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When I wrote this initially, I tried to use the native names, e.g. Yuk Bing Shiu is a rice wine originated in the south, most likely in Canton. I used its Cantonese name. But someone changed it into Mandarin. It is okay either way, but shouldn't names be left in their native pronunciation?
Kowloonese 20:06, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
no, the Cantonese shouldnt be replaced. it should be in both forms, separated by a slash --
Jiang 20:50, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
In all other forein versions, distilled types and fermented types are separate. I think at least this article should be separated into two.
210.196.67.3709:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)reply
This is a separate issue. I am uncertain now whether mijiu might actually be distilled also, then diluted. The bottle of cooking mijiu I just bought says that it's "distilled rice wine."
Badagnani22:32, 30 January 2006 (UTC)reply
My understanding is that "white liquor" can be both distilled and made "as is", where as "yellow liquor" (red and black also exist) is only "as is". Addition of herbs and spices can be done pre and post fermentation and also after distillation. Each of these vary with the type and brand of liquor. As for the actual manufacturing process, very little information exists on this topic in both english and chinese web sources (The information I entered is gleaned from Japanese sites). What is known is that the production technique/process is similar to the way Japanese and Korean liquors are made, with the inclusion of certain herbs, spices, or fermenting microbes. Some chinese liquors are also fortified with other liquors (in the sense that European port is fortified wine). Some manufacturers also have an interesting habit of fortifying their "natural" liquor with industrial ethanol, which, while not exactly toxic is still not a pleasant thought. I do see this article splitting or budding out in the future, but first more information and sources are needede.
Sjschen05:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)reply
Thanks! Do you by chance know the characters for "hung lu jiu" (maybe not the right pinyin), a red-colored (and bad-smelling, IMO) cooking wine that is one grade below shaoxingjiu? Kowloonese was asking about it below.
Badagnani06:11, 21 February 2006 (UTC)reply
I'm not a big fan of Chinese rice wines, most likely because I have not been exposed it extensively. As such I have not really paid much attention to what's out there. I do think Ihave seen "huang lu jiu" before but I have never tried it.
Sjschen06:55, 21 February 2006 (UTC)reply
Mijiu is just a generic name. It literally means "rice wine". You will find several examples of mijiu in the article if you read carefully. Shaoxing is also mentioned in the section about Huadiao
Huadiao jiu, Nü'er hong, and Shaoxing jiu are basically made of the same wine except they are named differently depending on the age, the container and how they are used. It is not uncommon to have Huadiao aged 50 years or more.
I don't know the characters for hung lu but I'll look.
Xiaomi jiu
This text is found in the
sake article. Can it be added (if correct) to this article?
"Chinese millet wine, xǐao mǐ jǐu (小米酒), made the same way, is mentioned in inscriptions from the 14th century BC as being offered to the gods in religious rituals."
Badagnani10:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)reply
Sjschen, here's another possible classification system that you might want to add if it's legit. Courtesy of Kowloonese:
Apparently, Chinese wine can be classified by their fragrances. Googling 酱香酒 found me a page talking about different Chinese wine categories: 中国酒的香型也很多,主要有以茅台为代表的酱香酒 (sauce fragrance),以泸州老窖为代表的
浓香酒 (heavy fragrance),以山西汾酒为代表的
清香酒 (light fragrance),还有米香型 (rice fragrance)、
蜂香型 (Honey fragrance) 等等,这些酒都是蒸溜酒. See also
[1] for more on the fragrance classification. Not sure what "sauce" really mean, but I don't think it is related to cooking though.
Kowloonese00:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)reply
烧酒 is a common misused term. In reality it should only be used for strong liquors that have been distilled to have such a high alcohol percentage for it to burn in the atmosphere. If a "liquor" (酒) can not "burn" (烧), then it can not be called 烧酒. However it seems nothing can stop the ignorant from calling almost any type of liquor as 烧酒. Usally in order for a liquor to burn, it must have more than 40% alcohol in it. Its high burning sensation is caused by the high level of alcohol in it and not by anything else. The real reson why you can not find liquors that come with such a strong burning sensation as that of which is give off by the 烧酒 is because it just don't have enough alcohol in it. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
211.30.239.237 (
talk)
08:59, 9 February 2008 (UTC)reply
Suggestions: 1) "leaven" is not often used except in an old sense, to describe yeast used in the rising of bread (not in the fermentation of alcoholic beverages). Suggestion: replace with "yeast." Does this make sense in the translation from Chinese? 2) "Unctuous"/"unctuousness" is not a well known word in English. Further, it doesn't have a good connotation--it means kind of greasy or ointment-like. Could we use a different word? I assume it means that it has a "creamy" or somewhat viscous "mouth feel," so there must be a number of other terms that could substitute for "unctuous" that could be borrowed from wine tasting terminology.
