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Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict

131 points by irtefa 6y ago

brundolf 6y ago
Something I see at a lot of Boba places that's also super good is the "Flurry" (it also gets called "snow" or something similar). It's basically a plate of shaved ice (usually you share with someone), but the texture is like... cotton candy. And then they put sweetened condensed milk on it and you can add boba, bursters, bits of fruit, syrups, etc. It's great; the texture is so unique.
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  This sounds like Bingsu. Wikipedia has it as Patbingsu[1], but I've only seen it referred to as Bingsu on Korean food-y type Youtube, and I can find it here in Sydney as just 'Bingsu'. I've also only seen it as a shaved milk-ice, rather than water-ice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patbingsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patbingsu
incensedbrowser 6y ago
This is what the page looks like when accessing it from Europe: https://i.imgur.com/d0rpSz5.png https://i.imgur.com/d0rpSz5.png
- molticrystal 6y ago
  Try this: https://web.archive.org/web/20210131053009/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/chronicles-of-a-bubble-tea-addict https://web.archive.org/web/20210131053009/https://www.newyo... You can just throw "https://wayback.archive.org/ https://wayback.archive.org/" in front of an url and it will autoredirect to the latest archived copy if there is one.
molticrystal 6y ago
I've been hooked since I tried a wonderful frozen cup(blended ice) of chai flavor back in college. I sought it out in many cities I've traveled to, to recreate the experience, but either I am unlucky or it is a rarer flavor and many places use ice cubes and not blended ice. It is amazing that the industry has grown to the point where most medium sized cities now have a place where you can purchase boba tea. But for those still lacking, I highly recommend you try making it yourself. You can find the ingredients in just about any Asian market or order the flavor and pearls online. If you go this route, try to get the extra wide straws as well.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/wRnFc https://archive.is/wRnFc https://web.archive.org/web/20210131053009/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/chronicles-of-a-bubble-tea-addict https://web.archive.org/web/20210131053009/https://www.newyo...
bryceacc 6y ago
growing up in the bay area you take it for granted when there are 5 different PMT shops every other block. I will also take calling it PMT (pearl milk tea) > boba to the grave
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ehnto 6y ago
I once went to a Bubble Tea place, and not knowing how the process worked, I said no to all of the additions, and ended up with nothing but chocolate milk and a big straw.
- KMag 6y ago
  On the flip side, my buddy and I got hooked on bubble tea in school. A year after graduation, we rented a house along with my buddy's brother and my buddy's elementary school buddy. We were always drinking bubble tea from a kiosk in a mall within walking distance, so the brother one day decides to see what the fuss is about. He mentioned "Hey, I tried that bubble tea you guys are always drinking. It's pretty good, except for the chunks."
  - antoniuschan99 6y ago
    Could that have been taro? They leave in the taro at some places like Chatime. Aka Taiwanese style. Also, op you could have use the normal straw :P
barnaclejive 6y ago
Gross. I had bubble tea exactly once while interviewing at FB. I had to choke it back and try not look like an idiot. Pretty sure that is the one and only reason why I didn't get an offer - "this dude is clearly from the Midwest and has no place here." /s
- spike021 6y ago
  Honestly that's how the first time experience is for most people, especially when they don't expect texture. It's ok not to enjoy it but this kind of comment comes off as fairly antagonistic.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  Jumping from "I didn't enjoy bubble tea" directly to "so they probably hate me because of their elitist socio-demographic biases" comes off as self-pitying, and pretty highly unrealistic.
deanclatworthy 6y ago
Bubble tea is bizarre. I only recently stumbled upon it on a trip to Bankgkok after a local said "let's get something to drink". I fell in love with it immediately. It's something that has not yet fully permeated Northern Europe, and Helsinki (where I live) has (or had..) one or two places to get it from (pre-pandemic).
- yocheckitdawg 6y ago
  You should come to Melbourne CBD in Australia. I can only assume they are being used as fronts to launder money or as a business investment to secure residency as there seems to be no possible way even a city of Melbourne's size could consume this much bubble tea. It's almost at the point where there are bubble tea sellers directly next to each other in the street. And I'm talking dozens, if not hundreds, of them.
  - girvo 6y ago
    Hah they’re here in Brisbane too. Not to the same extent, but give it time..,
  - always_left 6y ago
    Kind of interesting, I'm in the bay area and it's similar, but have you seen the pricing? And amongst young asian-americans its identical to Starbucks, just a place or thing to do.
  - chongli 6y ago
    It's almost at the point where there are bubble tea sellers directly next to each other in the street That’s an example of Hotelling’s law [1]. Competing businesses are better off clustering together in high traffic areas rather than spreading out to cover the market in a way that serves customers more efficiently. It’s a weird phenomenon and a clear refutation of the invisible hand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
