Bubble trouble

The cutthroat war behind China's creative milk tea craze

The beverage industry is very deep; there's a lot that's not apparent on the surface," Yan warns me, his gaze owlish across a frothy display of "milk cap" (奶盖, nǎi gài) drinks on the counter. "It's deep, and there's a lot that I can't talk about. I'm just letting you know as a courtesy."

Last August, beverage fans around the world were incensed by a comically clueless New York Times article on "bubble milk tea", that "curious amalgam ... (of) the Far East." In response, they tweeted photos and sang the praises of the tasty, fresh and innovative concoctions that the milk tea industry has been brewing for decades, apparently unbeknownst to the Starbucks snobs of the mainstream - a wholesome tale of an immigrant creation triumphing in the American beverage market.

This is not that story, however.

Instead, our tale begins in secrecy and falsehood at Yan's business, the bombastically named Royal Tea: New Chinese-style tea flagship store, which is in fact a one-window kiosk down a late-night food alley. Yan says he's "just a small business owner," explaining that "it's not convenient to reveal" how he got started.

It must be noted, however, that there are thousands of mainland milk tea shops that share the name "Royal Tea" (皇茶, huáng chá), threepoint crown logo and a menu dominated by "cheese milk cap" beverages - teas and smoothies served beneath a gooey layer of cream cheese foam. All are unauthorized clones of a popular Cantonese chain founded in 2012, which seemingly never bothered to register any of its trademarks.

The plot climaxes in treachery and deceit, with the "viral" openings of Cantonese chain Hey Tea (喜茶, xǐ chá) and Taiwan's Yi Dian Dian (一点点, yī diǎn diǎn) in Beijing and Shanghai in early 2017. As customers purportedly lined up for four hours to get a drink, reporters found both chains guilty of manufacturing hype by hiring actors to stand in line, cynically banking on millennials associating long lines with must-have trends.

Patrons could also be unwittingly lining up alongside milk tea scalpers, according to State-run business blog CYZone. These hardened outlaws buy up vast, cheesy drink orders to give to a confederate, parked nearby with a mobile Styrofoam cooler. A third member of the gang then walks up and down the line, exhorting patrons to skip the wait and grab a tea for 60 yuan ($9; 8euros; ￡7) to 100 yuan - a markup of up to 500 percent.

All's fair, it seems, in the milk tea war. The knowledge that their favorite fad is just a bubble seems not to have dissuaded tea fans. Hey Tea reported millions of yuan in profits last year; globally, the bubble tea industry is valued at around $5 billion, and is currently projected to reach $6 billion to $8 billion by 2021 in China alone. Hey Tea also turned out to be none other than the original Royal Tea - it rebranded in 2016, at the same time it received 100 million yuan in investment to expand nationwide, and vowed to sue for any future breaches of copyright.

Cynics are lauding this as a well-played guerilla marketing move: Let imitators boost your brand's visibility in regions where you can't yet afford to expand, then declare yourself the original and best version. The idea was not new; Taiwanese chain Gong Cha (贡茶, gòng chá), one of Royal Tea's competitors, also failed to trademark its name when it came to the mainland in 2014, but milked a lawsuit against a mainland copycat with "support real Gong Cha" hashtags on social media.

By now, though, the sheer number of imitators is helping to turn Gong Cha into a generic term. It's associated with the fresh, slightly bitter brew served at all Gong Cha outlets, real and fake, usually under an inch of whipped cream - known as "milk cap tea" (奶盖茶, nǎi gài chá) or, more fancifully, "macchiato".

Despite these brew-hahas, milk tea remained a puzzling phenomenon even to mainstream Chinese media, never mind The New York Times, up until last year.

"We've always drunk milk tea; how did this become an 'internet celebrity' in 2017?" food blog Ai Chu Wei queried last June. Several mainland outlets declared that year "the renaissance of China's tea industry" and "the year of new Chinese tea culture".

Today's viral beverages bear little resemblance to the drink actually invented over a century ago. Strictly speaking, northwestern herders in China had been brewing tea with milk for centuries - Mongolian suutei tsai, Uygur etken chai, as well as Tibetan po cha are all staples of their respective communities.

The beverage sold at today's chain outlets, however, is more directly influenced by Hong Kong-style milk tea (港式奶茶, gǎng shì nǎi chá). In a colonial-era adaptation of the British afternoon tea ritual, Chinese brewers replaced fresh milk with evaporated milk in the usual black tea, creating a richer flavor. The liquid was strained through fine cloth to produce its creamy texture, leading to the nickname "silk-stocking milk tea" (丝袜奶茶, sī wà nǎi chá).

Hong Kong still drinks an estimated 100 million cups of milk tea per year. However, the drink's real ascendancy - and first war - arose in Taiwan in the 1980s. Two tea shops, Chun Shui Tang of Taichung and Han Lin of Tainan, claimed to have originated a new drink combining two items then popular at Taiwan night markets: "foam tea", cold black tea or milk tea shaken until it frothed, and cooked tapioca balls, another British hangover found in desserts from shaved ice to hot pudding.

For the next 20 years, the two businesses battled over the credit for the resulting drink, "pearl milk tea" (珍珠奶茶, zhēn zhū nǎi chá), also known as "boba" (波霸奶茶, bō bà nǎi chá).

The first outlets opened on the mainland in the mid-'90s, selling drinks for as low as 2 yuan. In this era, the beverage had a rather seedy reputation - the "milk" and "tea" were powdered mixes flavored with syrup, and it was usually sold at internet cafes, campus-adjacent street markets and other student hangouts, along with cheap snacks like fried chicken. A food safety scandal would change everything. In May 2011, consumers worldwide were dismayed to learn that DEHP, a chemical used to make plastic, had been found in milk tea syrup. The same year, Gong Cha's first outlet opened in Taiwan, marketing its milk-cap brews as a safe, organic alternative to the previous generation's powdered creations. Even today, the "real tea" guarantee has lost none of its luster: "No artificial syrups," raved one Sohu blogger at Hey Tea's opening. "This is the power of quality," wrote another for Netease, after waiting in line for several hours for Yi Dian Dian.

"In the food and beverage industry, there's always a degree of imitation," Yan concedes.

Yet innovation is not dead - and no one is throwing in the tea towel. The slothful stylists at The Times might be aghast at the newer improvisations in the market. Cheese tea, Royal Tea's horse in the milk cap race, arrived on the US market late last year to fanfare from the Washington Post and Food Network. Tofu milk tea may not be far behind, having landed in Zhejiang province from Taiwan in 2017 and later spotted in Vancouver.

Still, if nothing else works, one can always invent new gimmicks for millennials: At a Shanghai outlet of milktea chain Dian Deng Pao (电灯泡, diàn dēng pào, Electric Light Bulb), the signature product is described by a female employee aptly named "Strive". "Our tea is served in a cup shaped like a light bulb; we also have dog-shaped cups (for the Year of the Dog). You can take it home, put flowers in, take photos."

"It also lights up when you push a button," she adds, beaming. "Our founder came up with this concept." Like the majority of bubble tea mythologies, the claim is not just unlikely, but disputed by another Taiwanese chain. What exactly I am drinking, I ask Strive?

"Oh ... it's tea," she says, blinking, and momentarily confused. "From Taiwan, I think? Just tea."

Courtesy of The World of Chinese; www.theworldofchinese.com.cn

The World of Chinese

(China Daily Africa Weekly 06/22/2018 page23)