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

[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