a beautiful name

A lot of the 18th century trade names are pretty bizarre. "Oriental Beauty" and "Young Hyson" have a long history in the west but in Asia they are just found to be silly.

--scott

Young Hyson is the pidgin for the chinese characters ?? ?? yuqian xichun. In the Chinese stores Ive seen 'Eastern Beauty' more than 'Oriental Beauty' as an English description.

Jim

?? (before the rains) and ?? (something like "splendid springtime") both show up in Chinese tea parlance. But if you google for ???? as a single entity, you'll basically come up empty.[1] So if Young Hyson really is a transliteration of those Chinese characters, then those early Western tea traders must have been more clueless than I imagined.

/Lew

Here is a file of chinese tea terms that will help.

You will find references to 'before the rain' and 'hyson'. I dont think there is any problem with the characters for hyson which can be verified. If you look elsewhere you will find English references to 'before the rain' when they talk about hyson.

When you put the two together you get the pinyin: Y?qián x?ch?n

Remember pidgin is a mimic of southern Cantonese not northern HanYu. I can see the 'young' and 'hyson'. We are trying to account for the English trade term. I think the Chinese just use 'hyson' and the redundant 'young' became part of the parlance. Later flushes of hyson change name altogether.

This is my research. I wasnt happy with what Wikipedia said on the subject.

Jim

AKA 膨風 or 掽风,碰风 depending on the Taiwan county.

Jim