If you have walked by Chinatown, or indeed, cities with a large Asian population, you probably came across "boba tea" vendors, and there are like a dozen of them in Chinatown. The items are also known as "pearl tea" or "bubble tea". But have you ever wondered about its history? A cup of boba milk tea courtesy wikipedia The lineage of Boba tea can be definitely traced to Taiwan... all the way back to the 1940s. A gentleman by the name of FanShu Chang (Chang is the surname) worked as a mixologist in an izakaya (Japanese, lit: stay-drink-place) in the 1940's Taiwan, which was then under Japanese rule. After WW2 ended, Chang decided to specialize in hand-shaken ice tea by opening a unique tea shop in 1949. The hand-shaken tea was done by a cocktail mixer and the result is a smooth and silky ice tea with a layer of bubble foam on top, dubbed "foam tea" at the time, and it was a hit, as Taiwan, being a tropical island, is always searching for co...
An exploration of San Francisco Chinatown typically NOT covered by tours