    - 1996 6y ago
kibibyte 6y ago
How did "boba" become the de facto term for the drink? I remember calling it "pearl milk tea" in middle school, somehow switching over to "bubble tea" in late high school to college, and now calling it "boba". And I don't think I heard of the slang meaning until much later. Aside from that, as I am a first generation (native-born) Chinese-American, this article discusses my identity scarily well from an angle that I never really thought about. Despite Subtle Asian Traits becoming popular around the time that I was cutting my Facebook usage after I graduated and started work and "boba liberalism" being a term I learned today, I'm not really that many steps removed from this all. Why is it that I subconsciously tried hard to prove myself to classmates that I'm an American, but on the other hand, I tried to be as "Asian" as my Asian-American classmates? This article hit a cultural identity nerve in me and I haven't really formed a coherent set of thoughts on it. (Maybe this also ties into why I'm such a boba purist in that I reject anything that isn't tapioca balls + whole milk + some sugar but not too much + good tea, though when I'm feeling less tolerant of lactose, oat milk surprisingly tastes almost no different from whole milk in a boba drink.) Also, the boba metaphor for culture that the author presented also really works well in another way. A person born of parents from Shanghai and a person born of parents from Beijing can have very different cultural backgrounds, but that richness gets lost when they become Chinese-Americans. Similarly to how boba, a Taiwanese drink, has become a de facto symbol of Asian American cultural identity overall. Some might argue this is a "bad thing", but, well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm still coming up with a coherent set of thoughts around this.
- kenhwang 6y ago
  The terminology difference just depends on who introduced the drink to the region and when. The east coast uses "bubble". West coast uses "boba". If your Chinese community was more Cantonese/HK than Mandarin/Taiwanese, you got "pearl" or "tapioca" instead (because HK also has a sago pearl drink and other tapioca based deserts). Bubble is technically supposed to refer to the smaller tapioca balls (about the size of a normal straw), boba refers to the jumbo sized balls. I think boba then became the dominant name because its the shortest and most distinctive.
- Moru 6y ago
  About cultural identity: It's not only a rich blend of cultures in China, I'm sure there are just as many mixes that we don't think about in the American part of Chinese-American that don't really fit you. After changing home location, there is always this feeling of where do I belong now? Am I a Swede or a German? Well neither, Germany has moved along since you emigrated, and you are now trying to catch up with Sweden. Same thing with south and north Sweden, there are places I can't even understand what they are saying. This on a small place like Sweden, can't imagine the differences you have in America and China.
jtchang 6y ago
Definitely spoiled living in the bay area where there seems to be way too many bubble tea places. One of my favorites though (which I can never get unless I am in south bay) is roasted buckwheat at Rabbit Rabbit.
fermentation 6y ago
I’m a big fan of bubble tea and I have noticed that across many bubble tea shops in the western US, while a fairly large 16oz serving has been standardized, there’s little standardization on sugar content. A lot of places ask if I want it half or 25% as sweet, but that’s not a great indication of sugar level or flavor unless I’ve already had tea from that place before. Given that I think most folks can expect a cup of black tea to contain 0g sugar, I think expressing sweetness in terms of grams of added sugar is a pretty fair way of describing this stuff.
- AYBABTME 6y ago
  I also wish the US used grams, that'd be pretty fair.
- always_left 6y ago
  But then people will be more conscious of how much sugar they are adding. Percentage is some arbitrary and relative term. 50g of sugar will make people realize how much sugar is being added and might realize their drink isn't too great without copious amounts of sugar.
  - yarcob 6y ago
    Yes. 50% sounds like a healthy amount (only half as much!), even if it's still way too much.
- namelosw 6y ago
  There's little to no standardization in East Asia either...
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  You can go no sugar on the drink and there will still be sweetness from the milk and the pearls, I think it actually tastes better that way, the added sugar isn’t needed.
- frankosaurus 6y ago
  Gong Cha lets you can specify the sugar amount from 0-100. Of course, even with 0 sugar, the tapioca balls are simple carbs that break down to sugar readily in your body.
spike021 6y ago
I love boba and have since my Asian friends in high school introduced it to me years ago. Granted, nowadays when I order "boba" (and say I'm ordering boba) I'm just referring to the tea by itself without the pearls/bubbles/boba. I mostly do this to cut down on sugar, since boba itself just has way too much. Though occasionally when I really am in the mood and I know the shop I'm at makes great boba, I do order it with the drink. It seems weird at first to call plain flavored tea boba if it doesn't contain them, but then a lot of my friends will also colloquially call the same thing "milk tea" even when they purposely get a milk-less tea at a shop ;). I think these days I'm more of a "traditionalist" if there is such a thing, because my favorite shop is one mentioned in the article: Ten Ren. I believe there are two Bay Area locations and I tend to frequent the Cupertino one, though the Milpitas one is far more traditional since it's lined with canisters of teas of all kinds and the people who ring you up/make your drink are the older generation (unlike most modern boba shops that tend to have high school/college age employees). But anyway, in short Ten Ren, IMO, has some of the best-tasting and simple flavored teas compared to some of the weirdly, overly-complex ones at more hype shops.
