I was perusing the website of our friend Howard the ad-troll of
www.jardinduthe.ca and noticed that the description of da hong pao, or
as he calls it, dai hong pao, sounded familiar. Here it is:

"Dai Hong Pao is a very impor-tant Wuyi Oolong whose name comes from
the fact it helped cure an owner of a Large Red Robe which was hung on
the bush, hence earning it the name. Originally there were 4 bushes
growing on a rock on Mount Wuyi, 2 of which still survive today and are
harvested for a few kilograms each year. This original and real Da Hong
Pao can fetch tens of thou-sands of dollars per kilogram but people
have taken cuttings and cultivated genera-tions of Da Hong Pao plants
which provide a more affordable Da Hong Pao that you are likely to find
in many places."

It particularly intrigued me that it was in fluent English. Anyway. I
googled "cure an owner of a large red robe" and found the following on
wikipedia:

"Da Hong Pao is a very important Wuyi Oolong whose name comes from the
fact it helped cure an owner of a Large Red Robe which was hung on the
bush, hence earning it the name. Originally there were 4 bushes growing
on a rock on Mount Wuyi, 2 of which still survive today and are
harvested for a few kilograms each year. This original and real Da Hong
Pao can fetch tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram but people have
taken cuttings and cultivated generations of Da Hong Pao plants which
provide a more affordable Da Hong Pao that you are likely to find in
many places."

Now wikipedia is open-source, and you're allowed to copy it, and many
do, but I still think this is sleazy.

Before we jump to conclusions, is it possible that he wrote the
Wikipedia article himself? Goes to check.....

On 8 May 2006 19:15:39 -0700, "TeaDave" >
wrote:

>Before we jump to conclusions, is it possible that he wrote the
>Wikipedia article himself? Goes to check.....

Agreed, but there is plenty on this site to raise questions, it seems
virtually every single description can be found elsewhere verbatim.

Much of it seems to be scripted blurbs from the distributors as many
sites have the exact same blurb. A good example is
http://www.jardinduthe.ca/eng/leafTea/black/caravan.htm which when
searched pops up on dozens of sites and I hardly think they all copied
the same source.

It is strange though that virtually every single description is easily
found elsewhere. No points for originality, that's for sure.

http://www.jardinduthe.ca/eng/leafTea/yellow/index.htm
http://www.tentea.com/yellowtea.html

http://www.jardinduthe.ca/eng/leafTea/black/assam.htm
http://teajunky.com/boestea.html

http://www.jardinduthe.ca/eng/leafTe...amEarlGrey.htm
http://www.camillestea.com/blackteas.html

http://www.jardinduthe.ca/eng/leafTe...ngSouchong.htm
http://www.englishteastore.com/noname.html


--
Mike Petro
http://www.pu-erh.net