"Lewis Perin" > wrote in message
news
> In researching information for Babelcarp's database, I often run Web
> searches using Chinese characters. Typically you find vastly more
> hits (mainly mainland Chinese sites) this way than if you use the
> Pinyin name for a tea.
>
> I've noticed often that a lot of hits will come from Japanese web
> sites. This isn't too surprising when you think about it: Japanese is
> written using (among other things) Chinese characters; why shouldn't
> Japanese people be interested in Chinese tea; and for those Japanese
> people who are interested in Chinese tea, why shouldn't they use
> Chinese characters to refer to them?[1]
>
> One thing, though, puzzles me about these Japanese sites for Chinese
> teas: some of the teas they list can only be found on Japanese sites.
> If a tea really is Chinese, why wouldn't it be retrievable on some
> Chinese site? Here's an example. (This won't work, of course, if
> your Web browser has no access to Chinese characters.) On the site
>
> http://chinese-tea.info/03g/shurui.html
>
> scroll down to the Jiangxi teas, where you'll find a tea whose Pinyin
> name (in the right-hand column) is zhou da tie cha. Search for it
> using the Chinese characters in the left-hand column. The results
> will be exclusively Japanese sites.
>
> Anyone know what's going on here? Kuri?
>
> /Lew
> ---
> Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html
> [1]Actually, I just thought of a reason why Japanese people wouldn't
> want to use Chinese characters: because, when using them in a Japanese
> context, the phonemes they correspond to wouldn't be the same as in
> Chinese.