Who invented bubble tea?
Bubble tea was born in Taiwan in the 1980s. Hanlin Tea Room in Tainan and Chun Shui Tang in Taichung both claim it, and a court said in 2019 that the question did not need an answer.
Bubble teaRegular cup with pearls (about 500 ml)350kcal
Before the pearls came the foam
Taiwan was shaking tea long before anyone dropped tapioca into it. According to CNN, a man named Chang Fan Shu opened a tea shop in 1949 and shook his tea in cocktail shakers. The shaking made a layer of tiny bubbles on top, and people called it foam tea. That is one reason the drink is called bubble tea at all. The bubbles were first the foam, and only later did people think of the chewy balls at the bottom.
Tainan says 1986
The Hanlin Tea Room in Tainan says its founder, Tu Tsong He, had the idea in 1986. He saw white tapioca balls at a traditional market, cooked them and added them to tea. He called it pearl green tea, and then made a milk tea with larger black tapioca balls. CNN says he opened his Hanlin shop in October 1986. That is why one of the drink's old names is pearl milk tea, after the round pearls that sink to the bottom.
Taichung says a staff meeting
Chun Shui Tang, a tea house in Taichung, tells a different story. A young product manager, Lin Hsiu Hui, is said to have poured her favourite childhood snack, sweet tapioca balls, into her iced Assam milk tea during a staff meeting. The others loved it and it went on the menu. The sources do not agree on the year. The Taipei Times says 1987, CNN says 1988, and National Geographic puts both shops' claims in 1986.
A court says it does not matter
The two companies fought over it in court, in a case CNN says started in 2009 and ran for ten years. In 2019 the court ruled that arguing over who invented it was pointless, because bubble tea had never been patented and anyone could make it. That openness helped it spread. By the mid 1990s it was on the menus of tea houses across Taiwan, and machines that seal the top of a takeaway cup made it easy to carry.
What it is today
Today you find bubble tea shops from Berlin to Brasilia, says National Geographic. The pearls are made from tapioca starch, which comes from the cassava root, cooked with brown sugar until they turn dark and chewy. In much of the world the drink is simply called boba. A typical cup is about 500 ml of sweet milk tea with a scoop of pearls and a wide straw. The sugar level and the toppings are where cups differ most.