- always_left 6y ago
  There looks to be one in San Francisco! I'll check it out, I used to live in Chinatown (where I see it on location). Been missing that area for a bit.
  - samatman 6y ago
    Ah man. The Alishan high mountain oolong from Ten Ren is just about my favorite thing to drink. Little yixing teapot, really starts to shine on the third steeping. Can't separate the nostalgia from visiting Alishan from the taste of the tea. But it's excellent tea.
- derwiki 6y ago
  There’s also a Ten Ren on Grant in SF Chinatown. I still have a punch card..
  - 6y ago
Guthur 6y ago
Where i grew up the closest I'd come to an Asian community was the family run Chinese take away in my home town. Consequently I've completely missed bubble tea, and now I'm of the age where I couldn't really stomach that much sugar in one sitting.
- quicklime 6y ago
  You can ask for it with less or no sugar. Not all places do it, but many do.
  - eru 6y ago
    Iced bubbled tea doesn't really work without any sugar at all tastewise. But they work with very small amounts of sugar. Here in Singapore some places do hot bubble tea. That one's taste works well without any sugar at all.
- Reason077 6y ago
  They come in all kinds of fruity and milky tea flavours, not all of them are sweet. You can ask for half or 0% sugar on the ones that are. The tapioca “bubbles” are optional, too.
- hnick 6y ago
  We always ask for zero sugar zero ice, unless it's a very hot day. We'll often get lychee jelly or something as well as the pearls so it's sweet anyway. You can also order it heated from some places instead of having ice, I had it in winter in China, it was nice but the bubbles get very gummy if you take too long.
ewokone 6y ago
Reading the 'in the realm of hungry ghosts' from Gabor Mate I learned that is not the substance itself but 3 major circumstances which trigger addiction in the human: powerlessness, isolation and stress. These key factors bring up behaviour patterns for addiction. Let it be sugar, sex, Screentime, drugs, food, sport, buying things, etc.... Really helped me to reflect on my patterns and I also learned about the difference between passion and addiction. My 50 cents here.
- 3np 6y ago
  That really hit close to home, thanks.
- thih9 6y ago
  Interesting to see sport on the list, I never thought about it this way. If anyone else is interested: https://aeon.co/ideas/how-people-with-sports-addiction-are-like-drug-addicts https://aeon.co/ideas/how-people-with-sports-addiction-are-l...
  - Deivuh 6y ago
    Makes sense, back a few years ago I was so into weightlifting that I would spend around two hours at the gym. And whenever I had to skip or move my workout from my schedule because of an early meeting or an errand I would be very irritable for the rest of the day.
- dmos62 6y ago
  I get powerlessness and stress, but how does isolation come into it?
  - hhjj 6y ago
    maybe lack of calibration?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    For many people, isolation is a stressor.
JCharante 6y ago
There's nothing better after a 14 hour flight to Incheon than to finish going past security, up the escalator, and immediately into the Gong Cha on the left. Well, going outside into Seoul instead of just transiting there would probably be better. I like how the author used bubble tea as a backdrop to bring up a bunch of different topics. I find representation to be interesting (well, when they mentioned Crazy Rich Asians), because while I do care about having a proportionate amount of people from central and south america* in decision making roles, I've never cared about it in Hollywood. Maybe this means that it's already been achieved here. <tangent>Maybe equal representation in Hollywood can be spun as a conspiracy to create complacency, because it distracts people from how most genetic studies that use public dollars disproportionately use white participants which does not proportionately benefit the participants of the countries that are funding it. </tangent> On the other hand, when I was studying abroad in East Asia I loved seeing a foreigner having a speaking role in a movie. Had I previously been decensitized to representation? Was I taking representation for granted? *and from other backgrounds of course
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  I agree. The last place I care about representation is Hollywood. Hollywood seems more and more a place to me devoid of morals, obsessed with lecturing to people, and a strange icon that so many are obsessed with worshipping. It's the one place I'd be happy if I were never represented.
- JCharante 6y ago
  Spotted a typo: does not proportionately benefit the *people* of the countries that are funding it
toastal 6y ago
In last year's politics and online social movements boba has been the mascot of "Milk Tea Alliance" between Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in support of democracy and combating Chinese nationalist bots/trolls online after a Thai actor called Hong Kong a 'country', ประเทศไต้หวัน, in a tweet.
- hong_kong 6y ago
  Actually each of Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have their own distinctive milk tea, only one of which (TW) is bubble tea.
