Bai vs Mao Chinese tea terms

snipped-for-privacy@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com5/17/05

11: snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com

Mydnight,

I'm not sure at all about your final paragraph.

To add to this discussion, with a little reiteration of what others said, what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect is often, but not always, political. Thus, Chinese "dialects" are not mutually comprehensible, but, on the other hand, Norwegan and Danish, two "languages," are. These are "political" decisions. Likewise, Urdu and Hindi. There are obviously shadings here to discuss.

When it comes to language, "standards" are expressions of power and politics. Any dialect can find itself at the center, given sufficient power among its speakers. It's in this context that I don't quite understand your final proclaimation.

Michael

Mao is a hero to most of the older generation, but some of the younger generation (UNI graduates et. al) is beginning to realize that he wasn't as great as he was made out to be. He succeeded in his deification when he was still able to control the history. If the older generation realized how many soldiers died during "The Great March" or how many people starved to death during "The Great Leap Forward," maybe they would think differently. But, that's a great example of how he was able to control history; some of those that were directly affected, relatives dying, etc, by "The Great Leap Forward" still think he is a hero or a God.

interpretation

I thought I mentioned that if I asked 3 Chinese the way to walk to get to some destination, I would get 3 different answers. But, the fact still remains, you would get different ideas on his name...it just isn't as cut and dry as you think it is.

The translation is relatively easy, and I answered Melinda's simple question with a simple answer; which was all that was needed. Direct word translation, what she asked for, interpretation, and word meaning are three seperate schools of linguistics.

Didn't America normalize diplomatic relations with China in 1973? & in that year The Yellow River concerto played for the 1st time in the US?

When Nixon came to China he was given among other state gifts, a bag of Da Hong Pao. He wondered what that was, till Zhou Eng Lai heard about it and informed him that that bag is worth half of China, probably in jest, but the import of the tea was significant.

Tea was available in US since the early days. The Chinese immigrants from Hongkong brought it over, but depending on where you are from, tea might not be that popular a beverage back then, and none of the quality stuff we lax lyrical over nowadays.

China in the 14th - mid 20th centuries was not a free country, starting from Ming dynasty it was largely self-sufficient. The tea and later opium trades, as well as a series of wars did a lot to unbalance its political and social structures, and the effects of which is still vibrating throughout the country. Although it wasn't a free country then, and probably rifed with much faults in the ways the 2 dynastires ran the country; the tea trade made China rich and Britain drained with the outpour of silver to buy tea; opium was a trade initially hoped to balance this largely one-sided biz adventage but went seriously wrong. The Sino-Japanese wars culminating in 1895 gave the west an opportunity to demand landlease and other trade concessions in China, the Boxer rebellion was a ill-thought plan by the Qing government who believed that the salvation of a country's dignity and the purging of foreigners on China's soil were in the hands of thugs. The Taiping & the May day revolutions were attempts to regain Chinese dignity and restore China to the Chinese for difference reasons. I may have trivialise these history changing events but you guys would have known the details, so it's pointless for me to give historical lessons here.

Rebecca, I'm not aware of many coastal cities that were under foreign control, save for Hongkong, Macau, and perhaps Yiwu. What are the cities? I can think of cities which were westernized faster than the rest of China, but not many that were under foreign control.

There's nothing sentimental about tradition, and culture is a 'new' rediscovery in recent Chinese conscience, who are beginning to realize what we have missed and destroyed during the cultural revolution. But tradition is still a vital factor in many small scale industries, of which tea is one. The introduction of machinery into the tea making trade gives us more tea which are mostly run of mill thing. Good quality tea, those that are plucked on the steep slopes of land, still require a lot of tradition hand processing.

Danny

Ja, the Imperial troopers are at my doorstep!

:")

I was up in New York 2 months back and caught them parading outside Toys r Us on Times Square for the midnight launch of the toys. Had my photo taken with Darth Vader and some troopers!

Danny

Haha!

And we southerners think the northerners are culturally barren...but that was a good 20 year ago...

