When the guests are finished and the bill is paid, the waiter himself will leave the cover ajar to signify that the table can be cleared. About this there is also a story. A poor man ate in a restaurant without money to pay. When the waiter came around he claimed that he had put his pet bird into the pot for safekeeping and the waiter had removed the lid and let it out. He created such a scene that the proprietor allowed him to leave without paying, and ever since then, waiters have left covers halfway on, so that any birds inside cannot escape.
Sizable teahouses exist in most large city parks.
On weekdays, elderly chess players may be prominent among the customers. But on Sundays they are outnumbered by families, from grandmothers to babes, on holiday outings. The teahouse still provides a place to cinch a business deal or a setting for friends hatching ideas for further small businesses. Very recently a new figure, the business broker, has reappeared. In an economic situation where business is expanding faster than channels of information about raw materials and markets, brokers supply this information, and even commodities, meeting their clients in the teahouses.