  - shlant 6y ago
    Thai milk bubble tea is definitely my favorite. I wish I wasn't so sensitive to caffeine...
vletal 6y ago
I hate to see original recipes bastardized by sugar and artificial coloring marketed towards kids and sold in malls.
- ginko 6y ago
  Copious amounts of sugar are an intrinsic part of the original recipe for bubble tea as far as I know.
nharmonia 6y ago
There are atleast 10+ bubble tea shops in and around my university campus: https://www.google.ca/maps/search/bubble+tea/@43.4741683,-80.5403577,15z/data=!3m1!4b1 https://www.google.ca/maps/search/bubble+tea/@43.4741683,-80... I don't really understand how they sustain themselves, but going out with friends to get bubble tea was one of my favorite covid activities
philliphaydon 6y ago
I don’t understand where “boba” comes from. Because I live in Singapore, my wife is Taiwanese, so I travel to Taiwan a lot, no one calls it boba... I keep seeing American or European articles say boba. Even in this article it says boba known in Chinese... but I’ve never heard anyone in Asia call it boba... in English it’s always called “bubble milk tea” or “brown/black sugar bubble milk tea”, depending on what you want. Or if it’s added, it’s referred to as pearls.
- michaelscott 6y ago
  Had a Taiwanese friend who ran a bubble tea store and also always referred to the bubbles added as pearls. He only changed it when he realised that his predominantly non-Asian market didn't know what "adding pearls to your tea" meant.
  - hnick 6y ago
    I've also seen bubbles and pearls here in AU, but never boba. e.g. https://sharetea.com.au/bubble-tea-menu/ https://sharetea.com.au/bubble-tea-menu/
- frogcoder 6y ago
  Every time this came up, I always insisted that it should be called booby tea. Because that's exact what Boba means, large breasts. That's a slang term meaning king of wave, because large breasts move in wave motion. The pearl tea name came later, due to the vulgarness of it's predecessor I guess. Now, you can enjoy more next time you suck on those sweet bouncy topioca.
- ip26 6y ago
  Perhaps it came out of the Chinatown SF area. I recall Asian Americans calling it ‘boba’ 20 years ago in the Bay Area.
- zoomablemind 6y ago
  In my mind it has always been named simply 'milk tea'. As opposed to 'Thai tea', which is a milk tea too, just the flavor and color are kinda specific. Besides, Thai tea in most places is really a 'Thai iced tea', I gave up on asking if it could be served hot (which it could, and tastes good too). Meanwhile, the milk tea in most shops I've been can be served hot or iced on demand. Moreover, the kind of tea used can also be selected.
Jack000 6y ago
I find it kind of funny that milk tea is tied to Asian identity. afaik for traditional Chinese adding milk to tea is a faux pas kind of like adding Coke to wine. I think the modern practice of adding milk to tea started with the British, who imported it via Hong Kong. The Taiwanese then added tapioca + sugar which became bubble tea. There are traditional milk teas in other countries though, like India and Mongolia. The Mongolian version is salty instead of sweet.
- legulere 6y ago
  I don’t know why you see Indians drinking tea with milk more traditional than British doing that, considering that British brought tea to India.
  - packetlost 6y ago
    Historically, yes. But masala chai is distinctly Indian, and one of the more notable examples of a tea where milk is a core ingredient instead of an optional addition.
  - iljya 6y ago
    That tea is - for the most part - known as "chai" in India suggests a different origin (the world's languages are largely divided on the first sound in the word for tea: either Te or Ch). It is true that the British brought large scale tea production to India, but the plant is endemic to India and its local consumption long predates the British (though the exact origins are somewhat obscure). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_tea_culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_tea_culture
    - flobosg 6y ago
      It seems that words for tea that derived from "cha" spread across land, while the ones originating from "tea" developed over sea routes. https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land-and-sea-to-conquer-the-world/ https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land...
  - 6y ago
say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
Not a single person on HN who has tried to make their own tapioca pearls?
205guy 6y ago
The boba phenomenon has always surprised me. I enjoy boba, but there are so many other cool slimy-solids-in-sweet-drink to be had at Ranch 99 market (the Chinese supermarkets in California): grass jelly, basil seed drink, nata de coco, and some I’m forgetting. It seems that most boba tea places only have the regular tapioca balls. I was once in Chinatown in New York and found a sweet tea with small mushrooms floating in it (I think they were straw mushrooms) but I can’t find anything like it with Google. Then there is falooda from India with vermicelli, among others. But I think the next popular “drink/dessert” will be Filipino halo halo. It’s a wide world out there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nata_de_coco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nata_de_coco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_jelly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_jelly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falooda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falooda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo-halo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo-halo

