On a recent Saturday night at Tea Station, Anthony Wang, 34, a Vietnamese immigrant who lives in Westminster, about 40 minutes from San Gabriel, was displaying photos of his recent trip to Burma, Egypt and other places to four friends.
Blending Cantonese and English, Wang and his friends said they relished seeing friends in a comfortable setting.
"We all come in groups, so this is not a pick-up scene," said Wang, who works for a mortgage finance company.
Just a few traffic lights away, past pearl milk tea places such as Tapioca Express, there was barely a table to be had at the sleek Au 79 Tea Spirit.
It was past midnight, and the place was percolating with the cadences of Mandarin, Cantonese, English and Vietnamese. Some people had corralled the Friends-like couches. Some were staring at a bank of televisions playing Asian music videos. Some were thumbing through a stack of Asian-language magazines and comics.
At one table, Howard Ma, an animated 27-year-old telecommunications systems administrator, was holding court in Mandarin with four friends. They talked about some serious matters, including the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. But mostly, they were trying to dwell on life's pleasures. Like pearl milk tea.
"We don't drink [alcohol], we don't smoke," said Ma, an immigrant from Taiwan who lives in Cerritos, about a 30-minute drive from San Gabriel. "We just like to hang out and drink [pearl milk tea]."
Ma and his friends used to hang out in a different place: the chat rooms of Sina.com, a popular Chinese-language Web site. But after several months, a few of them decided to meet in person at the most logical place: a teahouse.
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