samarkand wrote:

hi samarkand,
sorry for coming back so late, but I wish to thank you for answering
with such a detailed explanation. I knew it was not a "fresh" tea, but
it liked nontheless. And you confirmed what I had in mind about generic
packages.
Very much appreciated

Angela

hi Dominic,

The box packaging is generic. The company that produces this box has
several of similar designs in different colour. These boxes are designed as
gift-packs. Hoever, some tea companies who prefer to package their own teas
but refuse to pay a design fee on the packaging will approach this company
and have their teas packaged in the design as you see. The tea company can
also customise the package to include the name of their own tea.

In this case, Angela's last post with the pics showed that the company *may
be* called 'Ling Yan'. The name of the tea is in the 4th pic of the
previous post, called "Ling Yan Ming Qian Cha" - The pre-Ming (early spring,
around early March) tea from Ling Yan.

Unfortunately, both the name of the tea and the area of production are
ambiguously generic. However, since it says "Ming Qian", early srping tea,
this rules out very much the White Tea speculation. White tea is produced
in the later months. It is a green tea using young flush with lots of down,
similar to the Bi Luo Chun.

The other 4 characters all over the box in pic 3 are "Han Mo Ming Xiang" -
Han Mo means to pen a letter, here it indicates also the fragrance of the
ink; Ming Xiang means fragrance of Tea.

The lines of characters at the bottom of the gold box in the centre are
excerpts from a poem by Admiral Zheng Ban Qiao, but it is misquoted in the
large print...the lines read, in translation:

A few sprigs of black inked Orchids
On paper from Xuan De,
Bitter Tea in a cup
From the kilns of Cheng Hua.

Kinda *Hakku* I guess, to evoke a tonal picture.

The tea, is from Ling Yan. Ling Yan can be a company, or a place. As a
place, there are at least three with the same names in China, but my guess
is the one in Jinan city in Shangdong province. This is the place where the
monks first advocated drinking green tea to stay alert through long prayers.
This area still produces green tea that looks similar.

I think that's about all.

Danny


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