From Chrysler to a Chinese tea shop

The Girlings went from automotive employees at Chrysler to entrepreneurial tea hounds, and all it took was a trip to Beijing. A story other Michiganders might take solace in. The Girlings made the transition to what Michigan was to what Michigan could be, maybe. No, not tea-slingers, small business owners.


Excerpt:

Chrysler has greatly affected life in the Detroit area over the decades, and now it has brought the Motor City a Chinese teashop—albeit indirectly.

Janice and Jim Girling, founders of Goldfish Tea, were both working for the automaker when they were offered the opportunity to go to China for two years to help build an assembly plant outside of Beijing.

"We were living in Beijing and on weekends we just liked to go out exploring," Janice says.

While on an exploration one day, a dragon-embossed tea set caught the couple's attention.

"We went to look at it inside what turned out to be a wholesale tea market," Janice says. "Two Chinese ladies motioned for us to sit down at the tea bar and we stayed for three hours sampling tea."

Read the entire article here.