Badagnani21:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)reply
I'm fine with changing "leaven", but not to "yeast". The cake/powedr is a mass of yeast and mold, as such I prefer either "starter" or "innoculant". As for "unctuousness", it is not a common english word, but then again, it's VERY difficult to describe food taste in English in general. Words like 甘 is impossible to describe and translate into English. Heck "umami" has only recently been adopted, and I think "unctuous" is a great word. This is a good first step in getting people to gain more vocab, cuz people need more words.
Sjschen21:59, 27 April 2006 (UTC)reply
Yes, unctuous is a good word. If you think "unctuous" accurate describes the mouthfeel, then I guess it's OK. It sounded like the kind of word one of those little electronic Chinese-English dictionaries might spit out.
Regarding the mold-yeast cake, who knows what to call it? Leaven specifically refers (from its Latin root) to the verb "to rise" and in this case there's no rising of bread going on, just fermentation and conversion of the starches in the grains.
Badagnani22:05, 27 April 2006 (UTC)reply
This is why I prefer "starter" to "leaven" and even "inoculant". Specifically a starter is a starch cultivated with yeast and some other organism. In sourdough bread this is yeast+lactobaccili+flour, in chinese liquour it's yeast+(asper./rhisopus)+rice.
On another note, I think we should just start using the term "liquor" instead of saying "wine", other than in the context of "chinese wine. I think this will improve the article, at least in terms of editing.
By the way "uctuous" is often used in the culinary world to describe "viscous and rich mouth feel", which is why I think more of the public should start to learn it. I also doubt that Chi. to Eng. will contain such a word, since it's not quite popular in ESL courses ;)
Sjschen06:49, 29 April 2006 (UTC)reply
In fact "unctious" is orginally a culinary term, and the usage to describe a slightly unpleasant person came later. It is related to the word "unction" which originally had some kind of food meaning, and persists in the catholic phrase "extreme unction".
Eregli bob (
talk)
06:15, 29 May 2012 (UTC)reply
Getting there, but still quite far. Maybe we should focus more on tofu to get it to “good article”, if not featured :)
Sjschen21:59, 27 April 2006 (UTC)reply
Yellow and white Articles
Now that we have Y and W classifications, maybe should start dividing production to Yellow and White liquors. If anything this may eventually spawn 2 new articles.
Sjschen22:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)reply
I think 2 articles is premature, but if you think production should be split into yellow and white that makes sense. But, as you edited before, the yellow wine leads into the white because the latter is made from the former.
My previous splitting of wine names under "fermented" and "distilled" could be changed to "yellow" and "white," as well -- what do you think? The alcohol percentage ranges of each should probably be kept in the headings, though, because it's not just the color that's different, but also the strength.
Badagnani22:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)reply
Further question:
麴 is listed here as first tone, but the wiktionary entry lists it as a different tone. Which is incorrect?
Badagnani23:03, 29 April 2006 (UTC)reply
I'm tempted to say that it's regional variation or the something like the evolution of language in progress. I've heard it pronouned both ways, however it's not confusing because the context of its use disambiguates it. In short I think they are both correct, though I personally favor "qú".
Sjschen01:02, 30 April 2006 (UTC)reply
The regional variation makes sense, as for example in Cantonese words like "gam gwaat" will change characters from the original version to make the spelling more "logical."
Yes, but it's more a word that needs to be used in context of 酒. Used by itself, no one will think of it as yeast, which is why I'm content in saying that's it's also the simplified character for 麴. See my comment in
Talk:Red yeast riceSjschen03:06, 30 April 2006 (UTC)reply
This article has gathered enough stuff about yellow and white liquors to be split up. Do you think we should move the classification and types of white liquor to
baijiu? Should chinese wine become "yellow liquor" or should it remain to contain information about both white and yellow liquors?
Sjschen03:31, 30 April 2006 (UTC)reply
This is a hard question. Of course, the
baijiu article does duplicate very closely the baijiu section in the
Chinese wine article. I'm afraid I don't have an answer; the problem being that yellow and white liquors are closely related. I was thinking of just a disambig article called "Chinese wine" that would have nothing but links to "yellow liquor" and "baijiu" articles, but that's probably not good because Chinese wine should have an overview article on all wines, as we have it now.