131 points by irtefa 6y ago

Something I see at a lot of Boba places that's also super good is the "Flurry" (it also gets called "snow" or something similar). It's basically a plate of shaved ice (usually you share with someone), but the texture is like... cotton candy. And then they put sweetened condensed milk on it and you can add boba, bursters, bits of fruit, syrups, etc. It's great; the texture is so unique.

paranoidrobot 6y ago
This sounds like Bingsu. Wikipedia has it as Patbingsu[1], but I've only seen it referred to as Bingsu on Korean food-y type Youtube, and I can find it here in Sydney as just 'Bingsu'. I've also only seen it as a shaved milk-ice, rather than water-ice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patbingsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patbingsu

incensedbrowser 6y ago

This is what the page looks like when accessing it from Europe: https://i.imgur.com/d0rpSz5.png https://i.imgur.com/d0rpSz5.png

molticrystal 6y ago
Try this: https://web.archive.org/web/20210131053009/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/chronicles-of-a-bubble-tea-addict https://web.archive.org/web/20210131053009/https://www.newyo... You can just throw "https://wayback.archive.org/ https://wayback.archive.org/" in front of an url and it will autoredirect to the latest archived copy if there is one.

molticrystal 6y ago

I've been hooked since I tried a wonderful frozen cup(blended ice) of chai flavor back in college. I sought it out in many cities I've traveled to, to recreate the experience, but either I am unlucky or it is a rarer flavor and many places use ice cubes and not blended ice. It is amazing that the industry has grown to the point where most medium sized cities now have a place where you can purchase boba tea. But for those still lacking, I highly recommend you try making it yourself. You can find the ingredients in just about any Asian market or order the flavor and pearls online. If you go this route, try to get the extra wide straws as well.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/wRnFc https://archive.is/wRnFc https://web.archive.org/web/20210131053009/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/chronicles-of-a-bubble-tea-addict https://web.archive.org/web/20210131053009/https://www.newyo...

bryceacc 6y ago

growing up in the bay area you take it for granted when there are 5 different PMT shops every other block. I will also take calling it PMT (pearl milk tea) > boba to the grave

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ehnto 6y ago

I once went to a Bubble Tea place, and not knowing how the process worked, I said no to all of the additions, and ended up with nothing but chocolate milk and a big straw.

KMag 6y ago
On the flip side, my buddy and I got hooked on bubble tea in school. A year after graduation, we rented a house along with my buddy's brother and my buddy's elementary school buddy. We were always drinking bubble tea from a kiosk in a mall within walking distance, so the brother one day decides to see what the fuss is about. He mentioned "Hey, I tried that bubble tea you guys are always drinking. It's pretty good, except for the chunks."
- antoniuschan99 6y ago
  Could that have been taro? They leave in the taro at some places like Chatime. Aka Taiwanese style. Also, op you could have use the normal straw :P

barnaclejive 6y ago

Gross. I had bubble tea exactly once while interviewing at FB. I had to choke it back and try not look like an idiot. Pretty sure that is the one and only reason why I didn't get an offer - "this dude is clearly from the Midwest and has no place here." /s

spike021 6y ago
Honestly that's how the first time experience is for most people, especially when they don't expect texture. It's ok not to enjoy it but this kind of comment comes off as fairly antagonistic.
happytoexplain 6y ago
Jumping from "I didn't enjoy bubble tea" directly to "so they probably hate me because of their elitist socio-demographic biases" comes off as self-pitying, and pretty highly unrealistic.

deanclatworthy 6y ago

Bubble tea is bizarre. I only recently stumbled upon it on a trip to Bankgkok after a local said "let's get something to drink". I fell in love with it immediately. It's something that has not yet fully permeated Northern Europe, and Helsinki (where I live) has (or had..) one or two places to get it from (pre-pandemic).

yocheckitdawg 6y ago
You should come to Melbourne CBD in Australia. I can only assume they are being used as fronts to launder money or as a business investment to secure residency as there seems to be no possible way even a city of Melbourne's size could consume this much bubble tea. It's almost at the point where there are bubble tea sellers directly next to each other in the street. And I'm talking dozens, if not hundreds, of them.
- girvo 6y ago
  Hah they’re here in Brisbane too. Not to the same extent, but give it time..,
- always_left 6y ago
  Kind of interesting, I'm in the bay area and it's similar, but have you seen the pricing? And amongst young asian-americans its identical to Starbucks, just a place or thing to do.
- chongli 6y ago
  It's almost at the point where there are bubble tea sellers directly next to each other in the street That’s an example of Hotelling’s law [1]. Competing businesses are better off clustering together in high traffic areas rather than spreading out to cover the market in a way that serves customers more efficiently. It’s a weird phenomenon and a clear refutation of the invisible hand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
  - 1996 6y ago

