Request translation from chinese

SN

The An Xi Ji P Gan Chun Wu Long Cha (gan is like the flavor between bitter and sweet; like hui gan. chun means like something pure; this character only usually appears when describing tea or wine.)

These are mainland vendors? The left's script is simplified Chinese, but the tea says "Dong Ding", which as we all know, is an area in Taiwan that has a famous tea. I guess the vendor is saying they have Taiwanese teas but in fact it's just more mainland rubbish, they are either they blending some TGY with some Dong Ding Wulong to get that tea, or they just stole the name; which is not unheard of.

Gan Chun Wulong, I have not heard of before. Could be another blend or just a generic name they gave for their wulong tea.

Maybe these guys are creating their own brands? I have no idea what those numberings are. Maybe something about the blending they are doing?

I find a statement like "An Xi Ji Pin Dong Ding Tie Guan Yin" to be more technically correct than a misrepesentation. In this case it is a TGY from Anxi. The Dong Ding area does not exist in mainland China perse. It is a mountain in Taiwan. You can still imply it was a source varietal transported to Taiwan. Normally TGY is given it's specific location in southern Fujian. On mainland packaging you will see the general term Dong Ding TGY if the specific location doesn't replace Dong Ding. On Taiwanese packaging you will see the transliterated term Tung Ting for the varietal specific to that nation.

Jim

PS I don't read rags. If you go to that website you will see the preview article on Taiwan Dong Ding from the last issue. You won't see what I just told you. I am a shopper in Chinatown. I see Dong Ding TGY and I assume it is from Taiwan. I see Tung Ting what the hell is that? From that article alone the tea in your cup may not be what you think it is. While I'm here the single character on the packaging for PouChong isn't the two for BaoZhong.

Wow! It's interesting that WHF puts English on their labels now.. That must be something new. Occasionally, I get a tea there that I'm fond of and then they change its sku (code number). I would not be surprised in the least to learn that the label has little or nothing to do with the bag contents. I purchased a little cup there recently for my little neice that was clearly marked with a number and characters on the box and shelf that translated to "fuzzy red toe cover". Good luck! And, enjoy your tea! Shen

Mydnight, WHF is Wing Hop Fung which is basically a dry goods store in both Los Angeles (and Monterey Park) Chinatowns. They do sell a great deal of tea. And you can taste from grotty little yixing pots (that have seen myriad tea types) and a paper cup. WHP has a tea called "Yellow Stone Mountain Dong Ding" which I buy occasionally; but, there is no guarantee that what you read on the tea jar in the store is what you've got in your bag. My feelings: their teas are reasonable priced. If they have something you like, taste some and buy it. If you enjoy it, what difference does it make what it's called. Most of the sales help in WHF really don't speak any English or understand tea, for that matter; although the service seems better in the Monterey Park store. And they don't quite understand our pinyin. There is an elderly man in the downtown Chinatown shop that seems to be tea-knowledgeable. The place is great fun and you can find really wonderful bargains. But, don't take the labelling seriously and watch out for their pu- erhs which tend to be labelled and outrageously expensive. Shen

Lots of mainland vendors claim to have Taiwan tea, imported and all, but really don't. All TGY comes from AnXi Fujian or it is not TGY. They basically have the "patent" on that tea's name, if such a thing as that does exist in China. On mainland packaging, if they are honest, you will see exactly the tea that it is supposed to be inside the package. In my several years of living in China, meeting hundreds of different vendors, mainland and Taiwanese, and drinking countless brewings of both of these types of teas, I have never heard of Dong Ding TGY. I stand strong with my assumption that the shop is either trying to create some kind of blend for marketing purposes or is up to something dishonest. Regardless of your argument, TGY comes from AnXi, Fujian and DongDing comes from Taiwan; so how could both names appear in this tea especially after it's being cited as coming from AnXi, Fujian?

Granted, but the package is from the mainland and the characters are Chinese simplified. If it were from Taiwan, it would have the Taiwanese styled characters. I get my Taiwan teas from my Taiwanese friends, and I don't buy mainland Wulong anymore; I can taste the difference. For instance, most of the "Taiwan Wulong tea" that is sold in shops here is actually Jin Xuan and not that Wulong varietal that most people know. Neat stuff you can pick up when you hang out with tea people.

WHF

Oh, I thought it was some kind of online vendor. If it's in the States, there is a chance that they don't even know what kind of tea it is. heh.

Ok so it seems theres some mambo-jumbo on the labels just to have something in english... That sucks, since probably wont be able to find the equivalent somewhere else, thus need to re-test another store's products... maybe start buying online.... its more fun in real stores tho... eh....

Ji pin actually means "supreme grade", but of course, everybody on Earth sells Ji Pin tea....

I must say Anxi Dong Ding TGY sounds extremely fishy to me. It can either be Dong Ding, or from Anxi... but not both. I've never heard of TGY made in Dong Ding before, and afaik there's no mountain in Anxi named (coincidentally) Dong Ding....

What do the teas look like?

The tea on the right, Gan Chun Wulong, just means "Sweet - mellow - Wulong". It's just a name you give to something. With the presence of the words Gan and Chun, however, there's a slight chance that this is some sort of Ginseng Wulong. Hard to say, again, without seeing the tea itself.

