Know what makes the holidays even better?
Hot chocolate with boba. Try it! I had my first at Tea Storm, a China chain. It's quite the dance party for your tongue.
Happy holidays!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Chengdu, Sichuan Province - The boba here is definitely not spicy, but it provides short-lived relief when you're eating FIRE (a.k.a. Sichuan food...any Sichuan food). The place we went to near our hostel was sub-par: tepid milk tea and tapioca that clumped together. I've come to accept that boba around China, especially outside the big cities, is nothing to cheer about. But for <5 RMB, I can live with that.
Meh boba
Place that serves meh boba
Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan Province - A gorgeous locale with decidedly less impressive boba. In fact, the chocolate boba I ordered DIDN'T EVEN COME WITH TAPIOCA. I felt so cheated. The tea was decent, though. It tasted a little hot chocolate but not as thick, and pleasant enough. But you know what would've made it more pleasant? That's right. Boba.
Boba stand right outside the nature reserve
Meh boba
Place that serves meh boba
Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan Province - A gorgeous locale with decidedly less impressive boba. In fact, the chocolate boba I ordered DIDN'T EVEN COME WITH TAPIOCA. I felt so cheated. The tea was decent, though. It tasted a little hot chocolate but not as thick, and pleasant enough. But you know what would've made it more pleasant? That's right. Boba.
Boba stand right outside the nature reserve
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Too hot to boba?
Nanjing nai cha
Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China - Boba lives outside Dr. Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum (Zhongshan ling).
It tasted like tepid soup, the tapioca was mush, and the cup had a picture of a man pulling a million-pound fish out of the water. The word "relaxing" is written above said picture. Is reeling in a fish the size of Texas really that relaxing, really? REALLY?
And what would the founding father of China say if he knew they were serving such an atrocity outside his resting place?
Also, at 5 RMB, it's considered pricey. For China. Really, though, the experience of visiting Dr. Sun's mausoleum far surpasses any criticism of mediocre boba I could ever think of. I might be losing my edge.
OH, and did I mention that the hostel where I stayed was attached to a boba place? Honestly, China, you're just making it too easy for me. More on hostel-boba later. No time right now to write about the many complicated drinks this place serves (including milk tea with boba, pudding and ice cream. In ONE DRINK. I know!)
Also stay tuned for DIY boba. We're talkin' milk tea in a teapot, a mug of tapioca, and a spoon. Mix it to your own liking. As my friend Nick (creator of the phrase "no-ba") would say, "Oh, boy!"
Outside Dr. Sun's mausoleum. That sign says "boba" in Chinese.
Relaxing indeed
DIY boba at Mao Kong
Shhh, not while I'm mixing
It tasted like tepid soup, the tapioca was mush, and the cup had a picture of a man pulling a million-pound fish out of the water. The word "relaxing" is written above said picture. Is reeling in a fish the size of Texas really that relaxing, really? REALLY?
And what would the founding father of China say if he knew they were serving such an atrocity outside his resting place?
Also, at 5 RMB, it's considered pricey. For China. Really, though, the experience of visiting Dr. Sun's mausoleum far surpasses any criticism of mediocre boba I could ever think of. I might be losing my edge.
OH, and did I mention that the hostel where I stayed was attached to a boba place? Honestly, China, you're just making it too easy for me. More on hostel-boba later. No time right now to write about the many complicated drinks this place serves (including milk tea with boba, pudding and ice cream. In ONE DRINK. I know!)
Also stay tuned for DIY boba. We're talkin' milk tea in a teapot, a mug of tapioca, and a spoon. Mix it to your own liking. As my friend Nick (creator of the phrase "no-ba") would say, "Oh, boy!"
Outside Dr. Sun's mausoleum. That sign says "boba" in Chinese.
Relaxing indeed
DIY boba at Mao Kong
Shhh, not while I'm mixing
Monday, November 5, 2007
No-ba
Jiujiang (九江- Nine Rivers), Jiangxi Province, China - On my way to Lushan Mountain (where many famous Chinese poets have gone for inspiration...also where Chiang Kai-shek lived during Kuomingtang rule and, later, where Mao Tse-tung and the Communist Party met during the Cultural Revolution) I stumbled upon a boba stand.
Bei Fu
And by "stumbled," I mean I asked every store owner in sight, and proceeded to drag my poor travelmates around a freezing drizzly night until success was found.
The result: very disappointing. Have you ever heard of a boba place RUNNING OUT OF BOBA? I know, that was my reaction too.
Cat: Yi bei zhen zhou nai cha (One cup of milk tea with tapioca, please).
Boba man: Zhen zhou mai guang le (We ran out of tapioca).
Cat: (gasp) Oh my god!!!
Cat's friends: Hahahahaha!
Not cool. So I begrudgingly settled for regular milk tea with no tapioca. It was mediocre. I suppose that if nothing else, it was nice having hot tea on a cold night. At least it helped warm my cold, cold heart, in which there is a void left by the lack of boba in Jiujiang.
Milk tea, sans boba. Hrmph.
Note: the title of this blog entry must be attributed to my friend Nick who, when another friend refused a sip of my boba, said, "No-ba?" Credit where credit is due, indeed.
Bei Fu
And by "stumbled," I mean I asked every store owner in sight, and proceeded to drag my poor travelmates around a freezing drizzly night until success was found.
The result: very disappointing. Have you ever heard of a boba place RUNNING OUT OF BOBA? I know, that was my reaction too.
Cat: Yi bei zhen zhou nai cha (One cup of milk tea with tapioca, please).
Boba man: Zhen zhou mai guang le (We ran out of tapioca).
Cat: (gasp) Oh my god!!!
Cat's friends: Hahahahaha!
Not cool. So I begrudgingly settled for regular milk tea with no tapioca. It was mediocre. I suppose that if nothing else, it was nice having hot tea on a cold night. At least it helped warm my cold, cold heart, in which there is a void left by the lack of boba in Jiujiang.
Milk tea, sans boba. Hrmph.
Note: the title of this blog entry must be attributed to my friend Nick who, when another friend refused a sip of my boba, said, "No-ba?" Credit where credit is due, indeed.
Monday, September 24, 2007
(Way) Lost in Translation
Shanghai - Okay, I am an idiot. So I go to this little boba hole-in-the-wall across the street from my dorm, right. (For the record, that's in the Yangpu district of Shanghai.) And instead of ordering my usual milk tea with boba (here, it's zhen zhu nai cha. Zen zhu = pearl, nai cha = milk tea), I decide to be adventurous because hey, my buddy from Hong Kong is visiting and we should live it up and have some flavored boba for a change, right.
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!
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!
Monday, September 3, 2007
OMG
Shanghai - OMIGOD. I didn't think I'd be able to post from China. I think this is what's going on: China blocks blogspot.com, but not blogger.com. Ergo, I can log in, post and edit my entries, but I can't view my blog afterwards. Or read the comments that people leave me. It's like having an itch you can't scratch. Infuriating!
Word on the street is that in China, "upscale" boba places serve you tea, tapioca and cream/sugar all separately so you can add the condiments according to your personal taste preferences. Will investigate further.
My life just got so much better. Didn't yours?
Word on the street is that in China, "upscale" boba places serve you tea, tapioca and cream/sugar all separately so you can add the condiments according to your personal taste preferences. Will investigate further.
My life just got so much better. Didn't yours?
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