Tea and transcriptions (Reply) [Man vänjer sig.]

One problem you encounter as a tea drinker is with linguistics. One week ago,

sunjan and Justina treated me to a very nice oolong tea that was called "Shui Cheng" (or something like that) on the package. We couldn't find it in literature, until Justina pointed out that the package used a Cantonese transcription, while the book we were looking in used pinyin and called it "Shui Xian". After some searching this weekend I finally found it at Tea Centre of Stockholm, under the name Shui Hsien.

So, in one week I have encountered three different ways of transcribing 水仙:

God-knows-what system: Shui Cheng

Pinyin: Shui Xian

Wade-Giles: Shui Hsien

There are conversion tables, but it would still be easier if everyone could settle on using one system. If I wasn't aware that there are differences between pinyin and Wade-Giles, I might never have found what I was looking for...