Bubble Tea originated in Taiwan in the early 1980's at a small tea stand. Elementary school children would look forward to buying a cup of refreshing tea after a long, hard day of work and play. Tea stands were set up in front of the schools and would compete for business with the best selling tea.
One concession owner became popular with her tea when she started adding different fruit flavoring to her tea. Because of the sweet and cool taste, children loved the taste. Soon, other concessions heard about the "unique" and popular tea, so they started to add flavoring to their teas. When adding flavor, the tea and flavoring needed to be shaken well for a good all around taste. This formed bubbles in the drink, which came to be known as "Bubble Tea."
[7] One is associated with the Chun Shui Tang tea room in Taichung.[1] Its founder, Liu Han-Chieh, began serving Chinese tea cold after he observed coffee was served cold in Japan while on a visit in the 1980s.[1] The new style of serving tea propelled his business and multiple chains serving this tea were established.[7]
The company's product development manager, Lin Hsiu Hui, said she created the first bubble tea in 1988 when she poured tapioca balls into her tea during a staff meeting and encouraged others to drink it.[7] The beverage was well received at the meeting, leading to its inclusion on the menu. It ultimately became the franchise's top-selling product.[7]
Another claim for the invention of bubble tea comes from the Hanlin Tea Room (Chinese: 翰林茶館; pinyin: Hànlín cháguǎn) in Tainan. It claims that bubble tea was invented in 1986 when teahouse owner Tu Tsong-he was inspired by white tapioca balls he saw in the local market of Yā-mǔ-liáo (Chinese: 鴨母寮).[7] He later made tea using these traditional Taiwanese snacks.[7] This resulted in what is known as "pearl tea."[31]
In the 1990s, bubble tea spread across East and Southeast Asia with its ever-growing popularity. In regions like Hong Kong, mainland China, Japan, Vietnam,[32] and Singapore, the bubble tea trend expanded rapidly among young people. In some popular shops, people would line up for more than thirty minutes to get a drink.[2] In recent years, the popularity of bubble tea has gone beyond the beverage itself, with boba lovers inventing various bubble tea flavoured-foods, including ice cream, pizza, toast, sushi, and ramen.[12]
Hong Kong is famous for its traditional Hong Kong–style milk tea, which is made with brewed black tea and evaporated milk.[1] While milk tea has long become integrated into people's daily life, the expansion of Taiwanese bubble tea chains, including Tiger Sugar, Youiccha, and Xing Fu Tang, into Hong Kong created a new wave for "boba tea."[4]
Since the idea of adding tapioca pearls into milk tea was introduced into China in the 1990s,
bubble tea has increased in popularity.[38] In 2020 it was estimated that the consumption of
bubble tea was 5 times that of coffee in recent years.[38] According to data from QianZhen
Industry Research Institute, the value of the tea-related beverage market in China reached 53.7
billion Renminbi (about US$7.63 billion) in 2018.[39] In 2019, annual sales from bubble tea
shops reached as high as CN¥ 140.5 billion (roughly US$20 billion).[40]
In China, young people's growing obsession with bubble tea shaped their way of social
interaction. Buying someone a cup of bubble tea has become a new way of informally thanking
someone. It is also a favoured topic among friends and on social media.[39]
Bubble tea first entered Japan by the late 1990s, but it failed to leave a lasting impression on the public markets.[41] It was not until the 2010s when the bubble tea trend finally swept Japan.[41] Shops from Taiwan, Korea, and China, as well as local brands, began to pop up in cities, and bubble tea has remained one of the hottest trends since then.[41] Bubble tea has become so commonplace among teenagers that teenage girls in Japan invented slang for it: tapiru (タピる). The word is short for drinking tapioca tea in Japanese, and it won first place in a survey of "Japanese slang for middle school girls" in 2018.[41] A bubble tea theme park was open for a limited time in 2019 in Harajuku, Tokyo.[42]
Taiwanese immigrants introduced bubble tea to the United States in the 1990s, initially in California through regions including Los Angeles County.[47 As the beverage gained popularity in the US, it gradually became more than a drink, but a cultural identity for Asian Americans. This phenomenon was referred to as “boba life” by Chinese-American brothers Andrew and David Fung in their music video, “Bobalife,” released in 2013.[4] Boba symbolizes a subculture that Asian Americans as social minorities could define themselves as, and “boba life” is a reflection of their desire for both cultural and political recognition.
In Taiwan, bubble tea has become not just a beverage, but an enduring icon of the culture and food history for the nation.[7][33] In 2020, the date April 30 was officially declared as National Bubble Tea Day in Taiwan.[2] That same year, the image of bubble tea was proposed as an alternative cover design for Taiwan's passport.[34] According to Al Jazeera, bubble tea has become synonymous with Taiwan and is an important symbol of Taiwanese identity both domestically and internationally.[35] Bubble tea is used to represent Taiwan in the context of the Milk Tea Alliance.[36][35] 50 Lan is a bubble tea chain founded in Tainan.[37]