Talk:Tea/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Draft for a overhaul of the processing/classification section

At the end is a stab at a complete classification, the diversity is amazing, and far more subtle than un-, semi, and fully-fermented. Since this is very complicated, I suggest starting with a list of famous teas, similar to what we have now. Technically speaking, all of these divisions can be mixed and matched, each chinese variety can be fermented fully of left unfermented, and be made from leaves picked at different seasons. In reality, certain varieties, like red tea, tend to be fully fermented, leading to lots of confusion. Green tea is particularly complicated.

My draft list of famous teas:

South Asian and British teas: orange pekoe, darjeeling, earl grey, assam (english breakfast, irish breakfast), masala chai, nilgiri

Japanese: matcha, genmaicha, kukicha, sencha, bancha, gyokuro

Chinese: white, yellow, black tea, red tea (including lapsang souchong), green tea (oolong, pu-er, jasmine, lung ching, gunpowder)

CLASSIFICATIONS

By plant type (Botanical):

1. Assam, India

2. Cambodia, Southeast Asia

3. China:

  a. white
  b. yellow
  c. light green
     inc. oolong
  d. green
     inc. lung ching, pu-er, gunpowder
  e. red (imported to india and sometimes crossed with Assam)
     inc. darjeeling, earl grey, orange pekoe, and lapsang souchong
  f. black

By Process: 1. Brick/Ball (china)

  --especially pu-er

2. Loose Leaf

  a. by fermentation
     I. unfermented
       --lots of disagreement about what falls here, but certainly not all green teas!
     II. semi-fermented (not just oolong)
       --inc. oolong, most green teas, green-colored pu-er
     III. fully fermented
        --inc most red and black teas, and brown pu-er
  b. by other processes (mainly japan)
     I. twigs and stems: especially kukicha
     II. shelter, including gyokuro
     III. powdered, especially matcha
  c. by picking process
     I. machine (mostly south asia and southeast asia)
     II. hand (mostly east asia)
     III. monkey picked (china)
  d. by additive (before brewing)
     I. flowers, inc jasmine tea
     II. brown rice, especially genmaicha
     III. herbs, seeds, vegetables, shrimp, for example in TCM tonics
     IV. spices, especially masala chai
  e. by season
     I. spring (best quality)
     II. late season (late summer or early fall) (lowest quality)

By Grade (bud, leaf type, dust . . .) By Medicinal Properties

  a. yin
  b. balanced
  c. yang

--mjolsnes 10 August 2006

This seems like a really good idea. It really is an amazingly complicated subject. I'll help make these changes.Lesnail 15:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

The processing/classification section

Claims the processing produces sugar. But the intro claims tea has no sugar. Perhaps the sugar doesnt come out of the tea when it is steeped?? But this seems unlikely. Please help.

Originally said three types of tea, which I changed to four to agree with the classification given in the intro. But then the section goes on to distinguish about seven distict varieties. If they really deserve to be counted separately then the count needs to go up from four. But some such as "yellow tea" probably should not be counted. --Lesnail 18:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

---

Sugar is a by-product of the breakdown of naturally-occurring carbohydrates during the withering stage.

There are serious errors in this section. ALL tea is processed on the day of picking, within hours in fact; not "one or two days" later. Oxidization ("fermentation," as it is called in the trade) takes from an hour to four hours; not days or weeks, as this author imagines.

For black tea, the orthodox process needs 24 to 36 hours for withering; eight to twelve hours for rolling and fermentation, which processes occur simultaneously, two to three rollings being done while fermentation is in progress; then firing. CTC process omits the withering stage, since the leaves are sufficiently broken down by the machine; the rest is the same. This author is GROSSLY IGNORANT of tea processing and makes untrue statements in this article, which urgently need correction.

I am not an expert, however. I suggest contacting the Upton Tea Company (www.uptontea.com) and asking them to make a corrected article.

 --- Yaakov Lavon

Portuguese tea

You can verify all I have said about portuguese tea in

http://www.gorreana.com/historiae.htm

Any remarks just tell me.

Gorreana presentation in foreign

http://www.theteacaddy.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=157

Confirm the high price of this tea...

Recently included misinformation / vague statements

[1]

• http://www.teausa.com is given as a source of "Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world after water, with every one in two persons a tea-drinker." Yet the page does not contain such claim.
• China, India, Sri Lanka and Japan are the major producers and exporters of tea leaves. is simply untrue. See virtually any tea production & export statistics [2]. Leading producers usually are India, China, Kenya, Sri Lanka. In export its completely different, as China and India are also leading tea consumtion.
• Australia, Portugal,Pakistan, Argentina are important tea producing countries? Maybe, but the importance certainly isn't derived from tea production.
• An average serving of tea contains only 1/2 to 1/3 of caffeine of the same serving size of coffee. One of the more confusing aspects of caffeine content is the fact that coffee contains less caffeine (1.5%) than tea (2.5% - 4.5%) when measured in its dry form.[3] [4] Maybe such crappy numbers are good enough for Encarta, but is it good enough for inclusion in Wikipedia? Stated this way it does not make much sense, average black tea infusion in Istanbul may contain 100x more caffein per volume than average oolong infusion in Taiwan. The stashtea reference is much better, but contradicts the claim, as caffein content of tea is given from 15 to 40 mg, divided by 80 mg in case of coffee its ~1/5 - 1/2, depending on type. It also warns why the reported values in the literature are so variable. and explains how the average serving was obtained. It would be better to have the contetn referenced from actual studies, not from an overview webpage which states values in literature are varied. --Wikimol 23:42, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikimol, don't remove everything - if possible, correct, not delete. Mandel 09:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Introduction should IMO be very brief summary of the rest of the allready very long article. I thought good place for referenced production statistics would be in the Cultivation section, next to the graph with the same contents.

In case of caffeine contents, unless numbers are cited from resonable scientific sources, I'd prefer to avoid them. --Wikimol 09:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikimol, THERE IS NO REFERENCE THAT PORTUGAL IS A MAJOR PRODUCER OF TEA!!!!!!! Did you even bother to read the article before state your remarks?

Actually Argentina is significant, at least to the US. Most Iced Tea Blends, consumed in the US and elsewhere, are blended from Argentina stocks.

Georgia (The country) is also important, though not mentioned in the article as a significant producing country, as during the cold war they supplied most of the Soviet Union.

The US, lack, of Tea production is also important. The US is the only country that I know of which can produce significant amounts of Tea but fails to have significant production due to wage differences.

apologies if i have read incorectly but the article states "When taking milk with tea, some add the tea to the milk rather than the other way around when using chilled milk; this avoids scalding the milk, leading to a better emulsion and nicer taste." referencing http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3016342.stm. Upon inspection of said article it says "As for adding milk to the tea after it is poured, the RSC issues a stern scientific warning against the practice. It seems that dribbling a stream of milk into hot water makes "denaturation of milk proteins" more likely. And who would want that?"

What is the most consumed beverage?

The tea article says that tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, after water. The coffee article Coffee says that coffee is the most consumed beverage. Which is it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 143.115.159.53 (talk • contribs) .

