Captions: Pearl bubble milk tea has become one of Taiwan's best-known beverages. 珍珠奶茶已經成了台灣最有名的飲料之一
Perhaps it is not pure coincidence that two noteworthy events in Taiwan's tea-drinking history both happened in 1983. That year Taiwan's first packaged tea beverage, Uni-President's barley-flavored black tea, hit the market, while in Taichung a teahouse called Chun Shui Tang started business and began impressing customers with its "bubble tea," a drink that was later developed into "pearl bubble tea," one of Taiwan's best-known specialty drinks. Both drinks were made available through channels that were unusual for average consumers of ready-to-enjoy tea drinks, the former mainly through Taiwan's first convenience store chain and the latter in the teahouse founded by Liu Han-chieh. For a long time Taiwanese had bought their chilled, ready-to-drink sweetened black tea from roadside stalls mainly as an everyday drink to quench their thirst, but the new products would change their buying habits and cultivate new tastes for a wider range of tea drinks.
1983年，台灣茶史上兩件大事的發生也許不是巧合。那年，台灣第一罐瓶裝茶飲-統一麥香紅茶席捲市場，而台中一間名為春水堂的茶館正剛起步，用現今台灣知名茶飲珍珠奶茶的前身-泡沫紅茶-使他的顧客印象深刻。兩種飲料透過不同於市面上的管道來接近他的顧客，前者以便利商店為通路，而後者則透過劉漢界一手創辦的茶館。長久以來，台灣人已經很習慣在路邊攤購買外帶式的冰紅茶當作日常生活用來解渴的飲料，而這樣的新商品則改變了這樣的購買習慣，同時也孕育出了需要更多的茶飲口味需求。
Teahouse founder Liu was originally a public servant, but his tendency to seek change and experiment led him to quit the job to work as a manager in a publishing house specializing in books about food preparation and cooking. "But there wasn't a single book on tea from that company," he says. So Liu spent two years traveling in Taiwan, mainland China and Japan to collect and research tea-related data before publishing a book on Chinese tea-drinking culture. Soon, with a deeper knowledge of tea, he decided to develop his own tea-related business.
茶館創辦人劉先生原本是名公務員，但是他勇於追求變化以及試驗的精神讓他決定辭去公務員的工作，轉而成為一位出版社的經理，專門負責出版食物烹調與處理的書籍。"然而公司竟然沒有相關於茶的書"劉先生說。於是他花了兩年的時間，走訪台灣、中國大陸、以及日本去蒐集茶的相關資料，並出版了"中國茶藝"，很快地，當他對茶有了深度的瞭解後，他決定發展一個屬於他自己的茶生意。
Liu benefited a lot from his research, which enabled him to see the huge potential in developing new types of tea drinks. In Osaka, Japan he saw shops making cold coffee with cocktail shakers. Back in Taiwan, he decided to open a teahouse, Chun Shui Tang, in 1983 and try this technique for tea drinks. The result of the experiment, black tea with a fine foam on the top of the drink, was dubbed bubble tea and proved to be a huge success. "The drink tastes much better after you use the shaker," he says, adding that much of the flavor is also due to the syrup of brown sugar added to the drink and made by the teahouse itself. "It takes time to make the syrup, but it tastes better than the fructose used by many beverage shops."
因為出版書籍時對茶的深入研究，讓劉漢界明白到新式茶飲料的巨大潛力。在大阪時，他看到咖啡店用調泡雞尾酒的雪客器調製冰咖啡，回國後他決定用他所看到的技術開一間茶館。春水堂，正式於1983年誕生。而此項技術實驗的結果，因紅茶上覆蓋了一層細緻的泡沫，故命名為泡沫紅茶，成功地一炮而紅。"使用雪客器以後茶喝起來更好喝"，劉先生並接著說明好喝的滋味來自於自製的糖漿"熬糖非常費時，但他比許多茶攤所用的果糖好喝許多"
The next year he started to sell chilled oolong tea, which was unique because traditionally people rarely drank this kind of tea cold. Chun Shui Tang, he says proudly, was the first teahouse in Taiwan that served all kinds of iced tea drinks, from black tea, oolong tea, and green tea to pu-er tea.
But Liu wanted to explore more possibilities and encouraged his staff to develop new products. "In the long history of Chinese tea-drinking, so many ingredients have been added to tea drinks, some of them you wouldn't believe. So why can't we be creative today?" he asks. In the mid-1980s, Lin Hsiu-hui, the manager of a Chun Shui Tang teahouse, added her favorite dessert fenyuan, small black balls or "pearls" of tapioca, into some of the tea drinks with milk. The response from customers was surprisingly good and in 1987 Chun Shui Tang formally launched a product it called pearl bubble milk tea.
次年他開始販賣傳統以來甚少冰飲的冰烏龍茶，劉先生驕傲地說，春水堂是台灣第一間開始販賣包括了紅茶、烏龍茶、綠茶到普洱茶等各式冷飲茶的茶館。但劉先生仍希望嘗試更多的變化並鼓勵他的員工發展新的產品。"自中國人開始喝茶以來，各式各樣的材料都被加入茶湯一起飲用過，甚至有些原料是讓人無法相信的，而在現代的我們為什麼不能也有點創意呢"他問道。在1980年的年中，春水堂的經理-林秀慧把她最喜歡的傳統點心--粉圓--加入了奶茶裡，推出後在1987年便受到顧客廣大的喜愛，於是在當年便正式將這項產品命名為珍珠奶茶。
The teahouse succeeded in attracting customers not only with tea drinks, snacks and meals, but also its relaxed ambience, and has since expanded to 27 teahouses in Taiwan, plus two in Shanghai. As it rose to fame and saw more financial rewards, however, it also faced some difficulties.
現有上海2間、台灣27間分店的春水堂，吸引顧客的不只是茶飲、點心與簡餐，主要還因為它帶給人輕鬆的氛圍。然而，當春水堂開始逐漸知名並賺錢後，也面臨了一些困難。
A teahouse based in Tainan started to sell tea drinks with white fenyuan made of sago in 1986 and billed itself as the inventor of pearl milk tea. Chun Shui Tang owner Liu Han-chieh published an article denouncing the claim, saying that his teahouse invented the drink, arguing that pearl bubble milk tea is much better known for the pearls of black tapioca made by his store than the white version. The Tainan store responded to the article by suing for libel, and the resulting lawsuit, which ended in 2007, saw Liu win.
With the status of Chun Shui Tang as the inventor of pearl bubble tea decided, Taichung has become the official birthplace of the drink, which can now be found the world over. No one knows what new products Liu will market in the future, but his desire to experiment has already enriched Taiwan's tea-drinking history. --Oscar Chung
Source from: Taiwan Review, May 2009, p 24-25
全文刊載於行政院新聞局"台灣評論"月刊本
98年5月號第24至25頁專文及照片