Maybe the details on the varieties (which is getting long, especially for white liquors) should be moved into baijiu. Keep brief details on general history and types of Chinese wines in
Chinese wine and move specific details to baijiu and yellow wine articles. I think I'd be okay with that.
Badagnani03:37, 30 April 2006 (UTC)reply
The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
The article deals with what Chinese call jiu whcih is all alcoholic beverages. As the first line of the article states: "Jiu is the Chinese word that refers to all alcoholic beverages. This word has often been 'mistranslated into English as 'wine', although the meaning is closer to 'alcoholic beverage' or 'liquor.'" The article covers no true wines and less than half even deals with
rice "wines". (True wines are dealt with at
Wine in China.) — AjaxSmack 02:23, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with*'''Support'''or*'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with~~~~. Since
polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account
Wikipedia's naming conventions.
Keep at Chinese wine. Most common English usage for such beverages, a catch-all term for both fermented and distilled alcoholic beverages.
Badagnani (
talk)
02:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Please show evidence that "wine" is common English usage for a distilled beverage. I have never heard Whisk(e)y, Gin, Vodka, Tequila or other spirits called "wine" even in common parlance. — AjaxSmack 08:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
You narrow down the definition of "wine" to only alcoholic beverage made of grape. "True wine" does not only refer to the wine, but also "the fermented juice of any of various other fruits or plants" according to the American Heritage
[2] and Mirriam Webster Dictionary
[3].--
Appletrees (
talk)
02:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Agree. However, what is covered here is much more than "fermented juice." Distilled liquors, which are not wines, are treated as well. — AjaxSmack 08:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
I would argue that the use of the term "wine" to refer to non-grape-based drinks is archaic or limited to very specific circumstances (which I listed below), and that "Chinese wine" is not one of them. "Wine" is never used to refer to fermented drinks.
Alexwoods (
talk)
20:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Support after consideration - I'm persuaded by the other party's rationale. Clearly, the current title is confusing and doesn't cover Chinese distilled liquors. "
Japanese wine" at Wiki refers to only wines made from grapes, and "Chinese alcoholic beverages" seems fair for the title. For consistency, I think
Korean wine should be also moved to "Korean alcoholic beverages". --
Appletrees (
talk)
04:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Support. Words can't express how in favor of this move I am. The English word 'wine' refers to fermented grape juice, full stop. Other uses, such as calling certain kinds of beer barleywine, calling sake rice wine, or calling mead honey wine, are archaic and barely used. Calling the myriad forms of Chinese alcohol 'wine' is a terrible, terrible translation. I would go so far as to say that the term 'Chinese wine' is Chinglish, menu English, and I would be shocked to see it in print in the West. This article should be moved to Chinese alcohol or some other correct and precise label.
Alexwoods (
talk)
14:14, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
I've seen
sake referred as "Japanese wine" (not Japanese "rice" wine) in the mentioned standard, so there would be Chinese wine in the same manner. --
Appletrees (
talk)
23:52, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment - Using singular "Chinese alcoholic beverage" is very, very bad, as it would appear from such a title that there is only one Chinese alcoholic beverage.
Badagnani (
talk)
20:00, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
I think that's correct, the singular sounds funny. "Chinese alcohol" would be better, in my opinion, as would "Chinese alcoholic beverages".
Alexwoods (
talk)
20:14, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
I don't think so. Alcohol often refers to what we drink - hard alcohol, calling someone an alcoholic, etc. Also, it's technically correct, whereas "wine" is not. However, I'd be happiest with "Chinese alcoholic beverages".
Alexwoods (
talk)
21:07, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Conditional Support: I think Chinese liquor should be used, liquor can be any type of alcoholic drink and does not suffer as much from the ambiguity of terms like "wine" or "alcohol"
Sjschen (
talk)
07:13, 29 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Support - The term "wine" (without any additional mentioning of source, such as apple, plum...) always refer to fermented grape juice in any sources written by people knowledgeable about beverages. Notice that apple wine, plum wine and cherry wine are not collectively known as wine(s), but as
fruit wines! This defintion is also enacted in
wine laws in a large number of countries, requiring all products sold simply as "wine" to be exclusively produced from grapes. Therefore, using a (sloppy?/mis-?)translation as a title of an encyclopedic article is clearly misleading.
