Pu'er is not black tea.

I'll buy that. Figuratively, of course. "Fermented Tea Product", that's been my position.

--crymad

Its neither true no false - all depends how one translates from Han to English. Puerhs are called "black" (hei cha) in China. What we call a black tea is, of course, "red" (hong) in China. This is a standard Chinese "Basic tea types table" where puerhs are listed as "hei" (black)

Sasha.

I know 'hei' and 'hong'. The reason I made this post was because many people are not calling it hei cha any longer and just referring to it as it's own category because it is quite different than black tea.

The sources I looked at were some tea books; some old and some new. I think the Chinese just refer to it as hei cha out of a lack of a better explanation.

Any comments, Mike?

Puer is the archetype of hei cha, it cannot be different. The definition of hei cha is *processed like puer*. Puer existed before the other teas classified as black. If what you mean is that the other ones shouldn't be in the same category (and for that, you may have a point), puer should keep the *hei cha* title and and others should get another name for their class.

I wonder if you get more differences inside the *hei cha* class that inside the * lu cha* one.

Kuri

I have a Chinese tea book which categorized pu-er as green tea.

Katie tam

I even asked a few bosses, some of which have worked in Yunnan before, about if it was a class of black tea or not and the reply I got was always no. I am not trying to reclassify the tea myself, I am just trying to spread what I've heard and what they are saying now.

Sheng could be classified as green tea if you take it down to the definitional level.

How hardline is this feeling? Are some "bosses" and merchants reluctant to dabble in Puerh, thinking it, perhaps, more a medicinal than a tea?

--crymad

This is said in at least 5 good tea books that I've seen; not the books with the pretty pictures from Taiwan, but the ones that contain more scientific information about the tea. More and more people are beginning to say it is not black.

It is an ingredient in "leung cha" which in cantonese translates to cool tea which is a medicine tea to help cool the blood. The bosses that don't dabble in pu'er are fools IMHO; the market is becoming larger and larger and the tea never goes bad! heh.

sounds good to me.. let's put pu in a class of its own. Of course then you'll have black pu and green pu within the overall class of pu. Why not.

Hmmm, this is such a grey area maybe we should call it grey tea.

It is my understanding that teas fermented like this are all considered "black" teas, much like Liu An or the Liu Bao you mentioned elsewhere. However it seems that over time Puer has taken a life of its own. Especially in the Western world where most people dont even know what a true "black" tea is. Another reason that I think puer has evolved into its own gendre is the invention of the ripening process in the early 70s. Then you introduced "black puer" which sort of made things confusing. The other puer was called green puer. How can green puer be a black tea? Before black puer was invented puer was simply called puer not black or green. Back then it was not illogical to classify plain puer as a black tea because of its fermentation style.

All of this is just conjecture. I have read contradicting information in many well known authorative texts.

Mike

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.

IMHO we are just wasting time here. The 1.5 billion Chinese will call it what they feel like calling it disregarding of what rec.food.drink.tea pontificate and anyone here educated enough to know what puerh is already know what it is, so what is the point? The worst we can do is the use term "black" in English in these discussions because then it always a question "which" black youre you talking about - the black that is hung or the black that is hei? So every time that term "black" iz used in these discussions we know that we are discussing phlogiston. Western civilization has that propensity to lose its sleep over terminology and classification. As I concluded after years of observing trainloads of swords being broken over all kind of useless classification debates in all corners of science and the behavior of primitive Siberian tribes - the bottom of that infatuation with naming things lies a primitive shamanistic belief that if you name something you are a master of it. But as long as we all know what puer is and how it is made, what is the real purpose to assign a "color" definition to it? And why invent "new" category when the Chinese one has no confusion in it? The confusion arises with the double meaning of the word "black".

Also all these classifications are nothing than just coarse schemas. Tea is an art and a developing industry, with borderline products all over. There is no "pure" definition of these things. But if someone cannot sleep well before he classifies the crap out of this magic drink, at least do it right. Basically there are several classification approaches - descriptive, genetic and "degustative".

