Your Bubble Tea Is a Ming Dynasty Relic (And That Changes Everything)
Bubble tea isn’t a modern invention—it’s a revival of Ming dynasty ‘pao cha,’ where tea was a base for nuts, seeds, and sweet toppings. The novel ‘Jin Ping Mei’ is full of these anachronistic tea rituals, and the earliest Chinese tea drinkers added onion, ginger, and orange. Pure tea is the historical outlier, not the norm.