It all boils down to the bubbles

With three downtown locations, it’s clear that Kingston is witnessing the rise of a student favourite. It isn’t a soda or a new gourmet coffee creation — it’s a quaint mix of juice, tea and sometimes milk.

Bubble tea began in 1980s Taiwan. When the world was indulging in Technicolour MTV, Taiwanese night markets — popular spots for cheap goods and snacks in the balmy late evenings of the island nation — were filled with pastel-coloured drinks.

This was the first incarnation of the bubble tea, a mix of fruit juice and tea with ice.

When Eric Wang, MIB ’13, left his home country of Taiwan at the age of 10, bubble tea was not yet a popular drink.

But when he returned in grade nine, he said the drink — named for the bubbles that form when the ingredients are shaken to mix — had become much more common.

“It was like Coke,” he said.

“The market’s pretty saturated with it.”

Eventually bubble tea, which sometimes featured small tapioca pearls called boba, made its way over to North American markets, especially where high populations of Asians resided. Wang’s first Canadian experience with bubble tea took place in Calgary’s Chinatown.

It’s the drink’s familiarity among Asians that’s helped make it popular in North America, he said.

In a 2004 talk on National Public Radio, University of California Berkeley professor Michael Pollan said North Americans’ immigrant history is part of the reason we’re so susceptible to food fads.

Pollan said North America lacks a stable food tradition because of the different groups that enter.

According to Wang, however, the North American experience is different than the Taiwanese experience.

“When I was with my Asian friends [in Calgary], we’d go to a bubble tea shop and order some food and sit,” he said. “In Taiwan, it’s more of a walkthrough … it’s casual.”

While the drink is incredibly popular in Taiwan, Wang said it’s not quite like the Starbucks or Tim Horton’s of Canada.

“There are a lot of different chains,” he said. “You can get it in convenience stores too.”

He said the night markets in Taiwan were conducive to the drink’s popularity.

“You do a lot of walking in Taipei [the capital of Taiwan],” he said. “You walk and drink instead of sitting in a tea shop to drink.”

Wang said his favourite flavour is taro, made from the root of the taro, a tropical plant

that’s native to Asia.

However, he said it’s the

tapioca that makes bubble tea so enjoyable.

“It’s more fun to drink.”