While shopping for cheap tea at my local asian grocery store, I bought
some vietnamese jasmine flower tea for the great price of $1.29 for
80g. What I was actually looking for was dried chrysanthemum flowers,
which makes a nice herbal tisane. But I got my chinese mixed up and
bought moli cha instead of what I guess would be juhua cha.

In any case, the jasmine flower tea is nothing like the jasmine tea I
expected. The little white flowers have a completely different flavor
from the scented leaves I have had before. The tea leaves are big and
somewhat twisted, with lots of stems (not surprising given the price).
In thinking back, a while ago I was at a Hong Kong style Chinese
restaraunt and they served tea that they claimed to be jasmine. It
didn't taste anything like jasmine to me and I noticed many little
white flowers in the tea pot. Now I realize that it was probably this
same jasmine flower tea. While I sometimes find jasmine tea to be too
strongly scented with jasmine for my liking, this tea is more subtle
and I actually like its soothing flavor (hot or cold!)

Anyone have any knowledge of this type of tea and its relation to the
much different tea that is scented with jasmine (and which is often
rolled into little "dragon" balls)?

-charles-

.. . . as a follow up to my own post, I searched rftd and found this
series of posts on a very similar topic:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.f...6c5d14c24c86bf

I know no vietnamese whatsoever and don't know where to really start
with the vietnamese on the package. But the most significant words
appear to be "Tra Hoa Sen". Because I know some Chinese, that was my
focus. There are three Chinese characters on the package: Mo4 (has
grass radical), Li4 (doesn't have grass radical, but probably should),
and Cha2 (tea). There is no English anywhere on the package. Now I am
wondering if this is really jasmine tea or not.

Charles

What you had is flower tea, or hua cha. Like yourself, my personal
favourite is the gong ju, or tribute chrysanthenum, although I am no
expert. It is difficult to get hold of it here, although I have quite
a few directly from China.

The usual jasmine tea mentioned in the West is a jasmine scented green
tea.

They are entirely different, although may smell similar.

Does this help?

Julian
http://www.amazing-green-tea.com

In article .com,
cha bing wrote:
. . . as a follow up to my own post, I searched rftd and found this
series of posts on a very similar topic:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.f...6c5d14c24c86bf

I know no vietnamese whatsoever and don't know where to really start
with the vietnamese on the package. But the most significant words
appear to be "Tra Hoa Sen". Because I know some Chinese, that was my
focus. There are three Chinese characters on the package: Mo4 (has
grass radical), Li4 (doesn't have grass radical, but probably should),
and Cha2 (tea). There is no English anywhere on the package. Now I am
wondering if this is really jasmine tea or not.

It's not. The Vietnamese is "Lotus Flower Tea." This is Hue style
tea made with lotus, not Saigon style made with jasmine.

For some reason just about every tea from Vietnam is sold in the US
as "Jasmine" no matter WHAT it really is.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

That may help. My tea definitely has tea, not just flowers (though I
was looking for the chrysanthemum flowers without tea when I bought
it). I guess it could be a very low grade jasmine, and maybe that is
why it smells so different. The tea itself is not what I would call
delicate two-leaf-bud pickings. The leaves are rather large, but it is
definitely green.

Strange, my last post appeared about 24 hours after I "posted" it.

In any case, one weird thing about this tea and its marketing is that
it has not one word of English on it. It is entirely in what I presume
to be Vietnamese, with the exception of three Chinese characters that
I believe to be "Jasmine Flower Tea". So it was clearly not made for
the U.S. market.

Thanks, all, for your help.

-charles

Vietnamese Tra Lai Jasmine Packaging
http://www.phuongvycoffee.com/SanPham/tralai.htm

Vietnamese Tra Sen Lotus Packaging
http://www.phuongvycoffee.com/SanPham/trasen.htm

Jim

PS: Sorry for my stuttering posts yesterday.

On Apr 25, 8:40 pm, cha bing wrote:
Strange, my last post appeared about 24 hours after I "posted" it.

In any case, one weird thing about this tea and its marketing is that
it has not one word of English on it. It is entirely in what I presume
to be Vietnamese, with the exception of three Chinese characters that
I believe to be "Jasmine Flower Tea". So it was clearly not made for
the U.S. market.

Thanks, all, for your help.

-charles

For some reason, I had never thought to look up this tea online. Here
is a picture of the packaging:

http://www.hoasentea.com/english_ver...mine/info.html

I guess it is jasmine tea after all. Doesn't smell much like what I
expect of jasmine. Maybe the problem is in my nose.

-Charles

Does your packaging Chinese characters match up with the packaging I
showed? I put more stock in the characters.

Jim

On Apr 26, 5:22 pm, cha bing wrote:
For some reason, I had never thought to look up this tea online. Here
is a picture of the packaging:

http://www.hoasentea.com/english_ver...mine/info.html

I guess it is jasmine tea after all. Doesn't smell much like what I
expect of jasmine. Maybe the problem is in my nose.

