Monday, October 20, 2008

Morning tea, October 20th, 2008

This post kicks off the Richmond Tea Blog. 

I brewed some Pouchong that I ordered from Holsome, a tea and medicinal shop in Princeton, NJ. The packaging the tea comes in--if you order enough of it--reads as follows:

FRONT:
Bao-Chung Tea 
from Pinglin, Wenshan

BACK:
Tea Making Instruction

Put Bao-Chung tea in the teapot for about two-third pot ' the pour boiling water (90 C is better) into it for about 20 seconds. In the second times ' pour the boiling water into it for about 30 seconds. It needs about 40 seconds in the third times ' 50 seconds in the forth time and 60 seconds in the fifth times... The flavor of tea could be strong or lightened by personal.


That is the exact wording and punctuation that appears on the packaging. 

Poor translations like the one above run rampant throughout tea literature written in English. And while the translation above is a poor one, it is still easy enough to understand the meaning in english. When the translations get longer, however, it does become harder to know just how much was lost in translation. This, coupled with a severe lack of good books about tea originally written in English, makes it very hard to: 1) find a truly good tea, 2) brew it properly 3) acquire knowledge about the tea growing region and 4) know anything at all about how the tea is grown or processed. Thus one goal for this blog is to find, report and share useful knowledge about tea.

This Pouchong will be discussed again at a later date, now I want to share some photographs of the Pouchong:



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