30-Second Overview: In 1987, at a teahouse in Taichung, the manager Lin Xiu-hui accidentally poured tapioca pearls into milk tea during an employee meeting and tried it—the result was that the drink sold more than all other beverages within months. Thirty-eight years later, this action spawned a global industry worth approximately $3.5 billion, making the bubble tea emoji 🧋 appear on every mobile phone, and leading brands from Taiwan and mainland China to compete for the title of "inventor."
In 1987, at a teahouse on Sishui Street in Taichung City. The manager Lin Xiu-hui was presiding over an employee meeting. On the table were ingredients she had bought that morning at Jianuo Market while riding her scooter; among them was a bowl of white tapioca pearls—a snack she had liked since childhood in Taiwan. She poured the pearls into the Assam milk tea beside her and took a sip.
"Everyone at that meeting loved this drink, and within months, its sales surpassed all our other iced teas," Lin Xiu-hui told CNN reporters years later, with no intentional exaggeration, more like describing a small accident she herself hadn't anticipated.
This accident later led to a decade-long lawsuit.
A Ten-Year Lawsuit With No Winner
Lin Xiu-hui’s version is only half the story.
Tu Zonghe, founder of Hanlin Teahouse in Tainan, has another account: after opening his shop in 1986, he saw pristine tapioca pearls at a market one day, had a flash of inspiration, tried to combine them with milk tea, and named it because the pearls resembled pearls. Both stories occurred in Taiwan during the latter half of the 1980s, both claiming to be first.
The Spring Water Teahouse version is more precise: founder Liu Han-jie opened a beverage shop on Sishui Street in Taichung in 1983, and it was Lin Xiu-hui who accidentally concocted bubble tea during an employee meeting in 1987, which was then sampled and officially launched. Spring Water Teahouse even pointed out that the person in charge at Hanlin Teahouse had personally come to observe and learn from Spring Water Teahouse.
This question of "who was first" eventually went to court. Spring Water Teahouse and Hanlin Teahouse sued each other, dragging on for over ten years. In 2019, a Taiwanese court ruled: bubble tea is a new type of beverage, not a patented product, and anyone or any shop can make it; there is no need to fight over who the progenitor is. Neither party could obtain a patent, so no one won and no one lost.
📝 Curator's Note
The question of "who invented bubble tea" may have become meaningless in Taiwan itself. What is more worth pursuing is: why did the "birthplace" of a beverage require ten years of litigation to confirm? In today's global market, where the bubble tea industry is valued at nearly NT$100 billion (approx. $3.5 billion), the real stake in that lawsuit was clearly not just historical discourse.
26,000 Shops, More Than Convenience Stores
Regardless of which teahouse made bubble tea first, Taiwan's obsession with this drink has long surpassed the scope of an "inventor" dispute.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Finance of Taiwan, the number of various types of beverage shops in the country reached a historical high in April 2022, totaling 26,000, which is nearly 10,000 more than all convenience stores in Taiwan, and grew by 67.6% over the past decade. In just one alleyway in Taipei City, you might find 50 Lan, Qingxin Fuquan, CoCo, and Magu Teahouse standing side-by-side, competing for customers. When you walk into any of them, the choices you have are more numerous than you might imagine: full sugar, half sugar, low sugar, no sugar; lots of ice, less ice, no ice, regular ice; pearls, coconut jelly, taro balls, pudding... A cup of bubble tea in Taiwan is a highly personalized choice, not a standardized product.
The global market scale is even more astonishing. Multiple market research firms estimate that the global bubble tea market size in 2024 is approximately $3.5 billion (approx. NT$112 billion), and it is projected to grow to $6–7 billion by 2034. Taiwanese brands are the origin point of this market: CoCo has over 5,000 stores globally, Gong Cha has over 2,000, and overseas branches of brands like Lukang Lane and Rices Tea are continuously expanding. Spring Water Teahouse still sells over 2 million cups of bubble tea annually in Taiwan alone.
