The most popular boba is made of tapioca starch and is referred to as tapioca pearls. “In fact, when Europeans first started showing up in China in the 17th century … they report drinking milk tea,” she says. Europeans took home the idea that tea had to be drunk with milk and salt or sugar, while the practice of adding dairy to tea eventually fell out of favor in China. When the colonial american made tea kettle British returned to the country in the 19th century, they reintroduced milk tea back into the Chinese diet, as can be seen most clearly in former British colonies like Hong Kong, which has a tradition of milk tea made with condensed milk. Boba culture isn’t limited to the San Gabriel Valley or the Midwestern campus where I surrounded myself with what I thought to be Asian Americana.

Some of these images are only used in the Theme Shop and won’t appear in the actual theme. Some design elements may differ depending on your version of LINE. You can make a smoothie or fruit squash of your choice by simply blending the desired ingredients in a blender. That lack of visibility is often compounded for Asian Americans of non-East Asian descent.

It’s embedded in immigrant communities across California; in college towns dotting the country; in the steadily multiplying bubble tea shops that I walk past in New York. But if you’re expecting a beverage that tastes like an Oreo milkshake, you might be a little disappointed when you take a sip and find that looks can be deceiving. While the creaminess shines through the flavors diverge from there. Instead of sweet cocoa, black sesame is more nutty, toasty, and mildly savory — but that works just fine for us.

Many of those immigrants settled in and had families in California — around LA, in particular — giving the state the largest number of Taiwanese immigrants in the U.S. in 2008. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. As we strive to provide site experiences for browsers that support new web standards and security practices. Sarah Jinee Park is a Korean American writer and editor from Queens, NY. By day, she works at a tech start up, and by night, she’s the Executive Editor of Mochi Magazine.

Now that you know nearly all there is about boba tea, it’s time for you to learn how to make it yourself. Healthline notes that bubble tea contains so much sugar that it is almost equivalent to drinking soda. There are also many different types of bubble tea, including milk bubble tea. Jellies are chewy, jell-o-like, rectangular fruit-flavored bits that are actually not made with gelatin.