"There are many summerhouses in the city offering free tea in the summer. Our stand also supplies free rice congee to passers-by or the homeless to warm them up in the cold winter period," said Wang.
At Wang's stand there are about 50 people who work one day a week from 4 am until 6 pm.
Normally, five to six people are on duty every day, making about 16 buckets of tea and using more than five tons of water daily between June and September.
To keep the stand running, the organizers used to use their own money to pay for the herbs, water supply and dining expenses but now they also rely on donations from the public.
"We would like to have this kind of daily charity around us all the time. It's so touching to see people of different ages and from different areas busy working at the stand every day," said Huang Wei, the owner of a shop opposite who drops by to drink tea and offers to help when there is a shortage of volunteers.
On the streets of the city, there are hundreds of small-sized stands and summerhouses like Hongriting located either near residential communities or markets where crowds appear frequently. Shuimentou summerhouse is a small stand in a neighborhood where mostly volunteers are residents living nearby.
"My mother used to work in the stand as a volunteer when I was quite young and now I've followed her wishes to help because she's getting old," said Ying Xiumei, a 61-year-old volunteer at the Shuimentou stand, who has worked every Wednesday over the past 30 years supplying the tea.
Ying added that the feeling of helping others in daily charity work is so delightful she wants to pass the part-time work on to her children.
Every day, Shuimentou stand offers free tea to hundreds of passers-by and residents who consider the place to be more of a communication center or gossip stop than a mere tea kitchen.
"Drinking cups of fresh tea and chatting with the volunteers are on my daily schedule during the summer. I've enjoyed it a lot because I have made many friends since I retired," said Ge Guoming, a 53-year old retired worker who lives nearby and comes to the stand for free tea everyday.
Ge added that the precious tradition should be kept with hopefully more young people joining the group to take over the work and reinforcing Wenzhou's reputation as a city full of generosity and kindness.
Sun Yudan contributed to this story.
By Yu Ran (China Daily)
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