA and as soon as we came to know of their we visit we started preparation for making their stay at Mindgym the best time of their stay in China."

The day came, and we were all set waiting for their arrival. Since it was a large group so two volunteers Anna and Mandy who are also part of Mindgym offered to help us attending the guests and making preparation before their arrival. That day our tea house was portraying a perfect picture of a place of peace of mind, filled with soothing smell of incense lore, light Chinese music playing in background, dim yellow lighting or in short place was engineered that day to sit, have a cup of tea and feel the peace of mind.

It was 4 in evening and the group arrived, we greet them and then Mandy directed them for one of our Mindgym rituals, in which our guests paint their name on a blank chart with a brush used for Chinese calligraphy, which later we give it to guests as souvenir along with some other gifts to remember us by. Below is picture of one of our guest marking her visit to Mind gym.

After this Anna helped them to wash their hands with jasmine water and was then directed towards the sitting area. Before starting today’s activity Mandy served them with a cup of tea made by her and while drinking the tea we introduce ourselves and welcome them to our small peaceful house of Chinese tea culture. Here is picture of Mandy making the first cup for our guests and all of our guests enjoying it, Mandy loves tea and she is quite professional in making good tea.

After having a cup of tea Sandy (our manager) gives a brief introduction about the greatness of Chinese tea culture and Chinese tea and shared a lot of interesting knowledge history and rituals with our guests. Chinese tea has a great history related to it, so no one can ever get bored of listening to it because for Chinese tea is much more than just a drink.

After the story time ended it was a time for a little game :D , as sandy have already given enough knowledge about tea so our guests were given a chance to recognize the tea by looking at leaves of teas and tasting different kind of tea and recognize, for most of people it’s more or less of a guess but if you have listened to sandy carefully while she was introducing those tea to you, you can easily recognize those tea and have a chance winning a pack of one of best qualities of tea for yourself to enjoy it later a home. Interesting thing here is the tea which we give as gift to our guests is so precious that it can’t be found in market neither we sell it here. Its only for real tea lovers who have respect for tea. (This is what I meant when I said for Chinese tea is more than just a drink ).

"Rules for the game were simple, our guests were provided with a piece of paper with names of all 6 kinds of tea on it and every guest was provided with 6 types of tea leave labelled from A-F and six kinds of tea in cups labelled from 1-6. What you have to do is look at the leaves and taste and smell the tea and write your answer or guess on paper. It’s simple. if you are smart enough or lucky enough you can win a gift of best quality fermented and non-fermented tea with this much little effort and in case you lose there is always a plus point of tasting all six kinds of best Chinese tea. So, to be honest you never lose. Some pictures of our guests playing and enjoying the game."

All of them really enjoyed it there were laughs, comments and smiles the whole time. At end of game sandy tell them the right answer and everyone evaluated their scores and surprisingly one of them had 9 correct answers out of ten so she was smart no one can be this much lucky :D. Everyone tried hard so sandy decided to give top 4 scorers the gifts as it was it was such a lovely, tea loving, and fun filled group and it was sad we can’t give everyone the gift as all of them seemed the winners by looking at their love they were showing for tea.

Sandy distributed the gift in top 4 scorers which includes best quality of both fermented and non-fermented.

Here are some pictures of guests who won the prizes.

After this it was time to tell our guests how to make best tea for themselves so sandy demonstrated the technique of making good quality and rich tasted tea, everyone drank a cup of tea made by her and as she is professional so there can’t be any flaws in a cup of tea made by her. She makes it with such a passion and love that takes the taste of tea near to perfection no matter which kind she makes. After her demonstration she left the seat for one of volunteer to come and make a batch of tea for all of us and everyone decided that a guy who scored zero in game will make tea for everyone :D. So, he took charge of hot seat and selected oolong tea as he finds this one to be his favourite when he tasted it during the game. Sandy was supervising him, and he made tea for everyone and surprisingly it was so good, and everyone literally praised him. Below are pictures of our guest making tea for everyone.

Along with this tasteful oolong tea made by our guest Anna and Mandy served everyone with delicious handmade cookies, now that’s icing on a cake, isn’t it?

Everyone liked oolong tea made by our guest so much so sandy give everyone a farewell gift which includes a small pack of best quality oolong tea to everyone because if something makes you happy, it makes us much happier to serve you with that thing .

Now it was a time for a group photo and saying goodbye to each other. After spending short but quality time with our guests it’s always hard to say goodbye. They were so much happy and thankful for our hospitality.

We thanked them for coming and said goodbye with hope of seeing each other again . Here is the group photo for that wonderful day.

Written by: M. Sarosh