Well, the articles claim 3.2 million tonnes of tea vs. 6.7 million tonnes of coffee. I assume both refers to the normal trade form, dried tea leaves vs. roasted coffee beans. Since you need a lot less tea per cup than coffee, I'd bet on tea. But it's probably reasonably close.--Stephan Schulz 23:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is really any way to determine is the most consumed beverage. I have a book, called "The Tea Companion" that claims that more tea is drunk than any other beverage, I assume excluding water. So I reccommend thaht we just leave it as what all the sources say about how much is drunk, how much is produced, etc., do the same for the coffee page, and take that ugly notice off the top. Because there's no reason to have it up here if its not also on the coffee page, because the coffee page contradicts this one just as much as this one does the coffee page. --Benuski 02:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

It was also up on the coffee page, but someone removed it. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Consider this: Asia has over 60% of the world's population. And in most of Asia, people tend to be heavy tea drinkers but rarely drink coffee. - Yyshanghai 08:28, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Deletion vote

A new article on a liqueur made from Chinese tea is up for deletion. Please vote here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Qi (spirit). Thank you, Badagnani 07:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Red Tea

I think it might be useful to add a brief note in the black/red tea section explaining the fact that in other areas of the world, red tea is the name reserved for rooibos. This is a rather frequent occurrence, and referring only to the fact that in some areas black tea is called red tea could lead to confusion or even misinformation. I also think that some mention of (yerba) mate tea and rooibis in the introduction might be useful, in order to explain that those two drinks which are growing in popularity are not actual tea. I don't believe either are technically herbal teas and it would not be obvious to me that they qualify as "non-tea". TAsunder 17:53, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, apparently the first one is already there. TAsunder 17:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Russian Tea

No mention of the Samovar in Russia? Is that not what the two-tier teapot is called?

It's not russian tea, it's just black tea. I suppose you can mention Samovar in tea culture. Rikis 12:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Fermentation Definition

In the 'Processing and classification' section it is presupposed that, by definition, fermentation requires microbial action. However, the article on fermentation does not imply this. Dictionary.com also disagrees, so long as a yeast-only definition is not used (which, if it was, would then disallow fungus fermentation to be so-called).

Tea is not actually fermented, but wilted and oxydized. However, for some reason this process has historically been (mis-)named "fermentation". We should probably have a line mentioning this use of language... --Stephan Schulz 13:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment on merge suggestion

I disagree with the merge suggestion (suggestion was merging Camellia sinensis into tea). I think the botanical article should be used as a {{main}} article for a section in this one. The tea article is already quite large, merging won't help that. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Missing Mongolian brick tea

There is no mention of the brick tea brewed in Mongolia. Should this be added since salted tea is a very common drink in Mongolia?

Here's an excerpt from "http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/hbtea.html" website: Brick tea (zhuānchá 砖茶 or jĭnyāchá 紧压茶) is tea (normally black tea) steamed and compressed into "bricks" of various shapes, in which form it is packaged and shipped, sometimes with flour or other additives (onions, ginger, animal blood) to hold it together and/or modify the flavor. Produced especially in Yúnnán 云南 and Sìchuān 四川, brick tea is little used by Chinese, it is the commonest tea in Mongolia (Mènggŭ 蒙古), Qīnghăi 青海, and Xīnjiāng 新疆, where it is commonly mixed with salt and milk when drunk, and in Tibet (Xīzàng 西藏), where it is mixed with salt and yak butter and (often) roasted barley flour.

Sure. Feel free to put something in the article about it. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Instant Tea

No mention was made of instant tea, commonly available in the UK (and, as i understand it, instant iced tea in america). No mention of instant tea is made anywhere on wikipedia, either, as it happens. I've written a brief paragraph on it in the Tea Packaging section, but I'm no expert and it's entirely the product of some quick googling, so might be inacurate. If someone knows more about the product, please do feel free to correct it; it could probably do with it's own article page, but I certainly don't know enough to do that one myself.

Tea Consumption

I've noticed that this article is lacking in facts/figures about how much tea is consumed on a regular basis. I have failed to find a decisive answer on the internet, so if anyone has this knowledge, I think it would make a valuable contribution to the article.

Hey Guys, remember to sign your posts. Complex-Algorithm 22:15, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

classification based on fermentation

There is an excellent book called "the way of tea" by Master Kam, despite the name, it's actually about chinese tea. The authors say that the common classifciaton of green tea (unfermented), oolong tea (partially fermented), black tea (fully fermented) is wrong. And though this article doesn't do this entirely, I do strongly diasagree that there are "four" "true teas". I will add some alternatives here, but I hope that other people can think of better solutions before I suggest one. Also, my perspetictive is mostly chinese, since I am now living in china.

Wikipedia is mostly about "the usual wisdom", and as the common classification is used almost everywhere it should probably stay in the article. If there are other proposal is literature, that could be menioned, but the core should stay with the common classification. (:I would agree its far from precise.) --Wikimol 11:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

random incorrectness

Apologies, I'm new to the Wikipedia syntax, but I noticed a translation of "kung-fu" as "time-energy" which afaik is wrong. I had heard (although this is one of those sourceless anecdotes) that it comes from the name of it's originator Kung fu tzu -- that is, "Master Teacher Kung" in the same form as Chuang tzu or Lao tzu. Can someone who can cite the chinese characters corroborate or prove me wrong?

There is 2 meaning for "kung-fu" in mandarin. One means martial arts; the other means "skillful works". The jargon is originate from tea drinking culture form Teo-Chew tribes in GuangDung, China. It means the beverages is prepare by a skillful master. It has nothing to do with Confucius/K'ung-fu-tzu.

Sign your posts, please??? Complex-Algorithm 22:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

do not merge

i don't think you should merge the section on tea with the history of tea article. it would make this current article even longer. if people want to read about tea history, they can go to the other article.

Concerning updates to Antioxident/Health info

I found a Health Center Online article concerning antioxidant levels in tea. According to the article, the antiox levels of black tea are in some cases higher than the levels in some green teas. Here is a link to the article. http://www.heartcenteronline.com/myheartdr/News_about_the_heart/Antioxidant_levels_of_common_teas_vary_widely.html

Blackthourne 16:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Fluorine/fluoride content

There is a fair amount on the Internet about the potentially dangerous levels of naturally occurring fluorine/fluoride commpounds in tea leaves. Can something be added about this? Badagnani 06:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

"Second most popular"?

How do we know for sure that it is the second most popular drink in the world? Perhaps this should be backed up by a sound research report. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 18:53, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Too many Links

Do you think we can cut out some of the Sea Also links some are unimportant and the list is way to long--Seadog.M.S 00:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps we should transfer some links to articles such as Tea culture or Iced tea. MKoltnow 22:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

advertisement for lipton?

the section on triangle tea bags looks like an advertisement for Lipton

Further, the statement that tea bags ONLY use "fannings and dust" is incorrect. That may be true of less-expensive supermarket teas, but is nothing more than snobbery when applied to tea bags in general. Many very fine teas are available in bags, and have been carefully selected, trimmed and cut before bagging.

It also doesn't provide a world view. In Britain triangle tea bags are marketed only by PG Tips. What is the situation in other countries? Who has criticised them for being environmentally unfriendly? 87.127.73.65 02:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

the indian factor

the inclusion of India and the history of tea in India has been grossly overlooked. This article is too China/East Asian -centric

I second this--Spyforthemoon 18:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

If you guys can get somebody to contribute the Indian section. --Sltan 13:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Requested merge of Tea#Tea_origin_and_early_history_in_Asia and Tea#Tea spreads to the world sections to History of tea

The following section was removed from the to-be-deleted Talk page of History of tea. Nearly a year of discussion has yielded no results, so the empty page is being deleted. Please feel free to be bold and recreate History of tea should this discussion conclude that splitting the indicated sections out is the proper course. — Saxifrage ✎ 04:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Vote

• Support. LuiKhuntek 05:49, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. In fact removal of core section of Tea to separate article is requested (History of tea is a very bad stub). I would reconsider when/if I see meaningful summary intended for Tea. --Wikimol 18:14, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Tea article too long - would benefit from some sections being moved / merged to other articles, whilst of course maintaining suitable links from the main article, with summaries of the most important points. Jamse 17:57, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. This would also aid adding to the article. --Iateasquirrel 00:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support I think the tea article needs a shorter but still substantial history section. If the full section is turned into the History of Tea article and the section in the Tea article is shortened, I think it will add to readability • Leon 12:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Support I agree, the main tea article is unwieldy, and the history of tea is such a big subject. mjolsnes 10 August 2006
• Support The tea article has grown too long. Splitting out of the history is a sensible response.--Simon Speed 21:14, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
• Support I think that 'History of tea' deserves its own article, but I agree with Wikimol, this article needs to be finished off properly!--SAS87 16:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Discuss

