"Space Cowboy" > wrote in message

>Only the second character from the left for Taiwan
> bai hao wu long cha didn't seem to translate (box).

The wan of Taiwan ? 湾　I have inputed it from the Japanese.
Reading is much easier than inputing (that requires having an IME and
knowing the pronunciation), for the characters not existing in Japanese,
I cannot do it,all I can do now is try to find them on Chinese pages and
paste them.

That's too bad because in a book, I have a list of over 300 Chinese teas,
listed by area, and their names in characters and pin yin (+ other data,
like "nicknames"...). I use it for shopping.
I'd like to copy it on a web page, that way anybody could paste the
characters of their prefered tea to browse about it or find it more easily
in Asian stores. I have not found any complete equivalent on google. When I
have more energy, I'll get a Chinese IME or I'll gather all the names I can
paste on different pages to recreate the list.

>I'm not going to
> quibble but All the Tea in China by Chow and Kramer use the characters
> for "white hair" to describe Yinzhen Bai Hao.

It is not surprising, it is used in descriptive comments about Oriental
Beauty too, but more rarely in the name to avoid confusions. If they give
"hao" as reading of "white hair", I suppose that's a typo (or an
over-simplification of the character ?).

> I'll use the marketing
> name Silver Needles and Oriental Beauty so not to confuse myself.

I'd prefer if teas were systematically named like wines (name + descriptive
name +
place of production + year), at least on the labels.

>My
> Japan reference is in my metro area you can immerse yourself in
> Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Spanish languages without
> leaving the US.

Maybe that's also a travel in the time, the most interesting one. Today's
Japan is incredibly Westernized (or the West is Japanized ?). Everyday life
in Osaka is not so different from life in a small French town. You have to
make an effort too to immerse yourself in typical things. But what I find
great is
that even if 99% of the people wear suits and jeans 364 days a year, there
is still
1% that spend one day in kimono to maintain traditions like the tea ceremony
as it existed
maybe 1000 year ago. In Europe, we've kept the old buildings and antiques,
but they
are "dead".

Kuri