kuri wrote:
> There is the possibility that some of the characters used in the first
> column are only for the Japanese naming of that tea. One possibility is that
> the Chinese original uses a more simplified or more complicated, and that
> character is not of the list of kanji (characters used in Japan), so they
> replace. Another is that they translated the Chinese meaning (here that
> would be the *rolled* thing) into Japanese, with different characters.


These lists of teas are given in Kanji (Japanese character set); but
Kanji uses a lot of simplified characters, which is the same simplied
form of Chinese used in the PRC. It is perfectly fine Chinese, and
perfectly understandable. No switching of Chinese characters to muddle
the meaning. But the encoding is: charset=shift_jis. So it's in
Japanese encoding. Still, if you input these characters using
simplified Chinese IME, you can find them.


> > 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?

I just did a search in Chinese for that Zhou Da Tie Cha, and I found
199 matches. All are Chinese sources. Here is one example:

http://www.china-tea.org/Html/200511593644-1.html


> I suspect the pin yin of that list has been added later, using the automatic
> character change of the computer.

The pinyin transliteration for these teas is mostly correct. But some
of the teas do have mistakes in Pinyin.

> Also, Chinese sites about tea tend to be more basic, give very little
> information. Most of them are only made to sell tea.


That's not really true. There are many many Chinese websites devoted to
tea, to information about tea. Not all are tea vendor websites. In
fact, most of the Chinese tea websites I visit don't sell tea at all. A
lot of Chinese tea websites have very detailed information - and many
many subjects. However, a lot of other tea websites just have garbage
information too. And many tea websites do copy the texts from the other
websites. So what you get is many sites that contain the exact same
information.

I don't really know why you are getting only Japanese websites. Maybe
your CJK IME is not set to Chinese.