Boba tea places: alternative for coffee shops, retreat to Asian culture

You pass by a person holding an opaque drink filled with pearls. In fact, you pass by quite a lot of them every day.

Many De Anza students are now replacing their drinks from the dining service to the milk tea from the plaza across Stevens Creek Boulevard. Fans of the drink refer to it as boba tea.

Although originating from Taiwan, it reaches a wide spectrum of fans from Asian-American students to international students from Asia. The boba places where you can buy these drinks have become a new choice for local Asian students to hang out at.

“This trend has really taken off since 2011,” said Klyde Aliga, 18, engineering major. “It got really popular mainly because of social networking sites. People would talk about how good it is on the Internet, which triggers the curiosity of many people.”

Diang Tang, 20, communication major, said that, compared to local cafes, boba places have a wider variety of drinks to choose from.

“I think milk tea is becoming popular because of how refreshing it is,”  she said. “ The number of different flavors is endless and many places are still trying to come up with more flavors and combinations.”

Aside from appealing flavors of the drinks, some Asian students like to visit boba places to get a sense of their culture.

Jamie Lin, 20, marketing major, said he enjoys going to boba places because the Asian music playing there makes him feel at home.

“Boba has become such a big part of our culture,”  Tang said . “You see people constantly going to boba places and you see people introducing it to others who have never tried it before. It’s incredible to see how a simple act of drinking tea can really bring people together.”

The boba places in the U.S. are different from those in Taiwan, where drinks are made  to-go, while U.S. boba places adopted the social-oriented environment  of American coffee shops.

There is a growing sense of Asian-American pride and unique cultural identity that has made it “hip” to be Asian in the U.S., and the boba tea culture has played a big role in it, according to Elizabeth Lee from the website Voice of America.

It is still unclear whether the rise of this trend will gradually take over the business of coffee shops and pubs, but before we discuss this, let’s go have some boba milk tea.