Bai Hao Oolong.

I'm getting close. I know the Chinese characters for BaiHao and for sake of argument means WhiteDown. My source says Taiwan Champagne aka oriental beauty is BaiHai which means for sake of argument WhiteTip ignoring for the moment others saying BaiHao,SilverNeedles,WhiteDown,WhiteTip,oolong oriental beauty are the same. I assumed Hao and Hai would derive from the same Chinese root character (only a guess). Hao is a reverse J with a couple of - though the middle stalk of the character. Damn if I don't go surfing and find a Hai Chinese character similar to Hao (just a couple of more

- but different angles adjacent to the stalk). I'm led down the primerose path to a Taiwan site in Chinese with 'oriental beauty' buried in Chinese characters. I don't have the font set to tell me if it's using the characters for BaiHao or BaiHai or maybe neither. Close but no cigar. Google will use UTF-8 links so you just load the corresponding UTF-8 languages you want to see but any particular webpage may use it own language font sets. I gaggle at how Google translates from particular language character sets to UTF-8 for it's links. One font set for all languages eventually. I learned that here from the gal in Japan who thought I couldn't immerse myself in Japanese culture by simply strolling the streets of an established pre WWII community located adjacent to downtown. All I can say only the street addresses for the mailman are in english.

Jim

Not silver needle: yinzhen

I assumed Hao and Hai would derive from the same Chinese root

I can't imagine what a Baihai would be, if not a mistake for Baihao

...

...

You introduced the confusion. You've said "silver needles" (白毫銀針 bai hao yin zhen).

That's mao in Mandarin, not hao

白毛　"white hair" bai mao 白毫 "white tip" bai hao 白葉 "white leaf" bai ye

台湾白毫烏龍茶 Taiwan bai hao wu long cha (Formosa White Tip Oolong) =(formerly)東方美人 dong fand mei ren (oriental beauty) 　

90% of the time, googles find those 2 associated in Japanese and Chinese webpages. That's what I read on packages usually. Other writings are rarer.

I have found a few pages with 白毛烏龍茶, some for "Taiwanese Oriental Beauty", others for a cheaper one from mainland China.

I write it 白葉烏龍茶 (bai ye oolong cha) for shopping in Taipei and Japan, because the character for "tip" is not a common character in Japanese, and leaf is pronounced "ha"in Japanese... A Taiwanese shop keepers that speak Japanese told me to do that, and I have noticed it was done in several shops in Japan. Logical spelling mistake. It is innaccurate, but as it is the only whitish Taiwan oolong, no confusion is possible with "oolonged white tea".

"Oriental beauty" has another name 香檳烏龍茶 (chiang * wu long), fragrant * oolong. It is rarely used.

There were street addresses and mailmen that could speak English in Japan before WWII ? Now, both species are complety extinct.

Kuri

ccc1c9vd$c9$ snipped-for-privacy@bgsv5647.tk.mesh.ad.jp2/23/04 02: snipped-for-privacy@spam.com

Kuri,

I'm getting question marks. How do I get myself set up to turn them into Chinese characters? (I'm on a Mac.)

Michael

With Windows , the first time I tried to view Chinese characters, it indicated me the link to download Chinese fonts. I think it works the same way with Mac. Try to select UTF 8 as encoding (your message and this one are in the "West European" encoding, probably the default setting on your computer). You should see the Chinese or get a message about downloading the fonts. If not, you'll have to do it from the control panel and add the Chinese as a language option.

Kuri

And you need to install the fonts from the OS disk.

I woke up this morning expecting to do battle and came across a post discussing tea. All I can say to Kuri is thanks very much. This is a rosetta stone post resolving the use of BaiHao and a Chinese character is a thousand words. When I first saw the post with Google all I saw were boxes for unknown characters. You have to use View: Original Format for UTF-8. Only the second character from the left for Taiwan bai hao wu long cha didn't seem to translate (box). I'm not going to quibble but All the Tea in China by Chow and Kramer use the characters for "white hair" to describe Yinzhen Bai Hao. I'll use the marketing name Silver Needles and Oriental Beauty so not to confuse myself. My Japan reference is in my metro area you can immerse yourself in Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Spanish languages without leaving the US. Any travel required is just an exercise in geography. In fact we have the only University outside of Japan where all subjects are in Japanese. The students come here to immerse themselves in our culture and language.

Thanks again, Jim

I agree, set the encoding of your browser to UTF-8, in google View: Original Thread. However install UTF-8 font sets and NOT language packs such as Chinese Big5(Traditional) or GB2312(Simplified). On Windows the humongous Asian UTF8 fontset for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean is called BATANG. It was on the install disk but I found WHAT to install by combing the MS Usenet threads for languages. Try the encoding and google view first. By default you should see Cyrillic and Arabic characters as part of the default install for IE on Windows so Mac may vary. On Windows there is a CHARSET utility to specifically identify what is installed. You won't get any prompts using IE, GOOGLE, and UTF-8. You have to prepare for it or nothing but boxes and ?. All profs to Kuri because I knew everyone wants to see these characters.

Jim

The wan of Taiwan ? 湾　I have inputed it from the Japanese. Reading is much easier than inputing (that requires having an IME and knowing the pronunciation), for the characters not existing in Japanese, I cannot do it,all I can do now is try to find them on Chinese pages and paste them.