The "Tea" article is too long and the bulk of the history of tea (except for the sections specific to China or Japan) can easily be moved to "History of tea" while leaving a summary in the main article. LuiKhuntek 05:49, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

@Jamse I agree some extraordinary long sections could be moved to separate articles and replaced by good summaries - if these are availiable (Tea culture). But this proposed move just does not make sense now

• the section History of tea is in average too brief
• especially its subsection Tea spreads to the world misses many important points and is shorter than it should be in "the ideal Tea article"
• History of tea in China and Japan allready have specific articles and content of Tea is more or less succesfull attempt at summarization creating of Tea culture would create three levels of details/summarization of the same topis (Tea, Tea history, Tea hisotry in specific countries). we should not start maintaining three different levels of the same text when we don't have decent text on any level of details --Wikimol 20:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Does this mean the history section used to be longer? I find it fairly overwhelming as it currently stands. Not to mention East-Asia centric (India gets relatively little play). Are there current objections to relocating material to the sub-pages (history of tea, chinese history of tea... I don't know them all) and leaving short sumaries here? Or could I get started on that?--Spyforthemoon 18:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• The article Tea Culture is very sloppy at the moment and it repeats a lot of what's in Tea (main article). Tea Culture is incomplete with reguards to Tea Etiquette. I think Tea (main article) should only contain solid facts about the substance with other aspects being covered in seperate articles.--SAS87 16:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Improving the Tea culture and Iced tea articles might help us slim down the Tea article by moving material there. MKoltnow 22:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place but I have a couple of criticisms.

First, the allegation that teabags contained the leftovers from real tea processing. I have heard this said before, but have never believed it, and note that there is no source provided for the statement. It also doesn't make logical sense; surely teabags are where a good chunk of the world's tea production ends up? How could a chunk that large be composed entirely of leftovers? The leaves are pulverized to go into the teabags, but that doesn't make them "sweepings" or leftovers.

Second it would be really helpful to have a list of the more common tea types consumed in western countries (Earl Grey; Orange Pekoe; etc.) showing where they come from and how they are related to the other tea types mentioned.Theonemacduff 21:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I like tea with cream. I am from America and would have though milk came in as a diet substitute. I thought everyone drinks tea with regular cream, not milk and certainly not clotted cream which I never heard of until I recently saw it on a travel show on P.B.S. As for Milk Tea, when I was seven, we found Royal Milk Tea and I thought it was something newly invented in or just before 1978 since we never heard of Milk Tea before. I would have thought Milk tea is a new invention from the 1970's when people first began trying to save health by cutting out cream and fat. I am now thinking I am wrong in my tea concept. Thanks! T. Mc. 11:55, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Tea Trade history

Tea trading is started since Tang (618-907)dynasty, between Tang dynasty and Tibet via tea and horse caravan road

Marco polo should be taken out from "Tea spreads to the world", since it is irrelevant to the whole articles.

Caffeine

Does the average cup of tea REALLY contain 40mg of caffeine??

Take a look at caffeine. The sources cited there, however, namely the Nutrition Action Newsletter and Erowid (who in turn cites Caffeine Blues by Stephen Cherniske, M.S. and Bunker and McWilliams in J Am Diet 74:28-32, 1979) show that the caffeine content of teas varies greatly according to the type of tea and the manner of its preparation, but a rough estimate of 40mg isn't way off. – ClockworkSoul 22:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

why the spam tag?

I have checked the external links, and do not understand why that section was tagged possible spam. I would like to remove the tag, but maybe I'm missing something. I suspect it may have to do with the link I added yesterday, but really, I can't tell if that site is commercial; it's just informational.  Sean Lotz  talk  19:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I followed all the links. The only one I found questionable was the Luzianne link. Even so, it is specifically a link to trivia about iced tea, not just the main Luzianne page. I don't consider this to be a link to an advertisement, even though the site is commercial in nature. I am going to go ahead and clear the spam tag. MKoltnow 22:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Can someone recommend a good strong tea?

This article is lacking the names of some strong teas. Can someone suggest a few? -- AS Artimour 03:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

See also

IMO "See also" would benefit from removal of most of links. In it's surrent form it looks like a random sample from [[Category:Tea]] --Wikimol 12:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

That's true, but how would you go about choosing what to remove? Tea as a topic covers a lot of stuff. Sjschen 17:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Mainly point to lists - for example List of teas, List of tea companies, Tea ceremony... if suitable lists/general articles don't exist, they may be worth creating. (I thought about categories, but can't find someting equivalent to "List of teas" in some meaningful order)

Exclude obscure connections, Anna Russel may be important for Tea (meal) or tea culture og Britain, but I doubt it's useful to link to her from here. --Wikimol 23:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Links

I presume the links in the intro were removed because they led to a commercial site but ... if you look at the specific pages linked they had only info of direct relevance to this article (a definition of the types of tea); there was no commercial marketing etc on those pages. Incidentally I have no personal link to this company I simply found them by googling. IMHO these links are very worthwhile and should be reinstated. On second thoughts I will put them lower down as a citation for the definitions in the body of this article since I note there are no citations; in fact there aren't many in the whole article. Unless of course anyone proffers a good reaon why I shouldn't. Abtract 23:29, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I removed the links. They were not wildly inappropriate. As you say, the pages themselves were informational, not commercial. But, it seems they did not adequately add pertinent information which could not be gotten in the appropriate WP articles; they are commercial sites, which I would rather not see linked to especially in the body of the article itself (personally, I would give greater leeway to links in the external links section at the bottom); and I think (this is opinion) that references provided to back up claims should generally be non-commercial sites. I won't delete them again if you want to re-add them. I made my point, and it's not a point worth fighting for. I'm easy with it; somebody else may share my same perspective and take them out again, but that's somebody else's business. And you are right: the lack of citations is not good. Sadly, a lot of WP suffers from that. But who am I to complain? I am horrible that way, myself. I do appreciate the attempt.  Sean Lotz  talk  01:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The problem is that the other WP articles for black, green tea etc also do not give any citations for the basic definitions. Normally I would avoid commercial sites and indeed strike them on occasions but these were the best pages I could find. I probably will put them back somewhere suitable but I will also look for better refs. Abtract 01:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

My favorite source for tea definitions is also my favorite tea merchant. Upton Tea has a section called "Information" with an "Online Tea Dictionary." They give the sources for their definitions. But they don't seem to have a definition for "black tea."  Sean Lotz  talk 

theophylline in tea

Please revert the revert you applied- nowhere in the website you supplied does it actualy say how they determined the theophylline content of tea. I have both personally measured, and seen a reference published in a reputable journal that claims almost no theophylline (e.g. below detection limit) was found in tea upon careful analysis. The fact that people have made claims of this in the past is likely due to less reliable analytical technique. MatthewEHarbowy 22:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

More info here, while theophylline is sometimes detected it is not in significant quatities (about 1mg per liter) whereas for treatment for asthma typical doses are 20mg/kg/day or about 900mg/day for an adult see this. It is misleading to mention this at the top of the article- it could be listed in a lower section among the other trace components. MatthewEHarbowy 22:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Sadly what you or I may have measured is of no account in WP terms - this counts as original research. What does count is Verifiability.Abtract 23:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Note: the first 3 paragraphs in this section have been copied from User talk:Abtract for continuation on this page. Abtract 23:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Read this, that I cited before. It says there is 0-4mg/liter, with ~200ml a normal serving. Assuming average is ~1 (consitent with citation), that's 0.2mg per cup. Caffeine is about 40mg, and therapeutic doses of theophylline are hunderds to thousands of times that amout. The webpage you cite has no scientific references, and is indirectly claiming that tea might be considered useful for treating conditions like asthma because it contains theophylline. This is misleading, and should not be in the introduction section of the article. MatthewEHarbowy 23:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks I have inserted your useful citation which lists threee significant natural components of tea:)Abtract 23:46, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Just because it is present doesn't make it a natural source. You could say it is a good source of lead, for instance, because it contains 0.002 to 0.012mg/l of lead [5] but that would be misleading, because that's not a significant source of lead in the diet.

