OK, I admit it, I am probably not bubble tea’s principal demographic, particularly with regard to age but, even allowing for this decisive factor, I simply cannot understand bubble tea’s huge popularity.

I mean, something like bouldering is a fairly young-person activity, but I can still see why it might be fun; similarly drinking non-alcoholic beer in a pub is rather Millennial, but I will concede the activity might have some merit under certain extreme circumstances; but bubble tea?  Young or old.  Gen X or Gen Z.  Why would anyone drink it?  It is revolting.

My only close-up encounter with bubble tea came in a shop in Panda Place in Hong Kong.  I was abroad; I was alive to new experiences; game to sample different tastes.  Bubble tea.  It was vile.

Whoever first thought that what a nice cup of Rosie Lee was missing was a sprinkling of small, chewy tapioca balls?  Total madness.  It must have been done for a dare; to win a bet; as a piss-take; an April Fool.

And yet this folly has caught on.  Like the Ice Bucket challenge, or planking, it has gone viral. 

St Giles and Charing Cross Road, once the happy abode of bookshops and bibliophiles has been swept away under a tsunami of bubble tea.  Queues snake, thirty-long, on the pavement outside the emporiums of these new-kids-on-the-block; jamming the narrow thoroughfares, a long line of eager, fresh-faced guzzlers, all clasping transparent plastic cups, and sucking on over-sized straws.

Bubble tea: what are you supposed to do with it?  Eat it or drink it?  Or is it designed for the quick-fix, instant-gratification generation who don’t have time for such a fundamental choice, but want everything altogether, all at the same time?

Bubble tea: it is the heroin of the post-Trainspotting era.  Drink, eat, pray, love, life, job, career, family, fucking big television, washing machines, cars, compact disc players, electrical tin openers, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance… bubble tea.

But why would I want to do a thing like that?  I choose not to choose bubble tea.

© Beery Sue

Beery Sue wonders whether there is a market for Bubble Beer.  Copyrighted here first.