"The Immoral Mr Teas" ha scritto nel messaggio
m...
Cheers, Ralf, Lew & Livio,

Unfortunately, the documentary didn't actually show any of the
preparation of the tea - they just talked briefly about it, and there
was a brief shot at the close of the segment of pouring hot water into
the 2 cup pot, which itself was pretty much stuffed with leaves. (As
y' know, I'm a committed jar drinker, my knowledge of Gong Fu limited
to jumping on my opponent's leg and clobbering 'em on the head).

I kind of assume they smoke a lower grade woody oolong - I can't
imagine anyone smoking the delicate floral Taiwan oolongs ... but I
might be wrong.
And Lew and Livio, could either of you guide me to the written form of
the words "Tampei" and "beilong" (tones or radical or meaning)? I
assume the latter is pinyin, tampei could be mandarin or colloquial?

And finally Livio, "used for drying tea, as well for the finishing or
"re-fining" of many oolong tea."
Such as which ones? Might it have been fairly common years ago to buy
"fresher/unfinished" leaves and finishing the preparation of oolong
teas oneself?

I'll try to get to watch the doc again (the film, A CITY OF SADNESS,
meanwhile has no tea scenes in it as far as I recall, but it's very
good if you get the chance to see it as are most of his films - the
non-costume epics in my opinion) ... if it says the name of the town,
or the cafe owner, etc, I'll let folks know.

Thanks all, J


First of all: forgive me, but it was too late when I realised that I wrote
re-fining instead of re-firing. Actually all non-industrial oolong teas use
this kind of final drying. Some have a very light one (such as Baozhong and
most of China Tieguanyin), some have a middle one (such as TW high mountain
oolong- gaoshan wulong), some have a quite heavy one (yancha of Wuyishan and
TW Tieguanyin). It belongs to the operations necessary for the finishing of
"maocha", semi-processed tea. In some cases you can see tea shop keepers
doing this operation in the premises of the shop in order to keep the tea
leaves dry or to get a more "baked" tea.
It doens't involve smoking, but just drying and baking.
I suppose that "tampei" is the Taiwanese pronuonciation of mandarin (in
Pinyin written) "tanbei", charcoal firing.
Do you know Kangxi 214 radicals? If so...
TAN4: charcoal. A "mountain" at top with "ash, grey" under it
BEI4: bake over fire. Radical 86 (fire) and the left part of character "bu"
of "bufen" (part)
LONG2: basket. A bambu at top (radical 118) with a dragon under it
L