"Cuppa"

"Cuppa" redirects here, but the word itself does not appear anywhere in the article. That makes it a bad redirect. It should be mentioned in the appropriate section that "cuppa" is a slang word for "cup of [tea]". function msikma(user:UserPage, talk:TalkPage):Void 06:57, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Then please do it :)Abtract 09:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Blue tea

A recent edit mentions blue tea for the first time ... the citation is to a chinese language site which leads to this [6] English language page which does not mention Blue tea. perhaps there is a citation that works better or in the meantime perhaps this mention of blue should be removed :)Abtract 00:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't know if this counts, but the chinese interwiki link at the oolong page send you directly to "blue tea". Sjschen 00:25, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Since I dont read chinese it can't count a lot but the English page [7] suggests that when they are selling they also use oolong as the generic code for 'dark green tea' or 'semi-fermented tea' Abtract 00:36, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Oolong is the generic term in English for this kind of tea, this is why the Oolong tea page is call such, and not "Blue tea" or "dark green tea". I think it is important to have this information and show that another culture classifies tea in such a way. This is not original research and the source is cited. Sjschen 00:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

not sure about all of this. The character 青 cited is mentioned here as meaning blue, green, black or young. Calling it blue tea seems inappropriate since "oolong" is well understood to be the appropriate translation, even though literally that english word is closest in meaning to "black dragon", making "black dragon oolong" a useless repetition. I am also concerned that this interpretation, "blue", is a local interpretataion and would be translated differently depending on the region. It's an interesting observation, but should the general article on tea cover it, or should it be mentioned on the oolong tea page? I dislike strongle that the general "tea" page has become a repoitory for too much specialized information which would be more useful if it were classed and organized better on daughter pages. My bone to pick with theophylline, for instance. I wish the editors on this page could make a firmer decision to commit only general information on tea on this page, and relegate finer points of translation and chemistry to daughter articles. MatthewEHarbowy 19:47, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Sugar in Yak Butter Tea?

Under the "Pu-Erh" section Tibetan Yak Butter Tea is mentioned, and it is said here that one ingredient of butter tea is sugar. However the wikipedia page on butter tea (linked to from the present article) does not mention sugar as an ingredient. Neither does the wikibooks cookbook list sugar among the ingredients.

---

According to accounts of I have read of travels in Tibet (most recently in National Geographic), Tibetans put salt in their tea, along with yak butter.

-- Yaakov Lavon

Milk reduces the health benefits of tea

Please see this newspaper article. It is based on a scientific paper in the European Heart Journal

AN ONLINE paper in the January 7th issue of the European Heart Journal points out that it is better to drink tea without added milk. Researchers from the Charité Hospital, Berlin have found that the beneficial effects of tea are greatly reduced upon adding milk. It appears that proteins in milk bind to some of the substances present in tea, leading to a vast reduction of their beneficial effects.

Also, 'Drinking tea with milk was no better than drinking water!' I am yet to take a look at the original paper.--Sahodaran 08:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC) Here is the paper.--Sahodaran 10:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Moved from article to talk page

Tea in popular culture

• Prefered beverage of fictional character Jessica Fletcher, protagonist of detective show Murder, She Wrote

---

Someone added the above section. Don't know whether it would be worth looking at expanding or not. I mean, it could include anyone that's ever been on TV - ever. Especially British TV (e.g. Arthur Dent in HHG2G, and the entire cast of EastEnders). Anyway, moved it here for discussion or deletion. Bubba hotep 12:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, it's just been put back in. Over to you. Bubba hotep 12:41, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Since the re-adder was the original author, and there was no indication that he/she was aware that it had been brought here for discussion, I removed it again and added a comment in its place indicating that it needed discussion here first.  Sean Lotz  talk  23:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

IMHO this should not be in this article, a separate article maybe (though I'm not convinced) but not here. My main reason is that it isnt really about tea as such. Abtract 00:33, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• This is definitely about tea. Except it.

Why Bangladesh is not included among the tea producing countries?

It's funny that the map showing the tea producing countries doesn't include Bangladesh, which is a major tea producing country in South Asia. Bangladesh has hundreds of tea gardens in the Sylhet and Chittagong regions and it is also one of the bigger exporters of tea in the international market, United Kingdom being one of the largest importers of tea from Bangladesh. The map must be edited as quickly as possible. Kazimostak 15:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Appears to leave out a large number of US teas

In fact I don't see a reference to any of the teas served cold here; this list appears to only includes the hot ones. Jon 22:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

smoking tea

what happens if you smoke tea (not marijuana, sometimes called tea)? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by The Right Honourable (talk • contribs) 09:46, 16 March 2007 (UTC).

I'm not sure what happens. I think a more interesting question would be what happened before smoking it that lead to the smoking in the first place (Down's syndrome, etc.)

i predict a soapy taste in the mouth and a vague feeling of nausea. maybe you could try it and find out. Meanderthal 09:37, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Tea Growing countries map

The map indicating tea growing regions should be revised. Korean tea is mentioned in the article yet it doesn't show up as a tea producer.

Panamajack 22:16, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

DoneSjschen 23:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Australia should also be on the map, having grown tea for 30 odd years. Velour Badger 15:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

What is the source of this map? Is it just an OR? I know other tea producing countries which are not mentioned like Iran.Farmanesh 01:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Yamamoto

I have restored statements sourced to Yamamoto which were deleted. JFD 21:08, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

?

I think someone should add a section on the psychoactive effets of tea

WHEAT TEA

Can someone add some info on Japanese WHEAT TEA? I'd like to find out mor about it since I was just given some as a gift. 74.129.182.66 19:27, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Sun tea

Why does sun tea redirect here? It's certainly an unusual enough concept to have its own page, and I was looking forward to figuring out what the hell it's all about.

worldmap

First of all the Caspian Sea is shown as a land while its water, that needs to be corrected. Second Azerbaijan a nation near the Caspian Sea also produces its own teas and they should be added om the map. Here are a few soucres which confirm this: [8] [9] Talyshli 11:21, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Green Tea

Should we mention Health Benefits of Green Tea? I don't know for sure if there is an article on it, but if there is, should we create it. I have a resource about the benefits of Green Tea at http://www.greentea.com --Complex-Algorithm-Interval 02:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

REMOVE COMMERCIAL LINKS

its not right to have references from websites that SELL tea. these links should be removed, their only interest in having information on tea is to drive traffic to their stores and mesmerize visitors. there must be some non-commercial articles that have the same information.

