Over the past few years, it has introduced fair-trade and organic coffee and loose-leaf teas.

The loose-leaf tea and the purple clay teaware is still the preferred method of preparing tea in Chinese daily life.

Siobhan pulled open the cupboards, revealing a few plates and bowls, packets of rice and seasoning, two chipped tea-cups and a tea caddy half filled with loose-leaf tea.

B Map The Tea Emporium offers tea-tasting courses (R85, minimum of 4 people), and has over 40 loose-leaf teas; a tasting of three is R25.

Small tea shops along Wangfujing and Liulichang streets are good places to shop for loose-leaf green teas and teaware.

Other possible ingredients include nutmeg, coriander, rose flavoring (where rose petals are boiled along with the loose-leaf tea), or liquorice root.

Along the walls, sake sets, teapots and Japanese loose-leaf tea are on display, but for tastings, sips of sake are poured into wine glasses rather than into traditional sake cups.

While Mr. Harney estimates that 20 percent of his business is in loose-leaf tea and 15 percent in the oversized bags for iced tea, the rest of his sales are standard-size tea bags.

Just-baked scones are served up with quenelles of clotted cream and strawberry jam, alongside proper loose-leaf tea in bone-china cups.