Descriptive should classify the tea according to its objective, observable and measurable qualities where two observers armed with definitions will call it the same thing more or less, such as (observable):color, texture of the while and its parts, the classification of the parts - which parts of tea plant, in what percentages and combinations and (measurable) size of particles, absorption spectra of standard brews, etc.

Genetic approach should take into consideration how this tea was made - the geography, type of plant, year, crop time, processing sequence and history (with details if necessary), storage history, etc.

Degustative classification would describe subjective (but most important) characteristics if the tea - smell, taste, etc. Then combine your findings into classes, subclasses, genes, species, etc.

And after you are done with this, start drinking coffee because you won't be able to stand even a sight of tea.

Sasha.

"Falky foo" wrote in message news:qHmee.2585$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...

Firstly, not all Chinese people know tea; there is one sitting right next to me that probably wouldn't know the difference anyway. This is where the problem comes from, not from the language itself. People will call it what people will call it, but I'm just saying that I've seen in most good books on the subject that it's a class all it's own. The books that I saw it called 'hei cha' weren't as informative as the ones that referred to it as something it's own category.

My only point was to just relay some info that I found; I am not trying to reclassify it at all. I think it's valid and interesting discussion.

And, yes, to many lay tea drinkers in China it's just as damningly (if that's a word) confusing. I've heard some tea drinkers of whom were Chinese refer to pu'er as everything from red to Wulong, and they've said it with such authoritarian fervor, that you would believe them if you didn't know the contrary.

Speaking about language and linguistics, I blame the British for the confusion between red and black tea. For some reason they translated the character for "hong" (which is red) into black...so when you see "China Black Tea" on some box with some characters beneath it, as you invariably will, it's actually saying China Red Tea...which just makes matters more confusing.

Mydnight *grinds some beans*

Maybe not yet, but I have a feeling that a lot of new teas will develop in the world of hei cha now that scientists and engineers are giving it attention. Whether this turns out to be a good thing or a bad thing ... we'll see.

/Lew

I think one main goal of classification of teas is to help you find the one you want among many others. It's just a convention. Some shops will put kuding in green, some will put the Oriental Beauty in blue and others in red, but that doesn't mean they are ignorant, it's just they think people are going to search at that place.

You've just written a message whose title is "Guangxi pu'er?". Isn't that much more approximative than saying both your Guangxi fermented tea and Puer will both be found in same hei cha section of a book ?

Kuri

The books I saw didn't have anything about Guangxi pu'er the reason being that it isn't pu'er exactly. The books I read were written by UNI professors mostly and people that have studied tea for most of their lives or have farming experience.

Or it could mean they don't know or don't care about classification. I usually buy tea in specialist shops that only sell that particular type of tea anyway.

But they have something about the tea you're talking about in the hei cha section no ?

They have a jargon that is useful for their job, and I expect them to use more than one classification depending on the aspects they are discussing. The color classification is more a traditional thing, and a simplified way to explain briefly the process to people not in the trade. For people that know the existence of only 2 teas "green tea" and "English tea" , it's a big progress to be able to get there are "blue"/"green"/"white"/"red"/"black"/others. About tea jargon, in Japanese, specialists don't use much the terms"blue", "red","black tea" but descriptions like "slightly oxidized ...% , "quite oxidized....%" and "post-fermented". My impression is those terms were directly imported from Chinese.

It's unlikely they don't know as these *mistakes* are traditionnal and not done at random. It's like selling tomatoes as vegetables, I think everybody knows they are fruit. Idem for buckwheat, botanically, it's closer to nuts than cereals, but people would not look for it on the shelf with peanuts. And, yes, for most people, the classification matters little as they appreciate their teas without knowing how they are made exactly.

Your experience is exceptionnal. Few people can do it, or they limitate themselves to one or two sorts of tea.

Kuri

all right so what "Kingdoms" of tea do we have:

Black Oolong Green White Pu Tisane

Or does somebody want to make White a subclass under Green?

I've been trying to stay out of this, but there's a limit. You aroused the pedant in me by including tisanes. Here goes:

Tisane, if you must Tea, under which: Black (or Red, in Chinese) Oolong (Blue-green, in Chinese) Green White Yellow Post-fermented (Black, in Chinese) Pu-erh Liu An Liu Bao ...

/Lew