Sometimes, googling around to figure out a term I'm adding to the Babelcarp database, I come across a website that shows how deep in tea knowledge the Chinese Web is. Somehow this page shocked me when I considered the odds of finding any of this knowledge in English:
I think the scratches come from your browser lacking East Asian character support. But I think you can see from the English on that page that the technical level is pretty high, which was my point.
Hey, I don't know about *YOU* but I certainly brew my tea by the A.I. fuzzy logic algorithm string theory quantum pattern recognition method, even my finest Red Rose! Sheesh, savages. I won't even *brew* tea if it doesn't pass the Turing Test.
- Dominic
/honestly I couldn't even fathom brewing tea via some pattern recognition method... I think it would become much less relaxing and calming if I did. I deal with patterns constantly in my daily life, I sure don't need more with my tea.
You know, I actually download and read some of these studies from time to time. If you're into tea cultivation, then yeah, it's useful to know Chinese. But for ordinary tea drinkers, this kind of info isn't really useful to tell you anything. There are all kinds of tea studies like this going on all the time. And tea culture is evolving in China, and I would hope, improving. Tea business practices and all that are changing.
But reading studies on tea cultivation techniques isn't going to tell you anything about the tea you're drinking now. Still, it is a very deep field, and a very interesting one too.
I could be misreading you, but you seem to be saying that the way tea is grown has nothing to do with what's in the cup. That's a very strong statement, and not one I agree with.
(Or are you saying that when you buy tea leaves there's no way to know how they were grown?)
I'm saying the science of tea has little to do with how we enjoy tea. Partly because we will never get to drink tea from experimental crop X or experimental crop Y - unless we were to visit the tea research center and taste it ourselves. And also because you can't taste the science in tea - and you don't know whether experiment a or experiment b was beneficial in producing the tea we drink today.
Of course, there's a lot of cool tea science going on right now - to develop low-level fluoride strains of tea bushes or trees. And that's actually good to help prevent tea-induced fluorosis - which is quite common in Inner Mongolia and other regions.
And while the general result of tea science is to produce better tea - that's mainly why we buy tea anyway - because it's good. But we don't know whether it's because of some specific scientific variable or intervention or whether it's a product of the environment - soils, climate, etc; or how much it's due to the skill of the tea producers in crafting their tea. And somehow, it seems in spite of science, some really bad teas are the result. I have been to tea research stations - trying to grow Anxi teas and Taiwan teas outside of the normal growing range - but the result was always inferior product. Sometimes the right environment is exactly what you need - the soils, climate, etc. But on the other hand, yesterday, I was talking to some people and they said Fuding is becoming quite the hotbed for new teas. They said Fuding is now making a Longjing that is better than Xihu Longjing - and they're even passing it off as authentic Xihu Longjing. But no proof to back up that claim - though it seems believable. I should go to Fuding sometime and check it out.
Lately, there has been a lot of rainy weather in Fujian, so this year's Autumn Tieguanyin isn't very good. Nobody is happy.
You're right: I don't know. But I'd like to know a lot more. Look, science affects most aspects of our lives. The arguments you're making apply equally well to medicine.
But that doesn't mean it's *impossible* to know. And I, for one, would like to know.
Right. I've been to a South Indian tea research institute where smart and dedicated scientists try to do everything they can to increase the yield in a way that's sustainable in terms of the land and the workers. But quality isn't on their agenda.
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