On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 19:33:02 +0900, "kuri" > wrote:

>Hi everybody,
>
>I'll let the Englishes teacher tell us if it's kudings cha , kuding chas,
>kudinga chas, kudeding cha....
>Here is what I have found in a next book. I was just looking at it at the
>bookstore, and well...now it's mine.
>
>In the list of teas, they don't have kuding cha. Then in the chapter "other
>than tea", there's a whole page with 5 photos of very different looking
>kuding chas.
>
>In the Fujian region, it is made with leaves of the kuding-tree (that's the
>famous holly illex).
>In other regions, it's made with a plant of the family of the
>"otogirisou"(Japanese name, no idea what it is).
>In addition, in Yunnan, the word can be used for the big leaves of tea of
>poor quality, which have a little of sweetness.
>The leaves are just "massaged" and sun dried. It can be blended with green,
>oolong or flower tea (10% of kuding).
>It's a remedy for too high blood tension, fever, poisoning, too much sugar
>in blood, whistlings in the ears and other stuff I'm too lazy to check in a
>dictionary.
>
>From "chugoku mei cha kan" (108 Chinese teas) ed. Takabashishoten
>
>But, among the 5 photos, none presents the small leave kuding, which (I've
>read somewhere else) is a new variety that had been grown recently (in
>Sichuan) and marketed since about 6-7 years. The other books put the "kuding
>cha" in the "liu cha" section but precise it's illex-kuding and not
>camellia-sinensis. It seems that do it to keep the old Tang era
>classification that considered it green.
>
>Well, I'm going to read my new book and drink my Fujian kuding cha, which is
>semi-oxidized and is shape in dread-lock. At least I know what I have.
>
>Kuri


excellent report. i do appreciate it. The small leaf is the qing
shan lv shui, yes common in sichuan, that we were talking about. they
consider it a green, but i guess it isn't c. sinesis.

There is also another kind of kuding cha that's famous on some of the
islands on the outside of China, Hainan and the like. It's also
considered a kuding cha but it's mixed with a type of seaweed, I
think. It's reputed to make you live longer as said by the locals.

What could have happened with the Kuding classification, is that some
of the common people a while ago just began calling it kuding cha and
then they forgot why or how they came to this distinction. Many
Chinese even forget the origins of certain phrases that they use on a
daily basis. It's a fairly common thing around the world, I guess.




Mydnight

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thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.