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A few Kunming signs

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Tea


abcdefg

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What better words than the words on a New Year's gift. A friend just now gave me some tea.

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I don't know how to use the "spoiler" feature to hide this part, but if you want some help, read on.

The main take-home words from the first frame are simply 普洱, the name of this type of delicious brew and the name of the region in southern Yunnan where it originates.

Second frame shows that this is a compressed cake of 熟茶。Puer tea comes in two main styles, 熟 and 生 (“cooked” and “raw.”)

Third frame shows that it is from Menghai 勐海County (in Xishuangbanna 西双版纳 Prefecture) and that these leaves were grown on old trees 古树.

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Middle frame, big characters in red, if I'm reading that correctly it's 醇香宫廷. Doesn't 醇 mean "alcohol"? So it's saying it has the flavor / fragrance of alcohol?

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Ah, thanks.

In my defense, I did think of a right-to-left reading, but eliminated it because

  1. 宮廷 is a word listed in MDBG (meaning "court", which might be appropriate here), while 廷宮 is not listed as a word. [bTW, what does 廷宮 mean?]
  2. I thought that when 香 is used to mean flavor, the 香 comes second, in parallel to 魚香.
  3. "醇香宫廷" has 7,000 hits on google, most/all related to tea, while "廷宮香醇" has zero

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I'd think of 醇 in this context meaning wine, mellow wine in particular, not just alcohol as such.

A large dictionary also shows that 醇 as an adjective has the secondary meaning of "pure" or "unmixed" (纯一,不杂).

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Thanks @889 and @xiaocai, I think that's the answer I wanted. I wasn't aware of the other meanings for 醇. Next time I'll look it up, 'cause there it is in MDBG: "alcohol / wine with high alcohol content / rich / pure / good wine / sterols".

Back to 醇香宫廷, if "醇香" here means "pure/clear fragrance", what does "宫廷" mean? MDBG lists it as "court (of king or emperor)", baidu agrees with "帝王居住和处理朝政的处所", so does this mean the tea is fit for an emperor?

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