In Chinese style this is always green or oolong tea, never taken with milk or sugar. Sometimes at the end of a seafood course, such as lobster or prawns which diners have had to shell with their fingers, the waiter will bring a basin of hot tea and a few pieces of lemon to be used for washing hands before the next course. Jasmine or some other strong-flavored tea will likely be served to drink at the end of the meal, again to combat the fish odor. As a rule tea comes with the price of a meal in Chinese restaurants in the United States, and many serve only onw kind of tea according to their type of customers. Pu-erh is popular in Cantonese restaurants, and Jasmine with Beijing and Shanghai cuisine.
Restaurants serving Western food have black tea.
Chinese teahouses, on the other hand, specializing in tea and serving lighter snack food, tend to offer a wider selection. Public bathhouses are big sellers of tea, as affer a hot bath people often lie down to cool off and complete their relaxation with a cup of tea. The hot weather brings out numerous tea stalls. When small private businesses started up again after 1979 in China, these were the first to blossom out along the busy streets.