# 淘茶 (to pour water over rice)



## Ghabi

Hello everyone! At my home, when sometimes I can't finish my bowl of rice, my mother would tell me to pour some boiled water over it to finish it off, and such an action is called 淘茶 (similarly 淘湯, when soup is used). Would you understand it when I use this word, please? If not, what word would you use, I wonder? 沖水?泡水? Thanks!


----------



## Lucia_zwl

oh, I've never heard of 淘茶 or 淘湯 in my region. For the same action, my mum would say 兑点儿水 or 和(huo4)点儿汤. 泡水 also makes sense. Interesting...I'm wondering how do you use it in a sentence?


----------



## BODYholic

We say 掺点汤.


----------



## larry2582005

淘茶 is rarely used in China and people usually hardly understand your meaning. I think 冲水，泡水 are better. I usually call the rice with pouring some boiled water as 泡饭。 Hopefully, my answer will help you.


----------



## Youngfun

In my dialects (Southern Zhejiang: 温州、青田) we also use 淘 but with the rice as object: 淘饭，as in 肉汤淘饭， 汤倒饭里淘起吃 etc. Well if the soup is delicious I like to eat the rice with it. 
But I'll never use it in Mandarin, it sounds the same as 讨饭 

When I have some left-over rice from the previous meal, I would pour boiled water on it, and then cover the bowl for some minutes. Same method of cooking as instant noodles, so I call it 泡饭 in analogy with 泡面。

But in the South-East coastal regions of China 泡饭 is rice cooked in boiled water together with vegetables, meat, seafood, etc. 
It's usually less "watery" than 粥，and with more food added.


----------



## Ghabi

Thanks so much your answers! 兑 and 掺 sound very good words to use in this context (I used only to associate these words with mingling water with wine), excellent!

@YF, interesting to know that you also use this word! Yes, 淘饭 makes more sense, although I don't remember I've ever heard my mom use it this way (I only use this word at home, so I don't really know how to express the same meaning in Cantonese). When I was a kid my mom often sang me a nursery rhyme at meal time: 今晚又無乜好餸,淘茶茶又凍!


----------



## Youngfun

Hi Ghabi!
I assume that here 茶 is synonym with 茶水 "hot water", more commonly called 开水 here in Mainland. 
In fact, searching Baidu we see that 淘开水 is very common, in the first site meaning "to pour water in the honey"（蜂蜜淘开水），in all the other sites with the same meaning as you - "to pour water over rice"（米饭淘开水）.
I've found 淘汤 in 3 "Baidu Tieba" forums about dialects, one about 湘语，one about 湖北省当阳话（西南官话）and one about 淮语（江淮官话）。
茶淘饭 (espcially in Shanghai dialect) and 汤淘饭 are also pretty common in 江浙地区（吴语区）, so it makes sense that my dialect also uses the latter (for the first we would say 开水淘饭).
I think 淘 with this meaning should be registered in dictionaries, with the mark <方>。
In these sites they have also used 开水拌饭、汤拌饭  as synonyms.

By the way, this way of eating rice is unhealthy and bad for the stomach, because we don't have to chew the rice to swallow it, then it's bad for digestion.

About 掺, for me it has the meaning of "diluting", so I would use it for mingling water with wine, for adding water or light soups into rice (but not tasty soups), for adding water to soups when too salty, or for adding water into honey as the example above.

My grandparents and my dad would say: 芋汤淘饭覅伉别人讲！= 芋头汤拌饭（多么好吃）别告诉别人！


----------



## Ghabi

Hi again YF! Thanks for your meticulous research (and friendly medical advice), much appreciated!


Youngfun said:


> I assume that here 茶 is synonym with 茶水 "hot water", more commonly called 开水 here in Mainland.


Sorry for the confusion. Yes, at my home 茶 simply means "boiled water", for "tea" we use a two-syllable word.


> My grandparents and my dad would say: 芋汤淘饭覅伉别人讲！= 芋头汤拌饭（多么好吃）别告诉别人！


Lovely example!


----------



## Youngfun

Ghabi said:


> Yes, at my home 茶 simply means "boiled water", for "tea" we use a two-syllable word.


May I ask which word? 
At my home we use 茶 or 茶叶, the latter meaning tea or tea leaves according to the context.


