Unknown tea [links to photos]

Looks like a white tea to me, and a fairly decent grade at that. White tea is brewed similarly to green: Water just below boiling (bring water to boil and wait about 30 seconds off of heat) and steeping time varies. Some whites need just a very brief steep of 30 seconds to a minute, while others need more time upwards of 3 minutes.

I will have to work on translating the packaging, I'm no expert there... but I do know there are many on this newsgroup who are so they may beat me to it.

- Dominic

Hi Dominic,

I'll let you work on it then. :")

Angela, your pictures of the box isn't complete, is it? There should be another picture of it, or the top and bottom, or of the packaging that holds the tea. The name of the tea is very hazy, as 3 areas in China that produce teas have the same name.

Danny

heh, I make no bones about me being novice at best on the translating side of things. Some basic Chinese (and mostly relating to tea) and Korean are my only areas of knowledge.

As I said I know that many of you around here are fluent/much more advanced than I could ever hope to be... some native to the language. Feel free to beat me to it, I'm at work and have little time until later to even pull up the photo's.

- Dominic

Not high-brow beating you to it, no such intention.

I'm asking Angela for more pictures with clues o what tea this is so you can work on the translation.

Danny

I never thought that the case at all... however I am striking out totally. I spent a bit of my lunch break trying to figure them out but I'm not seeing anything I recognize. I'm not even seeing the character for "cha" anywhere.

Angela is there any information about the importer of this tea, or anything else at all to go on?

Thanks,

- Dominic

Thank you Dominic

here are two more links:

on a box-side, in tiny little writing:

on top:

I don't know much more about it. It's a present she got from a Chinese cook, quite keen on tea and she passed the box to me, mentioning that it was a quite rare and "old fashion" tea... That's about all.

It looks very nice also after infusion: plenty of buds and very closed leaves

now it is, unfortunately (please see the last two links I just posted). In its full splendor, the box it's here:

Thanks again. By the way, I like it very much and would be glad to know a bit more about it...

Thanks for the extra info Angela... however, I am at a loss for any information. I have never seen this packaging and there are no instantly recognizable characters to me on it. There are no "cha" (tea) characters even.

I still am almost 100% sure it is a white tea, and as I said before a very good grade. I'm really hoping someone else around here will shed some light on this as I'm now interested to find out as well.

- Dominic

I agree, it looks to me like a white tea.

Well, looking at the packaging, it seems the name of the tea is Ling Yan Ming Qian Cha 灵岩明前茶。 Never heard of it before.

But from the name, it's a spring tea, picked sometime before the Qing Ming Festival, which usually falls on April 4 or 5.

Other than that, I have no idea. Web searches in Chinese don't pull up any info on this tea.

hi Dominic,

The box packaging is generic. The company that produces this box has several of similar designs in different colour. These boxes are designed as gift-packs. Hoever, some tea companies who prefer to package their own teas but refuse to pay a design fee on the packaging will approach this company and have their teas packaged in the design as you see. The tea company can also customise the package to include the name of their own tea.

In this case, Angela's last post with the pics showed that the company *may be* called 'Ling Yan'. The name of the tea is in the 4th pic of the previous post, called "Ling Yan Ming Qian Cha" - The pre-Ming (early spring, around early March) tea from Ling Yan.

Unfortunately, both the name of the tea and the area of production are ambiguously generic. However, since it says "Ming Qian", early srping tea, this rules out very much the White Tea speculation. White tea is produced in the later months. It is a green tea using young flush with lots of down, similar to the Bi Luo Chun.

The other 4 characters all over the box in pic 3 are "Han Mo Ming Xiang" - Han Mo means to pen a letter, here it indicates also the fragrance of the ink; Ming Xiang means fragrance of Tea.

The lines of characters at the bottom of the gold box in the centre are excerpts from a poem by Admiral Zheng Ban Qiao, but it is misquoted in the large print...the lines read, in translation:

A few sprigs of black inked Orchids On paper from Xuan De, Bitter Tea in a cup From the kilns of Cheng Hua.

Kinda *Hakku* I guess, to evoke a tonal picture.

The tea, is from Ling Yan. Ling Yan can be a company, or a place. As a place, there are at least three with the same names in China, but my guess is the one in Jinan city in Shangdong province. This is the place where the monks first advocated drinking green tea to stay alert through long prayers. This area still produces green tea that looks similar.

I think that's about all.

