Real Gunpowder

Dec 24, 2008 Last reply: 17 years ago 1 Replies

On a recent trip to Chinatown I came across a bin labeled Zhu Cha or Pearl tea. It was the cheapest loose tea Ive seen. The tea is tiny dark green almost purple pellets some so little that they clung to the plastic bag from static electricity. I went through my Chinese tea book and found the pictures that matched Zhu Cha by name and looks. The tea is from ZheJiang province. Buried in the Chinese I found the characters for Ping Shui which also names the tea. The English just called it Gunpowder. This tea does not match what I see in Temple of Heaven gunpowder which comes from Shanghai which is located just north of ZheJiang. I found a webpage in Chinese which describes gunpowder and the above demographics. Mentioned in the web page TOH got honorable mention in 1986. Interesting because I think the two are night and day in looks and taste.



Jim



PS Damn I hover the cursor over the Google translated page and Firefox shows me the Chinese. I was able to pluck off known locations in ZheJiang for gunpowder. The best known ShaoXing city.


I always thought "gunpowder" referred to the physical appearance of the tea, the way "fannings" or "orange pekoe" does, rather than to anything to do with the actual origin or taste.

--scott

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