Hi friends!

This is a post that I’ve been wanting to write for quite a while, and even though I don’t think I’ll ever have it done to the level I want (there’s just so much information that I can’t find with my limited resources), this is what I can best do at the moment. I’m open to learning more and updating this post, so if you have any resources to point me towards, please feel free to comment (I can read English, Chinese, and Japanese so anything in those three languages will be appreciated).

As a sort of background, I’ve been curious about how afternoon tea has developed in Asia after reading a book on the subject. As I searched, I revisited my original introduction to milk tea post and realised that this was another topic that I could explore. How did all these varieties of milk tea come to be? Did the period of colonisation in Asia play any role in it?

In this post, I would like to share what I’ve found about the relationship between milk tea and colonisation in the East, Southeast, and South regions of Asia. I’ve tagged this as a “universiTEA” post because it is a more complex one, even though it’s not the final word on the subject.

Hong Kong

According to Veronica Sau-Wa Mak (2020), during Hong Kong’s colonial period, the old-school way of preparing milk tea was the British way, with fresh milk added to black tea brewed from Ceylon black tea leaves. In fact, the sale of milk tea at Bing Satt, the precursor to Hong Kong’s famous Cha Chaan Tengs’ [1] was done as Hong Kongers wanted to imitate the colonial lifestyle at a price they could afford. It was here that Hong Kong developed its famous silk-stocking milk tea. Chan (2019) draws a link between the economic conditions that Hong Kongers suffered and the ingredients – the mixing of several types of tea leaves (Hong Kong milk tea includes puer leaves, for example) and the use of condensed milk was initially used to cut costs, but eventually became an integral part of Hong Kong milk tea, making it distinctly different from its colonial inspiration.

Hong Kong style milk tea has also been endorsed by the Hong Kong government and recognised as part of Hong Kong’s culture and closely identified with the Hong Kong spirit. At the same time, Hong Kong milk tea is also seen by younger consumers as a symbol of their ambivalence and together with Bing Sutt/Cha Chaan Teng, is interpreted differently from official government narratives.

Taiwan

Bubble tea, which is basically milk tea with tapioca pearls added inside, originates from Taiwan. While I was searching for papers on the history of milk tea, I found Wu Jiayi’s 2020 paper on Bubble tea. Interestingly, Wu mentions that in Taiwan, it was the Dutch that introduced the concept of drinking tea with milk and sugar to the Taiwanese. And while milk tea as introduced by the Dutch never became popular in Taiwan, when the Taiwanese were influenced by Hong Kong’s milk tea, they used this “introduction” from the Dutch to come up with bubble tea.

India

As with Hong Kong, colonialism also played a role in the creation of India’s milk tea, also known as masala chai. Well, it’s not just milk tea – while the tea plant is native to Indian states like Assam, it was the British’s thirst for tea that was the driving force which turned Assam and Darjeeling into tea-producing regions [2], making colonialism’s link with India’s tea industry all too clear.

However, it may be a bit trickier to wholly attribute India’s tea-drinking habit to the British. While the British did encourage tea drinking in India as a way of expanding the tea market (and thus to earn more) and while it’s also true that both British and Indian nationalists believe that tea drinking in India was a creation of colonialism, Rappaport (2017) brings out evidence to show that tea drinking may predate colonialism. Merchants in Surat drank Chinese tea in the 17th century (let’s not forget that trade links between Asian nations have existed for centuries), and the people living in Assam’s hills and along the borders of Central Asia also had consumed tea. Rappaport also writes that “We could say that while the [post-colonial Indian] government did not nationalise production, it did succeed in nationalising tea’s consumer culture.“

So perhaps we could say that colonialism directly encouraged the tea habit, but the seeds of drinking tea were planted before the East India Company arrived and continued to be shaped through colonialism and during the post-Independence era.

Now about chai, a drink made with milk and spices. I think it’s pretty clear that chai is an Indian creation. While there was an Indian Tea Association (ITA), which “launched a widespread and long-lasting publicity campaign” (Rappaport, 2017) where it took tea to public gatherings, educated the public on how and where tea was grown, and taught Indians to brew it, the ITA’s version of a proper milk tea was a milk tea made the British style. Chai, where the milk, spices, and tea leaves are boiled in a pot, is made differently and in fact, was not approved by the ITA as it used fewer tea leaves in lieu of spices (which would affect the amount of tea bought from them).

Singapore/Malaysia

Now, Singapore/Malaysia (formerly Malaya) is where things get a bit murky. Singapore/Malaysia’s version of milk tea is called Teh Tarik and it’s generally accepted that this drink was created by Indian-Muslims immigrants who sold drinks at the entrance of rubber plantations.

The question is: who brought them there? An article by the BBC links these immigrants as being “imported” to work in the rubber plantations. In that sense, we can say that colonialism helped create teh tarik by ensuring that this group of immigrants were in Malaya to create the drink.

Additionally, the poor economic conditions after World War II meant that these drink merchants could only buy the lowest quality tea, which was quite bitter. In order to mask the taste, they took inspiration from the British practice of adding tea and sugar, but used condensed milk in lieu of fresh milk.

I also found one intriguing possible connection between teh tarik and colonialism. Remember how chai was influenced by colonialism in India? Like in the previous paragraph, Priya Krishna points the finger at low-quality tea leaves which need something to mask the bitterness. However, Krishna also mentions that instead of adding the traditional spices used in chai, the drink merchants omitted these spices so that their drink could appeal to the Chinese as well. That would make teh tarik a drink derived from chai.

Concluding Remarks

After looking at Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, and Singapore/Malaysia, I think it’s safe to say that while colonialism did not directly create our local versions of milk tea, it played a big role in their creation as it shaped the environment, economic conditions, and even the migration patterns that resulted in the creation of these milk teas.

My favourite part of learning about all these drinks is seeing how each community has made the drink uniquely theirs – there may be a colonial influence in the history of these milk teas, but they have now been fully claimed by the people who drink them daily.

Now, if only I can do something similar for afternoon tea [3]!

Footnotes & Sources

[1] If you’re interested, I wrote a substack post on the history of cha chaan teng as part of my research into afternoon tea.

[2] For more on Darjeeling tea, I recommend the book Darjeeling by Jeff Koehler

[3] Basically, I would like to write something like this article on how Chinese food evolved in Singapore as it interacted with other cultures.

Veronica Sau-Wa Mak (2020): The heritagization of milk tea: cultural governance and placemaking in Hong Kong, Asian Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2020.1773616

Chan, S. C. (2019). Tea cafés and the Hong Kong identity: Food culture and hybridity. China Information, 33(3), 311-328.

Rappaport, E. (2017). A thirst for empire. In A Thirst for Empire. Princeton University Press.

Wu, J. (2020). What Makes Bubble Tea Popular? Interaction between Chinese and British Tea Culture. The Frontiers of Society, Science and Technology, 2(16), 97-102.

Stirn, M. (2022). Teh Tarik: Malaysia’s Frothy “national drink.” Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220104-teh-tarik-malaysias-frothy-national-drink

Krishna, P. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.foodandwine.com/tea/teh-tarik-frothy-hybrid-tea-inspired-sport