That's too bad because in a book, I have a list of over 300 Chinese teas, listed by area, and their names in characters and pin yin (+ other data, like "nicknames"...). I use it for shopping. I'd like to copy it on a web page, that way anybody could paste the characters of their prefered tea to browse about it or find it more easily in Asian stores. I have not found any complete equivalent on google. When I have more energy, I'll get a Chinese IME or I'll gather all the names I can paste on different pages to recreate the list.

It is not surprising, it is used in descriptive comments about Oriental Beauty too, but more rarely in the name to avoid confusions. If they give "hao" as reading of "white hair", I suppose that's a typo (or an over-simplification of the character ?).

I'd prefer if teas were systematically named like wines (name + descriptive name + place of production + year), at least on the labels.

Maybe that's also a travel in the time, the most interesting one. Today's Japan is incredibly Westernized (or the West is Japanized ?). Everyday life in Osaka is not so different from life in a small French town. You have to make an effort too to immerse yourself in typical things. But what I find great is that even if 99% of the people wear suits and jeans 364 days a year, there is still

1% that spend one day in kimono to maintain traditions like the tea ceremony as it existed maybe 1000 year ago. In Europe, we've kept the old buildings and antiques, but they are "dead".

Kuri

The missing wan character is trivial unless it is a box. I have a 'cheat sheet' of ethnic terms and characters I've put together over the decades. Your post is a wonderful addition. I think the book even made a remark about MAO somewhere but in the reference it justs say HAO. I have an old can of silver needles from the government export arm of China with plenty of inscription. The only characters I can make out is White Tea nothing about Yinzhen or Hao or anything I can recognize. You can copy and paste one character at a time from the UTF8 fonts set without an IME. That's easy for a finite number of characters for say Russian or Arabic. It's brutal for the Asian languages ideograms. The biggest plus of city life is diversity. Yesterday I was going to add 'Kuri the man' but I saw a post about your small wrist so if it isn't to polite to ask but you can also ignore my inquisitive nature.

Jim

...

Are these the characters for Taiwan 台灣 I tried your suggestion to cut and paste from the Chinese.

Thanks, Jim

...

Maybe it's in simplified or older characters. Or your tin box is decorated with poems or texts unrelated with the content (the sort of tea written only on a seal/sticker label). My list is in one writting style, a shorter list of most common teas in a second one...that's just a start.

Try it some day with Chinese.

That'd be "the woman", but there are men with small wrists.

Kuri

Yes, but.... You've found a "complicated" form of that character, I had written a "simplified" form. It ressembles. It happens the Japanese, Mainland Chinese, Hong-Kong people and Taiwanese use different versions of one character, and that makes more than 4 in total as older writings can be used to give a traditional tone. Sometimes, they don't even consider it different and perceive it as a change of font style, more cursive writing...

I have no idea why you can't view the other "wan".

Kuri

When I look at UTF8 posts in Korean, Chinese, Japanese I get about 10% in missing characters. What do you expect for free from MS? However not too shabby considering the three languages in the singular BATANG font set. I looked up Taiwan in Google and used the wan character that seemed most often following your character for Tai. I can understand why you say it is complicated. Most Chinese I can scribble from looking but this wan I couldn't even trace if I had too.

Jim

Neat. So you're traipsing all over Asia with your cheat sheet hounding poor merchants. If we ever cross paths maybe we can compare notes. I like the chase and my mailman isn't madd at me constantly signing for deliveries. In our culture we say 'limp wrists' till we find someone who is an ex NFL lineman then we say 'Mr.'. Steroids can do that too you. Is Japan still laughing at Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai. As I said before I'm a big fan of Zatoichi from the sixties. The morality tales are straight out of the old west. I've got the entire series on VHS and will by first DVD transfer when I get rich.

Jim

Yeah,

Bai Hao just means, white downy(fine), its just a description.

Bai Hao Yin Zhen, means White Downy Silver Needles, a Fujian Tea. the buds typically come from small tea shrubs akin to Shui Xian bushes.

Bai Hao Oolong, is an oolong tea which has Bai Hao in it, white downy leaves, and this is a taiwanese tea. when taiwan was called formosa, this tea was often referred to as Formosan Oolong by the british, who liked it for the peachy floral complex overtones. People from mainland china would call this tea, the beauty of the orient, or rather oriental beauty, and thus Dong Fang Mei Ren.

I have yet to come across a tea called Bai Hai, the most i've seen is Fo Hai, in Fo Hai Silver Needles. Might be a typing mistake? or a pronounciation mistake?

[snip] >way with Mac.

if you're using Mac OS X, you can install System Preferences. just select all foreign languages that you want to install. very nice Chinese fonts & other foreign fonts too. (nicer than on Windows)

For viewing, it should be able to decide what to. so you should not have to set the encoding scheme. I only have to set the coding for sending out emails.

regards,

regards,

You can lead a horse to water ... For all the other cowboys in the group using Google and UTF8 fonts you can reply to any post that used the UTF8 charset with your own UTF8 characters. However any originating post in Google uses the WESTERN ISO default charset. I spent days in alt.test trying to originate a post in UTF8 but no giddyup. Goshdarn my baby bell who sells me dsl with no newsgroup server and for the past month has been averaging a downtime of one day a week. Oh they got the excuses just like yesterday. Tech support for dsl will always guarantee you'll need a hands free speaker phone for the insufferable messages about waiting for the next available operator.

Jim

While intrepidly exploring rec.food.drink.tea, Space Cowboy rolled initiative and posted the following:

Then use the free server at

- text only, no HTML, no binaries.