This process of globalization follows an interesting path: it is not driven by government cultural diplomacy, nor is it a carefully designed market expansion strategy by large brands. The first step of bubble tea going global relied on the nostalgia of immigrants—Taiwanese immigrants in Los Angeles, Taiwanese immigrants in Vancouver; they wanted to drink a taste of home, opened shops locally, and ended up making their neighbors fall in love with the beverage. This is the most typical path of outward diffusion for Taiwan's regional street food: not export, but dispersion; not strategy, but lifestyle.
📊 Data Interpretation
Global bubble tea market size (2024): Approx. $3.5 billion (approx. NT$112 billion)
Taiwanese handcrafted drink shop count (2022 peak): 26,000+; 67.6% growth over the past decade
CoCo global stores: 5,000+
Gong Cha global stores: 2,000+
Spring Water Teahouse annual bubble tea sales: Over 2 million cups
Six Hours in Line in Tokyo in 2019
Bubble tea did not flow from Taiwanese teahouses to the world as a single explosion, but as successive waves.
In the late 1990s, the first wave arrived with Taiwanese immigrants settling in North America and Southeast Asia. In the 2000s, franchising turned it from a drink of the overseas community into a common language for Asian youth. In the 2010s, Instagram globalized its visual language—the image of clear cups, black pearls, and thick straws was inherently designed for social media.
But the most dramatic phenomenon occurred in Japan in 2019.
That summer, a sign appeared outside Lukang Lane in Tokyo stating "5 hours wait," which later updated to 6. Japanese media called it the "third wave tapioca boom" (第三波タピオカブーム), leading to the sudden appearance of bubble tea lipstick, bubble tea salad, and bubble tea-flavored snacks. Young Japanese women would go out wearing full bubble tea color schemes on their lipsticks, eyeshadows, and clothing just to take a photo check-in.
What most Japanese consumers failed to grasp was that this trend they were chasing originated from a casual trial during an employee meeting in Taichung thirty years prior. A Japanese netizen joked on social media: "The waiting time is enough to fly to Taiwan, drink one, and come back."
The following year, bubble tea completed an even stranger identity leap: it became a political symbol.
🧋 One Cup of Milk Tea, One Democratic Alliance
In April 2020, Chinese nationalist online accounts initiated a harassment campaign against a Thai celebrity, which unexpectedly pushed netizens from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand onto the same side. The hashtag "#MilkTeaAlliance" rapidly went viral—this name referred to the fact that all three places drink tea with milk, while traditional tea culture in mainland China traditionally does not add milk, a small but sharp dietary difference.
Milk tea became a code for a certain lifestyle: milky tea = democracy and openness; clear tea = an opposing political order. This metaphor was so crude it was almost funny, yet it was repeatedly cited on protest sites across Myanmar, Belarus, and Thailand in 2020. It linked the democratic experience of Taiwan with civil movements in Southeast Asia using a dietary symbol, achieving what no diplomat could.
In the same year, Unicode 13.0 officially included the 🧋 bubble tea emoji, giving this beverage its own face on every mobile phone.
📝 Curator's Note
The "Milk Tea Alliance" translated geopolitics into the language of emojis using the small matter of adding milk—this may be the most absurd yet real moment in bubble tea history: a common drink born in night market culture unexpectedly becoming a symbol of transnational democratic solidarity. And it didn't even try to do so.
A 500-Calorie Cup and Health Issues No One Wants to Hear
Any honest story of bubble tea must confront the number that makes nutritionists frown.
A cup of full-sugar, regular-ice bubble tea has a calorie count between 400–600 kcal, with about 50–70 grams of sugar—equivalent to one lunch box's calories or more than double the upper limit of daily sugar intake recommended by the WHO. Dr. Martin Lee, Director of Nephrology at National University Hospital in Singapore, stated directly: "The sugar in bubble tea can worsen diabetes, leading to kidney damage and even failure." Academic studies published on PubMed also pointed out that for Asian young people who drink boba daily, the health risks are comparable to those of sugary soda, making it a public health issue that cannot be ignored.
This is not sensational scaremongering, but a real risk that arises when bubble tea transitions from an occasional treat to a daily habit. The 26,000 beverage shops tracked by the Ministry of Finance of Taiwan are not just startup statistics; they are a warning signal for public health. The Ministry of Health and Welfare of Taiwan has repeatedly required chain handcrafted drink brands to label calories, but after seeing the "520 kcal" label, most consumers still choose full sugar—this small fact demonstrates how difficult it is to change human behavior.
