Bohea
Bohea (Chinese: 武夷茶; pinyin: wǔyí chá, a word derived from the Wuyi Mountains in northern Fujian, China), a kind of oolong,[1] or, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, black tea generally, as in Pope's line, "So past her time 'twixt reading and bohea.", or from Frances Hodgson Burnett's book 'A Lady Of Quality': "One may be sure that...many dishes of Bohea were drunk." Later the name 'bohea' has been applied to an inferior quality of tea grown late in the season.
The word is attested by Rev. Robert Morrison (1782-1834) in his Chinese dictionary (1819), as one of the seven sorts of black tea "commonly known by Europeans", along with pekoe and other varieties:
"The sorts commonly known to Europeans are these, Bohea, 武夷茶, now called 大茶 Ta-cha; ...; 4th, Pekoe, 白毫, Pih-haou; ..."[2]
Wuyi oolong is characteristically strip shaped and heavily fermented. The dried leaf is almost black in colour.
[edit] References
- ^ Huang, Hsing-Tsung (2000), Science and civilisation in China: Biology and biological technology. Part 5. Fermentations and food science / by H.T. Huang, Volume 6, Cambridge University Press, p. 541, ISBN 9780521652704
- ^ Rev. Robert Morrison, A dictionary of the Chinese language, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 3-4. The same text is reproduced in the 1865 reprint.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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