The person who comes to mind straight away is my friend Mai's mother, Mrs Wang, who lives in Chengdu. I met her when I was an exchange student there for a semester, and I stayed at their home for about two weeks before I found a dormitory.
What she does when guests arrive is quite something. Before you even take your shoes off, there are slippers waiting for you, and they're always the right size because she asks in advance. Then there's tea, usually with a small plate of sunflower seeds or fruit. She doesn't just feed people, though. On my first evening, she'd somehow found out that I'm from Bandung, in Indonesia, and she'd cooked a dish with chilli and peanuts because she guessed I'd like spicy food. She also gave me a little handwritten map of the neighbourhood with the nearest pharmacy, bank and bus stop marked on it.
I think guests feel welcome with her for a couple of reasons. The first is attention to detail. She notices what you enjoy and remembers it, so by the third day she knew I preferred green tea in the morning and that I didn't eat pork. The second is that she never makes you feel like a burden. If you offer to wash up, she'll let you dry the plates, so you feel useful rather than in the way. And she asks real questions about your life and actually listens to the answers.
Since then, I've tried to copy her when friends visit my flat. I'm nowhere near as good, but I always have spare slippers now.