kibibyte 6y ago

How did "boba" become the de facto term for the drink? I remember calling it "pearl milk tea" in middle school, somehow switching over to "bubble tea" in late high school to college, and now calling it "boba". And I don't think I heard of the slang meaning until much later. Aside from that, as I am a first generation (native-born) Chinese-American, this article discusses my identity scarily well from an angle that I never really thought about. Despite Subtle Asian Traits becoming popular around the time that I was cutting my Facebook usage after I graduated and started work and "boba liberalism" being a term I learned today, I'm not really that many steps removed from this all. Why is it that I subconsciously tried hard to prove myself to classmates that I'm an American, but on the other hand, I tried to be as "Asian" as my Asian-American classmates? This article hit a cultural identity nerve in me and I haven't really formed a coherent set of thoughts on it. (Maybe this also ties into why I'm such a boba purist in that I reject anything that isn't tapioca balls + whole milk + some sugar but not too much + good tea, though when I'm feeling less tolerant of lactose, oat milk surprisingly tastes almost no different from whole milk in a boba drink.) Also, the boba metaphor for culture that the author presented also really works well in another way. A person born of parents from Shanghai and a person born of parents from Beijing can have very different cultural backgrounds, but that richness gets lost when they become Chinese-Americans. Similarly to how boba, a Taiwanese drink, has become a de facto symbol of Asian American cultural identity overall. Some might argue this is a "bad thing", but, well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm still coming up with a coherent set of thoughts around this.

kenhwang 6y ago
The terminology difference just depends on who introduced the drink to the region and when. The east coast uses "bubble". West coast uses "boba". If your Chinese community was more Cantonese/HK than Mandarin/Taiwanese, you got "pearl" or "tapioca" instead (because HK also has a sago pearl drink and other tapioca based deserts). Bubble is technically supposed to refer to the smaller tapioca balls (about the size of a normal straw), boba refers to the jumbo sized balls. I think boba then became the dominant name because its the shortest and most distinctive.
Moru 6y ago
About cultural identity: It's not only a rich blend of cultures in China, I'm sure there are just as many mixes that we don't think about in the American part of Chinese-American that don't really fit you. After changing home location, there is always this feeling of where do I belong now? Am I a Swede or a German? Well neither, Germany has moved along since you emigrated, and you are now trying to catch up with Sweden. Same thing with south and north Sweden, there are places I can't even understand what they are saying. This on a small place like Sweden, can't imagine the differences you have in America and China.

jtchang 6y ago

Definitely spoiled living in the bay area where there seems to be way too many bubble tea places. One of my favorites though (which I can never get unless I am in south bay) is roasted buckwheat at Rabbit Rabbit.

fermentation 6y ago

I’m a big fan of bubble tea and I have noticed that across many bubble tea shops in the western US, while a fairly large 16oz serving has been standardized, there’s little standardization on sugar content. A lot of places ask if I want it half or 25% as sweet, but that’s not a great indication of sugar level or flavor unless I’ve already had tea from that place before. Given that I think most folks can expect a cup of black tea to contain 0g sugar, I think expressing sweetness in terms of grams of added sugar is a pretty fair way of describing this stuff.

AYBABTME 6y ago
I also wish the US used grams, that'd be pretty fair.
always_left 6y ago
But then people will be more conscious of how much sugar they are adding. Percentage is some arbitrary and relative term. 50g of sugar will make people realize how much sugar is being added and might realize their drink isn't too great without copious amounts of sugar.
- yarcob 6y ago
  Yes. 50% sounds like a healthy amount (only half as much!), even if it's still way too much.
namelosw 6y ago
There's little to no standardization in East Asia either...
seanmcdirmid 6y ago
You can go no sugar on the drink and there will still be sweetness from the milk and the pearls, I think it actually tastes better that way, the added sugar isn’t needed.
frankosaurus 6y ago
Gong Cha lets you can specify the sugar amount from 0-100. Of course, even with 0 sugar, the tapioca balls are simple carbs that break down to sugar readily in your body.

spike021 6y ago

I love boba and have since my Asian friends in high school introduced it to me years ago. Granted, nowadays when I order "boba" (and say I'm ordering boba) I'm just referring to the tea by itself without the pearls/bubbles/boba. I mostly do this to cut down on sugar, since boba itself just has way too much. Though occasionally when I really am in the mood and I know the shop I'm at makes great boba, I do order it with the drink. It seems weird at first to call plain flavored tea boba if it doesn't contain them, but then a lot of my friends will also colloquially call the same thing "milk tea" even when they purposely get a milk-less tea at a shop ;). I think these days I'm more of a "traditionalist" if there is such a thing, because my favorite shop is one mentioned in the article: Ten Ren. I believe there are two Bay Area locations and I tend to frequent the Cupertino one, though the Milpitas one is far more traditional since it's lined with canisters of teas of all kinds and the people who ring you up/make your drink are the older generation (unlike most modern boba shops that tend to have high school/college age employees). But anyway, in short Ten Ren, IMO, has some of the best-tasting and simple flavored teas compared to some of the weirdly, overly-complex ones at more hype shops.

