Session 03—Wed, Aug 31: Camellia sinensis basics ②: Nomenclature, crafting, brewing

Topics

❖ Tea nomenclature in China, Japan and the West
❖ Crafting (yellow; white, green, oolong, red, and black)
❖ Brewing

Thoughts—read before class, revisit for tests

I covern nomenclature in part because English is very loose with tea terms. "Fementation" almost always means "oxidation" so be careful about that. Also, "black tea" or just "tea" in English usually means "red tea" (in Chinese designations). "Japanese tea" means "green tea" even though in fact there are lots of types of Japanese tea. For that matter "tea" in English means anthing made by infusion (steeping) method. "Mint tea / herbal tea" is NOT tea, strictly speaking: it is steeped mint leaf. "Jasmine tea" IS tea; it is the c. sinensis plant with jasmine added as a fragrance.

There are a lot of details to this day. Undertand the basic steps in the process of crafting, not every little thing, and the basic range of tea production, from "white" to "black".

The pages required below have a lot of information. Please spend 20-30 minutes looking over them, not just a quick glance. We come back to this information over and over again in class.

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ Read Tea production steps: China [on site, HTML]

✓ Read Tea nomenclature: China [on site, HTML]

✓ Read Tea nomenclature: Japan [on site, HTML]

Multimedia notes

❖ DVD excerpts: "teance: the renaissance of tea" (F. Lit Yu directing, 2005)

• Gaiwan service
• brewing various teas with various tea wares
• teahouses

❖ DVD excerpts: Martin Yan's Hidden China: Episode #10 - For All the Teas in Western China

• Puer production in Yunnan
  

Links

⇢ textextext

Other

Health benefits - Crafting links 1009 [bSpace, PPT] (This is a quick draft type file, basically just some notes.)

Tea crafting steps as flow chart [bSpace, PDF] is now on bSpace in a misc. folder. That is the document I had on screen during this session.

Links to each session page