Strange puer reference NU3ER2

Well, Nu Er (女儿) definately means daughter.

The word catecha... I'm not sure what that is or where it comes from. Apparently, that's how babel fish translates "Er Cha" (儿茶), but in the context of these tea names, it should not be read Nu ErCha, it should be read NuEr Cha.

As for what "Daughter Tea" is. It is "Virgin tea" referring to the old (and possibly completely mythological) classification of tea that was "only picked by young maidens before dawn". I would link you to some reference pages about this, but they are all in Chinese. So, in this context "Nu Er" should be translated as "Virgin" or "Maiden" or "Unmarried Woman/Women"..

In general this classification is supposed to indicate a very high quality, if not the highest quality of tea.

Hope that helps, Troy

As for old maiden-picked tea... The stuff's no good.

Monkeys, though, never lose their touch.

/Lew

Tea-trained Golden Monkeys die in their twenties, which isn't a whole lot better.

What is a tea affectionado to do?

Steve

Hi Troy,

That puts it in context. Thanks. That one has been bugging me for awhile. I usually get help from others. I see that term often on the Chinese puer pages but not anywhere else. I plug along with Babelfish,Unicode,GB2312,BIG5 extracting tea terms. I thought when I did the post maybe the new guy who taught English in China knew some Chinese. Welcome to the group.

Jim

Troy Howard wrote:

Well, I'm by no means fluent, but I have studied the language informally, and of course day to day survival in China sort of demands it. My first few months in China were definately VERY difficult. Imagine walking out of your door and being completely illiterate and unable to speak to anyone. I was in Beijing for my first few weeks, but then went to a much smaller city immediately thereafter for work, and was left 99% of the time alone and without any English speaking assistance. You learn a language pretty quick when it comes time to buy those things that are too embarassing or complicated to gesture.. Like oh.. say.. toilet paper, or a shower curtain... and after eating noodles for weeks straight because you don't know how to say or read any other food, you start studying. :)

Between my working vocabulary, dictionaries, and as a last ditch effort, begging help from my students and fiance, I can usually decypher Mandarin Chinese. However, some things are just intrinsicly too difficult to comprehend and/or translate, context or no context. Even native speakers often have trouble with this.

So if anyone needs help, feel free to ask! I'll try to come up with an answer. (:

Thanks, Troy

Train the men to climb trees next?

Jim, you know what I'm going to say about the nuance of a language blah blah blah so I'll skip that and go straight to your questions

Nü Er can take to mean Daughter, Girl (addressing in affection), Maiden (also addressing in affection)

Cha we know is Tea

When you place Nü Er, followed by Cha and feed it to Babelfish, the machine will select the closest match based on 2 characters, in this case, Nü & Er, as well as Er & Cha, hence giving you "Female" and "Catecha" respectively...the latter is probably a mutation of "Catechin" of which in chinese is called "Er Cha Su".

Next, the term Nü Er and its relation to tea. In the novel Story of the Stone (aka Dream of the Red Chamber), this tea was mentioned in chapter 63 as a tea to wash down the grease after food, and it hinted that it was a pu'er variety.

There are 2 types of Nü Er Cha: In the Yunnan, young girls would pick the young leaves in the early months of the year, and when they gathered enough a certain amount, they would trade the harvest for money, which was set aside as their dowry - hence tea made from this young flush is called Nü Er Cha. Somewhat related is that the compressed tea cakes (as tribute offering for the imperial court), made from the harvest, and smaller in size compared to the other compressed teas, is also named Nü Er Cha, for its small size and young flush tea ingredient. These tribute tea cakes eventually developed into bowl size compressed tea - some suggested lewdly its sexual connotation - as tuochas.

The modern equivalent of the Nü Er Cha, in its loose form is often considered to be the Bai Zhen Jin Lian - White Needle Golden Lotus pu'er.

There is another Nü Er Cha known as Nü Er Huang - my preferred translation for this is Maiden's Curls, though some would say Daughter's Rings etc etc. This is a relatively new tea known as Crafted Tea or, Gong Yi Cha. The leaf, at about 4cm, is picked and steamed, and then rolled round a stick with a small width. When the tea is dried, it is slipped off the stick and dried further. The end product looks like a Cheerio ring...

Danny

Sorry, don't you mean Huan, not Huang?

/Lew

Thanks for the explanation. I knew Babelfish mangled ER and CHA somehow to Catecha. Female is NU. I was able to extract the Chinese characters and PinYin and get daughter right so I could ask a question for someone who is fluent. I still couldn't associate Troy's Maiden with White Needle Golden Lotus which is common together. I've seen pictures of the Gong Yi Cha. I'm surprised NUER is part of the marketing lingo.

Jim

samarkand wrote:

Indeed you are right, my fingers were too quick. Huan as in Rings.

Danny

I almost forgot that there is another Nü Er Cha, which some refer to as Zhu Tong Cha, or Bamboo Tube Tea. This is a product from south of Yunnan.

:"P Danny

Jim

samarkand wrote: