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Steep our way into the global community

`We learn from tapioca milk tea that if we want to embrace the world and map out a global strategy, then we should have big hearts and accommodate different cultures.'

Tapioca milk tea (珍珠奶茶, pearl milk tea) is popular in China and Hong Kong, and has found markets in Southeast Asia, North America and Japan. If Taiwan must find something to be its "national food" in the same way as McDonald's hamburgers exemplify the US, something by which we can let the world know of Taiwan's existence, then tapioca milk tea is it.

Food culture spreads naturally, without any pretension, quietly changing people's habits around the world. The scope of such cultural influence is far wider than money diplomacy or international political propaganda.

The creator's business acumen and innovation as well as the development process -- the proportions of water, tea and sugar, the filters used and how long you shake the tea -- are all important factors behind tapioca milk tea's popularity. However, even more important are the cultural factors behind the market acceptance.

Tapioca milk tea has multi-cultural characteristics -- with Taiwan-made tapioca orbs, Chi-nese tea, Western creamer and cocktail-style shaking. Tapioca milk tea is an amalgam of various foods and drinks, or "hybridity," to borrow a post-colonialist term. There is no longer any unitary culture in the world as every culture crosses paths with others all the time. We learn from tapioca milk tea that if we want to embrace the world and map out a global strategy, then we should have big hearts and accommodate different cultures.

The "foam" in the milk tea should not be viewed as a symbol of transience. In his analysis of mass cultural phenomena in the book Mythologies, the late French scholar Roland Barthes mentioned how consumers perceive the foam created by detergents. He suggests that the foam signifies "luxury and abundance, easy, infinite proliferation." The light, soft and floating essence of foam gives the consumer a feeling of happiness, just the way our sense of taste perceives foie gras, wine and sweet food, or the way the bubbles in the bathtub where a female celebrity is taking a dip ease our unhappiness.

The fact that tapioca milk tea sells well in Taiwan both in winter and in summer could be to do with our low happiness index and people's not knowing what to do or where to go. In our unconscious, we have to escape into the feeling of happiness in tapioca milk tea and forget the embarrassment and pain of the now.

Tapioca milk tea stands for fashion and being advanced, while traditional tea drinking symbolizes backwardness. The big straws that come with tapioca milk tea allow consumers to suck up heartily or sip daintily -- fulfilling the demand for freedom -- as opposed to the limitations imposed by smaller straws. The chewy tapioca orbs bring back the delight of chewing when we were infants, back to the happiness and security of sucking a pacifier on our mother's lap. We need this kind of feeling because we do not know where our future happiness will come from.

Wu E-chou is an associate professor of literature in the Eng-lish department of Providence University.

Translated by Francis Huang
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