In 2011, Taiwanese food culture faced a more direct attack: methyl methacrylate (DEHP) was illegally added to foods and beverages by Qiyunji, affecting handcrafted drinks like bubble tea. The Taiwan Food and Drug Administration ultimately confirmed that 965 items were contaminated, with 206 of them exported to 22 countries. This scandal caused a sharp decline in business for the Taiwanese beverage industry in markets like Hong Kong and Malaysia, and it became a direct catalyst for major revisions to Taiwan's food safety regulations.
Environmental issues have not disappeared either. The global trend to ban single-use plastic straws has presented bubble tea with a practical engineering challenge: paper straws soften when wet, metal straws are too hot, and biodegradable materials are too expensive. The progress of this drink in promoting sustainable packaging is much slower than its brand marketing speed.
"New Tea Drinks" and the Diluted Story
Another, quieter competition is taking place.
Chinese mainland brands—HeyTea, Nayuki Tea, BaWang ChaJi—have rapidly expanded globally in recent years, with some overseas stores matching or even exceeding the scale of certain Taiwanese brands. What is more noteworthy is their marketing language: the Taiwanese origin of bubble tea is gradually diluted in the narratives of these brands by vague terms like "tea culture" and "Asian tea innovation." For Taiwanese brands, the discourse power of the "place of origin" has become a battle as important as commercial competition, perhaps even harder.
Commerce can compete through capital and expansion speed; discursive power depends on whose story is remembered and believed by more people.
The Taiwanese government and private brands are not unaware of this. Cultural activities promoting bubble tea overseas hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, promotion by the Association for Transnational Cultural Exchange among overseas Taiwanese communities, Spring Water Teahouse insisting on featuring Lin Xiu-hui's story at the top of its official website... these are all defensive narrative engineering efforts to prevent the "Taiwanese made" label from being diluted. But in the global market, consumers drink experiences, not origin stories; this battle is destined to have no end.
A Continuous Action
The action Lin Xiu-hui took in 1987 remains the most prominent story on Spring Water Teahouse's official website today. That cup of pearl milk tea sold better than all other beverages within months—this event itself is the version closest to a "mythical origin" for this drink.
But in 2026, the effort required to keep the words "invented by Taiwan" at the core of this beverage's story is far greater than the moment she first poured pearls into milk tea. How many people around the world drink bubble tea every day without knowing or caring where it comes from? This number is almost impossible to calculate.
Of course, that moment did not know what it was doing. Great accidents are never known.
Further Reading
- Taiwan Food Overview — A panoramic map from indigenous people to Michelin: the place of bubble tea in four centuries of mixed palates
- Taiwan Handcrafted Drink Culture — The expansion history of brands like 50 Lan, Gong Cha, and CoCo into over 40 countries
- Tea Culture — From Todd's Oolong Tea in 1865 to today's high mountain teas, the legend of Taiwanese tea quality
Image Sources
- Hero: Close-up of classic bubble tea, Photography by Oqmilteashop, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
References
- Spring Water Teahouse Official Website: The Invention of Bubble Tea (Primary source)
- CNN Travel: The rise of bubble tea, one of Taiwan's most beloved beverages (Includes Lin Xiu-hui's quote)
- ETtoday: Who invented bubble tea? Spring Water Teahouse and Hanlin Teahouse sued each other for 10 years; the court ruling is out (2019 judgment report)
- Taiwan Handcrafted Drink Market Data Analysis (Statistics from the Ministry of Finance of Taiwan) (Primary statistical source)
- TIME: What Is the Milk Tea Alliance? (Background on the Milk Tea Alliance)
- Maximize Market Research: Global Bubble Tea Market Size 2024 (Global market data)
- PubMed: 2011 Taiwan food scandal — plasticizer contamination (Academic primary source, 965 contaminated items data)
- National University Hospital Singapore: What happens if you drink too much bubble tea? (Source of Dr. Martin Lee's quote)
Related topics in this entry: Night Market Culture, Taiwan's regional street food, Taiwanese food culture.