Beijing Mandarin is taken to be the standard language of communication. Hence in Taiwan it is called Guo Yu or national language, in Hongkong it is referred to as Pu Tong Hua, or commonspeak (after Orwell...). The northen variation of Mandarin contains a large amount of vocalic 'r' in the morphemes, while the southern veriation is crisp, clearer with a musical note to it. This is in general, as most people would carry their dialectal nuances into the Mandarin they speak.

Anybody interested in the Chinese language should watch An Li's Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon. There are at least 5 different variations of the Mandarin language spoken by actors from different background. That would be a linguist's heaven...

Danny

Rebecca snipped-for-privacy@news.verizon.net5/17/05

10: snipped-for-privacy@NOHarvestverizon.net

I do see your point here. I was thinking of the standard language as found in books and newspapers: Mostly characters with necessary syllabary items as grammatical tags.

M

Exactly. It's why I put "standard" in quotes. I was being slightly sarcastic and trying my damnedest to not open up a lingustics discussion on what "standard" is. heh.

The differences between Mandarian, Cantonese, or even the Fujian language are quite comprehensive in all aspects of what's considered an individual language. The Cantonese, in HK as well as the mainland, have a thousand or so traditional characters that aren't used anywhere else in the country except here in Guangdong and HK. The verbal aspects of the language are quite different, for example, Mandarian has

4 (or 5...if counting the muted tone) tones while Cantonese has up to 11 depending on which version of Cantonese you are speaking. I would guess the reason why more people don't consider Cantonese and Mandarian different languages would political, as you stated above, the languages are under the same red flat; therefore, Chinese.

We got thousands of people from the North coming here just for the specific purpose of learning Cantonese.

I have visited one on the mainland called Zhanjiang that was controlled by the French, apparently for a short time, and there are a few others I'm a little shady on.

Hi Michael,

What you say is true, but I think I can explain what Mydnight is trying to say.

Mandarin began as a dialect which through political and social factors, have become the standard language of communication for all Chinese, whether one is from the north or south, inland or border, mainland or overseas. It also have a comprehensive writing system - but that's another history. There are other writing systems in other dialects, some borrowed from mandarin such as the Cantonese and Fujian dialects, and some have completely different system, such as the Wu and the Badong dialects.

When Mandarin speakers migrate, they fuse other cultures with the one they bring, and overtime the pronounciation and usage of the language changes (I think it's called the geographical language shift). A Taiwanese, Hongkonger, and a Chinese from mainland can get together and converse fluently in Mandarin, but they will be puzzled over small differences in the terms and usage of the language perculiar to each individual's background which can bring about some misunderstanding.

This is what you are trying to say, Mydnight?

Danny

Here, that's the case today.

Not to be picky, but "putong" means common and "hua" means language. For instance, you say say Zhege cha hu shi putong dongxi" which means, this tea pot is common stuff. In Cantonese, to say Putonghua is something like 'pou tong wa' which is what you would more likely hear in HK.

The northern version of putonghua does have the "r" sound usually in words that end in an 'i'. For instance, the word "shi" which is the equivilant of our "to be" (is) verb. They say "shir" while the southerners usually have much difficulty pronouncing the "r" and even the "h" so you mostly end up with "si." The difference between 4 (si -

4th tone) and 10 (shi - 2nd tone) in the South is a real pain in the ass and the Cantonese even have a hard time understanding each other at times.

If a person has excellent pronounciation of the 'r' in the right places and the hardening of the "sh" sound to a rough voiceless frictitive it is said that they can speak putonghua in a very standard way.

I beg to defer, Mydnight.

When you say "zhe ge cha hui shi pu tong dong xi", what you mean is that the teapot is a common daily object, for daily use. To mean "this teapot is common stuff", the phrase would be better as "zhe ge cha hui hen pu tong", or in Cantonese as you have illustrated, "yi gor char wu hou poh tong". Are you in Hongkong or Guangzhou?

