On 23 Oct 2005 11:39:48 -0400, Lewis Perin > wrote:

>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.


sort of like searching for references to french fries on a french web
site?