It is said that any wine lover who is still a white has an excel table of appellations and grape varieties.
The essence of this is that the wine names you often hear about, such as Riesling and Cabernet Sauvignon, are named after grape varieties, and together with the labeling of the corresponding appellations, it becomes a way for you to explore the terroir and style of the wine region.
The naming of this exotic beverage is subtle in our way of exploring flavor, so chinese tea, which is also a beverage, will there be nouns belonging to it in foreign countries in addition to the unified "tea".
In addition to the oolong tea "oolong tea" that represents the big tea category, the English translation of only a niche Wuyi rock tea includes no less than three kinds: the most common "WUYI Rock Tea", the most academic "Mt.WUYI's Cliff-grown Teas" and the most Chinese "WUYI YAN CHA".
In a sense, capturing specific objects is borderless.
If you only say oolong tea, foreigners do not distinguish between the second classification under the big classification of oolong tea. Think differently, just as foreigners only tell you that this is wine, and your heart has begun to rebel: "Who doesn't know this is wine!" ”
And their "rebellious" staged a Rashomon with a black tea or a rock tea "Bohe.tea", accompanied by a jianghu legend that "pronounced from dialects", and inexplicably won.
So, whether this is about the more secret or corrective reading of Wuyi rock tea, today we will explore some clues from this language pull.
#01和方言到底有没有关系?
Although it is not clear whether Bohea is talking about rock tea or black tea, it is certain that it is speaking of Wuyi tea, a pronunciation that has not been recognized in WuyiShan, and the legend is that it is a transliteration of the pronunciation of "Wuyi" in Hokkien.
▲Tongmu Pass, located at the junction of the two provinces
According to the geographical location of Wuyishan in Fujian and Jiangxi provinces at that time, coupled with the exchange window of the tea producing area, it was not a closed place to expand this possibility.
There are even three dialects of the locals, in addition to the local Wuyishan dialect, tongmuguan, which is the junction of the two provinces, is mainly Jiangxi dialect, and some of them are the Minnan language of minnan immigrants.
Moreover, Xiamen has historically been one of the four ports open to foreigners, and it seems that it is even more natural to use Wuyi, the dialect of Minnan dialect, as a name that spreads with tea.
Miraculously, most of the minnan friends will silently say "um cubs" (I don't know) in the face of this "Bohea" that represents Wuyi tea.
A minnan small partner told the representative that Wuyi tea is still a literal translation of "Wuyi de" in her familiar Minnan language, rock tea is "Hong Kong de", and black tea is "Li de". The tendency to pronounce this is consistent with the "TE" that comes out of the Fujian Hokkien language family in the three English writing styles of tea.
The relationship between Bohea and Minnan dialect becomes inconclusive, but ambiguous.
On the one hand, although the Hokkien language audience is wide, but also because the local language is widely divided into Hokkien with their own more niche pronunciations, you really can't tell which secret mountain village this pronunciation may come from.
On the other hand, the word Bohea first appeared in the Western world in 1696 in John Ovington's Voyage of Surenth, which is about our Qing Dynasty. According to the development of language research, the current language and the ancient language spoken by the ancients three hundred years ago may not be able to switch seamlessly.
▲Pingtan Hailao porcelain
Traveling through the past is likely to be regarded as an alien spy, and the change in speech does not affect the text. Even Cantonese, a living fossil known as the closest to ancient Chinese and ancient Chinese in modern times, cannot be translated simultaneously, and without leaving any recorded audio, modern pronunciation is actually disturbed by the complex historical changes of Chinese pronunciation.
Not to mention that there is no written dialect, so Bohea may indeed be the historical Hokkien pronunciation of Wuyi, or it may not be. It is really not clear, we lie flat and accept that it is the Result of the English translation of Wuyi Tea.
But in Wuyishan, the birthplace of black tea and oolong tea, the only doubt becomes that the materials, advertisements or posters of the tea trade in the 17th and 19th centuries, as well as bohea, which appeared on the purchase list of the United Kingdom and other common purchase lists, what is this popular tea?
#02Bohea.tea is black tea or rock tea?
Most people will silently believe that this is black tea, and in the 18th century Bohea was one of the three major types of tea imported mainly from The British to China.
Matching the current environment is still popular in the UK afternoon tea is exactly the black tea we are familiar with, forming a certain inertial thinking, the default imported tea is not black tea, in fact, the other two of the three major tea categories are melon slices and pine roses that belong to green tea.
▲ In 1736, the tea list of the "Normanton" also saw a lot of green tea
And Bohea was roughly classified as black tea, in part because the tea presented the appearance of "red tea soup".
Another part is that in the 18th century, Chinese tea only had two types of green tea and black tea, and there was no distinction between black tea and rock tea in the process, only between the two categories of non-fermentation and fermentation, until 1979, according to the oxidation degree of tea tea polyphenols, there was a more detailed division of six major tea types, and there was a more subtle understanding of tea.
In other words, black tea may have been just a general concept at that time, and as the boundaries of tea categories were gradually clarified, the perception of what bohea was tea was jet lag, and this jet lag was very likely not only to say not a tea, but also not a single-fingered word but a multi-fingered word.
In any case, only matching the "strip of black, red tea soup" itself is not scientific, rock tea and black tea can meet such basic conditions.
The more likely phenomenon is actually to call the tea produced in Wuyi Mountain "Bohea.tea", then rock tea black tea can be. However, it is not excluded that black tea is under the market role of considerable imports, and Bohea.tea refers to the frequency of black tea higher than that of rock tea, which gradually shifts to the term black tea.
Throughout the picture, the name of tea is not a layer of unchanged, such as the "Gongfu" and "small species" that now represent the category of black tea, but in the long long ago, it refers to the varieties of tea in Wuyi Rock Tea, and even represents the grade of Rock Tea.
▲ At this time, the small varieties not only refer to black tea, but also oolong
There is such a record in the "Moments of Leisure": "Wuyi tea is high and low, and there are two kinds of ... The tallest of the rock tea is known as the old tree species. The second is a small species. The second is a small kind of work, the second is a worker, the second is a flower fragrance, and the second is a flower fragrance. "In the confusion of time and space, it becomes a name that does not correspond.
▲ Eighteenth-century European records wuyi tea atlas
Fortunately, later, the small black tea had a more Emphasis on cantonese transliteration of "Lapsang Souchong" In English, Wuyi Rock Tea had a rock saying "Wuyi Rock Tea" that better matched the craft.
Only slightly let go of the obsession of who is Bohea tea's life, after all, the only thing that can resonate with the ancients is the moon that has remained unchanged for thousands of years.