Danny

It is more than likely a company, and it does look like white tea or some very good maojian. I question the apparent freshness though because the Spring pick isn't for about another month. Send me a sample!

heh.

I'd question the freshness even moreso because of the possible date stamp of 2004 on what I believe is the boxtop :) That's a few spring pick's ago for sure.

- Dominic

Hey Danny,

What are the white on black 'hieroglyphics' I see in the upper right hand corner of this picture:

Is it some form of ancient Chinese? Sometimes I see something similar on Puer wrappers.

Thanks, Jim

samarkand wrote: ...everything but...

Hey Jim,

That's Zhuan Shu, a form of calligraphy that is often found in chinese seals.

The words are similar to these in black...

"Han Mo Ming Xiang"...

Danny

Oh now I SEE. I'll go back and look at some of those wrappers. I knew hieroglyphics was the wrong term to use.

Thanks, Jim

samarkand wrote:

Personally, I liked the "hieroglyphics" term... I'm sure there is some ancient chinese calligrapher turning over in his grave though :)

- Dominic

Hey Danny,

I can't tell you how long I stared at the meaning of this calligraphy before getting a clue from you.

Jim

samarkand wrote:

That's just one of many forms of the character for "cha" 茶。 You wouldn't believe how many variant forms there are. It all comes down to styles of calligraphy.

And besides that, there are a few archaic variant forms of writing the tea character itself - and they are all correct. Except, they're not used anymore.

Quite a few characters in Chinese have variant forms of writing. For example, the word for "cup" 杯。 It uses the wood radical 木。 But then, that should indicate the cup is probably made out of wood. Then, in another variant form, you could replace the wood radical with the dish radical 皿 on the bottom of the character.

As another example, the character for "bowl" 碗。 Normally it uses the stone radical 石。 But, it can also be written with the earth radical 土 instead of the stone radical. Or, you could use the wood radical 木。 Or, you chould use the dish radical 皿 on the bottom. So that all gives it some kind of meaning - whether it's a bowl made from stone, earth, wood, etc. Anyway, most people today just write it as 碗。

That all adds to the complexity and beauty of written Chinese, which is not expressed in the spoken language.

:")

I can't agree more on the beauty and complexity of the characters!

Jim, the character you showed is one of the veriety for the character that means 'Tea'. If you look at the center 'pole' (it does look like a Mayflower pole with 2 tassles hanging down from its side...haha!) it has a bar on its top, and anothr bar through it.

With these 2 bars, it is pronounced as 'Tu' - in the old days of Lu Yu it means 'Bitter Tea'. The modern meaning of this character is 'weed'.

Without the top bar, it is the 'Cha' that we are familiar with. In the old days, anything that can be brewed is considered 'Tea', however, there were different characters to indicate either the type, pick, or preparation for it. Lu Yu made the character "Cha' as the uniformed character for 'Tea', but the notion that any leafy brew is 'Cha' remained, which gave rise to much confusion...

[niisonge] Quite a few characters in Chinese have variant forms of writing. For example, the word for "cup" ?? It uses the wood radical ?? But then, that should indicate the cup is probably made out of wood. Then, in another variant form, you could replace the wood radical with the dish radical ? on the bottom of the character [Danny] ?, "Min" is the collective term for vessels, not just ? - cup. The character ? cannot be used singularly if it is to indicate Tea cup, the character "Cha" will have to accompany it...the item must also be made of metal, silver, copper etc to be able to use the character. It is not usually used on vessel that is made of porcelain.

Danny

That's just one of many forms of the character for "cha" ?? You wouldn't believe how many variant forms there are. It all comes down to styles of calligraphy.

And besides that, there are a few archaic variant forms of writing the tea character itself - and they are all correct. Except, they're not used anymore.

Quite a few characters in Chinese have variant forms of writing. For example, the word for "cup" ?? It uses the wood radical ?? But then, that should indicate the cup is probably made out of wood. Then, in another variant form, you could replace the wood radical with the dish radical ? on the bottom of the character.

As another example, the character for "bowl" ?? Normally it uses the stone radical ?? But, it can also be written with the earth radical ? instead of the stone radical. Or, you could use the wood radical ?? Or, you chould use the dish radical ? on the bottom. So that all gives it some kind of meaning - whether it's a bowl made from stone, earth, wood, etc. Anyway, most people today just write it as ??

That all adds to the complexity and beauty of written Chinese, which is not expressed in the spoken language.