Bai vs Mao Chinese tea terms

Let Rebecca's quote below speak for itself.

"I'm not an expert on Japanese or on Chinese..."

Ah, yeah.

If you can ignore Jim when he goes off on you, I'll promise to ignore Sasha when he starts posting what I believe are tall tales about his deep and lingering insertion into things Chinese.

Rebecca snipped-for-privacy@news.verizon.net5/19/05

13: snipped-for-privacy@NOHarvestverizon.net

I too promise to try to be good from here on in. Now, everyone, let's take our meds and play nice in the great electronic sandbox. Seriously, I enjoy linguistics, I have a fair linguistics background, and I recognize the truths in much of what you say. Now, back to tea.

Michael

You got a Deal!

What kind of tea are you drinking?

Mike

The thing Mydnight did was that he jumped right into China without a huge amount of preparation.

No doubt Mydnight can get some things wrong, but the person who gets the most things wrong in visiting other countries is the person who ignores what doesn't fit his preconceptions.

You might enjoy reading Joseph Needham on technology in China, by the way. I've only made my way through the digest (two or three volume) version. Needham was the scholar who made the West realize that China hadn't just invented gunpowder and the compass.

I come from a colorfully poor part of the United States and tend to sympathize with people who'd cheerfully sacrifice colorful local culture for reliable transportation, a steady diet, Gortex shells over fleece jackets in the winter, and air-conditioning in the summer.

All this has made me wonder if the best way to get great tea in America would be to cultivate it ourselves. Theoretically, tea could be grown in the Pacific Northwest and possibly in the higher elevations of California and in the southern Appalachians. I've got a friend who is involved in alternative agriculture in Oregon who might know if anyone has tried there.

Attempts at domestic tea production have a long and storied history. Many tries, many failures, and ultimately rejected as being not cost efficient. South Carolina is the state where most of the efforts have been made, in the

1930's, 40's, and 50's. There is in fact a company in SC that is currently in tea production, but they seem to have a limited visibility, and I've never tried their product.

too damp, I'm thinkin'...............p*

This I doubt; clouds and mist are tea friends. But I don't think tea's been grown successfully on a commercial scale that far from the equator.

/Lew

that may well be - i'm really talking out of my hat here, because i know very little about tea and climate. it is true, however, that tea production has a long lineage of attempts and failures in the states.................p*

You are right Jim, nothing has changed....

Ciao,

Mike Petro

"In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed." Samuel Johnson, 1775, upon finishing his dictionary.

Dude, he's Chinese and a post grad teacher...asking him to Google about the most revered person in the country is rather stupid, considering he was alive during the time of the Cultural Revolution. He is a teacher of Chinese language and history...

You're just going to have to accept that there are other people on the planet that know more about China than you do.

Oh now you've done it Rebecca,...;)

BTW, and I'm not meaning to offend anyoen by this statement...but I think that folks who feel so old that they don't feel they can have adventures anymore are really doing themselves a disservice. I lost my mom last fall, I am feeling age creeping in on me, I'm 34 for god's sake. And I decided that I wasn't going to think that way because it would make me end up where she did (no not dead, we all end up there) but in a nursing home with no will to do anything to make her life better. She gave up. And while I'm not a "rage rage against the dying of the light" type...I am beginning to realize that time is too precious to me to mentally give up just yet. Even if we live many lifetimes that's no excuse for me to squander what I've been given in this one. Joy is joy.

Just my two cents, again not directed at anyone in particular nor meant to offend or put down or anything like that. Just my heartfelt feelings right now.

Melinda who FINALLY got her shipment from Malaysia. ::rolls eyes and grins::

I've tried it -- it was okay, but not great, but was quite fresh.

If people were trying to grow regular teas to sell to regular American tea drinkers, I doubt that growing here could compete with growing in Asia. But tastes have changed a huge amount since I was a child, and people do pay $20 to $40 for bottles of California wine. There's a nursery in NC that sells tea plants (and other camellias), so they do grow there, but I don't know what the quality of the tea would be.

The best Asian teas are high grown and often at the more extreme conditions that tea can grow in (Darjeeling, Japanese teas, high mountain teas).

34 is the middle of youth. The forties are the best so far.

My dad learned to play the fiddle after he was legally blind, in his seventies.

Thing is that a lot of people will talk about the adventures they'd like to have while other people are having those adventures on a shoestring and sheer guts and while other people pretend to have had adventures (I'm teaching "The Glass Menagerie" and anything that reminds me of Amanda Wingfield makes me snarky).

Oh well that gives me hope then. :)

That's awsome!

Lol!! I hear you. I am between one and two right now, used to be two, then I got married and got complacent.

Melinda (Yeah I'm off topic I'll quit now.)

[Michael] [Rebecca] [Michael] Yes, indeed. But, that's easier said than done. We live in a soup of preconceptions which for the most part remain unrecognized. It has been my travel experience, which is extensive, that the best preparation is an open mind and a closed mouth. Would that I could follow my own advice. [Rebecca] [Michael] I'll have a look. [Rebecca] [Michael] This is a conflict I live with. The masses of people of the world are not a living museum for the rich to gauk at, I realize. Nonetheless, it pains me to lose so much color. [Rebecca] [Michael] Now, that's an idea whose time has come.

Michael Drinking a Dai Bamboo Pu'erh (1996) from David Hoffman, Silk Road Tea, which I've had around for a year and a half and is deepening into the edge of a camphor note, and away from florality.

Michael

Lewis Perinpc73bsivrsm.fsf_- snipped-for-privacy@panix1.panix.com5/19/05 17: snipped-for-privacy@panix.com

Lew et al,

Being ever the careful, methodical, and exacting scientist that I am, I propose the following: Get a shit load of different types of varieties known to thrive in cooler climes, throw their seeds around the mountain, come back in twenty years and see which tea trees grew. Then, loose a pack of precocious monkeys and you're home free.

(I'm only half joking. Ya want good tea, or you want commerce?)

Michael

snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com5/20/05 03: snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Well, don't hope yet. We can each and every one of us die in the next ten minutes. There are no guarantees. Drink good tea NOW.

That *is* awsome.

Yup. Understanding is the booby prize of life.

Tea.

Michael

Part of this is because picking tea is very labour-intensive and that's something of a problem in the US.

I believe that the folks in South Carolina are using some sort of automated picking machinery, but then they also aren't trying to make any high grade teas either. What I have tried of their product was a definite step above Lipton, but it was not particularly aromatic or fragrant... not as good in my opinion as similarly constantly-picked Indian teas that cost much less.

--scott