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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One of the origin story of the term links to a once-popular Hong Kong actress Amy Yip[1], who was known for her cup size and sexy appearances in movies. The "nickname" 波霸, roughly translated to "Boobs overlord" in English, or transliterated to "Boba" (sounds similar in both Cantonese and Mandarin), was given to her by the media.
It was said that one bubble tea maker in Taiwan made large tapioca bubbles to put in milk tea, when tiny bubbles were used in milk tea at the time, and he named it "Boba tea", associating the relatively huge size of his bubbles with the actress well-known body feature.
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.
I always assumed it was a corruption from someone saying "bubble" with an exaggerated Chinese accent.
Granted, I now know this is wrong, since it's apparently a straight-up mashing together of the words for "big" and "bubble". So, funny how languages work.
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.
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.
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.
My Taiwanese friend insists that "boba" wordplay was popularized and faded along with the career of the Hong Kong actress 葉子楣 and her famously large pearls in the late 80s/early 90s. 珍珠奶茶 seems to more popular with younger people at least walking around Taipei, so it might be related to whether it was introduced via Hong Kong or Singapore versus Taiwan.
Japan is doing bizarre things like ramen and pizza with it now.
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.
I think there's some confusion in English between 泡沫紅茶 (literally bubble tea) and 珍珠奶茶 (pearl milk tea or boba), because the words bubble and boba sound quite similar, particularly for someone speaking English as a second language. The tapioca pearls even look a little like bubbles.
Often bubble and boba are used interchangeably now, but I think they originally referred to two different types of tea-based drink, as the Chinese-language names still do. The same shop often sells both types of drink, so this inevitably adds to the confusion.
Google image search 泡沫紅茶 and 珍珠奶茶 to see the difference
> 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?
shared identity is the strongest substrate of trust; we are constantly evaluating each other for aligned incentives. imo the more granular the better -- think about the joy of stumbling upon someone else who shares your hometown or some deep passion of yours, or a potential romantic partner with many shared interests. when we share a common foundation, we can more easily model each other and project likely behavior, which lends itself to cooperation, or at least a diminished risk of defection.
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.
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).
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.
Bubble tea shops have become pretty ubiquitous in London in recent years. There must be hundreds of them across the city! There's one ('CUPP') opened up around the corner from me recently and there always seems to be a long queue outside in the evening, both regular customers and deliveroo riders picking up orders...
Some parts of Europe adopted it at different times, and curiously, it doesn't seem to be correlated with expat Asian population.
I first tried 珍珠奶茶 at the top of Taipei 101 in 2009, and have always sought it out since. It was a thing in Daegu when I lived there in 2012. In Austria, I was surprised to see McDonalds having bubble tea in mid-2012! It was the popping-bubbles though, not tapioca. I discovered new flavours (e.g. Yakult) in Shenzhen in 2013, and drank it daily in Taiwan from 2014-2018. (not always milk, I'd mix it up with passion fruit, pineapple, grapefruit, whatever else). My favourite way to explore was to ask for "yi yang" - the same as the person before. My favourite was actually NuPasta, then Coco, then Xian Cha Dao, then 50 lan. There was one place where it only cost 30 NTD, but one time I got it without sugar and realised it tasted awful, so after that I realised I should pay 50-70 NTD for slightly better quality.
Unfortunately the Gong Cha and Chatime in Auckland don't accept my loyalty cards from Taiwan :-P
The bubble tea in Bangkok is especially delicious, because it’s usually the bubble version of Thai tea (at least that’s what was most common when I lived there). Which is an especially delicious spiced black tea. The copious amounts of sugar it’s usually served with (or condensed milk) doesn’t hurt the flavor either.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] ewokone|5 years ago|reply
My 50 cents here.
[+] [-] ehnto|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JCharante|5 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] Jack000|5 years ago|reply
There are traditional milk teas in other countries though, like India and Mongolia. The Mongolian version is salty instead of sweet.
[+] [-] fermentation|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] molticrystal|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] philliphaydon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frogcoder|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ronyclau|5 years ago|reply
It was said that one bubble tea maker in Taiwan made large tapioca bubbles to put in milk tea, when tiny bubbles were used in milk tea at the time, and he named it "Boba tea", associating the relatively huge size of his bubbles with the actress well-known body feature.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Yip
[+] [-] michaelscott|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ip26|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kemayo|5 years ago|reply
Granted, I now know this is wrong, since it's apparently a straight-up mashing together of the words for "big" and "bubble". So, funny how languages work.
[+] [-] zoomablemind|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nharmonia|5 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] kibibyte|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] reincarnate0x14|5 years ago|reply
Japan is doing bizarre things like ramen and pizza with it now.
[+] [-] Moru|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] herendin|5 years ago|reply
Often bubble and boba are used interchangeably now, but I think they originally referred to two different types of tea-based drink, as the Chinese-language names still do. The same shop often sells both types of drink, so this inevitably adds to the confusion.
Google image search 泡沫紅茶 and 珍珠奶茶 to see the difference
[+] [-] nyolfen|5 years ago|reply
shared identity is the strongest substrate of trust; we are constantly evaluating each other for aligned incentives. imo the more granular the better -- think about the joy of stumbling upon someone else who shares your hometown or some deep passion of yours, or a potential romantic partner with many shared interests. when we share a common foundation, we can more easily model each other and project likely behavior, which lends itself to cooperation, or at least a diminished risk of defection.
[+] [-] winkeyless|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toastal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hong_kong|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deanclatworthy|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Reason077|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterburkimsher|5 years ago|reply
I first tried 珍珠奶茶 at the top of Taipei 101 in 2009, and have always sought it out since. It was a thing in Daegu when I lived there in 2012. In Austria, I was surprised to see McDonalds having bubble tea in mid-2012! It was the popping-bubbles though, not tapioca. I discovered new flavours (e.g. Yakult) in Shenzhen in 2013, and drank it daily in Taiwan from 2014-2018. (not always milk, I'd mix it up with passion fruit, pineapple, grapefruit, whatever else). My favourite way to explore was to ask for "yi yang" - the same as the person before. My favourite was actually NuPasta, then Coco, then Xian Cha Dao, then 50 lan. There was one place where it only cost 30 NTD, but one time I got it without sugar and realised it tasted awful, so after that I realised I should pay 50-70 NTD for slightly better quality.
Unfortunately the Gong Cha and Chatime in Auckland don't accept my loyalty cards from Taiwan :-P
[+] [-] AmericanChopper|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eunos|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spike021|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derwiki|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neonate|5 years ago|reply
https://web.archive.org/web/20210131053009/https://www.newyo...
[+] [-] 205guy|5 years ago|reply
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/Grass_jelly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falooda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo-halo
[+] [-] brundolf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paranoidrobot|5 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] bryceacc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Guthur|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quicklime|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnick|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Reason077|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtchang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vletal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ginko|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] say_it_as_it_is|5 years ago|reply