always_left 6y ago
There looks to be one in San Francisco! I'll check it out, I used to live in Chinatown (where I see it on location). Been missing that area for a bit.
- samatman 6y ago
  Ah man. The Alishan high mountain oolong from Ten Ren is just about my favorite thing to drink. Little yixing teapot, really starts to shine on the third steeping. Can't separate the nostalgia from visiting Alishan from the taste of the tea. But it's excellent tea.
derwiki 6y ago
There’s also a Ten Ren on Grant in SF Chinatown. I still have a punch card..
- 6y ago

Guthur 6y ago

Where i grew up the closest I'd come to an Asian community was the family run Chinese take away in my home town. Consequently I've completely missed bubble tea, and now I'm of the age where I couldn't really stomach that much sugar in one sitting.

quicklime 6y ago
You can ask for it with less or no sugar. Not all places do it, but many do.
- eru 6y ago
  Iced bubbled tea doesn't really work without any sugar at all tastewise. But they work with very small amounts of sugar. Here in Singapore some places do hot bubble tea. That one's taste works well without any sugar at all.
Reason077 6y ago
They come in all kinds of fruity and milky tea flavours, not all of them are sweet. You can ask for half or 0% sugar on the ones that are. The tapioca “bubbles” are optional, too.
hnick 6y ago
We always ask for zero sugar zero ice, unless it's a very hot day. We'll often get lychee jelly or something as well as the pearls so it's sweet anyway. You can also order it heated from some places instead of having ice, I had it in winter in China, it was nice but the bubbles get very gummy if you take too long.

ewokone 6y ago

Reading the 'in the realm of hungry ghosts' from Gabor Mate I learned that is not the substance itself but 3 major circumstances which trigger addiction in the human: powerlessness, isolation and stress. These key factors bring up behaviour patterns for addiction. Let it be sugar, sex, Screentime, drugs, food, sport, buying things, etc.... Really helped me to reflect on my patterns and I also learned about the difference between passion and addiction. My 50 cents here.

3np 6y ago
That really hit close to home, thanks.
thih9 6y ago
Interesting to see sport on the list, I never thought about it this way. If anyone else is interested: https://aeon.co/ideas/how-people-with-sports-addiction-are-like-drug-addicts https://aeon.co/ideas/how-people-with-sports-addiction-are-l...
- Deivuh 6y ago
  Makes sense, back a few years ago I was so into weightlifting that I would spend around two hours at the gym. And whenever I had to skip or move my workout from my schedule because of an early meeting or an errand I would be very irritable for the rest of the day.
dmos62 6y ago
I get powerlessness and stress, but how does isolation come into it?
- hhjj 6y ago
  maybe lack of calibration?
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  For many people, isolation is a stressor.

JCharante 6y ago

There's nothing better after a 14 hour flight to Incheon than to finish going past security, up the escalator, and immediately into the Gong Cha on the left. Well, going outside into Seoul instead of just transiting there would probably be better. I like how the author used bubble tea as a backdrop to bring up a bunch of different topics. I find representation to be interesting (well, when they mentioned Crazy Rich Asians), because while I do care about having a proportionate amount of people from central and south america* in decision making roles, I've never cared about it in Hollywood. Maybe this means that it's already been achieved here. <tangent>Maybe equal representation in Hollywood can be spun as a conspiracy to create complacency, because it distracts people from how most genetic studies that use public dollars disproportionately use white participants which does not proportionately benefit the participants of the countries that are funding it. </tangent> On the other hand, when I was studying abroad in East Asia I loved seeing a foreigner having a speaking role in a movie. Had I previously been decensitized to representation? Was I taking representation for granted? *and from other backgrounds of course

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
I agree. The last place I care about representation is Hollywood. Hollywood seems more and more a place to me devoid of morals, obsessed with lecturing to people, and a strange icon that so many are obsessed with worshipping. It's the one place I'd be happy if I were never represented.
JCharante 6y ago
Spotted a typo: does not proportionately benefit the *people* of the countries that are funding it

toastal 6y ago

In last year's politics and online social movements boba has been the mascot of "Milk Tea Alliance" between Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in support of democracy and combating Chinese nationalist bots/trolls online after a Thai actor called Hong Kong a 'country', ประเทศไต้หวัน, in a tweet.

