Moaning about "Moning": a thread for translating old tea trade-names into modern teas

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mbanu
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Thu Mar 11, 2021 4:51 pm

OK, let's try again. The "Oopack" from the beginning is a general term for non-named tea from Hubei (湖北), which produced some named teas as well. This includes one particularly popular variety, Ichang. Ichang is Yichang (宜昌), a tea sold today as Yihong (宜紅). For anyone who followed my CNNP thread, this might be a repost, but here is a State-packaged tin of Ichang. :) Along with Keemun and Ningchow, William Ukers (author of All About Tea) considered Ichangs to be the "Burgundies of China teas".
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mbanu
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Sat Mar 13, 2021 5:20 pm

mbanu wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 11:49 am
South China teas were adulterated with North China teas before sale because of supply difficulties. However, it was discovered that Russia preferred the flavor of North China teas, leading to their open sale. In this way, it mirrors the development of Formosa oolong, which originally started as a way of adulterating the more popular Fujian oolong, and was then sold directly after it was realized Americans preferred the flavor of Taiwanese oolong.
I don't know why, but this seem to be a common pattern -- a similar thing almost happened with Guangdong tea, which was originally the main ingredient in something known during the early 19th century as "Canton Bohea", a mixture of new Guangdong tea with last year's unsold Wuyi oolong. The main difference seems to have been that there was no group at that time who was excited enough about the Guangdong tea to want to export it directly.

Part of this might have been the location the tea was coming from, Woping or Heping (和平), on the border of Jiangxi, although I hear that the green tea grown in Heping is now a local specialty. Maybe this is Kooloo/Gulao tea? The roasting process sounds similar, and the location seems right...
*Edit: Going under the assumption that this Guangdong tea (Woping, Heping, 和平) is Kooloo/Gulao, it was sold under its own name eventually. During the late 19th century Kooloo was popular in some overseas Chinese communities in Australia and America. So I guess this is following the same pattern as with North China teas and Taiwanese oolong; why did this keep happening, I wonder?

Part of this might have been because of its association with Canton (Guangzhou), which was sort of the Taobao of the 19th century; you could get anything in Canton, but there was no guarantee it was real, leading to an adversarial relationship between foreign exporters and Cantonese traders.

(It is hard to avoid presentism doing this kind of for-fun hobby-research, though, so while I can read the words, that doesn't necessarily mean I understand the unspoken context. One thing I have been thinking is if maybe the distinction was between the traders viewing these teas the way that British merchants viewed blends rather than as specific teas; when someone buys PG Tips, they are buying a finished taste, so if someone switches out Assam tea for Kenyan tea, for example, if the blend still tastes the same then what's the problem? On the other hand, "They want black tea, I have green tea; if I roast the green tea it will be black and they will be happy" does seem a bit like following the letter of a request rather than the spirit... )

During the late 19th century after much of the tea-trade had left Canton for ports closer to their desired teas, Guangdong tried to market its oolongs on its own merits, known by Walsh as types of "New-Make" tea, but they did not seem able to escape their earlier reputation until much later with the popularization of modern dancong oolongs.

Here is an 1834 interview with John Reeves Sr., a retired tea inspector for the East India Company who was stationed in Canton, from a report from the "Select Committee on Tea Duties". Also another description from his predecessor, William Ball, who wrote the book An Account of the Cultivation and Manufacture of Tea in China. (Interesting to see that they disagreed on whether Woping/Gulao tea was itself a good tea.)
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mbanu
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Sun Mar 14, 2021 9:07 pm

mbanu wrote:
Sat Mar 13, 2021 5:20 pm
Going under the assumption that this Guangdong tea (Woping, Heping, 和平) is Kooloo/Gulao, it was sold under its own name eventually. During the late 19th century Kooloo was popular in some overseas Chinese communities in Australia and America.
Some Hang Mee brand Kooloo, popular in Australia. It was also offered in tins, so a bit surprising it's the paper package that survived. :) I guess this would have been the week's kooloo for a customer, scooped out of the bulk bin? If I understand correctly, this was in an old family-run grocery store, so maybe it was originally used for advertising purposes. :)
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mbanu
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Mon Mar 15, 2021 10:35 am

mbanu wrote:
Sat Mar 13, 2021 5:20 pm
During the late 19th century after much of the tea-trade had left Canton for ports closer to their desired teas, Guangdong tried to market its oolongs on its own merits, known by Walsh as types of "New-Make" tea, but they did not seem able to escape their earlier reputation until much later with the popularization of modern dancong oolongs.
Here is what Tea & Tea Blending by Lewis & Co. had to say on the subject. Two of the named teas (and perhaps all of them) may simply be Kooloo in disguise, as Hoyune was a way to say Heyuan (河源), the larger region in which Heping/Woping is located (which in turn is the larger region in which Gulao/Kooloo is located). An interesting thing here is that apparently the way that these teas overcame British uneasiness with "Canton teas" is that it was harvested slightly earlier than teas from provinces further north, allowing them a niche for people impatient to taste Spring teas. :)

I'm not sure about Newmake Pekoe-Souchong Congou or Honeysuckle Congou, but given the British authors' dismissiveness over other Newmakes (Walsh disagreed here), my guess is that Newmake Pekoe-Souchong Congou may be the sort of tea that was sold sometimes as "Kooloo Pekoe" (the name under which it was promoted by the Chinese government at an International Exhibition in the U.S. in 1876). This style of tea was reintroduced after the 1950s tea-industry nationalization, and is still made in small amounts today.

