Translation request

[unixronin]

Wha' hae, laddie, I hae a wee giftie frae the Clan ... er ... wait, let me start again.

I have just been gifted by cymrullewes, the Silly Goose, the Dread Pirate Bignum, and Wen the Eternally Surprised with this marvellous teapot and a set of four matching cups.  Unfortunately, I do not read Chinese, and cannot read the inscription on the pot (which also appears on the cups).  Are any of my readers able to translate this?  (There's a full-size copy of the photo here.)

I'm going to be really disappointed if it's nothing but legal disclaimers or instructions that read along the lines of "For making nice tea, fill to the boiled pot with water, then with three scoops add tea and stand until finished."  :-)

Comments

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

Good health, long life, much sex, good food.

Well it should say that.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Heh. :)

[yndy.livejournal.com]

surely there's an asian community on LJ where someone would be able to read it ASAP...

The question becomes what language it's written in?

I'm trying to remember who I know that reads Mandarin... not Cantonese mind you, but Mandarin.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

The written version, being idea pictograms, is independant of the language. (Which is why most is readable by the Japanese...)

[yndy.livejournal.com]

er... not exactly.

While they are logographs - (slightly different concept than pictograms) that doesn't mean that they are 100% similar.
Any more than say, Brittish English and American English are.

Mostly intelligible yes - but since we haven't identified the origin of this, you can't tell if it's prose or poetic - and there are again, differences there - as well as not being able to identify whether it's "traditional" or "simplified"...

It's a bit more complex than you're suggesting.

This isn't a bad explanation of it - for all that it's on wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_written_language

[suzilem.livejournal.com]

I buttonholed one of my Chinese Electrical engineers at work. :-)

It's a very old poem. Subject matter is someone meets a friend around the New Year where they drink tea on the shady side of a mountain. I suspect something has been lost in the translation. :-)

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Sue.