-Charles

On Apr 26, 4:22 pm, cha bing wrote:
For some reason, I had never thought to look up this tea online. Here
is a picture of the packaging:

http://www.hoasentea.com/english_ver...mine/info.html

I guess it is jasmine tea after all. Doesn't smell much like what I
expect of jasmine. Maybe the problem is in my nose.

-Charles

I have seen this tea in one of the Thai markets here in Berkeley. It
could very well be that it is just a different kind of jasmine.
Lately, the jasmine has been in bloom around here and there must be a
dozen different types with nearly dozen different scents.
BTW, I have had Vietnamese Lotus tea, often and one brand hardly
resembles another.
Shen

On Apr 26, 2:40 pm, Space Cowboy wrote:
Vietnamese Tra Lai Jasmine Packaginghttp://www.phuongvycoffee.com/SanPham/tralai.htm


The packaging on my tea matches the characters on the Jasmine
packaging above, except the "Li" character does not have the grass
radical on top on my packaging (I think that is the grass radical,
right?). That must be a sort of typo.

I guess. Another li4 character without the grass radical on top means
sharp. You find that character using the dao radical on the right
which is the downstroke and hooked downstroke.

Jim

On Apr 27, 6:09 pm, cha bing wrote:
On Apr 26, 2:40 pm, Space Cowboy wrote:

Vietnamese Tra Lai Jasmine Packaginghttp://www.phuongvycoffee.com/SanPham/tralai.htm

The packaging on my tea matches the characters on the Jasmine
packaging above, except the "Li" character does not have the grass
radical on top on my packaging (I think that is the grass radical,
right?). That must be a sort of typo.

On Apr 28, 11:51 am, Space Cowboy wrote:
I guess. Another li4 character without the grass radical on top means
sharp. You find that character using the dao radical on the right
which is the downstroke and hooked downstroke.

Jim


The "Li" character on my tea packaging is the "Li4" that means sharp.
According to three different dictionaries I have (all from mainland),
the "Li" used in the word "jasmine" is the same as the "Li4" that
means "sharp", except with the grass ("cao") radical. Both "li"'
characters appear to use that "Dao" radical within them, except I
guess it is not the "radical" when the grass radical is on top.

Since we've gone this far into a Chinese discussion (it would be a lot
easier if I could just post a picture of the character, but this has
given me a great excuse to pull out old chinese text books), the "li"
on my packaging contains the grass, or "Cao" radical on top
(simplified form), the growing grain, or "He" radical on the lower
left (similar to the tree radical, only with a slanted line on top),
and the knife, or "Dao" radical on the lower right. It almost looked
like, in the packaging you sent that the lower left in some writings
of "Li" could use what I understand to be a "wei" character (meaning
"not, no") instead of the "he" character. Due to the font, I can't
tell which one babelcarp uses.

Interestingly, neither "Mo" nor "Li" appear to have any independent
meaning. Anyone know why they are used together for the word
"jasmine" (e.g., is the word is a phonetic approximation of a foreign
word), or is that just the way the word is written?

-Charles

the "li"
on my packaging contains the grass, or "Cao" radical on top
(simplified form), the growing grain, or "He" radical on the lower
left (similar to the tree radical, only with a slanted line on top),
and the knife, or "Dao" radical on the lower right.
-Charles

Oops, I mean it does NOT have the "cao" radical, though it probably
should.

Remove the grass radical for either jasmine or lotus and you get the
same pinyin name with another meaning.

http://i19.tinypic.com/4yirtk8.gif

Jim

On Apr 28, 6:08 pm, cha bing wrote:
On Apr 28, 11:51 am, Space Cowboy wrote:

I guess. Another li4 character without the grass radical on top means
sharp. You find that character using the dao radical on the right
which is the downstroke and hooked downstroke.

Jim

The "Li" character on my tea packaging is the "Li4" that means sharp.
According to three different dictionaries I have (all from mainland),
the "Li" used in the word "jasmine" is the same as the "Li4" that
means "sharp", except with the grass ("cao") radical. Both "li"'
characters appear to use that "Dao" radical within them, except I
guess it is not the "radical" when the grass radical is on top.

Since we've gone this far into a Chinese discussion (it would be a lot
easier if I could just post a picture of the character, but this has
given me a great excuse to pull out old chinese text books), the "li"
on my packaging contains the grass, or "Cao" radical on top
(simplified form), the growing grain, or "He" radical on the lower
left (similar to the tree radical, only with a slanted line on top),
and the knife, or "Dao" radical on the lower right. It almost looked
like, in the packaging you sent that the lower left in some writings
of "Li" could use what I understand to be a "wei" character (meaning
"not, no") instead of the "he" character. Due to the font, I can't
tell which one babelcarp uses.

Interestingly, neither "Mo" nor "Li" appear to have any independent
meaning. Anyone know why they are used together for the word
"jasmine" (e.g., is the word is a phonetic approximation of a foreign
word), or is that just the way the word is written?

-Charles