Pu'er is not black tea.

Lew, I thought you were above this. What a disappointment. I am not going to take the bite, but Oolongs are not blue-green (qing). Wu Long is a "Black Dragon" See the table again (I am not saying that table came from God directly and should be worshipped, but just that it reflects the actual terminology used in China

The term "qing" (blue-green or turquoise, as one very serious Russian vendor of Taiwan oolongs translate it) is applied quiet freely and without much system to almost all green teas, especially pressed green teas. In Taiwan, I think, qing has more connection to Oolongs, but nobody ever was able to explain it to me what exactly qing means in terms of tea. I am also a bit surprised that you excluded Puerh from black(hei) category. What's the justification?. I agree that LiuAn and LiuBao are a separate group but I do not agree that they are separate from each other.

Sasha. (Who cares less about tea classification, but cannot allow others to mess things up, either :) :) :) )

In article , Lewis Perin wrote: [snip] >Tea, under which:

this seem to agree with my liltte book on Chinese tea. it says there're 6 types:

red (fully fermented) "blue" (half-fermented) yellow (weakly post-fermented) "black" (post-fermented) white (weakly fermented) green (non-fermented)

regards,

Pam @ Home

Cort Furniture Rental and Honesty are two exclusive concepts.

In article , "Alex Chaihorsky" wrote: [snip] >I am not going to take the bite, but Oolongs are not blue-green (qing). Wu

huh? don't understand your comment. this table that you showed does indicate oolong (black dragon) as "blue" tea (in parenthesis). also Lew did include pu-erh in "black" (hei) tea.

but you may be right that it is possible that "blue" tea is used to mean different teas by different people. so that's where the confusion comes from.

regards,

Pam @ Home

Cort Furniture Rental and Honesty are two exclusive concepts.

In the link you gave says the contrary of your affirmation, they put the adjective "qing" as a synomym of Wulong and use "lu" for greens.

In both China and Taiwan, I have always heard "lu" for greens (from continental China, Taiwan, Korea or China...) and "qing" for any semi-oxidized tea (including wulong). At least on that, I though there was a consensus.

I think this link explains well (they call hong-cha "black tea", hei-cha "hei tea" , qing-cha "qing tea"...which is not a bad idea to avoid the color confusion there is in English language).

The character may have several meaning depending where it is in the sentence You're supposed to know more than me about Chinese language. That can mean :

-"blue" (=partially oxidized) when in "qing cha", talking about wulongish teas

-"stopping the oxidation" when in the word "kill+blue" (that operation is done to any "color" of tea)

-"blue color" in the name of tea (for various reasons)

-etc

Check this link, they give more details about the process in Chinese :

All that won't prevent me from drinking my shincha whitout wondering in what box I should put it.

Kuri

S*it!!!! Now I've got a *real* headache.

Alex ChaihorskyjOBee.1628$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com5/5/05

Also, don't forget about the Kuding teas. They are also referred to as 'qing' tea sometimes as well, and one of the teas has qing in the name: qing shan lv shui. There is always confusion with Kuding cha and lv cha as well as with the classification of pu'er.

Yeah, well, I had a doomy feeling writing it.

Thanks for the link. It'll take me a while to digest it character by character, so I may have more to say about it later.

So Taiwanese terminology differs from mainland parlance. I should've expected that, I suppose.

Oh, but I didn't exclude it. If you look again, you'll see that I listed Puerh as a subcategory of hei cha at the same level as the Liu brothers.

We should probably have a duel to settle the question of who cares less. How about bamboo tea scoops for weapons?

I have never heard of wulong being called qing cha in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or on the mainland. What part of China do you frequent? The only time I've heard 'qing' is when talking about kuding.

i'm wondering if maybe there's a connection between the 'blue' classification and the old (last century) chinese practice of adulterating green teas with prussian blue, a chemical compound, to give the tea a certain hue which was desired by the american tea-drinking public.

far-fetched? probably.

interesting? to me ; )

............p*

Any help? Anytime...

Say when and where... I always thought that forbidding of duels killed the spirit of the Western civilization. I am all for duels and the pettier reason - the better :)

Sasha.

Yes.

And ? The teas that have "hong" in the name are necessarily red tea ? those with "bai" white teas ?

Kuri

You can read it hundred of times in different styles of Chine...or you can continue to ignore it.

I didn't travel as extensively as you and I didn't go specifically for tea. I've seen a bit of each, free, semi-free, popular, cities, countryside, rich people, dirt poor farmers....and there's so much more I have to discover in the future.

Kuri

There is a book published about whether puer is black or not. Each representator from Puer factories and Taiwan Dayao have thier own opinion. Whether it is a black or not. There is still no answer yet.

Hi Jian,

Can you give me the name of the book or the ISDN number?

Thanks,

Mike

I am sorry but this discussion is gettin' funnier and funnier. How can anyone agrue if puerh is "black" (hei) or not of there is no clear DEFINITION of what hei is?

Sasha.

Or I can continue to be sceptical considering it's the first time I've heard 'qing' and I have traveled extensively in China in some places solely for the purpose of collecting information about tea and drinking it and I've also visited hundreds of teashops. I am not apt to trust some website; especially one that is just trying to sell tea.

Of course not, but what does this have to do with qing or anything related to it?

Just remember good information in China isn't as easy to obtain as it is in the west. You have some people trying to write books about tea with an authoritarian stance simply because they've taken a recent interest to it. You also have University professors writing books on tea, as well as regular people who may or may not have experience with tea or decent education (some tea bosses)...which book gets published depends on who you know at the publisher and who you pay off.

I've heard it on my very first trip to China (a 3 day stopover in Hong-Kong). You've not been to their teapot museum? They always have very interesting exhibitions and lectures, by people that seem to have solid tea culture and are considered by their compatriots.

Yes, you're visiting people that are trying to sell you tea and you're just bluffing about your "uni teachers". I did not give you "one website", but a way to find thousands. On the first page you already find Hong-Kong University's :

You could get their tea culture text-book or that of any other university.

Kuri