----------



## chlorophylle

倒点开水泡着吃
或者
冲神仙汤喝


----------



## hkenneth

I am from Shanghai, and yes, we do also use 淘茶 or 淘汤 when pouring water/soup into the rice. We would say 茶淘淘饭 or 汤淘淘饭


----------



## Rabau

but as I heard in Shanghai, they would call that  泡饭，

If for 淘，I would rather said it 套， in dialects in Southern Shaaxi, or Northern Hubei, it means use the hot water to make the solid( rice, toufu, 丸子,ect.) hot again.

but in Putonghua, you should say 泡。


----------



## hkenneth

Yep, after you 茶淘淘饭，the 饭 becomes 泡饭 lol


----------



## chlorophylle

hkenneth said:


> I am from Shanghai, and yes, we do also use 淘茶 or 淘汤 when pouring water/soup into the rice. We would say 茶淘淘饭 or 汤淘淘饭



提醒了我, 其实中部一些地方也是说: "淘汤" 和 "淘饭"的.


----------



## hkenneth

Yes. There are consistent words used in both Wu-Chinese and Southwestern Guan-Hua but not Mandarin, for example, I noticed 跍 (squat) is used in both Wu-Chinese and Wuhan dialect while 蹲 is used in Mandarin.


----------



## Ghabi

Thanks for the additional replies!


Youngfun said:


> May I ask which word?  At my home we use 茶 or 茶叶, the latter meaning tea or tea leaves according to the context.


I think the word for "tea" in my home dialect is 圓茶 (like this, but I've never seen it written down of course, so just a guess).


----------



## 维尼爱蜂蜜

we never eat rice like that. but i can understand 泡饭 or shanghainese 栥饭 or japanese 茶渍饭.


----------



## hkenneth

泡饭，粢饭 and お茶漬け are quite different things lol

泡饭: 



粢饭：

お茶漬け




Only お茶漬け uses green tea.


----------



## zhg

I agree with YF who had a perfect explaination at post#7.  

At the first sight, I thought you misheard the word 倒点茶 倒点汤（和饭拌一拌）.But it occured to me that such a usage "淘X" has a similar pattern as in  淘米 淘金 淘沙，which all share a same character which signifies the action of pouring liquid over solids for the purpose of sifting finer things. However the problem is that it is strange to sift liquid,as in your case 茶 汤, because you can't sift _liquid _using _liquid _,only _solid_ _things _can be sifted by _liquid_.
So my point is 淘茶 doesn't sound like Mandarin，instead of saying 淘茶 淘汤 I guess X（X could be any liquid you use ,such as tea,boild water,ect.）淘*饭 *would make better sense.

And in case I make myself sound over-dialect-ish or even confuse my friends from different regions,I would avoid using X淘饭, and 泡饭 would be the better choice of word in Mandarin.



维尼爱蜂蜜 said:


> we never eat rice like that. but i can understand 泡饭 or shanghainese 栥饭 or japanese 茶渍饭.


Actually 泡饭 and 粢饭 are different things.If you haven't tasted 粢饭 yet，try using search engines and they would show you what exactly 粢饭 looks like.


----------



## 维尼爱蜂蜜

yes, i've been to Shanghai and used to live in Japan.
what i was trying to say was i can understand the other three words literally, but the one in the title, no.


----------



## Daffodil100

我是听不懂什么叫淘茶的。

不过上海人把这种叫“泡饭”
http://baike.baidu.com/view/470648.htm



> 泡饭是上海人的标准早餐，同时也是上海人在外地人口中落下的话柄之一。所谓泡饭，就是早上起来把昨晚吃剩或故意吃剩的冷饭用开水一淘，弄一锅饭不像饭粥不像粥的东西。要是赶时间，通常也就免了加热的程序，借着开水的温度，酱菜油条过过，也是一通连捎带打。



不一定是早餐。吃剩的干饭，用水泡一下。就叫泡饭。


----------



## Kevin70s

(7) 以液汁拌和食品 [mix and stir]
宋金戴了破毡笠,吃了茶淘冷饭。——《警世通言·宋小官团圆破毡笠》
http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE6ZdicB7Zdic98.htm


----------