Why "picky"? I was referring to George Orwell in his 1984 when he created the language of the future called Newspeak, I stole the suffix and lend it to Pu Tong Hua, nothing more. Thanks for the illumination, by the way. "Hua" is 'to speak', can be alluded to as 'language', though 'Yu', 'Yan' and 'Wen' would be the more appropriate terms.

not just 'i', but the vowels 'a' and 'e' as well...I don't quite agree with your example in 'shi', something is missing in the illustration but I can't for now put a finger on it...

Oh the northerners are trying hard to catch up...

...but that is not exactly well received. The almost half guttural sounds and the rough "sh" can be quite harsh on the ears. I'd prefer the tonal variations of the southern Mandarin...but that's a personal choice.

Danny

Erh, how did we digress so far away from food, drink, and tea?

Haha!

:")

Danny

Which part ? That many Japanese adults have not the level to read classical literature and serious newspapers ? Certainly, but they wouldn't understand it more if you gave them the phonetic reading of each character, they just lack the vocabulary and culture. I know that all the adult Westerners can read all the letters of the alphabet, but not all of them read novels, essays, or even the New York Times. In France, studies have shown that for a part of the population the only reading was the TV program magazine (the one with many photos).

For the success of manga, hard to tell. Many very literate people read some too. There are many genres, some are definitely not easy reading. Manga use kanji in very creative ways. Now, many TV shows are getting manga-style subtitles.

Kuri

You mean Turkish has borrowed its characters + half of his vocabulary + a large part of its literature/science/religions/cultural references/tea culture/you-name-it to Cherokee ?

And in the same movie, as Japanese would be closely related to Turkish, no wonder Japanese and Cherokee both end up on the same boat.

Kuri

Rebecca -

It would be better if we do not tell each other stories. I work and travel in China as recent as this year. In 60-ies I was a child. The fact that I am Russia does not have to glue me to the 1960-ies Pravda. And another thing (see several of your posts here)- we all can google. And googling can bring anything, so anonymous citing of google searches per se, is not an argument, and should be avoided.

Sasha.

Not sure what you mean by *anonymous* citing. The two sources she cited in response to my query about Japanese literacy and Kanji were completely apposite and, as far as I can tell in a field I know little about, at least as well argued as, well, lots of what comes over on this newsgroup.

/Lew

Cites from Google using sources that are original beats some goof on in a Usenet group any day. Some of the folks have met you and may have a better impression of you than I have.

Live with it.

Foolish comparisons are a good way of admitting you have lost the argument.

Japanese appears to have both Altaic (like Turkish) and Polynesian influences in the roots, just as the roots of English are Germanic and ultimately Indo-European. We've had a lot of loan words from French, but the structural words come from Germanic sources.

The Cherokee were fortunate that the person who devised their writing system was a linguistic genius and didn't mess them up trying to combine three different systems.

The standard that most linguists care about is the language used by most people.

The problem with English is that it has some tendency to preserve the spelling of earlier stages of the language. These things are similar, but not the same, as using Chinese characters in Japan. It makes learning to read English (not talking about learning to speak it) harder than learning to read Russian or Spanish.

Languages that have writing systems that don't work for many people are languages where most people don't read that much and either devised another script for business communications or suffer. The basic alphabet we are using here was derived from an alphabet used by a trading culture, not the highest literary culture of its day.

What I'm interested in is hearing about tea drinking in tea producing areas. Most of the "Italian" restaurants in the South of my youth were run by Greeks and served terrible food. Eating at real Italian restaurants in NYC was a revelation. Likewise, as a tea drinker, I'm really interested in what sorts of tea drinking is still going on in China's, India's or whoever's tea producing areas.

The other thing I was thinking of today is that there is no thousands of years of tradition -- that, outside of books, all the past is transmitted through one teacher to one student. If people are still making and drinking good tea in the tea production areas, this means that what we get will more likely be better than if someone was growing it for export sale only.

Likewise, what makes Chinese, Italian, etc. restaurants good here (Philadelphia, NYC, etc.) are the presences of people who cook what they eat. Greek food in the South could be quite good when the restaurants included it in their Southern fried and fake Italian menus.