I do wonder about the origin of the name Pekoe-Souchong Congou, though -- it would have completely confused the tea-traders who wrote about "Canton bohea" in earlier years.

"What is this tea?"
"Oh, it's pekoe-"
"Pekoe?"
"...souchong-"
"Pekoe-souchong?"
"...congou?"
"Pekoe-souchong congou? Wonderful. How much do you have?"
:lol:
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mbanu
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Mon Mar 15, 2021 9:30 pm

One type of Moning that is a bit easy to identify is Wenchow tea, as it is pointed out as the only black tea Zhejiang produced. It was named after Wenzhou (温州), one of the treaty ports. Zhejiang still produces mainly one black tea, Jiuqu Hongmei, which for some reason is named after a type of tea from Fujian. Some folks have suggested that this tea too was created during the Taiping Rebellion to mix with Fujian tea orders, although I don't have any confirmation there.

According to a 1937 issue of the Chinese Economic Journal and Bulletin, by the 1930s this tea was supposedly most popular in Germany; if this was always the case, that might explain why Tea and Tea Blending by Lewis & Co. had so little to say about it.
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mbanu
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Tue Mar 16, 2021 9:45 am

mbanu wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 9:30 pm
One type of Moning that is a bit easy to identify is Wenchow tea, as it is pointed out as the only black tea Zhejiang produced. It was named after Wenzhou (温州), one of the treaty ports. Zhejiang still produces mainly one black tea, Jiuqu Hongmei, which for some reason is named after a type of tea from Fujian. Some folks have suggested that this tea too was created during the Taiping Rebellion to mix with Fujian tea orders, although I don't have any confirmation there.
Here is what Walsh had to say about Hongmei in Tea: Its History and Mystery. He doesn't specify where the tea is coming from, so it's not clear if this is Fujian hongmei or Zhejiang hongmei. Also, a description of the Fujian Hongmei, from Samuel Wells Williams' 1863 A Chinese Commercial Guide. Maybe the secret will be hidden in 杏子 or 小湖 tea? :)
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Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:39 am

mbanu wrote:
Sat Mar 13, 2021 5:20 pm
Going under the assumption that this Guangdong tea (Woping, Heping, 和平) is Kooloo/Gulao, it was sold under its own name eventually. During the late 19th century Kooloo was popular in some overseas Chinese communities in Australia and America.
It was known by the Kooloo name in the late 1830s, it looks like. (This would have been when John Reeves' son, J.R. Reeves, was the tea inspector, I think.) Here it is mentioned in the 1841 A Chinese chrestomathy in the Canton dialect by E.C. Bridgman, which seems to be a book for learning Cantonese.
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Tue Mar 16, 2021 8:01 pm

mbanu wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 9:42 pm
Ningyong is a little easier, it is a way of saying Ningyang (寧洋) which was an old way to refer to southern Yong'an (永安) near Longyan (龙岩). Apparently this region was split apart into its neighbors several times over the years. Perhaps this could have been genuine Anxi Tieguanyin?

Also, how it was seen at home, in this case, as the favorite tea of a New Englander bride-to-be in Hannah Bradbury Goodwin's Sherbrooke from 1866. :D
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Maybe a fun break, a trip to a Boston teashop in the 1870s to pick up some oolong. This would be heading to the Oriental Tea Company on Court Street in Boston, Massachusetts, a themed teashop with a giant teakettle out front rigged to emit steam. :)

*Edit: Apparently the kettle is still there, although moved a couple doors down to be on the corner -- it's a local tourist attraction.
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Last edited by mbanu on Wed Mar 17, 2021 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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mbanu
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Tue Mar 16, 2021 8:46 pm

mbanu wrote:
Tue Mar 16, 2021 8:01 pm
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If anyone was wondering about the "buying large quantities for cash" part of this advertisement, this would likely have been using Mexican silver dollars, which were the standard in the international tea trade at the time. These would be tested by Chinese moneylenders and then stamped with their approval as being genuine (those marks in the coin). If anyone is interested in this side-path, there is a book on this subject, Chopmarked Coins: A History; the silver coins used in China 1600-1935 by Colin James Gullberg.
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mbanu
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Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:38 pm

I think I've been avoiding climbing up the mud hill of Monings, so why not try green tea? :) So the reason that so many teas were Hysons (Young Hyson, Hyson Skin, etc.) was because it was a processing method for tea rather than a particular type. Tea traders would know that an Anhui hyson and a Zhejiang hyson were distinct teas, and at one time, so did customers. So then why focus on it at all? This has to do with shelf life, because different rolling styles tended to keep better. So a hyson skin with a loose open roll would go stale much quicker than a hyson with a tighter roll, or a young hyson with a very tight roll, even if these were produced in the same place. In that way the difference is maybe the same as when Indian tea makes a distinction between orange pekoe, broken orange pekoe, and broken orange pekoe fannings during the sifting process. This was still true when William Ukers wrote All About Tea in 1935.

