tea translation needed

Hi,

Wow, those are great pictures. The tea is most likely a Wulong -- an Oolong of one of the greenest types. Does it produce a yellow liquor and taste and smell pleasantly of some kind of flower? Is the taste soft, perhaps a little like a melon? Does it have a lingering complex aftertaste on your tongue and at the back of your throat after you've swallowed the tea, perhaps

Great idea, uploading those pictures.

For the Chinese, our first line of defense is of course BabelCarp...

...who tells us that Zhong Guo means "Middle Kingdom". You can play with BabelCarp further using the link above.

Michael

auntymoEZyvc.617880$Pk3.116337@pd7tw1no6/3/04 01: snipped-for-privacy@shaw.ca

Hi Auntymo,

"Famous Chinese Tea". Well that looks like a box from Mainland China.

"the way of tea" "top quality" etc.

The name of the tea is : Tie Guan Yin.

Guan Yin is the god(dess) Kannon. Ti is black iron (black silver ?), an old character used here.

Big "stalks". Funny, that's exactly the same appearance of the one I was drinking today.

And you have little branches with 2 or 3 leaves on them ? Mine is called Anxi Mao She I had never heard of it before, which means nothing. It's also a Wulong. I get a yellow brew.

There is a Anxi Tie Guan Yin, that should cost 20$ per 100g or more. It gives an orange brew and is not so green when you see it dry. What is on your photo looks more like a Taiwanese for the color (that gives a yellow brew ?).

Kuri

Working with the PinYin with assumed accents:

zhong quo is mainland china ming is the tea plant we call camilla sinensis cha means tea as in a drink

The tea itself looks like a Pouchong (slightly oxidized green). Maybe additional inscription shows the tea location of origin probably somewhere in Fujian. It looks like commercial packaging so care to share where we can get some? That is tantalizing leaf.

Jim

I bet it's a variant transliteration of Mao Xie, or Hairy Crab. Good stuff!

/Lew

thanks for the response so far! but then i figured you guys would love a mystery. heh

i made some more of it today, just seven dry leaves in my small gaiwan. and once the leaves uncurled they filled half the gaiwan!

here is a picture of the leaves after i enjoyed my tea:

the dry leaves are tightly rolled and heavy, reminding me of a gunpowder tea. it also smells green like a gunpowder, with no flowery scent that is noticeable.

the liquor is yellow green. it smells like a chinese green. very light taste. as i said, pretty green. heh. i'm new at this by the way.

on the top of the container there is some embossed writing: 'zi bo xinlu' the character for tea, and then underneath... 'zhiguan'

a couple of people have said that the container says it is a ti kuan yin. if it is...wow...it's not like any ti kuan yin i've ever tried yet, seeming more 'green' than usual, and having none of the flowery, perfumy oolong smell. anyways i like it. :)

it cost about $30.00CAD for the container of tea, which i guesstimate holds about 200 or so grams (?). i'm pretty horrible at guesstimating, and don't have a scale handy. anyways, it will probably last me forever since i only need a few leaves per gaiwan.

i bought it at a hole in the wall chinese shop in our local china town. i think i've been to most of them already, i like to take a bit of a risk and purchase tea usually having no idea of what i am actually getting. it would probably help a lot if i knew chinese eh? i'm no conoisseur, but i've found a few kinds i really like, a da hong pao, some ti kuan yin, and a few greens, also *another* mystery tea which i'll probably start another thread for.

anyways, thanks for all the help so far!

--mo--

literally means "Chinese famous tea" (means "fine tea")

the top 4 red characters in a box mean "fine grade fine tea" (my poor translation)

then the 2 red characters can translate "top grade"

the 2 big black characters mean "tea dao (tau) (way of tea)?

the 3 red ones mean "te guan yin" (iron buddha).

bye now,

pam @ home ¤p¬}

Pam's Ode to Spammers & Telemarketers

May all spammers & telemarketers die an agonizing death; have no burial places; their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one room to another for 1000 years.

As for Iron Buddha all I could see was the second character for Goddess only after you pointed it out. I flipped back and forth between the two characters for Iron and Mercy and couldn't match them on the tin. For the two big black characters I have packaging for the top character which means Enjoying. I couldn't find it in any online dictionaries. I couldn't find the lower character. I agree with the original poster I've never seen Tie Guan Yin that looked like this. I always think it is heavily oxidized. I'm taking a picture to my Chinatown and see if I can find some. The leaf is still on the stem? I guess some pruning would be normal to keep the plant under control and you encounter broken stem in lesser grades but not like that. One of the most interesting tea discoveries I seen from Chinatown. I'm jealous.

Jim

I agree it's a Ti Kuan Yin I've never seen. In fact I think of cheap TKY as the poor mans Puerh. You can go into the grocery stores and buy cheap TKY and go into the retail tourist stores and buy much more expensive Ti Kuan Yin. I've seen tins for +$100 so switch to Puerh from the apothocary. I've never bought at high prices but yours is worth checking out. My local tea shoppe is getting a new stock of Ti Kuan Yin to replace the old. He never liked the taste of the old and likes the new. It hasn't arrived but tasted a sample he had from the Lost Wages tea show and I agree. It is big black curled chunky leaf. He started his second anniversary sale yesterday and I stocked up on some great bargains. He had TongYu Mountain green tea from Fujian which seems to be rare. I'll go back on Sunday and cleanup on whatever remains.

Jim

Jasmin tee