![]() ![]() Contrary to the competing claims of the teahouses, perhaps the real origin of bubble tea is to be found in Taiwan’s night markets, possibly inspired by a Taiwanese night market vendor sipping on a glass of cendol during a trip to Singapore or Malaysia. Meanwhile, chewy tapioca balls, called fenyuan in Chinese, somehow made their way to Taiwan from abroad - possibly via China, after being presented to Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧太后) as tribute - and began to be used as an ingredient in sweet snacks at Taiwanese night markets. Today, Cendol is a ubiquitous thirst-quencher drunk across South East Asia, including Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia and when served in a tall glass, bears an uncanny resemblance to Taiwan’s bubble tea. It is thought that cendol may have been inspired by locals observing British expatriates adding milk to their tea and may have originated in port cities such as Malacca or Penang, where refrigeration technology from British ships would have provided the ice. In British Malaya (modern-day Singapore and Malaysia) an iced drink/desert, usually called cendol or chendol, began to be drunk to provide respite from the tropical heat.īrightly-colored, worm-like gelatinous strands, usually made from rice flour or sago, are added to coconut milk which has been sweetened with sugar and combined with ice to make a refreshing drink or iced snack. However, there is an intriguing alternative explanation: bubble tea’s earliest incarnation could in fact be traced back to the days of the British empire. With the introduction from abroad of machines that automatically seal the top of takeaway cups with a thin film of plastic, the modern takeaway version of the beverage was born. However, since neither one was able to successfully patent or trademark their product, by the mid-1990s, pearl milk tea featured on the menus of Taiwan’s teahouses, which were popular hangouts for students and businessmen to relax and chew the cud in the days before the influx of coffee shops. The two companies became locked in a bitter dispute, filing lawsuits against each other and eventually going to court to settle the matter. One day at the teahouse, Lin experimented by mixing her favorite childhood snack, tapioca balls, with iced milk tea and also lemon black tea to produce what the company claims was the world’s first cup of pearl milk tea. However, Chun Shui Tang maintains it is the true inventor of the beverage, which it says was created by a then-20-year-old female employee, Lin Hsiu-hui (林秀慧), the following year in 1987. The “pearls” in this tall glass of pearl milk tea are made with brown sugar. ![]()
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