CHINESE CHARACTERS FOR TEA AND CAMELLIAS

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This is the common character for TEA, the beverage.
You can find this character on menus, signs, and packages of tea throughout China. Any knowledegable person, seeing this character, interprets it as the beverage.

If the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) or other ornamental Camellia is referred to, additional characters are added (see below). But in all cases, the character 'cha' is part of the composite description.

This composition has the meaning of Mountain Tea Plant or Mountain Tea. However, the really correct Chinese would be 'shan cha hua' which means Mountain Tea Flower (see below).

This has the correct meaning of the tea plant grown for flowers.

This is the description of C.chrysantha, now classified as C.nitidissima, the yellow camellia.

Web Editor's note (Feb. 2005): When Klaus Peper wrote this file in 2001, he noted that he had no knowledge of the Chinese language or of Chinese characters.  The above information was provided to him by his friend Ron Bradley. If you have corrections or additions, please e-mail the Web Editor.  Japanese characters are different, and we would welcome a similar explanation of Japanese characters for tea.