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prettygoodwordhyson (HAY-suhn) - n., a Chinese green tea made from thinly rolled and twisted leaves picked early in the season.
If picked before the rains, it's considered a high quality tea, but mediocre if picked later. Dictionaries are frustrating on the origin: all agree it's from Chinese 熙春, bright/splendid spring, via a dialect of Guangdong Province, but most just give the dialect name as "Guangdong," without specifying whether it's Cantonese, Hakka, or Minnan/Hokkien. The source is given by many as héichēun, which is not a pronunciation of 熙春 in any of those dialects. Most likely is Cantonese (which one reliable dictionary gives), where it's pronounced hēicēun. The Modern Mandarin pronunciation, fwiw, is xīchūn and the Middle Chinese was xitʂyn.
---L.
If picked before the rains, it's considered a high quality tea, but mediocre if picked later. Dictionaries are frustrating on the origin: all agree it's from Chinese 熙春, bright/splendid spring, via a dialect of Guangdong Province, but most just give the dialect name as "Guangdong," without specifying whether it's Cantonese, Hakka, or Minnan/Hokkien. The source is given by many as héichēun, which is not a pronunciation of 熙春 in any of those dialects. Most likely is Cantonese (which one reliable dictionary gives), where it's pronounced hēicēun. The Modern Mandarin pronunciation, fwiw, is xīchūn and the Middle Chinese was xitʂyn.
---L.