I doubt it, because usually the tea companies themselves have the information, because they know bet about their own tea. Also, please sign with four tildes (Complex-Algorithm) after posting. Thank You. Complex-Algorithm 22:11, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Temperatures of "tea preperation" too high

Almost all types of tea described state a temperature close to boiling point or even boiling point. Also, nowhere did I see any temperature lower than 80°C, aldough sometimes 60°C is appropriate (with certain teas). Please note that :

-with not a single tea a temperature of 100°C should be used -depending on the tea used a temperature of 60°-90°C should be used

With this information (and other information available online), the article may be corrected

KVDP 16:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, after looking through the different sections I think they might need an update. Although 100°C is appropriate for most black and pu-erh teas or the taste won't develop properly. As far as I know, and have experienced as well as the recommendation I've seen from "experts", most other teas require temperatures in the 60°-90°C range. Some even lower than 60 but thats rare. --Apis O-tang 22:19, 6 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Apis O-tang (talk • contribs)

Low temperature steeping

Sun tea redirects here, but there is no mention of that or other low temperature methods of preparation (a safer alternative to sun tea being to brew it in the fridge overnight[10]). Anyone have any good sources for that? scot 14:57, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Cream

Some connoisseurs eschew cream because it overpowers the flavour of tea. - Jesus Christ- these weasel words should be changed. Some connoisseurs eschew adding horse piss too probably. It's a simple fact that like horse piss, cream should not be added to tea. Jooler 13:10, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, why even mention it =/ (even though cream is used with coffee). It's hardly necessary to mention all the things that don't go well with tea, i mean it would be an awfully long list. I'll remove it for now =) --Apis O-tang 22:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Apis O-tang (talk • contribs)

There is a whole 'nother wikipedia page dedicated to tea with "clotted cream" which one pbs travel show first brought to my attention. The words "some conoisseurs eschew" implies that a sizeable number enough to use this terminology of uneducated and confused people do, though incorrectly, drink tea with at least some kind of cream. Of course it appears now that this is done only in Britain and not in America except if trying to do a British formal tea demonstration; also, that such perhaps improperly used cream is a special ultra thick British cream and not the liquid Rich's coffee creamer nor creamer powder we add to our coffee in America.T. Mc. 01:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not from england either, but as far as I understand, clotted cream is used like butter on scones with jam, which is traditionally served together with tea, but never added to the tea itself. Although if one is to believe the clotted cream page, something similar to clotted cream is added to salted tea in Mongolia (I'm guessing that is the butter that is referred to in the other additives section). I removed the Some connoisseurs eschew cream part because it doesn't make sense to say what not to add to tea, that is something that's ultimately up to each individual tea drinker. I don't think it's common practice to add cream to tea however, I've never heard of anyone doing it until now =). --Apis O-tang 12:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Tea oxidiser

As can be read in the "serving"-section:

The flavour of the tea can also be altered by pouring it from different heights, resulting in varying degrees of oxidisation. This high-altitude pouring is used principally by people in Northern Africa (e.g. Morocco, Mali, ...) and serves to positively alter the flavour of the tea. In certain cultures the tea is given different names depending on the height it was poured form, e.g. in Mali, when depending on the amount of oxidation done the tea is called respectively "la vie", "l'amour", "la mort".

Would it be possible to mimic this process simply by putting a hose with air pump in the tea pot ? I am thinking about making a tea maker (which does exist, aldough it has not yet been described by Wikipedia; see this link and also the Tassimo-article. Perhaps you might add such article on Wikipedia too.

Cheers,

Zippo (talk) 17:10, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Changing the style of the etymology section

As reading the etymology...section, I feel dizzy and can't figure out which country calls which. So I suggest that the changing of the section with using "wikitable" like below.

Country	Name	Country	Name	Country	Name	Country	Name	Country	Name
Afrikaans	tee	Armenian, Catalan	te	Czech	té or thé (archaic)	Danish	te	Dutch	thee
English	tea	Esperanto	teo	Estonian	tee	Faroese	te	Finnish	tee
French	thé	West Frisian	tee	Galician	té	German	Tee	Hebrew	תה, te or tei
Hungarian	tea	Icelandic	te	Indonesian	teh	Irish	tae	Italian	tè
Javanese	tèh	scientific Latin	thea	Latvian	tēja	Lithuanian	arbata(1)	Low Saxon	Tee [t(ʰɛˑɪ] or Tei [t(ʰaˑɪ]
Malay	teh	Norwegian	te	Occitan	tè	Polish	herbata (2)	Sesotho	tea
Scots Gaelic	tì, teatha	Singhalese	thé	Spanish	té	Scots	tea [tiː] ~ [teː]	Sundanese	entèh
Swedish	te	Tamil	தேநீர thenīr	Telugu	తేనీళ్ళు tēnīru	Welsh	te	Yiddish	טיי, tei

Both (1), (2) from Latin herba thea

Country	Name	Country	Name	Country	Name	Country	Name	Country	Name
Albanian	çaj	Amharic	pronounced shy	Arabic	شاي shai	Assyrian	pronounced chai	Azeri	çay
Bengali	চা	Bosnian	čaj	Bulgarian	чай chai	Capampangan	cha	Cebuano	tsa
Croatian	čaj	Czech	čaj	English	char, slang	Georgian	ჩაი, chai	Greek	τσάι tsái
Gujarati	cha	Hindi	चाय chai	Javanese	tèh	Japanese	茶, ちゃ, cha	Kannada	Chaha
Kazakh	шай shai	Korean	茶,차 cha	Macedonian	чај, čaj	Malayalam	"chaya"	Marathi	chahaa
Mongolian	цай, tsai	Nepali	cheeya	Oriya	cha	Persian	چای chaay	Punjabi	ਚਾਹ
Portuguese	chá	Romanian	ceai	Russian	чай, chai	Serbian	чај, čaj	Slovak	čaj
Slovene	čaj	Somali	shaax	Swahili	chai	Tagalog	tsaa	Thai	ชา, cha
Tibetan	ཇ་ja	Tlingit	cháayu	Turkish	çay	Ukrainian	чай chai	Urdu	چاى
Uzbek	choy	Vietnamese	*trà and chè

• they are both direct derivatives of the Chinese 茶; the latter term is used mainly in the north and describes a tea made with freshly-picked leaves.

discussion and thought

Please take a look at the above table and leave any input here thanks.. --Appletrees 23:47, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this is fantastic. You should just add it. Sjschen 01:55, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer. I will go ahead to add it onto the article. ^^--Appletrees 02:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Statistics section

I don't understand the table at all. There are two conflicting sets of figures, and there is no header to explain what the two sets of figures represent. Also, the table conflicts with the map. The map indicates no significant amount of tea is produced in Indonesia, but the table indicates Indonesia is one of the world's major tea producers. Someone who knows things should fix this. Ordinary Person (talk) 09:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Statistics section

I don't understand the table at all. There are two conflicting sets of figures, and there is no header to explain what the two sets of figures represent.

Also, the table conflicts with the map. The map indicates no significant amount of tea is produced in Indonesia, but the table indicates Indonesia is one of the world's major tea producers.

Someone who knows things should fix this.

Ordinary Person (talk) 09:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Calmness?

Is there any truth to the claim that tea makes you calmer? Does your pulse go down after drinking a cup of tea? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.139.202.21 (talk) 07:30, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Calmness through Theanine perhaps? Sjschen (talk) 15:27, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

The calming effect might be a reference to Chamomile herbal tea which is cited for calming and digestive issues as it is a mild sedative. It has the following chemcals: bisabolol (essential oil), lactones, coumarins, glycosides. Please note that chamomile tea is not infact made from tea (as in the plant Camellia sinensis) but rather it is an herbal infusion (tisane). Zidel333 (talk) 19:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Tea usually has caffeine, which is a stiumulant, so it is far from calming. Jehan6018, Jan 30, 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.144.145.25 (talk) 22:00, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Caffeine is indead an active ingredient which like any active have different impact on the body dependind on the amount you drink. Do simple a experiment: drink a coffee one evening and the next day drink a tea. You will see the result will be different. Sensonet (talk) 10:10, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

See also clean-up

How about removing the tea companies from this section? Otherwise it will get to big. There can instead be a link to a list of them based on the [Category:Tea brands] page. What do people think? Malick78 (talk) 13:57, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Tea in Australia

Australia is not shown as a tea producing nation in this article's graphic.

