Pu'er is not black tea.

Here is another tea categorization and more info on the Qing thing

(cantonese name are approximation as there is no pin yin)

white tea: Bai cha (md) - bak tsa (ct)

yellow tea: Huang cha (md) - Wong tsa (ct)

green tea : lu cha (md) - Lok tsa (ct)

- fried

- steamed

- post fermented : raw/green pu erh, liu an

Oolong : wu long in ct and md

- compressed

- twisted

- fisted

A tea that is partially fermented. In Chinese it will be called :half fermented". They use the term "ban" (half) to refer to something that is not "full", but it doesn't mean all oolong have the same level of fermentation.

Ban fa jiao -> half fermented (in mandarin)

Red tea : hong cha, same in ct and md

Black tea : hei cha (md) - Hak tsa (ct) A tea that is fully fermented.

- compressed (cooked pu erh, liu bao)

- loose (hunan hei cha)

About the Qing.

Qing can be used to refer to something as: green, blue, black, or young.

• used as "green" with A type of kuding called Qing shan lu shui - >

green mountain green water. It is also used to refer to green tea by the people of south-east guangdong (koo loo qing cha) or of Yunnan province (Dian qing).

• used as "blue". It is used for example with the "Qing Hua" which is a porcelain painting style from the Ming Dynasty that uses only the blue color.

• used as "black". In chinese books or articles, qing is used as "qing si" to described the black hair of chinese people.

• used as "young". The term qing is also used in publications to describe teenager (qing nian) or undone fruit.

Qing and oolong. Firstly the term Qing has always been used as the original definition for oolong tea. It refers to "half fermented" tea, kind of like the non-grow fruit (undone). This is the term used by the scientists. Why the oolong name is the most popular now, there are several stories about it but here are the 2 most plausibles:

• people looked at the leaves, said it is long and dark so it looks like a dragons and the wu long cha (black dragon tea) was born.

• here is my favorite. Wu long was created in Fujian by a guy name Su Long. but, in local language, the Su is pronounced like "wu" in mandarin so when people travel to fujian and ask for the name of the tea they were told it was "su long cha" but for them it sounded like "wu long cha".

Et voila!

SEb

I've found from someone that the term is a relatively old term, and it isn't used as much in tea parlance anymore; it does exist but it isn't common. This explains why I haven't heard it. I asked two shopkeepers yesterday about it, both of which have been in the business for over 20 years, and this is what they told me.

Am I bluffing about my University professors that happen to be close friends of mine? Absolutely not. Before you decide to get snotty in replying to someone's message on a newsgroup, try to ask the background of the person. I have lived in China altogether for nearly two years now, and I have visited countless shops on the mainland in numerous provinces as well as in Taiwan and Hong Kong. I would say that I have more than enough personal experience to be able to post confidently on this board.

I have never ordered tea from an online vendor; only bought it in shops firsthand.

I have no opinion about your friends and private life. I know university specialists that are doing research in different subjects, conversation with them is interesting, but that will not make me become a nobel prize in sciences I have not studied.

You are sometimes bluffing when you tell that you have checked in " books I read were written by UNI professors mostly and people that have studied tea for most of their lives or have farming experience." (BTW just like the books others read), and that you'd have found things as gross as that :

Sorry, but your "UNI professors" are certainly not the ones calling English tea hei cha...it's you. Between what you're actually told, what you choose to listen or ignore, what you understand/misunderstand...and what you forget before reaching your computer and type here, there might be gaps sometimes.

As you had not given attention to the phenomenon, I just wanted to indicate you the existence and frequency of a traditionnal classification that is still in use in China, Japan, Korea, places where live the Chinese diaspora, and where to look for additional information and received your usual me-in-China-I'm-the-only-one-to-know...

I can't send you books or people, I don't even keep all of them at reach of hand. Well you're very fussy if you reject systematically the huge variety of information avalaible on internet. Yourself never give any reference except "a guy I talked to said".

That's not much. I've been in Asia for ten years and I'm still a newby in the area and a newby at tea. A number of posters here have never been to China but have drunk Chinese since before the birth of your parents.

Me too. Plus department store corners, fairs, markets, sales from the farmers, etc... Shopping addicted tourists, aren't we ?

You're talking about it as if that was something people should stay away from. Funny, because a few months ago, your intention was to become a tea online vendor yourself.

Kuri

I think choosing weapons is a more important question, and the more I try to imagine fighting with bamboo scoops the less dignified it seems.

I recently read something from a guy who readies compressed tea for brewing by steaming it for a few minutes. That way, he says, the tightest bingcha is easy to pull apart without damaging the leaves. So: how about steam-softened 100-gram tuo chas at twenty paces? I think this offers the majesty of a good snowball fight without the need to wait for winter.

/Lew

I do the same as a standard procedure, only I do not apply it to the whole bingcha.. I never break up dense puerh, as a matter of fact I never break up any puerh. I break off a piece, "wash" it with hot water once to "prime" it in a chahu and leave it there for 10-15 min, after which it usually starts to "open up". then I wash it another one or two times very briefly (just 1-3 seconds) with just warm water untill it opens up completely, looking like a porcupine. Only then I brew the first brew. Depending on how dense the puerh is this may take from 2-5 up to 20-30 min. All that time I enjoy the ever changing smell of the puerh and this way one learns much more about puerh scents than usually. Like a lover who is patient enough for a really long foreplay learns so much more about the subject of his passion.

I think that it would be good to steam the whole piece if you know you are going to consume it within days. However leaving a steamed bingcha for longer time may be perilous for the tea.

Done. See you in February.

Sasha.

Midnight -

And we are very thankful for your efforts. Be they successful or not - depends on many variables that are out of your control, but you tried and we thank you for that. The nature of internet is such that once in a while one has to exercise one's sense of balance and humor and realize that getting into lengthy "you said - I said" battles is just absolutely and utterly pointless, mostly because you opponent has a luxury of choosing any part of your argument to quote and attack without the scrutiny of educated and experienced peers as the case would be in academic and industrial circles. Internet is mostly the universe of amateurs and "@home folks" be it a British castle, Siberian hut or a Tokyo apartment. The internet provides us a public podium but does not teach and demand proper standards to use it. Once in a while when one is engaged by a known angry confrontationalsit one has to smile and step back. Its not quitting, its hygiene.

Sasha.

snipped-for-privacy@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com5/6/05

Is there a god? Frankly, my indifference is only exceeded by my lack of interest in this and the question posed above. Between the two questions however, I believe yours is the more significant.

Michael

Alex ChaihorskyWrPee.13871$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com5/6/05

Sasha, why be sorry? Just sit back and enjoy the show

Michael

I enjoy the Mydnight Edward R Murrow and Kuri Walter Cronkite posts. The Chinese diaspora is diluted and open markets isn't academia. The guy making bbq in Texas will disagree with the guy making bbq in Arkansas. I personally prefer boiled okra over fried.

Jim

That's a great way to do it, although I have to admit I'm usually too lazy and impatient to do all of what you do.

The guy I mentioned uses dry heat to stabilize the tea immediately after steaming.

Excellent. In February, we might be able to use snowballs too.

/Lew

For those who are interested a pictorial of instructions for this method can be found at:

towards the end of the page. I have used this method and it works but one must be careful to fully dry the tea afterwards or molds can develop very rapidly.

I prefer to whack off a hunk with my trusty oyster knife and just brew it up. I often dont even break up the leaf, I just dump a hunk in the pot and increase the steep time for the first couple of steeps, eventually it unfolds nicely by itself.

Mike