Oh, one more thing: we just learned fruits in Chinese class last week.
So, thinking I'm all cool and well-versed in my fruit, I order a honeydew ("honey-gua") boba for my friend, and a coconut (bo luo) boba for myself, which I had seriously been thinking about for a week and just never knew how to order, because I didn't know how to say coconut in Chinese, and was too lazy to look it up.
I get my boba (which is a suspicious yellowish color, instead of white), take a sip, and vehemently declare, "This is SO not coconut!" Imagine wanting coconut boba for an entire week and then getting some weird pineapple-tasting thing instead. I was pissed!
Turns out it was pineapple. Because bo luo means pineapple in Chinese.
How do you say "Oops" in Chinese?
Honeydew boba (L) and pineapple (NOT coconut) boba (R)
In any case, both were gross. You could still taste the powder they used to make the milk tea. It was only 2.5RMB, though, which is about $0.33. Forgivable? I'm still deciding.
When I have a few minutes, I'll give the complete Boba Briefing. For now, I'm going to go look for a video I took of a woman making boba in rural(ish) Huangshan, where I went for National Week Holiday. No joke - I was outside the gates of Xidi, an ancient village founded in 1047 in southern Anhui province, and there was a boba stand. Look for updates soon, as well as entries about a Lollicup near the Guilin night markets!
