Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
My 50 cents here.
"Researchers had already proved that when rats were placed in a cage, all alone, with no other community of rats, and offered two water bottles-one filled with water and the other with heroin or cocaine-the rats would repetitively drink from the drug-laced bottles until they all overdosed and died. Like pigeons pressing a pleasure lever, they were relentless, until their bodies and brains were overcome, and they died.
But Alexander wondered: is this about the drug or might it be related to the setting they were in? To test his hypothesis, he put rats in “rat parks,” where they were among others and free to roam and play, to socialize and to have sex. And they were given the same access to the same two types of drug laced bottles. When inhabiting a “rat park,” they remarkably preferred the plain water. Even when they did imbibe from the drug-filled bottle, they did so intermittently, not obsessively, and never overdosed. A social community beat the power of drugs."
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-tea...
> Studies that followed up on the contribution of environmental enrichment to addiction produced mixed results. A replication study found that both caged and "park" rats showed a decreased preference for morphine compared to Alexander's original study; the author suggested a genetic reason for the difference Alexander initially observed.[9] Another study found that while social isolation can influence levels of heroin self-administration, isolation is not a necessary condition for heroin or cocaine injections to be reinforcing.[10]
> Other studies have reinforced the effect of environmental enrichment on self-administration, such as one that showed it reduced re-instatement of cocaine seeking behavior in mice through cues (though not if that re-instatement was induced by cocaine itself)[11] and another that showed it can eliminate previously established addiction-related behaviors.[12] Furthermore, removing mice from enriched environments has been shown to increase vulnerability to cocaine addiction[13] and exposure to complex environments during early stages of life produced dramatic changes in the reward system of the brain that resulted in reduced effects of cocaine.[14]
> Broadly speaking, there is mounting evidence that the impoverished small cage environments that are standard for the housing of laboratory animals have undue influence on lab animal behavior and biology.[15] These conditions can jeopardize both a basic premise of biomedical research—that healthy control animals are healthy—and the relevance of these kinds of animal studies to human conditions.[16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park#Follow_up_experiments
I also used to smoke, and it really was, on the one hand, a great way to meet people, and on the other, to maintain casual friendships w/ the people who happened to be around you (e.g., people working in the building next door).
Still, not worth it on balance. But I miss it.
Also, op you could have use the normal straw :P
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
does not proportionately benefit the *people* of the countries that are funding it
There are traditional milk teas in other countries though, like India and Mongolia. The Mongolian version is salty instead of sweet.
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://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land...
Just...don't use the good stuff.
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.
Of course, even with 0 sugar, the tapioca balls are simple carbs that break down to sugar readily in your body.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Japan is doing bizarre things like ramen and pizza with it now.
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.
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
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.
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.
Actually it's the opposite: more choice is brought by the invisible hand where people naturally go to, even if it puts businesses in direct competition and thus reduce prices
There are tens of thousands of mainland Chinese living in the CBD, and it’s basically a daily staple for a huge chunk of them.
Some of these places are charging $7-$8 for something that costs all of 20 cents to make. The margins are huge - the biggest difficulty is securing the right location with the right footfall.
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
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 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.
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
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.
Here in Singapore some places do hot bubble tea. That one's taste works well without any sugar at all.
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.
You can just throw "https://wayback.archive.org/" in front of an url and it will autoredirect to the latest archived copy if there is one.
It's ok not to enjoy it but this kind of comment comes off as fairly antagonistic.