Bubble tea, also known as Boba milk tea, or bubble milk for short, is a tea drink popular in Taiwan . After adding powder balls to the milk tea , it becomes bubble milk tea.
Pearl milk tea is a type of Taiwan’s ” bubble black tea ” culture. Although it only adds tapioca rice balls to milk tea, it has become one of Taiwan’s most representative drinks and snacks.
Bubble tea is a fun drink that typically consists of black or oolong tea , milk or fruit flavor, sweetener , and a chewy texture in Taiwanese cuisine called QQ (you might think of the “bubbles” in bubble tea). Most often, QQ comes in the form of tapioca pearls.
The name “bubble tea” originally came from the bubbles that form when the milk tea is shaken, rather than the interesting pearls in the drink. The drink is known by many other names, including ” bubble tea ,” “boba tea,” and “tapioca tea.”
Legend of bubble tea
There are two shops in Taiwan that claim to be the inventors of bubble milk tea. It is said that Mr. Liu Hanjie, who runs a bubble tea shop “Chun Shui Tang” in Taichung City , claimed that he began to experiment with making milk tea in 1983. He also said that a female employee of the shop accidentally made it successfully. The ingredients added at that time were fruits , syrup , candied sweet potatoes and rice balls . The milk tea he launched was not well received at first, but by chance, after being interviewed by a Japanese TV program, it finally attracted the attention of businessmen.
Another theory is that it was invented by Mr. Tu Zonghe of Hanlin Tea House in Tainan City . It is said that he was inspired by seeing white powder balls in Yamuliao market around 1987. Therefore, early pearls were white, and later changed to black. However, neither store has applied for patent or trademark rights , making bubble milk tea the most representative people’s drink in Taiwan.
In the first half of the 1990s, bubble tea was first included in the menus of chain bubble tea shops such as “Xiao Xie”. Since bubble tea shops were popular places for office workers to discuss business and students to gather before coffee shops became popular in Taiwan, bubble milk tea began to be widely favored by students. . Then, bubble milk tea vendors gradually appeared near schools, areas with dense cram schools , and night markets . In the late 1990s, some operators introduced ” automatic sealing machines ” to replace traditional cup lids. Many new investors, such as Shangfan Food, Leli Cup, Green Dream Milk Tea, Leisure Station , Dalian, Kuai Ke Li, etc., have adopted automatic sealing machines to start expanding the business of chain takeaway beverage stores. Since then, take-out bubble milk tea shops have become mainstream, and due to the participation of chain stores, businessmen have begun to expand bubble milk tea to the world, becoming one of Taiwan’s internationally renowned foods. In order to fight over who invented pearl milk tea, “Chun Shui Tang” and “Hanlin Teahouse” sued each other in Taiwan courts.
When it comes to bubble milk tea, Taichung City is the birthplace, and Taichung citizens were the first to enjoy its charming taste. In 1987, a teahouse near the Taichung City Hall first launched bubble milk tea. Because of its soft texture and the right amount of milk tea, it tastes great. The original creator is Lin Xiuhui, the current product research and development manager of Chun Shui Tang. Lin Xiuhui recalled that her parents used to set up stalls in the vegetable market, and she would go to the vegetable market to help out on holidays since she was in elementary school. The person who impressed her most in the market at that time was a “Fen Yuan Uncle” who she looked forward to most every day . The first thing she did was to share a bowl of hot, sticky and smooth rice balls with her brother. From then on, when she was craving for food, she would cook a pot of rice balls to satisfy her craving.
In 1984, Lin Xiuhui joined the bar counter at the “Yangxian Tea Shop”, the predecessor of Siwei Street and Chun Shui Tang. She learned how to make tea and drinks, especially milk tea. She was later promoted to purchase. When she went to the traditional market to buy, she saw “Powder Balls” “Zhang bought a pack back to the store, and then she tried to combine the powdered balls with milk tea, and cups of delicious pearl milk tea were born. In the early days, bubble milk tea was like Lin Xiuhui’s “private tea”, shared only by bosses and colleagues. Because of its great popularity, when Lin Xiuhui was promoted to the store manager of the Siwei store in 1987, she wanted to sell this private tea, so her colleagues worked together to make tea. When it comes to naming, someone suddenly thought that “the pink balls in the milk tea are like pearls”, so the beautiful name “Pearl Milk Tea” came out. Soon, this tea became popular in all the bubble tea shops in Taichung City. One month later, all the black tea shops on Siwei Street and Shifu Road were selling bubble milk tea. There was a time when pearl milk tea became a specialty drink in Taichung, and people from other places were bound to have a cup when they came to Taichung. Three months later, it was even more amazing, and pearl milk tea was available in almost all of Taiwan. Because Taiwanese tea shops expanded overseas chains, they brought this tea with them. It has been drunk in mainland China and Southeast Asia ; it can be drunk in Europe and the Americas . In order to learn the “orthodox” pearl milk tea, Japanese caterers even made a special trip to Taichung City tea shops to learn from it, hoping to prepare a Taiwanese-style tea drink. To this day, despite the continuous renovation of tea drinks, pearl milk tea still ranks among the top three orders of bubble tea shops, tea stalls and chain stores.
