Just like coffee, tea grown in different areas have different flavors, some of them need to be drunk with small and delicate tea cups, and some can be drunk from a big bowl.

Some people believe tea needs to be drunk quietly, so many of the tea shops are located in a corner of a Hutong, providing customers with a very quiet and comfortable environment - but the fast-pace of life sometimes doesn't allow that. So there are tea shop owners who, just as Starbucks does, locate their shops in the downtown area in order to provide for quick service customers.

Take Heytea for example. It's one of the most highly rated tea shops and it has now opened several new outlets in the business areas of big cities like Beijing. Waiting in lines for longer one hour for their tea is a common occurrence.

This new star was just a small tea shop located in small lane in a small city of Guangdong province in 2012. But in only 5 years, it has expanded 83 stores over China.