Bubble Tea — A Cultural Innovation
No sugar, no ice.
I am not your everyday boba consumer. I am a critic, a connoisseur. I come from the flashy suburbs of Maryland. The central road through town, Rockville Pike, is dubbed “台湾一条街” meaning “a street out of Taiwan.” There are more than ten competing shops on this one street, with more opening every season. Around the world I’ve had boba in Beijing, Liyang, Los Angeles, New York, Rhode Island, Montréal — more than 30 unique shops in total.
What is Bubble Tea?
Bubble tea, also known as boba or boba tea, is a Taiwanese dessert that usually contains black tea, milk, sugar, and chewy black tapioca pearls. One serving typically costs $4–6. The food/drink hybrid is ingested using a boba straw. With a diameter of 1 centimeter, it is the perfect width for sucking up the pearls from the bottom of the cup. Today, boba flavors are a creative science. Lychee jelly was a popular addition from the start. Just within the last year, a new acquired taste for “salted cheese foam caps” became trending among consumers. From fruity to frothy, the variations of boba cover a broad range of crave-able tastes.
No Sugar, No Ice
People gasp when they hear “no sugar.” Even though I like sweet flavors in my drink, I don’t want to spend five dollars for a cup of corn syrup. Sugar and ice merely mask the symphony of flavors in a quality drink. I expect the tapioca pearls to have been soaked in either honey or brown sugar. Their caramelized sweetness should be the accompaniment to the delicate taste of loose leaf tea.
Try getting a “no sugar, no ice” at a mediocre chain like Kung Fu Tea. Well, for most of their drinks you actually can’t. Bubble tea chains use artificial flavoring syrups or powders instead of real milk and real fruit. So try getting an unflavored “no sugar, no ice” drink. Without those distractions, it’ll be obvious that the tea is over-steeped and stale. A normal Kung Fu Tea drink might satisfy your sugar fix, but there is nothing good about what they sell.
The invention of bubble tea was radical, and it was spread worldwide by consumer demand. Unfortunately, good shops in Boston are hard to find. We are in a bubble tea bubble — you don’t need to sell good stuff to make money. There is no market pressure to use fruit when syrups sell just as well. The vast majority of customers are merely paying for a sugar fix. (For example, a “dirty brown sugar milk tea” from TBaar doesn’t even contain tea… It is nothing more than sugary milk.)
Very few shops are worthy of my subjective “S rank” (meaning best). Most of these god-tier locations are on Rue Sainte-Catherine in Montréal, QC. Along this street are many small and independent cafes. Over winter break, I brought an American friend with me to Montreal on a boba tour. On day two we got drinks at ChiCha. After a sip, he said to me:
“Wow. There’s real taro in my taro milk tea?”
It is amusing in a pathetic way that natural ingredients in our food is a pleasant surprise. I shamefully admit that one reason (of many) I keep going back to Montréal is for good boba made of fresh tea.
A Changing Society
My mother would make rainbow tapioca in sweetened non-fat milk as a dessert from time to time. Jelly beads in coconut milk was a similar option that was found at many small restaurants in my home town. This was all before my first taste of the modern bubble tea beverage, which I got during middle school at a Chinese fast-food restaurant called Jumbo Jumbo. This was before the boba bloom on Rockville Pike. Puncturable lids weren’t even a thing yet. Jumbo Jumbo was F₀, the OG. At the time, boba was only saved for special occasions. Every time I would get peach flavor.
Moving into high school, the decision to get boba was less so my mother’s decision than mine own. Over summer I would get boba at least once a day. It was a staple in my life. Even today, boba is the most convenient way for Asian Americans to socialize. “Wanna hang out?” was largely replaced by “wanna get boba?”
The boba phenomenon is not just a case study of Asian American culture, it is a progressive innovation on the front of interracial relations. In literature, two competing metaphors for ethnic diversity are most frequently used. Either it can be seen as a mosaic, where cultures coexist within proximity while remaining separate, or as a melting pot, for coexisting cultures that mix and fuse together. First generation immigrants mix like oil and water. It is in the interests of second generation children like myself to figure out how our community can assimilate without losing touch with our cultural values.
Cultivating Connections
We can start building bridges by agreement on commonalities: our mutual addiction to sugar water in plastic cups. Westerners would complain that Asian foods taste “ethnic and strange,” but with around 50 grams of sugar per a medium 16 ounces boba, it is a familiar taste. While tapioca pearls are a controversial addition, it is the quirk that makes boba unique.
Boba enables conversations. As a simple ice breaker, ask them what their favorite drink is. Talk about how weird cheese foam is. Heck, I even network over boba. Last summer I invited a postdoc to get boba. We bought drinks and sat outside as she advised me on manuscript authorship and a career in academia.
Bubble tea is part of culture. Just like how you can be instant friends with strangers for liking the same sports team, boba is a new space for tribalism. Once I even talked to a doctor about boba while shadowing him in clinic. It was funny how a lowly high school volunteer can find grounds to relate with an accomplished M.D. Ph.D. at a world-famous institution.
A Plastic Society
As with everything humans do, boba’s popularity has a glaring problem. Near every shop you’ll find overflowing bins of one-time use plastic cups. Even if we like to think that sustainability is a frequent topic of the American day-to-day conversation, our waste reveals the ugly truth regarding apathy. The truth is that we are willfully ignorant to protect our lavish lifestyles.
Some of us make ourselves feel better by tossing used boba cups into public recycling bins. Recycling bins are literally where we can bottle up our problems and ship them somewhere else. Well, there are reasons why recycling comes last in the 3 R’s: “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Without washing it first, the dirty cup contaminates the entire bin. Moreover, recycling is an energy-inefficient process. Since China is buying less of our waste, a lot of recycled plastic ends up in landfills anyway, or getting lost then stuck in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Americans create more waste than the world can even handle. If everyone lived like Americans, we would need four earths to provide for our excessive consumerism.
I myself save the nicer cups and wash them at home for reuse. I see people posting about reusable boba cups on social media from time to time. Is the consumer voice effective? In reality, shops are reluctant to support the minor inconvenience of reusable cups. Businesses are slow to adopt sustainable practices. Hence, plastic waste is a negative externality, how to reduce waste is an unsolved problem.
A Human Story
Why is bubble tea so successful? We like it because it’s sweet, now we love it because it’s part of culture. To worship bubble tea is to fit in. Boba hooks onto our primitive minds’ need for sugar and social connection. No matter your age nor status, these desires are universal. But at the same time, boba shows us our ugly sides. We consume, we don’t care much about what we consume. We waste, we don’t care about what we pollute. We are living in the Anthropocene, where collective interests map out the course of our world. Bubble tea itself is just an innocent dessert, yet its nuanced role in our culture and economy have implications for who we are and what we do.