However, Nerada Tea have quite a large plantation near Cairns in Queensland.

http://www.neradatea.com.au

There are also several other growers, such as Madura Tea, Daintree Tea and Northern Rivers Tea.

Australia is also shown as a "tea producing nation" in the article that is cited under the graphic.

121.44.93.124 (talk) 11:11, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

First line rewrite

Tea is a beverage made by steeping processed leaves, buds, or twigs of the tea bush, Camellia sinensis, in hot water for a few minutes.

change to -->

Tea is an infusion made by steeping processed leaves, buds, or twigs of the tea bush into hot water. The steeping usually thanks no longer than a few minutes.

-> "usually thanks" ????

This rewrite should be done to show the similarities between herbal tea, mate, tea, ...

Please look into and change this line. Thanks.

KVDP (talk) 13:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction regarding Catherine of Braganza

This article says that Catherine of Braganza brought tea to the English court when she married Charles II in 1660, and that Samuel Pepys mentioned tea "the same year." But according to the article Catherine of Braganza, she didn't marry him or arrive in England until 1662. - Montréalais (talk) 17:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

That is a big contradiction. Some what should fixed that pronto. Chop chop! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.164.223.204 (talk) 17:16, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Where is just plain tea?

Well? 63.227.5.54 (talk) 07:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "plain tea"? Sjschen (talk) 14:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

If by plain you mean traditional Western tea (e.g. a non-flavored blend of Black tea that is withered, oxidized and/or placed in a teabag), then yeah. Check out the Black Tea article. Its quite helpful. Zidel333 (talk) 15:09, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Tetsubin article help

OK, I've been reading up on Tetsubins (Japanese iron teapots) for a while now, and I'm getting contradictory information on them. Essentially, they are kettles in Asia, that is to say all they do is brew the hot water for infusion. In the West however people believe that iron teapots are just that, tea pots to brew the tea in. Not kettles. This may partially be explained as the kettles are very small, and look like a tea pot for 2. The main issue is that iron, unlike other metals, reacts to the tea forming tannins and thus damaging the flavor of the tea. So, if this is all true, and we are to agree with the original and correct usage of the tetsubin is a kettle, then the entire article needs to be rewritten.

Any thoughts? Am I wrong here? I'm looking up sources right now. Zidel333 (talk) 20:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

A Small Correction

In Spanish, monosyllabic words are never diacritically accented. So the word for tea is te, not té.

• I'm a Spanish native speaker and I can assure that the word té must be written with accent. It's true that monosyllabic words are not usually accented in my language, but they are when a monosyllabic word has more than one meaning, like in this case. Te (without accent) means something like "to you". As the word has two meanings, when refering to one of them --the drink-- it must be written with accent. Pabletex (talk) 18:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Another Linguistic Point

Chaa probably came from Cantonese, actually, since British sailors would have spent so much time there, instead of in North China. JKn from

Tea in the United Kingdom

Which county in the United Kingdom would you say that is the most famous between them all for its high-quality and well-known tea? If you know any British city that has become famous for its tea, it would also be helpful to me. Pabletex (talk) 18:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Yorkshire —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.88.34.176 (talk) 00:41, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

White Tea

There's a discussion in the German Wikipedia about the correct word for Tea with milk in Great Britain. Does the expression "white tea" exist? And if so, is it just used in families or is it an official term? Dinah --217.87.215.29 (talk) 21:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

"White Tea" refers to an actual type of tea leaf, just like "green tea" or "black tea", and it is regarded as pretty official, IMO. Tea with milk or tea with cream is sometimes referred as "milk tea" or "tea with milk", though the milk or creamers added to the tea is sometimes called "whitening". Sjschen (talk) 22:21, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

In the UK and Ireland it's standard to add milk to tea, so in practice most people would call it "tea". If you wanted black tea you'd have to specify that.AleXd (talk) 22:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Tea temperatures

correct tea temperatures are:

• 100°Celsius for fermented tea (black)
• 90°-100° Celsius for semi-feremented tea (oolong, ...)
• 70-80° Celsius for unfermented tea (green, ...)

reference:

Alter the article with this information. Thanks. 87.64.201.184 (talk) 08:25, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Removed statement/s

Discuss these statements here before removing them.

I undid the removal of the statements within India section as I found it to be plausible. A source would be helpful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Media Research (talk • contribs) 03:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

In the mid-nineteenth century the "discovery" of tea growing wild in Assam proved to be consequential, since India's British rulers desired to break China's monopoly of world tea exports. There is little evidence, however, that tea played any role in Indian agriculture and the Indian diet prior to that time

— Gardella, Robert (1994). Harvesting Mountains. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520084144.

The word "tea" occurs in Shakespeare, and "cha," the Canton-Macao form, crops up in Lisbon from about 1550. "Cha" was used in English seaports until quite recent times, and was corrupted inland to "char" (no link with "charlady"). The upper classes pronounced it "tay" and spelt it "thé" as in French, and this was the common pronunciation of the genteel classes until Victorian times. The word was also spelt "te," "thia," and "kia," in imitation of various Mandarin alternatives in China itself. Significantly, the word was unknown in India until it was introduced by the English. ....
Tea was unknown in India, except as an imported consumable from China, enjoyed only by some Europeans and a few Europeanized Indians.

— Hobhouse, Henry (2005). Seeds of Change: Six Plants that Transformed Mankind. Shoemaker & Hoard. ISBN 1593760493.

I'm still not convinced that tea didn't exist in India before the British introduced it to them. Lack of known/existing evidence doesn't neccesarily confirm non-existence in India before the British rule. Direct quotes from books doesn't seem reliable enough - I would like to see more historical evidence. I'm very sure that I've heard or read somewhere that there was a different method of drinking tea in India before British introduced the Chinese method. The origins of tea-drinking may perhaps lie in China, but it could have spread towards India (at least North-East India) before the British took control. I'll do more research and give feedback. Media Research (talk) 03:02, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Lack of known/existing evidence doesn't neccesarily confirm non-existence in India before the British rule.

You're right, it doesn't.

Just remember: the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; also, "verifiable" in this context means that readers should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source.

JFD (talk) 05:14, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll remove the two sources as would be safe to say that the Encyclopedia Britannica quote, which says the same thing as the above mentioned quotes, covers both points adequately. It also uses somewhat lesser harsh language and doesn't stand out. Vtria 08 (talk) 23:49, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[sock]

Finally, there is also the quote from The Cambridge World History of Food which begins with the same statement. Vtria 08 (talk) 23:54, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[sock]

I'm going to restore (and somewhat re-word) the material as there was some unpleasantness over this issue with a sockpuppet some time back. JFD (talk) 23:59, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

You shouldn't let interactions with past sock puppets dictate future (or present) actions. Should I restore the text 'According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica (2008):' so that the text is attributed to Encyclopedia Brittanica? Vtria 08 (talk) 06:18, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[sock]

There was unpleasantness because the sockpuppeteer was trying to use sources to imply conclusions that they didn't explicitly support.

Let me re-word it again to try and make it less "harsh" (as you put it), but still clear.

And the text is already attributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica by footnote. JFD (talk) 11:13, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The difference between 'Indians were introduced to the custom of drinking tea, and its cultivation as an agricultural crop, in the 19th century by the British.' and 'Many scholars are of the view that prior to the 19th century, tea was unknown to the Indian diet and to Indian agriculture.' is very less. It still stands out like the article means to target a nationality whatever the intention may be.

I'll incorporate text about China in the article and remove repeated mentions of a single statement. The Britannica and Cambridge quotes do the job without standing out.

