Bubble tea’s Taiwan origin story: economic boom, national identity and betrayal

The self-governing island consumes a billion cups a year of the milk tea with the chewy tapioca pearls. Globally, it's a $3 billion industry.

At Chun Shui Tang teahouse in central Taiwan’s Taichung City, the perfect cup of bubble tea is boiled down to a science.

A tea barista fills a tall glass with black tapioca pearls 2 inches from the bottom. She scoops 1 inch of ice into a cocktail shaker, pours in tea, cane syrup and shakes. When the mixture is poured out, there is 1 centimeter of foam on top. Chun Shui Tang’s managing director Angela Liu said tapioca pearls are tossed out after three hours and a new batch is cooked to maintain a good chewy texture.

Her father, who is also the teahouse’s founder, Liu Han-Chieh, created the sweet, chewy tea back in the 1980s, which was a radical departure from how tea was consumed at the time — mostly hot and plain.

“In the beginning, we were regarded as betrayer of tea by professional tea sellers. They [thought] we’re ruining the tradition of tea,” Angela Liu said. “And so, my grandpa didn’t talk to my father for three years because he [thought my father was] insulting his favorite thing.”

All was forgiven once the business took off.

Globally, the bubble tea industry is estimated to be worth $3 billion. In the United States, the bubble tea sector is about $400 million and is set to grow. In Taiwan, local reports often cite that the island consumes over a billion cups of bubble tea a year.

Bubble tea came about as Liu, an oolong tea seller, was looking to expand his market to the younger, busier crowd who didn’t have as much time to drink traditional tea. A Chun Shui Tang video shows preparing traditional tea is a multistep process.

“A normal tea ceremony takes 25 minutes to finish,” Angela Liu said, adding that there is a lot of tea etiquette. “If you drink tea [using a mini cup] … you have to drink it in three separate sips,” she said.

Angela Liu said her father was inspired while on a trip to Japan in the 1980s, when he saw iced coffee for the first time. It was made with a cocktail shaker. Liu thought the same could be done for tea, cane sugar and ice. When he poured the mixture out, a foamy, bubbly layer appeared on top.

“Bubble tea originally referred to foam black tea,” Angela Liu said.

Later, Chun Shui Tang employee Lin Hsiu Hui combined milk tea with her favorite Taiwanese dessert, tapioca balls.

“[It had] a fantastic taste,” Angela Liu said. “We thought we should give it a special name. Because [the tapioca balls] look like black pearls, we called it pearl milk tea.”

Another company, Hanlin Tea Room in southern Taiwan, says it invented bubble tea around the same time. The dispute got so heated that the two firms went to court. After more than a decade, a judge decided in 2019 that bubble tea is not a product that can be patented.

“Personally, I would say thank God [the patent] was not successful because right now you can see a lot of varieties of bubble tea shops in Taiwan,“ said Po-Yi Hung, a geography professor at National Taiwan University. He studies political ecology and the food trade.

Hung said the chewy drink was created during Taiwan’s economic boom, when its economy was on a tear along with Hong, Kong, Singapore and South Korea. Together they were called the four Asian tigers.

“A lot of labor-intensive industries moved to Taiwan to build up the factories and make Taiwanese people to get more money,” Hung said.

Eventually, the Taiwanese became wealthy enough that their children no longer wanted to work in factories. When Taiwanese manufacturers went abroad, bubble tea shops followed.

“At first, bubble tea shops went to Hong Kong, then went to China,” Hung said. “Then in the 2000s, the power of globalization [meant] a lot of bubble tea shops tried to be more internationalized.“

Taiwanese bubble tea chains like Gong cha, Coco and Fiftylan set up in Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States — initially in Chinatowns, but now outside too. In mainland China, Zhiyuan Consultancy estimates there are half a million bubble tea shops in 2023. Specialty drinks like handmade lemon tea with their own chewable toppings are popping up in cities like Shanghai as China’s economy slows down.

Chun Shui Tang’s Angela Liu said they have experimented with handmade lemon tea, but their bestseller remains the pearl milk tea. “Even though we are the inventor, we [also don’t understand] why this is so popular,” she said.

After consulting a psychologist and other experts, Liu said it came down to the sweetness level as measured on the Brix scale. Without getting too technical, it means pearl milk tea hits the perfect sweet spot.

Bubble tea is sometimes to referred to as boba.

Angela Liu said that term popped up around the 2000s because tapioca pearls used in Taiwanese desserts are traditionally smaller, and some bubble tea chains later upgraded to a bigger size. Those were called boba, which happens to be the nickname given to 1990s Hong Kong actress Amy Yip, known for her large bosom.

“So, using the name boba milk tea is kind of objectifying women,“ Angela Liu said.

Inside Taiwan, bubble tea is mainly referred to as just “milk tea” and has become a tourist attraction.

In Taipei’s shopping district of Ximending, people, some with suitcases, line up for brown sugar milk tea, a signature drink from the Xing Fu Tang chain.

“[The first time I tried it] I thought boba was interesting,” Siti Nur Masyitah from Malaysia said. “The taste was nice.”

While she was willing to wait in line 15 minutes for a cup of brown sugar milk tea, she said she does not drink bubble tea often in Malaysia because of the high sugar levels.

But many locals, like Chris Peng, have up to three cups a week. His friend, Darren Ling, has it twice a month and said bubble tea is better in Taiwan.

“I visited Chicago and been to Singapore, and most of their bubble tea shops won’t let me adjust the sweetness level, but most shops in Taiwan allow us to choose how much sugar and ice we want,” Ling said. “It’s a bit more humane here.”

They are happy to see the long line of tourists.

“I’m proud of our bubble tea [going global],” Peng said. 

That pride comes at a crucial time for Taiwan. The self-governing island is often in the international news, mostly as a flashpoint in U.S.-China relations. China claims Taiwan as its own and has not ruled out using force to bring it under control. The U.S. has diplomatic ties with Beijing instead of Taipei, but the U.S. is legally obliged under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 to provide arms for Taiwan for self-defense purposes.

“We are not a member of the United Nations. So most of the time Taiwanese people have anxiety about [their] national identity,” Hung said. “We try to tell the whole world there is a place called Taiwan, [which] is a distinctive country. So, bubble tea actually creates this kind of soft power.”

Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, even greeted a Japanese official with bubble tea in 2019.

As for the Chun Shui Tang teahouse, it may have been among the first to do bubble tea, but it has been slow to expand compared to other tea chains.

Chun Shui Tang has 57 stores in Taiwan, 11 in Hong Kong and 14 in Japan, according to Angela Liu. Its subsidiary, TP Tea, has around 200 stores worldwide. Of those, Liu said 25 are in the U.S., mostly on the West Coast and in New York, but they’re only for takeout. 

That contrasts with the teahouse near Chun Shui Tang’s headquarters in Taichung city, which has two floors, light wooden furniture and shapes of tea pots adorning the walls.

“We want to have a teahouse around the world like [in our locations in Taiwan]. But this is not easy to do,” Angela Liu said. “We would like [to be the] tea version of Starbucks.”

Additional research by Jonah Khu and Charles Zhang