Tomas e (
talk)
18:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment - Of course I read all the comments, which should be quite obvious from the explanation I provided. Why would I otherwise bother to explain why various fruit wines are never referred to as wine collectively? That
wine is fermented grape juice can be read in e.g. the Wikipedia article on
wine and this use of the plain "wine" term is well established since several centuries, and is never applied in any other way in any professional or semi-professional setting I've encountered. (BTW, "rice wine" is also a case of another bad translation, since the production process has more in common with beer production, since it is based on starch conversion rather than directly fermentable sugars, so it is a very poor counter-example, but that's another discussion.)
Tomas e (
talk)
20:11, 2 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment - It doesn't matter if you think rice wine is a "bad" term--it's extremely widely used in the English language, as is "Chinese wine" to refer to Chinese alcoholic beverages.
Badagnani (
talk)
20:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment - It also appears that you did not read the comment just above that said, "You narrow down the definition of 'wine' to only alcoholic beverage made of grape. 'True wine' does not only refer to the wine, but also "the fermented juice of any of various other fruits or plants" according to the American Heritage[2] and Mirriam Webster Dictionary[3]," relying instead on what can only be described as wishful thinking.
Badagnani (
talk)
20:18, 2 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment - this is getting repetitive. As I think Kusunose pointed out, it's not a question of thinking that it's a bad term, but of whether it's an accurate translation, which it isn't - it's misleading and not distinguishable from grape-based drinks that are produced in China. Also, the term is hardly widely used in the English language, unless you mean the English language as used by Chinese-speaking English-language learners, or as used on poorly-translated menus.
Alexwoods (
talk)
20:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment - Rice wine is a standard English term, used by all English speakers in all regions of the world when referring to
sake and similar beverages.
Badagnani (
talk)
20:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment - The actual English term for wines from China are "rice wine," "sorghum wine," etc., with the catch-all heading being "Chinese wine."
Badagnani (
talk)
19:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Support per
Alexwoods,
Tomas e & others.
Wine is produced from grapes.
Fruit wine is produced from whatever you like, and so long as you declare that in the name (barley wine, ginger wine, rice wine) it's perfectly ok to use the word "wine" with it. If you place the name of a country in front (French wine, German wine, Chinese wine) it refers to wine proceeding from fermented grapes from that country. Let's not name articles according to (innaccurate) colloqial use; change it to
Chinese alcoholic beverages and mention the colloquial stuff in the lead. --
mikaultalk00:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment - This is the first mention I've seen of retaining the "colloquial stuff" (i.e., the use of "Chinese wine" to refer, in English, to both fermented and distilled grain alcoholic beverages) in the lead. If this is done, the move to "Chinese alcoholic beverages" might be okay. However, the article would then have to include at least a brief mention of Chinese beer (with probably a "Main article:" link to
Chinese beer).
Badagnani (
talk)
00:31, 3 April 2008 (UTC)reply
A little background. When
User:Alexwoods says, "I would go so far as to say that the term 'Chinese wine' is
Chinglish, menu English, and I would be shocked to see it in print in the West", he has come pretty close to the case here. The term "wine" is commonly used by non-native Chinese speakers of English to refer to jiǔ and this can be credited to a shortcoming of English: the lack of a concise term for all alcoholic drinks/beverage. However, it is misleading to the vast majority of native and non-native English speaking Wikipedia users who are not familiar with this usage whether they assume wine to (narrowly) mean grape wine or (widely) mean any fermented drink. The existence of the
Wine in China article dealing with true wines should attest to that. — AjaxSmack 19:48, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Since there is some argument about what wine is, please refer to the intro of the
wine article which lists several meanings of wine which can be summarized from narrowest to widest meaning as follows:
An alcoholic beverage made from the fermentation of grape juice
An alcoholic beverage made from the fermentation of any juice
An alcoholic beverage made by fermentation or
brewing (multi-stage fermentation) with a certain alcohol content (~8-20%)
An alcoholic beverage with a certain alcohol content (~8-20%)
Although some Chinese traditional jiǔs fit the 3rd and 4th definitions (e.g. mǐjiǔ [
rice "wine" ]) but many such as the mighty báijiǔ hard liquor clearly do not. it's fine to have
rice wine at that location since there is no confusion with any "real" rice wine but that is not the case with this article. — AjaxSmack 21:36, 26 March 2008 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
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TinucherianBot (
talk)
00:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)reply
Sources for article expansion
Much, much more on the history, philology, and science of the development of Chinese alcohol can be found
here, although it's only a partial view, so individual editors will only be able to read certain blocks of text. All the same, if you're interested in the subject, feel free to search the book. If you could, then add the appropriate info to the article. —
LlywelynII09:23, 8 November 2013 (UTC)reply
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