Am I the only person who gets confused when 紅茶 comes up with a definition of "black tea". To me if you order 紅茶，I certainly dont expect to get "black tea", and by that I mean I certainly dont expect to get what westerners expect/understand to be black tea.

I suggest it should be called red tea. I am not sure if there is a rule, but generally I expect 紅茶 to taste like oolong, although I expect there may be regional variance.

Isn't that the correct definition?

http://www.nciku.com/search/all/%E7%B4%85%E8%8C%B6

James

Oolong definitely does not belong to 紅茶. Some examples of 紅茶: 普洱茶, Ceylon tea and Nilgiri tea.

Both terms, "红茶" and "black tea" refer to post-fermented or fully oxidised tea. 普洱茶 is usually classified as a 红茶, although, strictly speaking, the fermentation process is different.

Also, when you say "red tea" I imagine you're talking about roiboos, which is from a different plant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooibos

James

What we call black tea in English, they call "red tea" in Chinese. This definition is correct.

So how do you distinguish in taiwan/china between western tea and chinese "red" tea?

(Oh and it occurs to me that me equating 紅茶 to oolong may be a uniquely australian thing. I dont think I have ordered 紅茶 in china/taiwan for many years due to me not liking 紅茶.)

紅茶 is definitely what we know as black tea, at least on Taiwanese menus. The other varieties - 烏龍/青茶, 普洱茶, 抹茶, etc, are listed individually. I think the confusion with "red tea" is really just a language difference - an imperfect translation, even though it's one and the same (similar to 黑糖/brown sugar).

The bigger issue of tea confusion, though, is that westerners don't really grow up with an extensive tea vocabulary. Knowledge and availability of tea in Asia tends to be a lot more sophisticated, so they get more specific - that is, they really know their teas, better than just black and green.

I think it's a lot like how westerners think of pasta - to us, it's not just pasta. It's spaghetti, macaroni, capellini, rigatoni, vermicelli, angel hair, rotini, fettucine, lasagna, etc, etc, etc. For most Chinese speakers, on the other hand, it's all just 意大利麵. Try asking what kind of 意大利麵 you're going to get in a Taiwanese restaurant, and you'll likely get a shrug from the waiter. Try asking what variety of green tea you're getting in an American restaurant, and they'll probably tell you "Lipton".

Incidentally, here's one menu from a popular Taipei chain - the entire top row is tea! http://www.50lan.com/web/products.asp

ktvxiaojie, interesting post. Thank you!

while we say black to to any kind of fermentated tee chinese do say 红茶. with the unfermentated tea both of us say 绿茶 - green tea

http://i40.tinypic.com/2qvxrhk.jpg

see :D