After the credits, fade-in on Joyce Chen behind the kitchen counter. She recounts that any household in China traditionally is expected to have seven basic items: wood (for cooking over fire), rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vanilla bean, and tea. Today, she will teach the viewer how to work with two of these essential kitchen staples: rice and tea. First, she explains that there are two basic kinds of rice -- brown and white -- and that white is fluffier. She recommends cooking rice in a glass pot as one can then easily see when it is done: this, she suggests is "a lazy way and an easy way" to make rice. She moves to the kitchen sink (which we've not seen in previous episodes) and the camera pans right to follow her. Rice needs to be washed: in America, three washings are fine whereas in Asia the rice may be dirtier and may need more washings. She offers to make fried rice but notes that it is actually more popular in the U.S. than in China where it is pretty much an emergency dish (i.e., if someone comes over unexpectedly or a family member shows up, one can throw some cooked rice into a wok and then add whatever else is around). She's already cooked up some rice earlier in the day and she uses that for the fried rice. To assure the American viewers that they can get "exactly the kind of fried rice [they've] been eating in Chinese restaurants," she clarifies that one can make fried rice take on the common brown color by adding brown gravy (and here she pours in liquid from a jar generically labeled "brown gravy syrup"). She mixes in egg, meat, onion and so on and declares the fried rice done. It can be kept ready in a warm oven for up to an hour and is nice to serve with soup or an appetizer like spare ribs. Now, she announces, she will explain the Chinese way to make tea. In China, there are three primary types of tea -- green, black, and jasmine -- and the Chinese drink tea in circumstances comparable to American consumption of coffee. She explains how to steep Chinese tea and how to add extra flavor by adding in edible flowers (for example, orange blossom with green tea). On formal occasions, such as weddings or New Years, the Chinese like to drink tea from formal tea cups and she shows off a porcelain set and admiringly notes, "Isn't that nice?" With the tea now fully steeped, she takes a tea kettle and cups into the dining area and pretends she has a drop-in guest. The proper Chinese hostess would, on such an occasion, remain standing until the guest does (but the well-bred guest may also not want to sit down first so it is a matter of waiting it out until one or the other decides to sit!). With a guest over for tea, nuts or sweets (such as candy or lychees) should be served. In richer homes, glass tea cups may be used instead of porcelain since the glass shows off the contents more ostentatiously. But since hot glass is harder to hold, the glass cup is typically inserted into a silver holder (which, usefully, adds to the ostentatiousness). Another type of tea cup, which she shows off in close-up, has insulation as a lining and thereby keeps the tea warm. Alternatively, some Chinese like to drink through the spout of individually sized tea pots and she shows the viewer how to do that. As she sips her tea, she offers her typical sign-off.