hong_kong 6y ago
Actually each of Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have their own distinctive milk tea, only one of which (TW) is bubble tea.
- shlant 6y ago
  Thai milk bubble tea is definitely my favorite. I wish I wasn't so sensitive to caffeine...

vletal 6y ago

I hate to see original recipes bastardized by sugar and artificial coloring marketed towards kids and sold in malls.

ginko 6y ago
Copious amounts of sugar are an intrinsic part of the original recipe for bubble tea as far as I know.

nharmonia 6y ago

There are atleast 10+ bubble tea shops in and around my university campus: https://www.google.ca/maps/search/bubble+tea/@43.4741683,-80.5403577,15z/data=!3m1!4b1 https://www.google.ca/maps/search/bubble+tea/@43.4741683,-80... I don't really understand how they sustain themselves, but going out with friends to get bubble tea was one of my favorite covid activities

philliphaydon 6y ago

I don’t understand where “boba” comes from. Because I live in Singapore, my wife is Taiwanese, so I travel to Taiwan a lot, no one calls it boba... I keep seeing American or European articles say boba. Even in this article it says boba known in Chinese... but I’ve never heard anyone in Asia call it boba... in English it’s always called “bubble milk tea” or “brown/black sugar bubble milk tea”, depending on what you want. Or if it’s added, it’s referred to as pearls.

michaelscott 6y ago
Had a Taiwanese friend who ran a bubble tea store and also always referred to the bubbles added as pearls. He only changed it when he realised that his predominantly non-Asian market didn't know what "adding pearls to your tea" meant.
- hnick 6y ago
  I've also seen bubbles and pearls here in AU, but never boba. e.g. https://sharetea.com.au/bubble-tea-menu/ https://sharetea.com.au/bubble-tea-menu/
frogcoder 6y ago
Every time this came up, I always insisted that it should be called booby tea. Because that's exact what Boba means, large breasts. That's a slang term meaning king of wave, because large breasts move in wave motion. The pearl tea name came later, due to the vulgarness of it's predecessor I guess. Now, you can enjoy more next time you suck on those sweet bouncy topioca.
ip26 6y ago
Perhaps it came out of the Chinatown SF area. I recall Asian Americans calling it ‘boba’ 20 years ago in the Bay Area.
zoomablemind 6y ago
In my mind it has always been named simply 'milk tea'. As opposed to 'Thai tea', which is a milk tea too, just the flavor and color are kinda specific. Besides, Thai tea in most places is really a 'Thai iced tea', I gave up on asking if it could be served hot (which it could, and tastes good too). Meanwhile, the milk tea in most shops I've been can be served hot or iced on demand. Moreover, the kind of tea used can also be selected.

Jack000 6y ago

I find it kind of funny that milk tea is tied to Asian identity. afaik for traditional Chinese adding milk to tea is a faux pas kind of like adding Coke to wine. I think the modern practice of adding milk to tea started with the British, who imported it via Hong Kong. The Taiwanese then added tapioca + sugar which became bubble tea. There are traditional milk teas in other countries though, like India and Mongolia. The Mongolian version is salty instead of sweet.

legulere 6y ago
I don’t know why you see Indians drinking tea with milk more traditional than British doing that, considering that British brought tea to India.
- packetlost 6y ago
  Historically, yes. But masala chai is distinctly Indian, and one of the more notable examples of a tea where milk is a core ingredient instead of an optional addition.
- iljya 6y ago
  That tea is - for the most part - known as "chai" in India suggests a different origin (the world's languages are largely divided on the first sound in the word for tea: either Te or Ch). It is true that the British brought large scale tea production to India, but the plant is endemic to India and its local consumption long predates the British (though the exact origins are somewhat obscure). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_tea_culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_tea_culture
  - flobosg 6y ago
    It seems that words for tea that derived from "cha" spread across land, while the ones originating from "tea" developed over sea routes. https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land-and-sea-to-conquer-the-world/ https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land...
- 6y ago

say_it_as_it_is 6y ago

Not a single person on HN who has tried to make their own tapioca pearls?

205guy 6y ago

The boba phenomenon has always surprised me. I enjoy boba, but there are so many other cool slimy-solids-in-sweet-drink to be had at Ranch 99 market (the Chinese supermarkets in California): grass jelly, basil seed drink, nata de coco, and some I’m forgetting. It seems that most boba tea places only have the regular tapioca balls. I was once in Chinatown in New York and found a sweet tea with small mushrooms floating in it (I think they were straw mushrooms) but I can’t find anything like it with Google. Then there is falooda from India with vermicelli, among others. But I think the next popular “drink/dessert” will be Filipino halo halo. It’s a wide world out there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nata_de_coco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nata_de_coco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_jelly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_jelly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falooda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falooda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo-halo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo-halo