Originally young hyson was a way to sound out "yu qian" (雨前), a way of saying the tea was harvested before the start of the "Grain Rains" season (谷雨) in late April. However, as demand for young hyson grew beyond the capacity to supply such teas, it morphed from being a time of harvest to being a size and tightness of leaf-roll. This is mentioned briefly in John Henry Blake's 1903 Tea Hints for Retailers. I suspect that hyson was a back-formation to describe tea from after that flush without calling it "old hyson". :)
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Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:51 pm

mbanu wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:38 pm
This has to do with shelf life, because different rolling styles tended to keep better. So a hyson skin with a loose open roll would go stale much quicker than a hyson with a tighter roll, or a young hyson with a very tight roll, even if these were produced in the same place. In that way the difference is maybe the same as when Indian tea makes a distinction between orange pekoe, broken orange pekoe, and broken orange pekoe fannings during the sifting process.
The skin in hyson skin tea (皮茶) was pi (皮), which seems to be another word for leather. I kind of wonder if this is not actually related to being the "skin" of hyson tea, but rather its method of transport, being tea wrapped up in leather saddlebags for export to the border regions. (Here is a photograph in the early 1900s from the 1906 book, Western Tibet and the British Borderland.) If so, hyson skin would basically be brick tea grade green tea repackaged for the overseas market. :)
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Thu Mar 18, 2021 8:39 pm

mbanu wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:51 pm
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Also, how hyson skin was seen day-to-day, in this case, a woman and her daughter being given some unwanted advice on how to live on a hyson-skin budget in Philadelphia after an unexpected financial setback, from Eliza Leslie's 1837 Pencil Sketches, Or, Outlines of Character and Manners: Third Series, a collection of short stories. :)
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Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:35 pm

Liu bao was apparently Luk Po or Luk Pu, at least according to Robert M. McWade, the American consul in Canton, as described in this 1903 consular report. It is interesting to see that he is enthusiastic about the tea; I only wish he would have described it in more detail!

As to why the consul in Canton would be writing about this, apparently at the time Liu Bao was considered part of Guangdong rather than Guangxi.
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Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:17 am

mbanu wrote:
Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:35 pm
Liu bao was apparently Luk Po or Luk Pu, at least according to Robert M. McWade, the American consul in Canton, as described in this 1903 consular report. It is interesting to see that he is enthusiastic about the tea; I only wish he would have described it in more detail!

As to why the consul in Canton would be writing about this, apparently at the time Liu Bao was considered part of Guangdong rather than Guangxi.
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However, there may have been an alternate name -- I have seen mentions of something called Tsing Yuen (清遠 or 清远) tea, such as this one in a 1932 issue of the Lingnan Science Journal. This is named after Qingyuan, an area further down the river. Or could this be an early form of Guang Yun tea? I'm really not so sure, here...
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Sun Apr 10, 2022 5:16 pm

This has been a really interesting read so far, and an invaluable resource. Moning, Oonfa and Oopack were three that frustrated me to no end because they showed up in almost every blending manual and I got nowhere with the names. Sorry for picking the unwieldy ones!

Another one that pops up fairly often are "caper" teas, almost exclusively in the context of Scented Orange Pekoes and Scented Capers. Many books describe Capers as rolled similar to a Gunpowder, and this seems in-line with a lot of modern scented Minnan oolongs, but from what I understand, Anxi oolongs in particular had a much more open shape back then (though I could be wildly wrong). I don't know where to start when it comes to 'Caper' as a term. Maybe it was never a transliteration, and in fact just used to describe the teas' resemblance to capers?

Scented teas was its own weird sticking-point to me because a lot of books would list many varieties of flowers, but imply that "what you get is what you get" in terms of obtaining them. Even the company I worked for used to carry a "Scented Orange Pekoe" for the exclusive use of blending, never for sale, and other than the fact that it was defined as a green tea, I've never been able to get to the bottom of what kind of flower it was scented with, just that it was a separate tea from jasmine greens (of which it was often blended with), and that it was fazed out sometime in the 90s due to difficulty in sourcing, and eventually replaced with jasmine green in all blends going forward. Speaking with wholesalers, almost all flowers expect for the 'majors' (Jasmine, Rose, Osmanthus...) have been phased out of production, because (from what I'm told) their scents simply don't stick long enough for the current rate of turnover. Even rose has seen supplementation with rose flavouring in recent years.

My most recent hobby has been taking archive.org's auto-generated EPUBs for many of these books, and attempting to clean them up and restructure them into something more readable, which also comes with the urge to include some sort of glossary for some of these terms.
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