And that's a very good point Lew what does Zhu Cha mean literally? (Guess I
could get off my lazy such and such and use the babelcarp hmm...) but it
brings up a good point that sometimes I feel hopeless about and sometimes
when I'm being Zen I just accept that it's part of the journey: namely that
the English names we know teas by are different from their Chinese (meaning
"real") names and that sometimes a tea sold by the same general name in the
US (for instance, "sencha" though not Chinese) can have a HUGE variation in
quality etc. Almost like a different tea. And sometimes teas sold by a name
(especially popular ones like Long Jing) can be not really Long Jing at all
(as per another group, "counterfeit").
But Mydnight, yes I can see the similarities in the rolled aspect between
Tai Guan Yin and Gunpowder, though to me (and let me just say the gunpowder
I have at the moment is cheap...nevertheless I kinda like it...) they don't
taste at all similar. I would HOPE (grins and crosses fingers) that if I
opened a container marked gunpowder that actually had an oolong in it, that
I'd be able to tell by taste. If I opened a container marked Tai Guan Yin
that had gunpowder in it though...that would upset me just a little, lol. I
ordered around five or six different kinds of Assam about a month ago and
after drinking on them I can now tell the difference between them without
looking...training myself.
"Lewis Perin" > wrote in message
news
> Mydnight > writes:
>
>> On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 22:40:01 -0800, "Melinda" >
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Yeah I knew about the place of origin of Longjing, lol...I was asking
>> >about
>> >his supplier source or where he bought his Longjing. I have never heard
>> >of
>> >gunpowder being a type of oolong...does anyone else have this info?
>> >Thanks
>> >very much.
>> >
>>
>> you are referring to the sort of tea that comes rolled into little
>> balls that resemble black powder and unroll as you steep them, right?
>> on the western market, I have seen tie guan yin and other different
>> tyes of wulong advertised as 'Chinese Green Gunpowder' tea and
>> gunpowder tea and not using the true name of the tea. The two or
>> three vendors that I contacted about it, there are a profusion of them
>> on the net, all claim it to be green tea but know nothing more about
>> it since they basically just get it in bulk and sell it for jacked-up
>> prices.
>>
>> From what I've seen, it all looks, and tastes like, a kind of wulong.
>> I haven't heard of any kind of Chinese tea being called gunpowder
>> before I looked in the western markets.
>
> In Mandarin you'd say Zhu Cha for what's called Gunpowder in the west.
>
> /Lew
> ---
> Lew Perin /
> http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html