Vtria 08 (talk) 13:33, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[sock]

The salient point, which you keep omitting, is that tea-drinking and the cultivation of tea as an agricultural crop were not practiced in India until the 19th century. And surely this section ought to address the issue of when these practices were introduced to India. JFD (talk) 13:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Your concern regarding agriculture has already been addressed. The Cambridge World History of Food quote states that: 'The tea cultivation begun there in the nineteenth century by the British'.

Furthermore, the Encyclopedia Britannica states: 'In 1824 tea plants were discovered in the hills along the frontier between Burma and the Indian state of Assam. The British introduced tea culture into India'.

I introduced the Cambridge quote on cultivation by the way. I also introduced the Encyclopedia Britannica quote on discovery and introduction.

Vtria 08 (talk) 14:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[sock]

My concern regarding the custom of drinking tea remains unaddressed or, rather, was omitted by you. JFD (talk) 14:32, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The mention of cultivation, discovery and introduction is more than enough. But at this point I'm in no mood to reply to any more intimidating posts by you. Good Day, JFD. Vtria 08 (talk) 15:32, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[sock]

Your concern regarding 'custom of drinking tea' in India is addressed by the Cambridge quote: "Although a Dutch seafarer wrote of tea being eaten as well as drunk in India in 1598, accounts of earlier Indian history do not mention the use of tea or its cultivation."

I hope you will not add repeated mentions in an overly strong manner again.

Vtria 08 (talk) 19:29, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[sock]

Vtria 08,

If you want to "omit repeated mentions", take a look at your own contributions.

Most of the text you've added to the history section is about Indian tea production in the present day; what's more, it's been superseded by more recent research already cited in the production section.

JFD (talk) 18:50, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

If its 2000 then its history. I'll mention that more clearly in the introduction to the Cambridge quote. Vtria 08 (talk) 15:25, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[sock]

Out of curiosity, Vtria, if you consider the year 2000 "history," why do you delete citations from 2005? JFD (talk) 15:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I presume your comments are directed towards this citation:

Many scholars are of the view that prior to the 19th century, tea was unknown to the Indian diet and to Indian agriculture.<ref>Hobhouse 2005:119</ref>

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica quote:

"In 1824 tea plants were discovered in the hills along the frontier between Burma and the Indian state of Assam. The British introduced tea culture into India in 1836 and into Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1867. At first they used seeds from China, but later seeds from the Assam plant were used."<ref>tea. (2008). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.</ref>

In addition, the Cambridge quote covered additional details about history of the cultivation of tea in India from the times of the British till 2000.

Vtria 08 (talk) 16:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[sock]

Vtria 08,

Of concern is your heavy reliance on tertiary sources (e.g. Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Cambridge World History of Food), that is, sources which themselves are summaries of primary and secondary sources.

Wikipedia is itself a tertiary source and, for that reason, tries not to rely too heavily on encyclopedias and other tertiary sources: because doing so makes Wikipedia nothing more than a copy of other encyclopedias and tertiary sources.

Since your deletions, Vtria 08, not only does the history of tea in India section cite only tertiary sources but, of its 247 words, fully 220—almost 90%!—have been cut-and-pasted from those tertiary sources.

Can you see why this is a problem?

JFD (talk) 18:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

There’s no real problem, JFD. Both Cambridge and Encyclopedia Britannica are reliable sources. But I'm beginning to see that you have been changing arguments to have the text deleted on some pretext or the other.

Out of sheer curiosity, I spent the last hour looking up your contributions to find that you like to put China above India when it comes to articles like salt (where you deleted India), University (where you played up China as the cradle of Universities without citing a source), and Indian martial arts (where you cite from http://pic1.piczo.com/).[sock]

In each of those cases, I was fixing the damage done by a notorious sockpuppeteer[11][12][13] whom the Arbitration Committee forbade from editing Wikipedia under any username other than his original. JFD (talk) 23:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Good Day,

Vtria 08 (talk) 20:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[sock]

You also put these lines in the article: "The assamica variety of camellia sinensis growing wild in Assam gave the British a way to break the monopoly that the Chinese had hitherto held on tea."

JFD, There are better ways of promoting China then to attack India or the west.[sock]

Vtria 08, originally I made no mention of China or the west. JFD (talk) 23:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Vtria 08 (talk) 20:10, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Now you have attacked India by deleting a source from 2003 and copying/pasting from "Yamamoto p. 2", the reference for which you do not provide.[sock]

I was doing nothing more than fixing damage by that same sockpuppeteer. JFD (talk) 23:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Note that we have a Cambridge quote which claims that "Although a Dutch seafarer wrote of tea being eaten as well as drunk in India in 1598, accounts of earlier Indian history do not mention the use of tea or its cultivation."

Why attack other countries repeatedly? This has to stop sometime. You tend to do this habitually and you're subjecting article after article to your POV. Being pro-China I can understand but being anti-west and anti-India, and editing on that pattern here is something that has to be taken seriously, and stopped.

Vtria 08 (talk) 20:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[sock]

Look, Vtria 08, you clearly understand the value of leaving out irrelevant details, otherwise you would have left in the sentence immediately after "Although a Dutch seafarer wrote of tea being eaten as well as drunk in India in 1598, accounts of earlier Indian history do not mention the use of tea or its cultivation."

You know, the one about the popularity of buttermilk?

I have deleting nothing you added. Even where it was a repeated mention—the pretext you have used to delete text—I have moved it to a more appropriate place in the article rather than deleted it, even though it was redundant.

That is because I have heretofore assumed good faith on your part.

Best, JFD (talk) 23:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

JFD,

You're very good with your replies.

Its good that you're pro-China. Heaven knows that the Chinese people have worked hard for this moment and their achievements are celebrated by humanity in general, including the westerners and Indians (from what I gathered from Joseph Needham's reviews) who enjoy what China helped develop. Your stand that China's achievements should never be taken away or hurt is both understandable and admirable.

But my problems begin when you edit on the sections dealing with other countries, where you deliberately hurt their achievements to a significant extent. What bothers me in particular is that there is a large number of 'West' and 'India' sections throughout your contributions list that could do with some editing.

I'll be editing some of those in the near future.

I'd like to end with that famous Needham Quote: ‘Certain it is that no people or group of peoples has had a monopoly in contributing to the development of Science. Their achievements should be mutually recognised and freely celebrated with the joined hands of universal brotherhood.'

Peace,

Vtria 08 (talk) 16:28, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Footnotes

Something is wrong with the the footnotes, and has been so prior to my editing. More experienced users should take a look at the footnotes and solve the problem. Vtria 08 (talk) 19:00, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the footnotes. Vtria 08 (talk) 17:06, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Chen 1999

I copied/pasted the quote in the "Potential effects of tea on health" section and later removed the footnote '(Chen 1999)' from the quote.

The exact quote from "Mondal, T.K. (2007), "Tea", in Pua, E.C. & Davey, M.R., Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry, vol. 60: Transgenic Crops V, Berlin: Springer, pp. 519–535, ISBN 3540491600" is given below:

The economic importance of the genus Camellia is attributed primarily to

tea. Several books have been published describing the beneficial properties to health of tea (Kuroda and Hara 2004). Tea leaves contain more than 700 chemicals, among which the compounds closely related to human health are flavanoides, amino acids, vitamins (C, E and K), caffeine and polysaccharides. Moreover, ‘teadrinking’hasrecentlyproventobeassociatedwithcell-mediated immune function of the human body. Tea plays an important role in improving beneficial intestinal microflora, as well as providing immunity against intestinal disorders and in protecting cell membranes from oxidative damage. Tea also prevents dental caries due to the presence of fluorine. The role of tea is well establishedinnormalizing bloodpressure, lipid depressing activity, prevention of coronary heart diseases and diabetes by reducing the blood-glucose activity (Chen 1999). Tea also possesses germicidal and germistatic activities against various gram positive and gram negative human pathogenic bacteria (Chen 1999). Both green and black tea infusions contain a number of antioxidants, mainly catechins that have anti-carcinogenic, anti-mutagenic and anti-tumor

properties.