And then there's the chance, like Shen says, that they have nothing to do with the tea being sold whatsoever :)

MarshalN

Dong Ding TGY is not an oxymoron. As I stated the source of the varietal for Dong Ding mtn in Taiwan came from Fujian. You can refer to it as Dong Ding TGY. Dong Ding is also a reference to leaf style. It is lightly oxidized in nugget form. That style came directly from the south of Fujian. That is the way it is made in Taiwan today. Does Dong Ding TGY taste different than Tung Ting Taiwan?. Yes. By Darwinian definition, it isn't TGY anymore. However it still can be considered Dong Ding in the technical style and historic reference. If you go to the .TW sites they still refer to Dong Ding as TGY. I don't call them cons ripping me off saying TGY only comes from the mainland. It is a relative term like the mainland Dong Ding. When I buy Dong Ding or TGY I really want to know where it came from.

Jim

PS The > >

Dong Ding Wulong Tea originally comes from Fujian, yes, hundreds of years ago, but if any tea vendor claims to have mainland grown Dong Ding Wulong, they are being dishonest. Dong Ding is a mountainous area in Taiwan in Tai Zhong. There is no such thing as DDTGY unless they mixed it together. There are no relative terms in tea. It's either DD or TGY or dishonesty. Yes, most teas can be grown anywhere like I had a decent LongJing that came from Guangxi, but something lacks. But, it doesn't matter to me anyway, I don't drink mainland Wulongs anymore.

The spooky thing about the mainland Wulongs is that you have no idea what kinds of chemicals they add to their teas to make them taste that way. There's no way to know what kind of tea you actually get, anyway, unless you have friends in the business.

If it were "Gao Ji", I think that would mean more like high or supreme grade. The "Ji" in this way, I think, just means it's a higher grade than most teas.

That's exactly what I am thinking. I guess they are just blending stuff together or taking a handful of this tea and a handful of that tea and throwing it in together.

I've never heard of any Wulong called that before.

here's pic of leaf from "cold high top oolong",

heres some tasting notes as much as i can describe: flavor 3.5/7: ok flavor, aftertaste, very mild astringency. mild tobaccoish (as i describe the 'darker' oolongs), very mild nutty/ buttery, some greenish feeling.

will find the other pic soon, thanks!

I'm going to go out on a limb now when I say this, but I think what you got there is a few handfulls of 2 or 3 different teas mixed in the same bag. The shorter, rounded looking ones look like Jin Xuan; the longer ones look like some kind of wulong or possibly the TGY that the title mentions. The tale tell sign that it is indeed mainland tea and not Taiwanese is that the leaves have been picked away from the stems and it appears to have been machine rolled; rather poorly, I might add. There are some mainland rolled teas that aren't seperated from the stems, indeed, but the vast majority aren't.

I think a grab bag of Jin Xuan, some random TGY, and perhaps a few "nong xiang" roasted nuggets thrown in for the tobacco-ish flavor is what that company calls "cold high top oolong".

Sorry, that makes little sense. I meant to say most mainland rolled teas are seperated from the stems. There are a few kinds that remain on the stem, though.

The Chinese as scam artists is getting thin. How do you know your so called Taiwanese teas aren't from some mainland front company on the island selling your friends doctored tea? Dong Ding is the only description I know that identifies the TKY exported to Taiwan way back. Dong Ding is the only Fujian description I know that looks like what is produced in Taiwan today. Nobody is trying to con anybody. It's a matter of getting the usage correct. When I buy Yunnan Silver Needles I know the difference from Fujian.

Jim

PS I want to mimic Taiwan teas. I'll doctor BenShan. That'll fool'em. I'll go you > >

My so-called, as you so strangely put it, Taiwanese tea was brought to me FROM TAIWAN by my TAIWANESE FRIENDS who are in the TEA BUSINESS. I thought this was pretty clear in my postings above. These same friends will house me when I visit Taiwan this summer for the purpose of tea. These are the same friends that treated me to drink some competition grade, aged Wulong that priced into the hundreds-of- dollars range today. I am not trying to brag or anything, I'm just trying to make you understand how serious I take misrepresentation in the tea industry and how dangerous it is.

You do realize that if you go out with anyone in the tea biz to a restaurant here on the mainland what they will ask to drink: Bai Kai Shui (boiled water). I wonder why that is?

Dong Ding currently is manufactured from Dong Ding Mountain in Taiwan. Tie Guan Yin comes from AnXi Fujian.

Anything else is forgery, fake, or misrepresentation. Why can you not understand this?

The only way that it could be Dongding TGY is if it was a TGY varietal grown in Dongding (a place in Taiwan). Dongding is the name of a place, not a varietal. TGY is the name of a varietal, not a place. There is TGY from Taiwan, but it's from Muzha, near Taipei, whereas Dongding is in the middle of the island. If you took a varietal from Dongding to Anxi and grew it there, it still wouldn't be Dongding TGY, it would be Anxi luanze, or whatever varietal it was. Dongding TGY is a contradiction in terms.

SN - can you post some pictures of each tea, both dry leaf and after steeping?

I'll try one more time. Each time I try a different angle that it is more than geography. DongDing is a retroactive term used in Fujian today. Here is just one of many discussions on SanZui which is the Chinese forum equivalent of RFDT on the difference between Anxi and Taiwan DongDing:

The fact the differences can be semantic versus geographic varietal doesn't preclude the use of the term. Note even the limited use of TGY in the discussion. I agree with the one poster that the use for the mainland means a lighter oxidation of Dong Ding TKY similar to Taiwan.

Your tea arguments are simple dismissal of the Chinese ChaYe industry as corrupt. I personally think you are drowning in a sea of tea information overload. If I was fortunate as you, I would make better use of the opportunity.

Jim