In the same way that red is used in fast-food restaurants to discourage guests from settling any longer than is necessary to consume their food, the colors of a tearoom instill a guest with an unusual degree of calmness and serenity.

But your reaction to a color also depends heavily on where you live, where you were raised, and the context within which you experience that color. In China, red means luck and fortune. In the United States, red represents danger; it means to be alert or to stop. If you walk into a red room as someone from China, you might feel lucky; in the United