Is it absolutely essential that we retain "(Kuroda and Hara 2004)" and "(Chen 1999)"? Only "(Chen 1999)" is in the article right now.

Sincere Regards, Vtria 08 (talk) 17:06, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of the in-line citations. Vtria 08 (talk) 23:51, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[sock]

Char

The word "char" or "cha" is also the word for tea in many Indian languages, is there a correlation between the origins of the word, or did it migrate to one country to another, namely China or India?Storms991 (talk) 02:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Cha Jing

Wait, so a book on tea was called Cha Jing? Please tell me that's not pronounced "cha-ching". - Denimadept (talk) 23:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not. It's 茶经, or chá jīng. If you were going with Wade-Giles, however, it would be "ching," as in I Ching. bibliomaniac15 Hey you! Stop lazing around and help fix this article instead! 23:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Whew. That would've been too apropos for comfort. Thanks. - Denimadept (talk) 23:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Unreliable Sources

Why did user 71.172.46.153 add an unreliable sources tag to the history section? Which sources are unreliable? Please let us know so the "unreliable" sources can be pinpointed and supplemented/removed. Don't just throw a tag onto there without saying why, because that doesn't lend itself to any improvement of this article. Thank you! Vamooom (talk) 18:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

An unreliable sources tag was added to this section because the sources you cite, being personal or commercial websites, are unreliable sources. 12.15.120.169 (talk) 16:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Tea cultivation in India has somewhat ambiguous origins. Though the extent of the popularity of tea in Ancient India is unknown, it is known that the tea plant was a wild plant in India that was indeed brewed by local inhabitants of different regions.

The source of this is http://www.coffee-tea-etc.com/, a commercial website.

Indian legends credit the creation of tea as known in the modern sense to Bodhidharma (ca. 460-534), a monk born near Madras, India, and the founder of the Ch'an (or Zen) sect of Buddhism.

The sources of this are the commercial websites http://www.twiningsusa.com/ and http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/, "The World's Most Popular Website Devoted to Men's Clothing Advice!"

Interestingly, ancient Japanese tales credit the origin of tea to Bodhidharma as well.

The sources of this are http://www.twiningsusa.com/ and http://www.lcy.net/, a commercial and personal website, respectively.

The Singpho tribe and the Khamti tribe also validate that they have been consuming tea since the 12th century.

This source does not mention the Khamti or give the 12th century date.

The first recorded reference to tea in India was in the ancient epic of the Ramayana, when Hanuman was sent to the Himalayas to bring the Sanjeevani tea plant for medicinal use.

The sources of this are http://www.finjaan.com/indian-tea.html, http://www.gmvnl.com/newgmvn/districts/chamoli/valley_of_flowers.aspx, and the Ralph T. H. Griffith translation of the Ramayana.

http://www.finjaan.com/indian-tea.html is a commercial website.

There is no mention of tea at http://www.gmvnl.com/newgmvn/districts/chamoli/valley_of_flowers.aspx.

The Ralph T. H. Griffith translation of the Ramayana can be found online, but there is no mention of tea in the sourced Book VI, Canto CII, which can be found at http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/ry476.htm.

The next recorded reference to tea in India dates to 1598, when a Dutch traveler, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, noted in a book that "the Indians ate the leaves as a vegetable with garlic and oil and boiled the leaves to make a brew."

The same year, another reference to tea in India was recorded, by a different group of Dutch explorers.

Are you sure that there were two different references to tea in India by Dutch explorers, or do all of these refer to a single Dutch account.

Also, Kiple and Ornelas say "Although a Dutch seafarer wrote of tea being eaten as well as drunk in India in 1598, accounts of earlier Indian history do not mention the use of tea or its cultivation."

In an 1877 pamphlet written by Samuel Baildon, and published by W.Newman and Co. of Calcutta, he writes, "...various merchants in Calcutta were discussing the chance of imported China seeds thriving in Assam, when a native from the province present, seeing some tea said, "We have the plant growing wild in our jungles." It is then documented that the Assamese nobleman, Maniram Dutta Barua, (also known as Maniram Dewan) showed British surveyors existing fields used for tea cultivation and wild tea plants growing in the Assamese jungle.

The source of this is http://www.geocities.com/dipalsarvesh/, a personal webpage. 12.15.120.169 (talk) 15:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Please don't remove content without even providing reasonable time for others to have their say. You can tag it, but not simply remove it.

Playing by your actions, can I also remove the first 7 paragraphs from the 'China' section since there are no sources? And completely remove the whole Korea section since there's not a single source?

Please be reasonable by providing ample time for the gathering of reliable sources.

If after some months, ther's still no changes, we'll refer it to the Reliable sources/Noticeboard to decide on an action.

Thanks. --60.50.64.43 (talk) 11:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I referred it to the Reliable sources/Noticeboard and this is the response:

Most of this is unreliable, and the identification of the sanjeevani with tea is pure madness. These general points are well known: that tea is indigenous to Assam has been known since the early 1800s - when it caused quite a sensation - and that Maniram Dewan, a major figure in 19th c Assamese history, was, together with Dwarkanath Tagore, one of the founding directors of the original subsidiary of the EICo developed for exploitation of that resource, the Assam Company. The use of tea by the Assamese prior to the commercial development of the gardens is also induced from various texts, but IIRC not directly known.

12.15.120.169 (talk) 19:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

12.15... Thank you for taking the time to refer this to the Reliable sources/Noticeboard. I appreciate the effort. However, there was no consensus reached there. In fact, the quote you provided here was provided by one user, and one user only. For those who are interested in viewing the "discussion" on the sources, it can be found here: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_14#Tea. While I agree that the sources are unreliable, please pause. Before discounting entire facts due to incorrectly references sources, give it some time so that the old sources can be replaced by reliable sources. The quote says that tea was not consumed prior to the 1800s; however, many reliabe sources have confirmed that Dutch explorers in the 1500s came across Indians drinking tea. 132.250.122.83 (talk) 14:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Pyramid

were the pyramid tea bags not invented by pg tips? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.207.2.228 (talk) 12:40, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

PG tips & Lipton are brands of the same group : Unilever. So, pyramid tea bags has been invented by these two brands. Concerning Lipton, you can find this information here (within the video) : http://www.lipton.com/en_en/#jane-1,180 (Choose the chapter : "a culture of innovation") —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.113.177.36 (talk) 22:59, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Salted Tea?

I've heard about mongolians drinking what they call salted tea. Have you heard about it before, and if yes how do they make it? I suppose its more then just adding salt to the tea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.51.64.243 (talk) 17:03, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Could it be related to Butter tea? That's a Tibetan drink which is (apparently) salty. shellac (talk) 13:09, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Brewed in Water

The article states in the opening paragraph :

   Tea is an infusion made by steeping processed leaves, buds, or twigs of the tea bush, Camellia sinensis, in hot water for several minutes, after which it is drunk.

However, this is not always the case. For example, it is common in Pakistan (and presumably India) to brew tea in boiling or simmmering milk and then add water (or not). It is also common to add cardamom pods to the milk whilst it is brewing. This produces a markedly different flavour to tea brewed in water, even if the final ratio of milk to water is the same - probably due to the continued boiling and the fact that milk, being an emulsion, is a less effective solvent than water (this is especially true of full-fat milk and buffalo milk (which is higher in fat, protein and calcium, and also common to Pakistan)). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.163.165.185 (talk) 13:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)